On an earnings call on Tuesday, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready highlighted the promise of open source AI models in helping the company keep its costs down as it expands the use cases for visual AI.
The image pinboarding site, which often serves as consumers’ first step in their shopping journey, leverages AI technology to power a variety of features, including its personalized recommendations, a multimodal search experience that combines text and images, ad targeting, and, most recently, product discovery with the launch of its AI-powered Pinterest Assistant.
However, investors wanted to know what Pinterest’s opportunity in agentic commerce — AI systems that can act autonomously on behalf of users — was given the rapidly changing AI landscape, and how that could impact its bottom line and growth potential.
That question has become more pressing. During the company’s third-quarter earnings announcement, it predicted a weaker holiday shopping season than expected, citing President Donald Trump’s tariffs and their negative impact on the home furnishings category. As a result, Pinterest’s fourth-quarter revenue is expected to come in between $1.31 billion and $1.34 billion, while analysts were estimating $1.34 billion, on average. The news sent the stock tumbling by more than 21% on Wednesday.
Despite the near-term revenue concerns, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready pointed to ways the business could maximize its use of AI and LLMs (large language models), without dramatically increasing its costs. In addition to its own proprietary models that are already accounted for in its cost structure, Ready said the company tests leading off-the-shelf models against open-source options on a regular basis, and found the open-source models promising.
“One of the really, really interesting things that we’re seeing is that we are just getting tremendous performance from open source models specifically for Pinterest use cases on visual AI,” Ready told investors. “Given current market rates and per token costs, in early testing, we’re seeing orders of magnitude reduction in cost with comparable performance using fine-tuned open source models versus leading off-the-shelf proprietary models.”
He said the company planned to move forward with many open-source models for its various use cases, which would come at “a fraction of the cost” of the larger model providers.
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“We feel really good about the value that we’re bringing to the user there, our ability to align that with monetization, and our ability to control those costs and deliver that effectively,” said Ready.
The exec also touched on other areas where Pinterest is considering how to best use AI, including agentic shopping. Ready said that Pinterest already offers “push-button type buying” via its Amazon partnership, and it will wait to see if users actually want the AI to “push the button for them.”
Image Credits:Pinterest
In the meantime, Ready suggested that Pinterest’s biggest differentiator is that it guides the user through the shopping experience — something it hopes to improve with Pinterest Assistant, an AI companion users can talk to, asking for advice and recommendations. The assistant understands the user based on their boards, collages, saves, and how they compare to people with similar tastes, the company says.
The outlook for future generations isn’t looking so great. The UN released its annual Emissions Gap Report on Tuesday, and the news is mostly bad. The world’s projected climate path falls far short of the Paris Agreement targets. Although the 2025 projections are slightly better than last year’s, some of that improvement is due to the report’s methodological changes. The UN also notes that the upcoming US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will basically cancel that out.
The UN measures progress based on projections of rising temperatures (relative to pre-industrial levels) by 2030. The Paris Agreement’s goals are to limit that to 2 degrees Celsius (while pursuing a path to 1.5 degrees C). The current projections are well above both numbers: 2.3 to 2.5 degrees C.
Those numbers compare to 2.5 to 2.8 degrees C in last year’s report, but the improvement is partially chalked up to methodological changes. The report states that the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in January 2026 will wipe out around 0.1 degrees C of progress.
Wildfires (Matt Palmer / Unsplash)
Getting the temperature rise down to 1.5 degrees C by 2100 is still possible, but it appears increasingly unlikely. To get there, the world would need to cut emissions by 55 percent by 2035. Meanwhile, to achieve 2 degrees C of warming by 2030, those cuts would need to reach 35 percent. As the report bleakly puts it, national pledges and the current geopolitical situation “do not provide promising signs that this will happen.”
“Given the size of the cuts needed, the short time available to deliver them and a challenging political climate, a higher exceedance of 1.5 degrees C will happen, very likely within the next decade,” the UN says. The best hope for reaching the long-term goals now lies in reversing that change after the fact. However, that carries the risk of crossing “irreversible climate tipping points,” such as the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
Of course, rising temperatures alone aren’t the only things to worry about. Cascading effects would include crop losses (and food insecurity), water scarcity, wildfires, coastal flooding and coral reef collapse. You also can’t ignore the geopolitical implications, as desperate migrants flee uninhabitable regions, crowding the more livable ones.
A small silver lining is that solar and wind energy development has exceeded expectations, making their expansion easier and cheaper. The UN notes that CO2 removal tech could eventually help supplement policy changes, but that approach is “uncertain, risky and costly.”
Google has released a new “Theme packs” app on the Play Store for its devices that “Personalize your Pixel in one tap.”
Instantly unlock a complete refresh that updates your wallpaper, icons, sounds, GIFs, and more with seasonal theme packs.
Specifically, this updates your Wallpaper, Color (Dynamic Color theme), App icons, Clock, Sounds (Ringtone, Alarm, and Notifications), Gboard (probably GIFs), and more.
The “first seasonal theme pack” is Wicked: For Good! with three styles: “For Good,” “Glinda,” and “Elphaba.”
The app icon on the Play Store (com.google.android.apps.pixel.customizationbundle) is a color swatch on a purple background. Per an earlier leak, you should be able to access this from Wallpaper & style, but nothing is live today after installing the application.
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You get to preview the available Theme packs before tapping “Download” in the top-right corner. Afterwards, you can enable/disable what gets applied: Add sounds, Use wallpaper, etc.
The oldest device we can download it on is a Pixel 7. Theme packs was released to the Play Store on November 4, 2025.
It’s unclear when this will launch. At this point, Google doesn’t stick to the first Monday releases for monthly updates. Late last week, Google released a second October 2025 security patch, which could possibly impact when the next update is coming.
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After Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City on Tuesday, he used part of his acceptance speech to take a direct shot at President Donald Trump.
“To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us,” the mayor-elect said. “So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up!”
The statement was met with a roar of applause from the audience.
In a post on Truth Social Trump wrote, “If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home, because of the fact that, as a Communist, this once great City has ZERO chance of success, or even survival!”
The election quickly became a national talking point, drawing scorn from Republicans outside New York.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott responded to a poll claiming that New Yorkers would move away if Mamdani becomes mayor: “After the polls close tomorrow night, I will impose a 100% tariff on anyone moving to Texas from NYC,” the Republican governor tweeted Monday.
New York’s mayoral election results are also set to become a focal point of Republican messaging in next year’s midterms, according to a memo released Tuesday by the party’s campaign arm.
“The Democrat Party has surrendered to radical socialist Zohran Mamdani and the far-left mob who are now running the show,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella said according to PBS. “They’ve proudly embraced defunding the police, abolishing ICE, taxing hard-working Americans to death, and replacing common sense with chaos. Every House Democrat is foolishly complicit in their party’s collapse, and voters will make them pay in 2026.”
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Former Vice President Dick Cheney died Monday at age 84. He is seen here on Nov. 5, 2000, applauding as retired Gen. Colin Powell speaks at a rally in Del Mar, California.
M. Spencer Green/AP
Richard B. “Dick” Cheney (right), his brother (second from left) and friends were on a baseball team together in Lincoln, Neb., in 1953. His family moved to Wyoming during the boys’ childhood.
AP
Cheney (center) was on the Natrona County High School football team in Casper, Wyo., in 1957.
Courtesy of Natrona County High School/AP
Cheney and his future wife, Lynne Vincent, attend their junior-senior prom at Natrona County High School in 1959.
Courtesy Casper College Archives/AP
In 1964, Cheney was a junior at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyo.
University of Wyoming via Casper College/AP
Cheney succeeded Donald Rumsfeld as President Gerald Ford’s White House chief of staff in 1975 when Rumsfeld was named defense secretary.
Harvey Georges/AP
President Ford and Chief of Staff Cheney look over documents during a weekend trip to Camp David, Md., on Aug. 7, 1976.
David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images
President Ronald Reagan attends a meeting with Republican Minority Leader Bob Michael (left) and Rep. Cheney, R-Wyo., at the White House on March 22, 1983.
David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images
In 1989, Cheney became defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush.
Charles Tasnadi/AP
Defense Secretary Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speak to members of the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing from Myrtle Beach, S.C., at their air base in Saudi Arabia on Dec. 21, 1990.
Bob Daugherty/AP
GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush is joined onstage by his wife, Laura, his running mate Cheney and Cheney’s wife, Lynne, at the conclusion of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, on Aug 3, 2000.
Amy Sancetta/AP
President Bush talks with Vice President Cheney in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Bush had returned to the White House from Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Neb.
Eric Draper/The White House/AP
Cheney is interviewed by Neil Cavuto for his program “Cavuto,” on the Fox Business Network, in New York on Dec. 9, 2013.
Richard Drew/AP
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who extolled the power of the presidency, died Monday at the age of 84, his family said in a statement.
The cause was complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease, the statement said. Cheney had dealt with a history of heart problems.
“Dick Cheney was a great and good man who taught his children and grandchildren to love our country, and to live lives of courage, honor, love, kindness, and fly fishing,” the statement said. “We are grateful beyond measure for all Dick Cheney did for our country. And we are blessed beyond measure to have loved and been loved by this noble giant of a man.”
In a statement, former President George W. Bush, who picked Cheney as his vice president, said the death “is a loss to the nation and a sorrow to his friends. Laura and I will remember Dick Cheney for the decent, honorable man that he was.”
Bush added that Cheney “was a calm and steady presence in the White House amid great national challenges. I counted on him for his honest, forthright counsel, and he never failed to give his best.”
An inauspicious beginning
There was little in Cheney’s early life to foreshadow the immensely influential role he would one day play at the highest levels of American politics. Born the son of a government conservation worker in Lincoln, Neb., in 1941, he would flunk out of Yale University and work as a lineman for a power company in his new home state of Wyoming. Toss in a pair of drunken-driving convictions, and it’s an inauspicious young adulthood.
But turn it around Cheney did: marriage to his high school sweetheart, Lynn; two children; a college degree at the University of Wyoming; graduate school at the University of Wisconsin.
While Cheney was turning his life around, the U.S. was caught in the throes of the Vietnam War. Cheney supported that war but never fought in it. He received five military deferments. Critics would seize upon this decades later, as Cheney helped lead the U.S. into another controversial war — this one in Iraq.
Ordinary to extraordinary
The future vice president began his political career as a congressional intern in 1969. That same year he went to work for a future partner in the Bush administration — Donald Rumsfeld, who ran an economics office in the Nixon White House.
Cheney left the White House before Nixon’s resignation, but in 1974 he was back working for the new president, Gerald Ford. Cheney moved up quickly, becoming Ford’s chief of staff at the age of 34.
It was then that he began to develop a philosophy that would come to full flower in the White House of George W. Bush. His belief was that the power of the presidency must be not only protected, but also restored. In the 1970s, he watched as Congress enacted reforms in response to Watergate and to Vietnam.
“We’ve seen the War Powers Act, an anti-impoundment control act, and time after time after time, administrations have traded away the authority of the president to do his job,” he said in a 2002 interview on Fox News. “We’re not going to do that in this administration. The president is bound and determined to defend those principles and to pass on this office, his and mine, to future generations in better shape than we found it.”
War, a recurring theme
In 1978, Cheney ran for Congress in Wyoming and won. That was also the year he suffered the first of a series of heart attacks. He served in Congress for a decade and finally gave up his seat to become secretary of defense for President George H.W. Bush.
This job brought Cheney’s first confrontation with Saddam Hussein, when he directed Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East. The war ended quickly after Iraqi troops were evicted from Kuwait. At the time, there were some who felt the U.S. should continue all the way to Baghdad and topple Saddam’s regime. President Bush declined; in 1994, Cheney defended that decision.
“The notion that we ought to now go to Baghdad and somehow take control of the country strikes me as an extremely serious one in terms of what we’d have to do once we got there,” he said. “You’d probably have to put some new government in place. It’s not clear what kind of government that would be, how long you’d have to stay. For the U.S. to get involved militarily in determining the outcome of the struggle over who’s going to govern in Iraq strikes me as a classic definition of a quagmire.”
Cheney left the Pentagon when the first President Bush lost to Bill Clinton. Two years later, he flirted with a presidential run of his own but instead headed to the private sector, joining the giant energy services company Halliburton.
Changing the vice presidency — and foreign policy
The job made Cheney a wealthy man, but he stayed involved in conservative politics. In 2000, he was asked by Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush to lead the search for a running mate. Bush later made a surprise announcement that he had chosen none other than Cheney.
Dick Cheney and George W. Bush wave to the crowd during Bush’s second inauguration on Jan. 20, 2005.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
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In office, Cheney became a lightning rod for critics of the administration. Cheney also redefined the office of the vice president. He became President Bush’s closest adviser and a dominant player in shaping policy. Critics alleged that Cheney was really the man in charge at the White House.
The events of Sept. 11, 2001, only reinforced this notion. While Bush was in Florida that day, Cheney was at the White House. He was literally carried by Secret Service agents to an underground bunker. In an interview years later on NBC’s Meet the Press, Cheney said it was he who told Bush not to return to the White House.
“I said, ‘Delay your return. We don’t know what’s going on here but it looks like, you know, we’ve been targeted,'” Cheney said, adding that “things that we did later on that day tied directly to guaranteeing presidential succession.”
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney advocated an aggressive new foreign policy in which potential threats would be met with swift, preemptive action. No longer would the U.S. wait for an enemy to strike first. He helped sell the Iraq War by issuing dire warnings to the American people. At the same time, he famously predicted that the mission itself would be relatively easy.
On Meet the Press, Tim Russert, who then hosted the show, asked Cheney if the American people were ready for a long, bloody battle.
“I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators,” Cheney said.
As the war dragged on, Democrats seized that statement as evidence of how Cheney’s determination to go to war had clouded his judgment. There was talk that his views had changed from his earlier days in politics.
Controversy follows Cheney
While Cheney’s disposition was never particularly sunny, critics assailed the vice president as a relentlessly grim figure. Late-night comics called him Darth Vader. Even President Bush had fun with his vice president’s image on Halloween one year.
“This morning I was with the vice president,” Bush told reporters. “I was asking him what costume he was planning. He said, ‘Well, I’m already wearing it,’ and then he mumbled something about the dark side of the force.”
There were other controversies that dogged Cheney as the Bush administration’s popularity plummeted in its second term. In 2007, his chief of staff and top adviser, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted of perjury in an investigation into the leaking of the name of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. Cheney was not implicated in the case legally, but he was tainted by the scandal nonetheless.
Then, in what was one of the more bizarre incidents involving someone as high-ranking an official as Cheney, he accidentally shot and wounded a friend, attorney Harry Whittington, in the face and chest with birdshot pellets during a 2006 weekend quail-hunting trip at a Texas ranch.
Even in a strange story like this, some of the classic Cheney traits, such as secrecy, were on display. The story didn’t come out for two days, and when it finally did, Cheney himself took days longer to speak about it, finally doing an interview with Fox News.
On Cheney’s final day in office, he sat in a wheelchair, the result of an accident, bundled up against the frigid cold, and watched as President Barack Obama was sworn in.
Out of office, he emerged as a frequent and outspoken critic of the Obama administration, even accusing the president of not understanding that the U.S. was at war.
In February 2010 he made a surprise appearance at CPAC, the conservative political action conference in Washington. The crowd erupted.
It was one of the last moments of big public adulation for Cheney. With the rise of Donald Trump, Cheney’s brand of politics and his interventionist foreign policy fell out of favor in the party. Trump would often lambaste Cheney for launching what he called “forever wars.”
It carried into the next generation as Trump attacked Cheney’s daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), when she voted for Trump’s impeachment after a riot at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Trumps relentless criticism of her contributed to Liz Cheney’s defeat when she ran for reelection in 2022. Along the way, her feather appeared in television spots on her behalf.
“In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Dick Cheney said in the ad.
It was his last big public moment in the political arena. Two years later, he would endorse Democrat Kamala Harris over Trump for president.
In the end, the power of the Cheney name was greatly diminished in GOP politics. His legacy became one of contradictions: Trump supporters despised him, while some Democrats embraced him — if reluctantly — and still many others would always condemn him as a war criminal for his role in Iraq.
Now Cheney has died, with a legacy in government service, foreign policy and the balance of power between the branches of government. No matter his contradictory legacy, he leaves behind a personal stamp on a presidency greater than any vice president before him.
MoEngage, a customer engagement platform that works with consumer brands across 75 countries, says it has raised new funding led by its existing investor, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, to ramp up global growth and infuse more AI into its platform.
All told, $100 million in shares just traded hands, split roughly 60% primary and 40% secondary, as part of MoEngage’s Series F round. The funding marks the entry of Indian venture firm A91 Partners as a new investor co-leading the round with Goldman Sachs Alternatives. According to MoEngage, it has now raised $250 million in funding altogether.
As consumer brands increasingly rely on digital channels to reach customers, competition for attention has intensified. That’s pushed companies to use the customer data they already have to deliver more personalized marketing. While established marketing platforms continue to serve this space, brands are now seeking AI-driven tools that can automate decision-making and reduce manual labor. MoEngage positions itself in this segment with its Merlin AI suite, which helps marketing and product teams launch campaigns faster and improve targeting efficiency.
“We help B2C brands engage more effectively with their customers by leveraging the first-party data they already have,” Raviteja Dodda (pictured above), co-founder and CEO of MoEngage, said in an interview.
The 11-year-old startup spent its first seven years focusing largely on India and Southeast Asia. Over the past four years, it has expanded its reach to new markets, particularly North America, which now contributes more than 30% of its revenue, Dodda told TechCrunch. About 25% of the business comes from Europe and the Middle East, and the remaining 45% from India and Southeast Asia.
Goldman Sachs’ backing in the latest funding will help further bolster MoEngage’s global presence. The investment bank also co-led the startup’s Series E round of $77 million along with B Capital in June 2022.
“The current investors know the most about the company, in terms of how the company performs, and they know everything good and bad,” said Dodda. “[Goldman Sachs] leading the round is a strong validation of our fundamentals.”
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Over the past two to three years, MoEngage has invested heavily in generative AI and decisioning AI capabilities. These efforts are reflected in its Merlin AI suite, which Dodda said includes a range of AI agents built for marketing use cases.
Some of these agents act like copywriters, helping consumer brands draft marketing messages, create multiple variants of a campaign, or generate text in natural language along with relevant images. The suite also includes decisioning AI tools that help brands determine which customers should receive a particular message or offer, on which channel, and at what time, Dodda said.
MoEngage’s Merlin AI suiteImage Credits:MoEngage
MoEngage currently serves over 1,350 consumer brands worldwide, including SoundCloud, McAfee, Kayak, Domino’s, Deutsche Telekom, and Travelodge, as well as prominent Indian household names such as Swiggy, Flipkart, Ola, Airtel, and Tata. About 60% of the company’s business comes from traditional enterprises, while the remaining 40% is from internet-focused firms. The platform also works with more than 25 global banks and several large insurers, including JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, and India’s largest insurer, Life Insurance Corporation (LIC).
Some of these brands previously used marketing platforms from incumbents such as Adobe, Oracle, and Salesforce. MoEngage has since won over more than 300 of them, helping drive growth in North America and the EMEA regions.
In one instance, SoundCloud migrated over 120 million users to MoEngage within 12 weeks, utilizing AI-driven insights to accelerate product launches and enhance retention among its paid users, said Hope Barrett, senior director of martech at SoundCloud.
Several of MoEngage’s customers also relied on multiple point solutions to handle specific tasks. The company helped consolidate those tools into a unified platform to cut costs and streamline marketing operations.
“If you look at all of our brands, whether it’s a bank or an e-commerce company, they leverage MoEngage to unify all their customer data from all the touchpoints. It could be their offline stores, website, mobile app [or other channels],” Dodda told TechCrunch.
Without disclosing exact figures, Dodda said MoEngage grew about 40% year-over-year last year and aims to maintain a 35% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next three years. The company also expects to become adjusted EBITDA-positive on a quarterly basis by the end of the current fiscal year.
MoEngage sees companies such as Braze and CleverTap, as well as legacy marketing clouds by Adobe, Oracle, and Salesforce, among its key competitors.
The startup has about 800 employees across its 15 offices worldwide. It plans to expand its workforce, particularly in North America and Europe, by scaling its customer success, support, sales, and marketing teams to deepen its presence in those markets. MoEngage also intends to build additional AI capabilities and hire more talent to support that effort.
MoEngage plans to become IPO-ready within the next couple of years, Dodda told TechCrunch, without sharing a specific timeline for going public.
“We see an opportunity to build a multi-billion dollar revenue company in our space,” he stated.
When you search for a MagSafe power bank on Amazon, among the top recommendations are outdated banks that max out at 7.5-watt wireless charging. Now that Qi2 and Qi2 25W technology have arrived, iPhones can refill much faster. In our tests, older-gen batteries got a phone to 50 percent in just under two hours on average. Our pick for the best Qi2 25W power bank did that in about a half hour. You may also be tempted by Apple’s iPhone Air MagSafe Battery, but we found a better (read: cheaper) choice. We used more than a dozen batteries for this guide and continue to try out new models so you can buy the best MagSafe power bank — that someone actually tested first.
The best MagSafe power banks for 2025
Amy Skorheim for Engadget
Specs: 10,000mAh capacity, Qi2 certified, display, stand, USB-C port
Who is this for? The person who never remembers to charge their phone overnight.
Anker’s MagGo power bank was one of the first Qi2-certified products to come to market — and it’s still one of the most well-rounded MagSafe banks you can get. It charged an iPhone 15 from 5 percent to 60 percent in a little over 45 minutes. It took under two and a half hours to get the phone from near-dead to full, and it had enough power left over for an additional 70-percent refill.
A small display tells you just how much charge remains (and how long until it’s full when you’re recharging the battery). The kickstand is sturdy so you can use the phone hands-free in portrait mode, or you can twist the phone to watch something in landscape orientation.
Like many Anker products we’ve tried, it has a sturdy build and a clean aesthetic. Plus, it comes in purple, blue and green in addition to the standard (and comparatively boring) black and white. Though it’s on the pricier end of the battery pack spectrum at $90, it’s often on sale for $70 and has sold for as little as $50 on Amazon.
Specs: 10,000mAh capacity, Qi2 certified, rotating stand, USB-C port
Who is this for? The person who wants to watch videos while their phone charges up
The rotating stand on the Mophie Powerstation with Stand is pretty genius. You can twist it to put your phone in either landscape or portrait orientation, and then fine-tune the swing of the leg to get the perfect viewing angle. That, of course, isn’t enough to recommend a charger, but its capacity and speed are. It gave an iPhone 15 nearly two full charges (1.87 charges to be exact), which is more than any other 10K battery we tested, and it completed its first refill just as quickly as our top picks. The black-on-black colorway is a little drab and it doesn’t have an LED screen, just pips to let you know the remaining charge. It has the same list price as our top Anker pick but that latter battery is on sale more often than this one.
Specs: 10,000mAh capacity, Qi2 25W certified, USB-C cable/strap, USB-C port
Who is this for? The person who wants the latest charging tech for their iPhone 17.
Ugreen was the first to market with a Qi2 25W-certified power bank with its . Belkin and Anker have debuted their stationary charging accessories and we’ll likely see portable chargers from them and others soon. Currently, Baseus is one of the few other brands with a Qi2 25W battery available and we’re in the process of testing it as well.
The Ugreen battery charged an iPhone 16 (running iOS 26 and therefore Qi2.2 compatible) from near-dead to 50 percent in 30 minutes. For comparison, the same charge on an iPhone 15 took 45 minutes. The battery has a display that tells you how much charge the bank has left, which I found to be pretty accurate. The attached USB-C cable doubles as a handle and the overall design feels premium. At 10,000mAh, it’s got enough capacity for a refill and a half for a standard iPhone. That makes it a little bulky, but not so much that you can’t use the phone as it charges. There’s also no built-in stand so it’s harder to watch your screen while charging.
Pros
First Qi2 25W-certified power bank
Includes a screen to tell you the remaining charge
Specs: 5,000mAh capacity, Qi2 certified, under 5 oz, 0.34-inches thick, USB-C port
Who is this for? The minimalist; the person who wants their power bank to blend in.
iPhones are sleek and slim — if you want the same from your portable charger, Anker’s new Nano 5K MagGo Slim is a good pick. It’s one of the thinnest chargers I’ve ever tested and has a nice, smooth matte texture. Since it’s thinner and a little wider than many battery packs, it’s ideally proportioned for a standard iPhone, stretching edge-to-edge on the back and sitting just below the camera. That makes it easy to grip your phone and use it as it recharges. There’s no stand, strap, screen or any other extras, but that’s the point with a minimalist accessory like this.
It took an iPhone 15 from 5 percent to 90 percent in about two and a half hours. Like all power banks, it slowed down significantly after the pack was half drained, so it’s worth noting that it charged the phone to 40 percent in less than an hour.
Specs: 5,000mAh capacity, Qi2 certified, under 4.5 oz, 0.33-inches thick, USB-C port
Who is this for? The iPhone user who wants a balance of slimness, speed and price
It’s not as sleek looking as Anker’s smooth and slim battery, but the Sharge AeroMag 5K still looks quite nice, particularly in the aluminum ice blue color. It gave an iPhone 15 a 90 percent refill and did it faster than any other MagSafe option we’ve tried. It doesn’t have a stand or a display, and doesn’t even come with a USB-C cable (though I appreciate that as a person with too many cords). But it feels premium and stays firmly attached to the phone without getting in the way of using the handset. It’s also cheaper than our slim Anker pick and just a touch lighter.
Specs: 10,000mAh capacity, Qi2 certified, USB-C cable/strap, stand, USB-C port
Who is this for? The person who wants the most charge for the lowest price.
This is the first product from Iniu that I’ve tested and I was impressed by both the features and the value. The P73 10K Magnetic Power Bank managed to get an iPhone 15 from five percent to full in around two hours and fifteen minutes. It had enough left over to deliver another impressive 90 percentage points to the iPhone in round two — that’s actually a slightly better performance than our top Anker pick. As it’s the first of its kind, I’m not as certain of the bank’s long-term reliability (like I am with Anker batteries), but so far, Iniu seems pretty capable.
Instead of a display on the bank, the remaining power is indicated with a cute, lit puppy paw. The lights on the toe pads and center pad disappear as the battery discharges; it’s a cute variation on regular LEDs. The stand at the bottom works in either landscape or portrait mode, but the strap gets in the way when it’s in the latter position. Speaking of the strap, it’s not just a handy way to grab the bank — it’s also a detachable USB-C cable. That may come in handy when it’s time to recharge the pack or you want to lend some charge to another device.
What to consider before buying a MagSafe power bank
Choose the right capacity. Most portable MagSafe chargers have either a 5,000 milliamp hour (mAh) or 10,000mAh capacity. Obviously, the larger capacity batteries are physically bigger, but thanks to an iPhone’s magnetic attachment points, you can still use the phone comfortably as it charges. If you’re worried about overall bulk, you may prefer the slimness of a 5,000mAh battery.
Just note that a 5K battery pack won’t deliver its entire capacity to your phone due to energy loss from voltage conversion and heat dissipation. Over the years, I’ve measured around a 60-percent delivery rate for wireless banks. For example, that means an iPhone 16 with its 3,561mAh battery will get about 85 to 90 percentage points from a 5K battery. A 10K bank will charge that same phone fully once, with enough for a 50- to 60-percent boost next time.
Understand MagSafe versus Qi2. All iPhones model 12 and later have MagSafe technology, which rely on embedded magnets to align the phone with a wireless charger and can support charging speeds of up to 15 watts. The MagSafe name is owned by Apple — third-party chargers can’t freely use the term and instead call their accessories “magnetic,” or apply a branded name like Anker’s MagGo or UGreen’s MagFlow. Be sure to check the product details before buying: anything that works with Apple’s technology will be listed as MagSafe-compatible.
Qi2 is a standard from the Wireless Power Consortium (of which Apple is a member) and has the same stipulations as MagSafe (15W charging and magnetic alignment). Any company can submit their tech for this certification. iPhones 13 and later are Qi2 compatible.
The newest standard, Qi2 25W (also called Qi2.2), bumps wireless charging speeds up to 25W. The WPC says a certified smartphone using a certified charger can wirelessly go from dead to half full in about 30 minutes (keep in mind that both the charger and phone need to be certified to get those speeds) and that aligns with our testing.
Accessories, like power banks that support the new standard are starting to hit shelves now. As for phones, Google’s Pixel 10 Pro XL, Apple’s iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max all support the standard as well. iPhone 16 models (except the 16e) support the standard after an update to iOS 26.
Remember travel restrictions. You may have seen news reports of flights being grounded because a power bank caught fire in the cabin. Currently, the TSA allows them in your carry-on luggage as long as they’re rated at 100 watt-hours or lower (about 27,000mAh for lithium ion batteries).
But some airlines have enacted further restrictions. Southwest, for example, requires you to keep power banks out of the bag and visible while charging. Even if your airline doesn’t make such demands, keeping a power brick out in the open while it’s in use is a good idea — it’ll keep it cooler and you’ll be more likely to notice if it starts to overheat. Most, if not all, MagSafe battery packs come in at under the 100-watt-hour limit, so traveling should be easy with one.
Consider the extra features. You may not need them, but the little extra perks of a MagSafe power bank can come in handy. Some have stands so you can watch your phone while it refills. Some have LED displays that tell you how much charge is left, which can be a little more precise than the lighted pips other banks use. Some also have straps to make the bank easier to carry around or fish out of your bag.
What about the iPhone Air MagSafe Battery?
When Apple introduced the iPhone Air, it announced the new $99 iPhone Air MagSafe Battery in the same breath. It’s now the sole Apple-branded MagSafe power bank — but it only works with the iPhone Air. It’s a pretty divisive battery. In his review of the new phone, Engadget’s Sam Rutherford appreciated that the accessory keeps with the sleekness of the iPhone Air design and liked that it can also charge the new AirPods 3 wirelessly. But Valentina Palladino called out its dismal price-to-capacity ratio.
Anker’s Nano MagGo Slim is probably a better bet for all but the most devoted iPhone user. It has the same minimalist look and pocketable thinness as Apple’s proprietary battery, but it’ll attach to other phones in addition to the Air. Plus it’s $35 cheaper.
Other MagSafe batteries we tested
Mophie Powerstation Slim 5K
The Mophie Powerstation Slim 5K, too, has a super slim design that nearly disappears into the back of the phone as it charges. It makes excellent use of its 5K capacity, delivering a 90 percent refill to an iPhone 15. But it’s a little more expensive than the our top slim pick, Anker’s Nano MagGo Slim, and the squared off design makes it feel bulkier than it actually is. Neither of those make it a bad choice; the MagSafe battery playing field is just terribly competitive right now.
Belkin BoostCharge Pro 10K
Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro is Qi2-certified and was only a touch slower than other models in terms of charging speeds, boosting an iPhone 15 from 5 percent to full in about two and a half hours. The feel is premium and the stand is sturdy, but it got quite hot during charging, took overly long to refill itself and is pricer and a bit bulkier than similar models.
Baseus Picogo 5K
The Picogo 5K from Baseus is teensy but still packs a stand and a 5,000mAh capacity. It’s Qi2-certified and delivered a 43 percent bump to our tester iPhone 15 in 42 minutes, ultimately charging it to 91 percent. The slim slab of the Anker Nano battery is sleeker. But that one doesn’t have a stand — so if you want to prop up your phone while it charges, go for this one.
MagSafe power banks FAQs
What does MagSafe do?
MagSafe is Apple’s own technology that supports up to 25W wireless charging speeds and incorporates embedded magnets to align the phone with chargers and other accessories.
Which iPhones support MagSafe?
iPhones 12 and later support 15W MagSafe technology, though only iPhones 13 and later can reach the 15W charging speed with third-party Qi2 accessories. The iPhone 12 maxes out at 7.5W with non-Apple accessories.
The new iPhone 17, 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max support up to 25W charging speeds with Qi2 25W-certified chargers. iPhone 16, 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max should also support those speeds after an update to iOS 26. The iPhone Air supports MagSafe charging at a max speed of 20W.
Can you use MagSafe batteries with a case?
In most cases (heh), yes. The wireless charge can travel across a distance of a few millimeters. If the case is more than 5mm thick or contains metal components, the wireless charge can be blocked. Many iPhone cases are marketed as MagSafe-compatible, which means the case itself has complimentary magnets inside and should not interfere with charging accessories. We tested a MagSafe power bank on an iPhone 15 with and without a MagSafe case and got the same charging speeds and amounts in both tests.
How much power do MagSafe batteries provide?
That depends on the power bank. If it is Qi2-certified, it can provide up to 15 watts of wireless power. Qi2 25W-enabled chargers can deliver up to 25 watts to a compatible handset. Non-Qi2 batteries typically deliver around 7.5 watts.
The amount of charge delivered depends on the capacity. Most MagSafe portable chargers are rated at 5,000mAh or 10,000mAh. The former can get a standard iPhone 15 from five percent to around 90 percent. The latter can fill the phone completely with enough left over for another half charge.
After launching on iOS a month ago, OpenAI has finally released its Sora app on Android, granting more users the ability to generate its eerily realistic AI videos.
Sora is the name of OpenAI’s video generation model, but it’s also the name of a new social app that the company launched in late September of this year. The app was first available on iOS but, finally, has arrived on Android.
You’ll be able to create videos using prompts, including the ability to inject yourself or anyone else into that video by starting with an existing image. OpenAI says the app generates “hyperreal videos” with “unprecedented realism.”
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Indeed, videos created by Sora can often be eerily realistic, which is a big part of why they spread like wildfire on social media shortly after the app’s iOS debut. Google Gemini is also able to generate realistic videos using Veo 3, but Sora packages the functionality into its own dedicated experience while also adding in some community features.
OpenAI explains what the Sora app for Android can do saying:
Create Videos in Seconds: Start with a prompt or image and Sora generates a complete video with audio inspired by your imagination.
Collaborate & Play: Cast yourself or your friends in videos. Remix challenges and trends as they evolve.
Choose Your Style: Make it cinematic, animated, photorealistic, cartoon, or entirely surreal.
Remix & Make It Yours: Take someone else’s creation and put your spin on it – swap characters, change the vibe, add new scenes, or extend the story.
Find Your Community: Community features make it easy to share your creations and see what others are making.
Sora was initially only available in the US and Canada, but has expanded to Japan, Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam. There’s also no waitlist anymore in select regions.
Polling station at the Esther B. Griswald Theater for Preforming Arts building at the American International College. Nov. 4, 2025.(Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
Voters ousted an experienced city councilor in favor of a 25-year-old newcomer and returned a former councilor to office in Tuesday’s election.
The election was not easy on incumbents. Six-year City Councilor Sean Curran also lost his bid for reelection as did two School Committee incumbents who had served 15 or more years on the board.
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NPR’s Steve Inskeep speaks with Jonah Goldberg, editor of The Dispatch, about former Vice President Dick Cheney who died Monday at 84.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
One of our perspectives today on former Vice President Dick Cheney comes from Jonah Goldberg, editor of The Dispatch, who followed much of Cheney’s career. He’s died at age 84. And, Jonah, welcome. I guess we should say neither you nor I are really old enough to have followed all of Cheney’s career, but a fair…
JONAH GOLDBERG: Right.
INSKEEP: …Amount of it. How should we think about him?
GOLDBERG: I think in some way – well, first of all, you know, I always – I struggle with this. Whenever somebody at a ripe age with – who lived this incredibly full life passes away, the focus on sort of, oh, it’s a sad day – I get it. But at the same time, he lived an incredibly interesting, full life with major accomplishments.
INSKEEP: True.
GOLDBERG: And whether you love him or hate him or anything like that, one can’t say at 84, after all he did, you know, it was – he was taken at a tragically young age or anything like that. It’s – I had the same thing go through my head when William F. Buckley died, my old boss. It’s, like, it’s sad because it’s the closing of a chapter, but it’s also this amazing story. And Cheney’s is an amazing story. He – you know…
INSKEEP: How should we…
GOLDBERG: …He flunked out of Yale.
INSKEEP: Yeah. Did you say flunked out of Yale? I didn’t know that. Go on.
GOLDBERG: Well, that’s what he told people.
INSKEEP: OK.
GOLDBERG: He went to Yale briefly, got into some shenanigans – who knows? – and ended up going to, I want to say the University of Wisconsin, where while he was finishing his PhD, he gets called up to basically go to Washington and becomes a congressman, becomes the youngest chief of staff in the Ford administration, secretary of defense under Bush 1. And he was this sort of – he comes from an era where you could be a fierce partisan but also a serious policy intellectual and also a patriot who sometimes – some people would say to a fault – puts the country first beyond sort of partisan or popular considerations. And I think a lot of that is sort of gone these days. He was just a serious man.
INSKEEP: I just want to note, he became a critic of President Trump. His daughter Liz Cheney was a fierce critic of President Trump. And at the end, if I’m not mistaken, former Vice President Cheney voted for a Democrat for president who he could not possibly have agreed on with very much in terms of issues but believed it was better for the country. Is there any irony in that?
GOLDBERG: There’s a lot of irony to Dick Cheney’s career. He was one of the foremost public officials in the sort of intellectual realm championing this idea of a stronger executive branch. He thought the executive branch would become too weak, that Congress and the courts and the permanent bureaucracy had overtaken things. And a lot of that argument has been picked up in ways that obviously Dick Cheney would not endorse by the Trump administration.
He was also an architect of the – you know, the action that took Manuel Noriega out in Panama, which, you know, a lot of the supposedly intellectual arguments in favor of what Trump is doing in the Caribbean and with Venezuela these days point to that as the precedent that allows them to do this.
And it’s a – it’s sort of an example of – Dick Cheney’s entire life, he argued for a stronger presidency on the assumption that the presidency would be, you know, occupied by a person of real conviction and patriotic principle. And it’s sort of – you know, it’s a – for him, it has to have felt a little bit like a Frankenstein’s monster to have this guy he did not like and thought did not put the country first using a lot of the arguments and mechanisms that he tried to put in place for his own ends.
INSKEEP: Just about 30 seconds then. I think you’re telling me that he didn’t really have a legal argument with President Trump. He had a character argument with President Trump.
GOLDBERG: I think that’s right. I think that’s right. There are a lot of – it’s sort of like John Bolton, who’s got his own issues these days. John Bolton, in terms of, like, the intellectual superstructure of Trumpism – there’s a lot of agreement there, but they just don’t think the guy is – was fit for the office. And so they put the country first because they thought the character mattered more than just mere policy positions.
INSKEEP: Jonah Goldberg is editor of The Dispatch and has been a regular guest here for years. Jonah, it’s good to hear from you again. Thank you so much.
GOLDBERG: Always great to be here. Thanks, Steve.
INSKEEP: And if you’re just joining us, former Vice President Dick Cheney has died at the age of 84. Among other things in his life, he served as chief of staff to President Gerald Ford, secretary of defense for President George H.W. Bush and also vice president to President George W. Bush. We’ll continue covering his life.
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