Looking for an Android smartphone with a unique twist, and missed out on Prime Day deals? Motorola is coming in clutch with a $300 markdown on the 2025 version of the Motorola Razer Ultra (8/10, WIRED Review) bringing the price down to a very reasonable $1,000.

There’s a lot to like about the Motorola Razr Ultra beyond its compact and unique design. This model Razr is available in a variety of colors, but at least on my end, the discount is available on the Pantone colors Scarab and Rio Red. They’re both immediately striking and elegant, setting them apart from the deep blacks and space grays you’re likely to find on other smartphones.

Our reviewer Julian Chokkattu was quite happy with the performance improvements to this generation of Razr flip phones. The screen has also been improved from previous generations, with a smoother crease in the middle that’s harder to spot, although you can still feel it during use. It’s a big 7-inch AMOLED panel with a 165Hz refresh rate, which is great for both regular use and gaming.

Of course, the big draw here is the exterior screen, and Motorola has been rolling out new widgets and compatible apps for the smaller display. You can quickly check the weather, control your music, or interact with a variety of functionsd, as well as taking selfies with the exterior camera. These features are all totally unique to smartphones that flip in the same way, most of which are a lot more expensive.

The Razr does have a raft of new AI-enhanced features, whether you want them or not. The only one that really stood out to our reviewer was “Pay Attention” mode, which lets you record a conversation or interview in tent mode with real-time transcription and a summary afterwards.

While we think this is the best Motorola smartphone you can currently buy, the less expensive Razr models are discounted as well. The base version is marked down by $100 to just $600, although the Plus model is just $100 more than that, with a more significant $200 discount. If you’re curious about what separates the three versions, make sure to check out our Motorola Razr review for all the details and hands-on impressions.

Legal experts WIRED spoke with say that the ICE monitoring and documentation apps that Apple has removed from its App Store are clear examples of protected speech under the US Constitution’s First Amendment. “These apps are publishing constitutionally protected speech. They’re publishing truthful information about matters of public interest that people obtained just by witnessing public events,” says David Greene, a civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

This hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from attacking the developers behind these ICE-related apps. When ICEBlock first rose to a top spot in Apple’s App Store in April, the Trump administration responded by threatening to prosecute the developer. “We are looking at him,” Bondi said on Fox News of ICEBlock’s Aaron. “And he better watch out.”

Neither the White House nor ICE immediately responded to requests for comment.

Digital rights researchers say that the situation illustrates the dangers when key platforms and communication channels are centrally controlled—whether directly by governments or by other powerful entities like big tech companies. Regardless of what is officially available through the Google Play store, Android users can sideload apps of their choosing. But Apple’s ecosystem has always been a walled garden, an approach that the company has long touted for its security advantages, including the ability to screen more heavily for malicious apps.

For years, a group of researchers and enthusiasts have tried to create “jailbreaks” for iPhones to essentially hack their own devices as a way around Apple’s closed ecosystem. Recently, though, jailbreaking has become less common. This is partly the result of advances in iPhone security, but partly related to the trend in recent years of attackers exploiting complex chains of vulnerabilities that could potentially be used for jailbreaking for malware instead, particularly mercenary spyware.

“The closed ecosystem motivation sort of dwindled as Apple added capabilities that previously required a jailbreak—like wallpapers, tethering, better notifications, and private mode in Safari,” says longtime iOS security and jailbreak researcher Will Strafach. “But this situation with ICE apps highlights the issue with Apple being the arbiter and single point of failure.”

Stanford’s Pfefferkorn warns that while US tech companies are not state-controlled, they have in her view become “happy handmaidens” when it comes to “repressing free speech and dissent.”

“It’s especially disappointing,” Pfefferkorn says, “coming from the company that brought us the Think Different ad campaign, which invoked MLK, Gandhi, and Muhammad Ali—none of whom would likely be big fans of ICE today.”

Lots of single-use water bottles made from poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) end up in landfills, but there’s a growing interest in upcycling them instead. Researchers in Energy & Fuels report on new heat-based fabrication methods to transform PET into supercapacitor electrodes and separator films for upcycled energy storage devices. In demonstrations, an all-plastic supercapacitor made from discarded water bottles outperformed a similar design that used a traditional glass fiber separator.

“PET is used to produce over 500 billion single-use beverage bottles each year, which generates a significant amount of plastic waste and poses a major environmental challenge,” says lead researcher Yun Hang Hu. “PET-derived supercapacitors hold great potential for diverse applications in transportation and automotive systems, electronics and consumer devices, as well as industrial and specialized sectors.”

Converting waste plastics like PET into carbon-based materials, especially ones that are electrically conductive, is an attractive way to manufacture more cost-effective and sustainable energy storage devices like supercapacitors. These devices use highly conductive carbon electrodes to store and release a large amount of energy quickly and repeatedly. So, Hu and colleagues wanted to upcycle old water bottles into components for a type of supercapacitor called an electrical double-layer capacitor (EDLC). This device is characterized by two porous carbon-based electrodes separated by a thin, perforated film immersed in a liquid electrolyte.

Hu’s team developed two processes to turn used PET water bottles into components for the upcycled device:

• For the electrodes, the researchers cut the plastic bottles into tiny, couscous-sized grains. They added calcium hydroxide and heated the mixture to nearly 1300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius) in a vacuum. This process converts the plastic into a porous, electrically conductive carbon powder. The researchers combined the carbon powder, carbon black and a polymer binder, and then dried it into thin layers.
• For the separator, the researchers flattened small plastic pieces about the size of postage stamps and poked holes in them using hot needles. The holes’ pattern optimized the passage of current through the electrolyte.

To assemble their PET-based supercapacitor, the researchers submerged two porous carbon electrodes in a liquid potassium hydroxide electrolyte and separated them with the perforated PET film. In demonstrations, the upcycled supercapacitor retained 79% of its capacitance (storage ability), while a similar device with a glass fiber separator retained 78%.

Hu and colleagues say this research introduces a potential strategy for transforming PET waste into supercapacitor components, “opening new opportunities for circular energy storage technologies.” In addition, they say the upcycled EDLC is less expensive to produce than devices made with glass fiber and is itself fully recyclable.

“With further optimization, PET-derived supercapacitors might realistically transition from laboratory prototypes to market-ready devices within the next five to 10 years,” says Hu, “especially as demand grows for sustainable, recyclable energy storage technologies.”