When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. What you need to know before buying and using an eSIM on your next trip. Landing in Japan without mobile data can make a long travel day much harder than it needs to be. The minute you arrive you'll likely rely on your phone for train routes, maps, translation, reservations, and messages, so it's best to sort out getting connected before your flight. I've lived in Japan for nearly a decade, both in cities and the countryside, and I've used several different ways to stay connected. These days, I've found an eSIM to be the easiest option. But there are a few things worth checking before you buy one.

Five years ago, people who hang out in the stranger corners of the web started arguing that the internet was mostly fake . It had been this way since about 2016, they said, when Google introduced its artificial neural network for machine translation. Supposedly, from that point forward, online interactions began to be replaced, until nearly every message and picture had been posted by a bot. Everywhere you looked, websites were "empty and devoid of people," as one scholar of the theory put it. This wasn't true, but the core idea was tethered to a real phenomenon.

Trending Now Say More Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Switch Off Creator Playbook Mashable Voices Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List In My Bag All Series The Motorola Razr and Motorola Razr+ are free with these clever hacks. Joseph Green is the Global Shopping Editor for Mashable. He covers VPNs, headphones, fitness gear, dating sites, streaming, and shopping events like Black Friday and Prime Day. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.

Say More Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Switch Off Creator Playbook Mashable Voices Trending Now Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List In My Bag All Series Huawei's second tri-fold phone debuts September 7, but nearly 20 years of U.S. restrictions keep it off American shelves. Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable, covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master's in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and . Huawei is gearing up to unveil its next triple-folding smartphone, the Mate XT 2, at an event in China on September 7.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable Voices Look Up Trending Now Say More Mashable Selects Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series The Motorola Razr and Motorola Razr+ are all yours. Joseph Green is the Global Shopping Editor for Mashable. He covers VPNs, headphones, fitness gear, dating sites, streaming, and shopping events like Black Friday and Prime Day. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission.

I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen Downsizing from a'big three' carrier can save you big money, but it has its downsides. A few weeks ago, I shared my journey of switching over to Mint Mobile, after being a T-Mobile customer for more than a decade. As you may have guessed, the move was easy to justify, with mounting price increases and forced plan upgrades being the main reasons. But going from a big household name such as T-Mobile to a smaller brand like Mint has taught me a thing or two about the downsides of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs), too. They're mostly tolerable, with some unique fixes and lifestyle changes that I've picked up over the past few months.

SoftBank Group's $200 million investment in Swiss startup Gravis Robotics marks another major robotics bet as founder Masayoshi Son seeks to make the company a pivotal player in the global AI race. SoftBank Group has invested $200 million in Gravis Robotics, a Swiss startup that makes autonomous software for construction machinery. Zurich-based Gravis announced the Series A investment in a statement on Monday but didn't share a valuation. It was reported in July that SoftBank was considering an acquisition of Gravis that might be completed in several stages, which includes injecting fresh capital over time. The deal marks another splashy investment into robotics from SoftBank, whose founder, Masayoshi Son, is trying to make his firm a pivotal player in the global artificial intelligence race. The Japanese investor, which by October is set to own a 13% stake in OpenAI, has backed a range of robotics businesses, including with the acquisition of ABB's industrial unit last year.

The Pixel 11 smartphone lineup is here, alongside the Pixel Watch 5 and the all-new Pixel Tag. Google is dialing things up to 11 this year with its Pixel phones . Ahead of its annual Made by Google event in New York City, the company unwrapped the Pixel 11 smartphone family--which includes the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and Pixel 11 Pro Fold--alongside the Pixel Watch 5 smartwatch . There's also a new hardware addition: the Pixel Tag, which seems designed to be the AirTag of the Android world. Here's everything you need to know about the hardware changes and software upgrades on Google's latest devices.

I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen The main reason I switched to Mint was that the service uses the same 5G and LTE networks as T-Mobile. So why pay a lot more for basically the same service? Recently, a T-Mobile outage affected thousands of customers nationwide, and depending on your choice of words when conversing with a service representative, you were compensated anywhere from $10 to $80 in bill credits. Had I still been a part of the magenta family, I likely would've experienced the frustration of my in-laws, who were outside a concert venue that day, waiting to regain any bit of signal to validate their tickets in the 90-degree weather. Also: Hit by T-Mobile's outage?

I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen I wore the world's first HDR10 smart glasses TCL's new E Ink tablet beats the Remarkable and Kindle Anker's new charger is one of the most unique I've ever seen The inconsistent service, shady upcharges, and uptick in better-valued competitors made the choice easy. Just a week ago, a T-Mobile outage affected thousands of customers nationwide, and depending on your choice of words when conversing with a service representative, you were compensated anywhere from $10 to $80 in bill credits. Had I still been a part of the magenta family, I likely would've experienced the frustration of my in-laws, who were outside a concert venue that day, waiting to regain any bit of signal to validate their tickets in the 90-degree weather. Also: Hit by T-Mobile's outage? You can get up to $80 in credit - here's how Instead, I had already switched to Mint, a smaller but more humble conglomerate, after more than a decade as a T-Mobile customer.