Two great new repairable gadgets

Plus, in this week’s Installer: a clever daily puzzle game, the next Jason Statham action movie, Pokémon cameras, and more.

Plus, in this week’s Installer: a clever daily puzzle game, the next Jason Statham action movie, Pokémon cameras, and more.

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Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 141, your guide to the best and Verge -iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, I’m newish here too, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage .)

This week, I’ve been getting back into the Installer groove, trying out some ergonomic Switch 2 grips I bought on Etsy , researching bike stuff because I’m about to get a Velotric e-bike, inching my way through the fourth book in The Dark Tower series, trying to figure out what feels off about Sonic in the new Fortnite season , wondering why Mark Zuckerberg needs a castle , and swatting at a few too many flies that have snuck into the house.

This week, I also have for you a clever daily puzzle game, the next Jason Statham action movie, Pokémon cameras, and more.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What do you want to know more about? What are your favorite things you’ve watched / seen / listened to / played with this summer? Drop a line to [email protected] . And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer , forward it to them and tell them to subscribe here .)

I was last featured in this section more than a year ago ahead of my previous run with Installer . I figured it might be worth reintroducing myself and sharing my latest homescreen, which has evolved. Or, as you’ll see, perhaps unevolved.

Hi, I’m Jay! Like David said last go-round, I like wonky indie games (play Big Walk , my favorite game of the year so far), diving deep into iOS betas ( iOS 27 is great ), and taking my toddler on adventures around Portland, Oregon (we particularly love the Oregon Zoo, which just got new red pandas ).

Like many other people, I’m also trying to spend less time on my phone, and I recently went all-in with a homescreen cleanup to test just how minimal I could go. Here it is — and I promise this isn’t a bit, I’ve been running this homescreen for a few weeks now.

The phone: Still my iPhone 16 Pro I talked about last year. I still think it’s too heavy and too big, and I still miss my iPhone 12 Mini. Next time, I’m going to buy whatever the lightest but newest iPhone is at that time. But I probably won’t upgrade from this phone for a while, because it still works great. It’s honestly overkill for what I need.

The wallpaper: A black gradient I created using the iOS wallpaper tool. (I promise it’s different from the wallpaper I included last time, but I think that’s because I deleted the old one by accident.) I also use iOS’s glassy icons to reduce how flashy my phone is. I sometimes turn on the grayscale mode , too — I even have a Control Center toggle for it — but that’s a pain when I want to look at a picture of my daughter.