Verizon suffered a service outage on Wednesday that affected potentially 2 million customers and dragged on for more than 8 hours. Late in the evening, the company declared the outage resolved and advised affected customers to restart their devices in order to be reconnected. It also promised those customers a $20 credit.

We don’t know what caused the disruption. Verizon didn’t immediately respond to a request for clarity on the issue.

The company did say that the problem was a «software issue» and that there was no indication that the cause was due to a «cybersecurity issue» in a statement to TechRadar Thursday morning.

The loss in service was unique for its longevity and because it wasn’t region-specific and affected people across the US, unlike previous cellular outages. When natural disasters take down cellular towers or hardware failures happen, the effects are felt in specific cities or areas. We saw reports (and CNET staffers chimed in) of service being down in New York; Florida; Hawaii, Los Angeles; Oakland, California; and other far-flung spots.

Until Verizon shares more information, we can piece together some possibilities.

Analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics, a telecommunications research firm, suspects that a feature update went awry, based on how devices were affected. «It looks like their 5G SA (Standalone) core went down during a minor feature change,» he wrote to CNET.

Entner noted that the outage was limited to new high-end devices in selected markets where Verizon’s 5G SA core is deployed, which is why the outage wasn’t felt everywhere. The term 5G SA core refers to a network that uses only 5G technology and doesn’t rely on older 4G LTE infrastructure.

Entner also suggested the outage’s timing was unusual. «When carriers do massive upgrades, they do that between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. in the morning,» he said. «A noon start for the crash indicates ‘fat fingers’ for a smaller change that cascaded through the system.»

This is a developing story. Follow all of CNET’s Verizon news for more about the network outage.

OpenAI is putting Google Translate on notice: It now has a dedicated ChatGPT Translate webpage that can convert writing in 50 languages. At first glance it looks like a basic text-to-text translator that resembles Google Translate and other simple language translation tools on the web. But scrolling down the page reveals more about OpenAI’s ambitions for Translate.

You’ll come across a line that mentions adding voice or an image (for instance, a photo of a sign) to get a translation, although the page doesn’t indicate when those capabilities will become available.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

OpenAI’s breakout of Translate comes as its chief competitor, Google, is aggressively deploying AI to support features like live translations using headphones and new language learning tools. In 2024, Google added 110 languages to its translations.

Language translation is a hot field for artificial intelligence in general. At CES 2026 last week, for instance, CNET’s Macy Meyer tried out a phone-sized device and companion headphones that let her carry on a live conversation with a Polish speaker even though she doesn’t speak Polish herself.

The skills that ChatGPT Translate currently provides are things you can already do in the chatbot itself. In fact, once you translate text on the webpage, ChatGPT offers a set of sample prompts as one-click buttons for what you can do with that text, such as «translate this and make it sound more fluent» or «translate this as if you’re explaining it to a child.»

Selecting one of those prompts takes you to a ChatGPT conversation where options like image uploads are readily available. 

OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.  

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Who knew that foldable phones would be so popular again? If you’re looking for a foldable iPhone, you’re gonna need to wait until later this year. If you’re on the hunt for the best foldable phone you can get your hands on right now, you need to take a look at the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Normally $2,000, right now at both Amazon and Samsung, you can get a decent amount off that hefty price tag.

Amazon is dropping the silver version of Samsung’s foldable phone to $1,600. That’s an impressive $400 discount. If you prefer to shop at Samsung directly, you’ll end up paying $50 more as all colors of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 are down to $1,650. Neither of these are record-low prices, but Amazon is close enough at just $43 more. 

Samsung’s unique foldable phones had an awkward adolescence, but after getting her hands on the new lineup, CNET reviewer Abrar Al-Heet confirms that the latest Z Fold 7 «just feels right.» For one, it’s incredibly sleek at just 8.9mm thick when closed or 4.2mm thick when open, which is so thin you may even forget that it’s foldable.

Despite weighing just 215 grams, this foldable features some serious hardware. It has a 6.5-inch cover screen and an 8-inch interior display with a fluid 120Hz refresh rate. It’s equipped with a cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Elite processor and 12GB of RAM to support tons of helpful AI features and functions, and comes with Android 16 and Samsung One UI 8 right out of the box.

The camera system is also pretty impressive, boasting a 200-megapixel rear camera, 12-megapixel ultrawide shooting and a 10-megapixel front camera on both the cover and interior screens. Plus, it’s equipped with a 4,400-mAh battery for all-day use.

Why this deal matters

With an unbelievably sleek design and cutting-edge hardware, the impressive Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is our favorite foldable phone on the market. But it also comes with a staggering $2,000 price tag, and if you’re hoping to get your hands on one, this $400 discount is a way to save and help cushion the blow of its considerable cost. Just be sure to get your order in soon, as we doubt this deal will remain live for long.