Meta has won its antitrust case against the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC said Meta held an illegal monopoly in social networking — centering on the company’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram.

Judge James Boasberg of the US District Court for the District of Columbia released a memorandum opinion on Tuesday, stating that the FTC failed to prove its claims in court.

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«Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past,» Boasberg wrote in the filing, «the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now.»

Boasberg initially dismissed the FTC’s complaint in 2021, stating that the agency lacked sufficient evidence that Meta holds «market power» in the social networking industry. At the time, the FTC argued that «Facebook’s course of conduct has eliminated nascent rivals,» preventing «the benefits of competition, including increased choice, quality and innovation» from developing for US social media users.

After the FTC amended its filing with information about Meta’s user numbers and acquisitions of the WhatsApp and Instagram applications, Boasberg allowed the case to proceed in 2022.

The trial began in April, and multiple high-ranking current and former Meta executives testified before the court — chief among them, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Much of Zuckerberg’s testimony focused on refuting the FTC’s primary claim, which hinged on an argument Zuckerberg made in 2008: «It is better to buy than compete.»

Meta’s win means the company will be able to continue operating WhatsApp and Instagram unimpeded. Had the FTC proven its claims in court, Meta likely would have had to break these applications off into their own separate social networking companies.

Meta released a public statement on Tuesday, stating that the decision «recognizes that Meta faces fierce competition» in the social networking industry.

«Our products are beneficial for people and businesses and exemplify American innovation and economic growth,» the statement read. «We look forward to continuing to partner with the Administration and to invest in America.»

FTC Director of Public Affairs Joe Simonson said the agency is «deeply disappointed» with the outcome of the case. 

«The deck was always stacked against us with Judge Boasberg, who is currently facing articles of impeachment,» he said. «We are reviewing all our options.»

Republican lawmakers have tried multiple times to impeach Boasberg, a frequent political target of the Trump administration.

While Meta’s antitrust case may be over, it didn’t take place in a vacuum. Google recently settled a case with the FTC that resulted in the search giant being told it must share limited search and user-interaction data with «qualified competitors.» Another case targeting Google’s AI overview feature is ongoing in the European Union, as a group of publishers claims the company is causing harm due to a loss of traffic, readership, and revenue.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is easier than most days. It helps if you know world religions. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I delve into the rules for Strands in this story. 

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Divinely inspired.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Different beliefs.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints, but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

• BRIM, BEAR, PEST, RIGS, ROPE, GRIP, GRIPE, GOES, GUILE, MAIM, GRAD

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

• IMAM, RABBI, PRIEST, MONK, BUDDHA, PROPHET

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is RELIGIOUSFIGURES. To find it, start with the R that’s three letters to the right on the bottom row, and wind up.

From a design standpoint, the OnePlus 15 and RedMagic 11 Pro are almost complete opposites. OnePlus aims to evoke a premium design and sleek aesthetics, while the angular, futuristic-looking RedMagic 11 Pro looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. 

However, they share nearly identical internal specifications and are both heavily focused on gaming. The OnePlus 15 aims to be a flagship phone that also delivers a strong gaming experience, while the RedMagic 11 Pro is, first and foremost, a gaming phone that also handles everyday smartphone tasks.

They’re both incredibly powerful, and each one makes different trade-offs to deliver a uniquely distinct experience.

Display

Big, beautiful, fast displays are front and center here and are impressive both technically and visually. The RedMagic 11 Pro houses an almost perfectly rectangular 6.85-inch AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate. OnePlus went with a 6.78-inch in. OLED panel with a 120 Hertz refresh rate that can ramp up to 165 Hz during supported games. 

The AMOLED panel on the RedMagic 11 Pro shows better colors, and the higher refresh rate gives it the edge here. Plus, RedMagic has been hiding its selfie cameras under the display for a few years now, so the screen is truly edge-to-edge, with no camera cutout. It’s a bit more angled than most other phones, but not uncomfortable, and the huge, gorgeous display is wonderful to look at. 

Performance

The RedMagic 11 Pro and the OnePlus 15 have nearly identical spec sheets. Both house the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 with similar storage configurations of 12GB or 16GB of RAM and 256GB or 512GB of storage. RedMagic does have an advantage here, offering a maxed-out version with 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, but most people won’t need that much power. However, considering that version is the same price as the 16GB and/ 512GB edition OnePlus 15, that’s a value-oriented point for RedMagic.

RedMagic and OnePlus have both designed proprietary processors to accompany Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 to help boost gaming performance, and the result is two phones that simply fly. I never once experienced any slowdowns or stutters anywhere across the software. No matter what I did, neither phone ever seemed to slow down. 

Battery and charging

Both phones have massive batteries, with the OnePlus 15 coming in at 7,300-mAh and the RedMagic 11 Pro squeezing out a bit more juice at 7,500-mAh. Both will easily get you through two days — as long as you keep gaming to a minimum. 

Both devices thankfully support fast charging, and it’s some of the fastest in the industry, especially in the US. Each can charge at up to 80-watt speeds over wired charging, and both come with an 80W charger in the box, which is frustratingly rare these days. OnePlus charges over the proprietary SuperVooc standard, which means you’ll need to use that included power adapter in order to achieve the phone’s fastest speed. Meanwhile, RedMagic uses the more universal USB-PD standard, so its charging brick can also fast charge other devices.

Wireless charging is available on both devices — a first for RedMagic. Even more impressive is how fast they can charge wirelessly. OnePlus was the first (and is still the only) company to bring 50W wireless charging to the US a few years ago. RedMagic claims that the 11 Pro can charge at up to 80W wirelessly. That’s an absolutely absurd claim and one I sadly cannot test, as the only 80W wireless charger I could find is made by Xiaomi and thus not available here in the States. OnePlus achieves that faster speed using the AirVooc standard — so again, you’ll need the wireless charger that OnePlus makes in order to get the faster 50W speed. While we can’t test the 80W wireless charging claim, we do know that the phone works with the more universal Qi wireless charging standard.

Gaming

RedMagic has built its entire ethos around mobile gaming, and the 11 Pro is the epitome of that. The lack of camera bump means it’s perfectly flat, so it feels better in your hand and fits into mobile controllers better. There are touch-sensitive shoulder triggers on the right side that can act as a touch point on the screen. For example, setting the left one to aiming and the right to fire in Call of Duty: Mobile easily makes the phone feel more like a gaming controller. There’s even a dedicated cooling fan built into the side to keep the phone cool during longer gaming sessions. 

The pinnacle of it all is a feature that’s still a rarity on all but the highest-end gaming PCs: a self-contained liquid cooling system. On the Nightfreeze and Subzero models, you can actually see the electric-blue cooling liquid inside the phone. Turn it on, and the liquid will literally flow across the internals to help maintain peak gaming performance for longer than ever. 

This may all seem a bit overkill (and it absolutely is for almost everyone), but it really sets RedMagic apart.

OnePlus takes a different approach, aiming to be a more traditional smartphone that still excels at gaming. On the OnePlus 15, the dedicated touch sampling and Wi-Fi processors, along with a proprietary internal cooling system, are specifically designed to squeeze out as much performance as possible while gaming. 

And it works. Highly demanding games such as Call of Duty: Mobile, Genshin Impact, PUBG and Wuthering Heights — among others — all ran flawlessly on the OnePlus 15. In Call of Duty, I very rarely dropped below 165 frames per second, which is substantially higher than the average gaming PC can sustain. 

Both companies also add software features to improve the gaming experience. OnePlus offers a preinstalled app called Game Assistant that lets you tweak settings for each game. RedMagic goes a step further to give you a hardware button that launches Game Space. This is essentially a separate launcher that almost turns your phone into a mini console. It also lets you modify settings, but it offers far more options to tweak, including an in-game overlay where you can install plugins and macros for extremely granular customization.

Software

Aside from the wildly different aesthetics, the software experiences are also worlds apart. OnePlus has taken more than a few cues from Apple’s Liquid Glass design language for OxygenOS 16, but the overall experience remains very fast, very smooth and fairly close to Google’s intended version of Android. It’s still one of my favorite takes on the operating system.

The RedMagic 11 Pro knows it’s a gaming phone through and through. Thankfully, RedMagic has heavily toned down the wildly over-the-top gaming-focused design elements over the years, but they’re still readily apparent throughout the software. The company also preloads the phone with an unacceptable amount of bloatware and useless apps, some of which cannot be uninstalled. 

CNET senior editor Mike Sorrentino came away feeling rather disappointed in the software experience on the RedMagic 11 Pro during his testing, but I personally didn’t find it too unbearable. Nearly all of the issues he and I have with the software are the same ones I’ve had with Samsung’s software for years — and, ultimately, most of them are easy enough to avoid.

But without question, this one goes to OnePlus. 

Price and availability

Prices for both RedMagic and OnePlus phones have steadily increased over the years to the point where both sit squarely in flagship territory. The OnePlus 15 starts at $899 for 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and jumps up to $999 for the 16GB and 512GB version. The base model only comes in black, but OnePlus typically offers the top-tier models at the lower price during launch. 

The RedMagic 11 Pro starts at $749 for the 12GB of RAM and 256GB model and also goes up $100 to $849 for the 16GB and 512GB model. The top-end configuration of 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage costs $999 — the same price as the lower-specced OnePlus 15. 

Both devices will be available in most regions. The OnePlus 15 will be on sale at Best Buy, Amazon and the OnePlus website, although the ultra violet color option will only be available in limited quantities at Amazon and OnePlus. The RedMagic 11 Pro will be available on RedMagic’s website and Amazon.