This digest compiles the latest from The Verge.
Today’s The Verge Roundup
This experimental camera can focus on everything at once
29 Dec 2025, 2:50 pm by Jess Weatherbed
A camera lens, historically, can only focus on one thing at a time, just like the human eye. That could be a thing of the past, though, thanks to a breakthrough lens technology developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) that can bring every part of a scene into sharp focus, capturing finer details across the entire image, no matter the distance.
Traditional lenses are limited to sharpening one focal plane (the distance between an object and your camera) at a time, blurring everything behind or in front of that object. That effect can bring a sense of depth to images, but seeing a full picture clearly typically requires you …
The best shows to watch on HBO Max from 2025
29 Dec 2025, 1:30 pm by Charles Pulliam-Moore
With all the drama surrounding Warner Bros. Discovery’s plans to sell itself to another company, it’s not currently clear how much longer HBO Max will continue to exist in its current form. But for the time being, the streamer is chock full of solid series you might want to consider watching if you find yourself bored, chilly, and firmly planted on your couch this holiday season. Whether it’s superhero madness, dark satire, or steamy romance, HBO Max has a little bit of everything. And the streamer has a whole lot more coming down the pipeline, so now’s the time to check out some of what it had to offer in 2025.
Heated Rivalry
At a time wh …
Xiaomi’s 17 Ultra Leica edition has a rotatable camera zoom
29 Dec 2025, 1:23 pm by Dominic Preston
Xiaomi used the Christmas period to launch its top flagship phone for the year, the 17 Ultra. It drops the extra rear display that’s the key selling point of the 17 Pro, but instead adds in the option of a manual zoom ring, built directly into the phone’s camera island.
That rotating zoom is only included in the new Leica edition of the phone, which also packs touches like the Leica red dot logo and a textured finish on the phone’s sides. The ring can be reprogrammed for exposure or focus if you prefer, and the Leica version has a few custom software touches too, like unique film simulation effects, and physical accessories like a lens cap …
I’m The Verge’s Senior Internet Typist, ask me anything while Nilay’s away!
29 Dec 2025, 1:00 pm by Elizabeth Lopatto
Hello from the dead week of the year, when all sane people have logged off to spend time with their families. This is when I typically write at least one deeply weird post while I’m working over the holiday. One time I got left alone on New Year’s Day and posted about cats all day and people got very mad! No one let me run the site alone anymore after that.
I’m supposed to give you some inkling of what I am willing to talk about but even I don’t know what my beat is anymore. I am somehow our business reporter, our in-house media critic, our heavy metal expert, our long-running (and long-suffering) Elon Musk personality disorder specialist, …
Windows on Arm had another good year
29 Dec 2025, 1:00 pm by Antonio G. Di Benedetto
In 2024, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips finally made Arm-based Windows laptops viable. Unlike previous Arm laptops that struggled to even run Windows well, this new class offered solid performance and the best battery life on Windows, and they impressed us in Microsoft’s own Surface Laptop and Surface Pro offerings. But inconsistent app compatibility remained the biggest hurdle to running Windows on Arm. (It forced me to use the watered-down Adobe Lightroom app instead of Lightroom Classic, and that’s a sin.) And playing games, one of Windows’ greatest strengths against the walled garden of Apple’s Macs, was basically a nonstarter.
Throughou …
Google Photos is coming to Samsung TVs in 2026
29 Dec 2025, 11:48 am by Jess Weatherbed
Google Photos will finally be available on TVs next year, starting with an upcoming integration for Samsung TVs. Samsung announced that the planned integration will “seamlessly bring the photos people capture on their phones to Samsung TVs, where they can appear in a larger, cinematic format,” and that it wants Google Photos to be “deeply woven into the TV experience.”
There currently isn’t a native TV app for Google Photos, even on the company’s own Google TV platform, though Samsung’s announcement doesn’t specify that this new integration will be launching as a dedicated app. Samsung says it’s first aiming to bring a Memories feature that …
End of today’s The Verge roundup.
