What you need to know

• OnePlus rolled out Wear OS 5 to Watch 2 and 2R units in the last week of December 2025, though only in some territories like India.
• Users who received the update have reported serious battery drain, cutting the 3-day estimate down to 1–2 days.
• OnePlus originally promised the update in Q3 2025 before shifting its window to Q4 2025.
• OnePlus’s version of Wear OS 5 mostly includes stock updates like Google app improvements and animation changes.

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Like a college student emailing their assignment to the professor at 11:59 p.m., OnePlus rolled out its Wear OS 5 update to some OnePlus Watch 2 and 2R users on December 29, sneaking under their self-imposed end-of-year deadline. And as you might expect, this last-minute update has been causing problems since then.

The OnePlus Watch 2 and Watch 2R, both released in 2024 running Wear OS 4, were originally supposed to receive Wear OS 5 between July and September 2025; only after Android Authority asked about the delay in October did the company say the update would arrive “in the near future.”

Now, some OnePlus Watch owners have received the update, though not everyone; my U.S.-based OnePlus Watch 2R, for example, still shows Wear OS 4 and the May 2025 security update. But this might be a blessing in disguise, given the update’s effect.

This Reddit thread and several OnePlus forum posts (here, here, and here) have mentioned that the update is causing severe battery drain. The Watch 2 and 2R regularly lasted about three days in smart mode before the update; now, some users say it won’t last a full day, even after trying factory resets and other fixes.

Microsoft is retiring the Collections feature in Microsoft Edge, with warning notices (spotted by Windows Report) now appearing in the Collections panel. Launched in 2020, the tool allows Edge users to save web pages, organize content, add notes, and sync data across devices for easier online shopping, reading, research, project planning, and more.

With the end of Collections in sight, users can no longer add new items to their lists and projects. Microsoft also recommends that users export their data before the feature is gone for good. (Inconveniently, the company hasn’t yet stated when Collections will disappear, or if mobile versions of Edge will also lose the feature.)

This leaves users with two options. The first option, “Move to Favorites,” creates a new folder named CollectionsExport and moves all saved pages into separate folders for each collection. However, only web pages transfer this way; images and notes do not carry over.

The second option, “Export your data,” exports a CSV file named collections_export.csv to the Documents folder.

Collections’ retirement follows Microsoft’s replacement of the native version with a web-based option, which likely contributed to declining usage.

In B2B Marketing, the most common misconception is whether or not companies should be doing demand generation. The bigger issue, though, is determining which channel is most efficient for companies (e.g., with the least amount of waste). Therefore, when trying to decide between cold emailing or PPC advertising, a business owner should work with a professional High-Yield PPC Advertising Agency to evaluate their options. They will provide businesses with medium-high volume leads, clearly define attribution to sales source, and enable testing and adjustments in a rapid manner.

Businesses that have a more mature data set (e.g., more leads), larger deals, longer sales cycles, and a need for speed when it comes to market feedback on their products and services would want to use PPC, whereas businesses who want to focus on relationships and precision should opt for cold emailing. Cold emailing focuses on precision and building relationships, while PPC emphasizes speed and scalability.

How Cold Email and PPC Differ at a Systems Level

Understanding a channel system’s functioning will help as opposed to looking at it as a channel or tactic. Cold email serves as an outreach engine; its ability to operate is in relation to the quality of the data that will be utilized, the customization of the emails to actual recipients, and the aptitude for delivering emails, respectively. Pay Per Click (or PPC) advertisements, on the other hand, operate more as engines for capturing consumer intent and rely on auction characteristics, conversion strategy, and control of the available budget.

When teams assess their outcomes from each channel without first identifying the inputs that go into developing those outcomes, they often overlook many aspects of the channels. In cold email initiatives, for instance, clean recipient lists must exist; good domain hygiene must be maintained; composed copy must be maintained; and proper logic must be adhered to. When input components fail, respective channels are unable to succeed and experience poor performance as a result.

Key differences that shape outcomes include:

• cold email targets specific accounts with controlled volume;

• PPC targets intent clusters with elastic volume;

• cold email compounds through replies and referrals;

• PPC compounds through optimization and budget scaling;

• cold email costs time and process;

• PPC costs money and iteration.

After clarifying these mechanics, the decision becomes less emotional and more operational.

When Cold Email Wins

A clearly defined buyer universe and a value proposition that needs to be explained makes cold email the most effective. For enterprise software, niche platforms, and services with a high average contract value, one-to-one messaging with a quick relevance frame is usually very successful.

Additionally, email is a great way to learn. By getting replies, the team can learn what the common objections are, the type of language used, and what the priorities are that typically would have remained hidden in ad dashboards. The team can iterate on written copy weekly and revise their ideal customer profile assumptions without spending a significant amount of resources. Due to this fact, cold email can serve as both a strong channel for early-stage businesses and also serve as a useful research tool even when a business scales.

On the other hand, cold email fails when either the quality of the data drops off or if the team is automating too much. Poor targeting leads to poor deliverability and distrust of your brand. For a program to be sustainable when using cold email, the program must have built-in boundaries, which are: warm-up period, reply management, and human review and approval.

When PPC Wins

PPC is a great way to obtain new customers quickly that are already looking for your product or service. When someone does a search for something, they are already looking for a solution, which means you are getting immediate qualified traffic from paid media placements, in comparison to cold email, which provides no immediate qualified traffic. PPC also condenses feedback loops so that the sending organization can test their offers, pricing, and position in a matter of days rather than months.

When the sending organization needs immediate traction, paid media is able to quickly deliver qualified traffic faster than building compounding channels. An effective PPC program will bring a high volume of immediate qualified leads and an increase in the quality of those leads, ultimately resulting in more converted customers.

On the contrary, PPC programs do not generate results when the sending organization expects “magic” from their PPC campaigns when no foundation exists, such as well-designed landing pages, clearly defined value propositions, and properly structured keywords. In fact, PPC punishes bad foundation. Without proper ad structures, budgets will run out quickly without covering any value return. The PPC channel rewards discipline and not speculation. Conversely, the PPC channel will spend quickly and provide little to no insight on the spending effectiveness of PPC when no foundation exists, such as poor landing page experiences, unclear value propositions, or poorly aligned keywords. Sustainable results are obtained by consistently conducting disciplined testing and adjusting your PPC efforts rather than relying on PPC to fix deeper issues in your sending organization.

Cost, Risk, and Control

Time and the tools we use can be difficult to quantify; thus, cold email appears cheaper due to these aspects. In contrast, PPC campaigns are pricey due to their explicit costs. In addition to the price difference between cold email and PPC, the risks associated with cold email and PPC differ significantly. Cold email risks damage to your reputation and deliverability failures, while PPC only risks the efficiency of your budget.

In contrast, cold email has a natural limit on the number of emails sent because of the way that emails are received and responded to, while PPC can be rapidly scaled and requires more strict control of budgets and metrics. Many advanced marketing teams prefer to use PPC for its predictability and favor cold email for its high degree of accuracy.

Marketing teams that analyze their market environment must choose the best option given their limitations. For those teams that have an overload of sales opportunities, cold email will be a better option. For those teams that need to accelerate their sales pipeline, PPC will be a better option.

A Practical Decision Framework

To limit emotional decisions and eliminate channel dogma, a framework that creates a reality-based alignment of strategy, resources, and expectations should be established so that any budget or effort will have a solid rationale. The ideal customer profile and specific buying signals must first be established.

In establishing the ideal customer profile, it is important for a team to establish a clear definition of their ideal customer profile so they can better determine whether they will take a precision outreach approach or use intent-based capture methodologies. Second, it will be beneficial to better map out the length of your average sales process and the average deal size for your business. Deals with longer sales cycles and higher average deal values (ACV) typically respond better to high-personalization outreach, while deals with shorter sales cycles usually respond better to a scalable acquisition methodology.

When determining your data readiness, take an extremely honest assessment. Having a great deal of clean, permitted data will favor cold email outreach efforts, while having strong keyword search data and documented conversion paths will create favorable conditions for your PPC advertising efforts. Establishing a realistic timing of your project’s goals and deliverables will prevent premature conclusions regarding success.

Finally, when developing your success metrics, include some measure of business impact, pipeline contributions, deal velocity, and revenue generation.

Where a Hybrid Approach Outperforms

A hybrid approach works best when teams stop treating channels as competitors and start treating them as complementary systems. PPC excels at capturing existing demand and stress-testing messaging at scale, while cold email reaches high-fit accounts that may not yet search for a solution. When used together, these channels cover both active and latent demand, which improves pipeline stability.

The real advantage comes from insight sharing. Email replies reveal objections, vocabulary, and urgency that refine ad copy and landing pages. Search queries and conversion data from PPC highlight intent signals that improve email targeting and hooks. Hybrid systems also reduce risk: if one channel underperforms due to seasonality, budget shifts, or platform changes, the other maintains momentum. This balance proves especially valuable during launches, market transitions, or competitive pressure.

Operating Both Channels Without Chaos

Running PPC and cold email in parallel introduces complexity that requires governance, not improvisation. Messaging must stay aligned across ads, emails, and landing pages to avoid confusing buyers. Attribution models should follow the same logic so teams compare outcomes fairly instead of debating numbers. Regular feedback from sales closes the loop, ensuring lead quality discussions lead to action.

High-performing teams centralize reporting and define shared qualification standards. Clear handoff rules prevent friction between marketing and sales, while weekly reviews surface patterns early. When operations stay disciplined, channel choice stops being a debate and becomes a coordinated execution strategy.

Deep Dive: What Makes PPC Convert in B2B

PPC success in B2B hinges on more than bids. Keyword intent mapping, offer clarity, and landing-page speed drive outcomes. Teams that segment by buying stage outperform those that lump traffic together.

Budget allocation matters too. Spreading spend thin across many campaigns slows learning. Focus accelerates optimization.

Cold email converts when relevance is obvious in the first line. That relevance comes from research, not tricks. Simple language, honest asks, and clear next steps outperform cleverness.

Reply handling is the hidden lever. Fast, human responses increase conversion more than subject lines. Teams that treat replies as conversations win.

Measurement That Actually Matters

Measuring B2B acquisition channels by lead volume alone creates false confidence. High lead counts often mask low intent, long follow-ups, and stalled deals that consume sales time without producing revenue. Metrics tied to pipeline contribution, sales velocity, and close rates provide a clearer picture of whether a channel supports growth. Cost per opportunity and cost per closed deal reveal efficiency far better than surface indicators like clicks or replies.

Attribution should support decision-making, not become a distraction. Perfect attribution models rarely exist in complex B2B journeys, especially when buyers interact with multiple touchpoints. Directional attribution helps teams compare channels, identify trends, and allocate budget more effectively without delaying action in search of precision.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Many teams struggle because they adopt playbooks designed for different markets, deal sizes, or sales motions. Strategies that succeed in high-volume SaaS may fail completely in enterprise or niche verticals. Over-automation often worsens the problem by scaling the wrong message faster. Creative underinvestment leads to generic outreach, while ignored sales feedback disconnects marketing from reality.

Another frequent mistake involves impatience. Teams switch channels or tactics before systems gather enough data to learn. Both cold email and PPC require iteration cycles to reveal what works. Cutting them short prevents optimization and creates a false sense of failure.

Choosing the Right Moment to Invest

The best time to invest depends on organizational readiness, not company size alone. Early-stage teams often rely on cold email to test positioning, learn objections, and refine ICP assumptions with minimal spend. As demand becomes clearer, growth-stage teams add PPC to scale reach and accelerate pipeline creation. Mature organizations focus on optimization, efficiency, and integration across channels.

The right moment arrives when leadership commits to building processes instead of chasing shortcuts. Clear ownership, realistic expectations, and willingness to learn determine success more than channel choice itself.

Turning Choice Into Advantage

Cold email and PPC are tools, not identities. The advantage comes from choosing intentionally, executing well, and learning fast.

This perspective aligns with how Netpeak supports B2B teams building repeatable demand engines. Netpeak helps companies design PPC systems that deliver qualified demand with clear economics while integrating insights across channels. If you want to decide, then execute, with confidence, partnering with Netpeak can help you turn channel choice into sustained growth.

Whether you’re trying to hit New Year’s resolutions or just need a good workout or diet tracker, the best health and fitness apps can help you get there. And if you’re feeling overwhelmed (or underwhelmed) by the choices available, I’m here to share personally-tested workout and planning apps to get you started.

Some people thrive with personalized, AI-made workout or diet plans. Others benefit from social apps like Strava where challenges and “kudos” from friends keep you motivated. And you’d be surprised how a good spreadsheet or basic workout log might work better than an expensive app with videos and plans.

If you’re wondering what dark energy is, that’s understandable; scientists are still wondering that very same thing.

It’s probably the most mysterious idea in all of physics, and a good deal less understood than dark matter—a substance which is itself hidden in the shadows. Dark matter can at least be mapped and understood as physically distributed in the universe, much like ordinary matter. But dark energy has only recently been able to be investigated at all.

So, what is dark energy? Well, it’s been a few things over its lifetime.

How We Got Here

After Einstein, physicists were fairly certain about how the universe was evolving: the Big Bang threw all the matter outward, as an explosion does, after which gravity naturally attracted that matter to itself and slowed the outward expansion.

This was, itself, a big admission. Einstein initially proposed a static universe, but later accepted Edwin Hubble’s evidence that the universe was expanding and called the static-universe hypothesis his “greatest blunder.”

Einstein introduced the “cosmological constant,” denoted by the Greek letter lambda (λ), which was introduced to support a static universe. He set this idea aside, along with his error, and moved on. So did the rest of physics.

Faced with the fact of an expanding universe, it remained unclear whether that expansion would ever fully stop, or perhaps even reverse, causing the universe to contract back in on itself. This idea was referred to as being an eventual Big Crunch. The Big Crunch hypothesis found a lot of backers for the same reason as the static universe hypothesis before it: it felt good.

The idea of Big Crunch allowed the further idea that this compression of all matter and energy would cause a new ultra-singularity and, perhaps, a new Big Bang, creating the nice and neat idea of a cyclical universe that was infinitely expanding, contracting, and expanding again. It was the only thing everybody could be sure of: Universal expansion was definitely slowing down over time.

Except it isn’t. Studies looking at Type Ia supernovae, so-called “standard candles” in astronomy, provided the first-ever evidence that the expansion of the universe is not decelerating, but actually accelerating—moving outward more and more rapidly over time. Arriving in 1998, this was one of the biggest scientific announcements of the century.

Later, evidence from things like maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation showed that this was correct: In defiance of the gravitational influence of matter, the universe is indeed expanding faster every year.

However, another problem was introduced by the CMB maps and other cutting-edge observations: According to the best evidence at the time, there was simply too much matter and energy in the universe. Physics had already concocted a value called the “critical density,” which was a prediction of the total amount of matter and energy in the universe.

The actual observable amount didn’t remotely equal this figure, however. Even with dark matter taken into account, the universe still only seems to have about a third as much stuff in it as expected.

Physicists realized that these two observations could potentially have the same explanation. There could be a whole lot more energy in the universe than we had previously realized, and that energy could be the thing driving the unexpected, accelerating expansion we observe in the universe.

So, What Is Dark Energy?

Crucially, one of the other names you might run across for dark energy is “the energy of space.” This refers to the modern working definition of dark energy, which considers it an intrinsic property of space.

In other words, if you have some dark energy in some space, and then you expand that space by some amount, you don’t dilute the dark energy you had because the new space you just created will have dark energy all its own. This dark energy would seem to exert an outward force, and thus space itself has an intrinsic tendency to expand.

So, as the universe expands, this energy can keep driving that expansion, since it doesn’t get diluted. If it did, as regular matter and energy would, its influence would be smeared out to the point that gravity would eventually dominate, and expansion would slow or stop.

This doesn’t have to break the idea of conservation of energy, since dark energy is an attribute of space, not really a quantity within it; one of the issues may be the name “dark energy,” which is a holdover from before this idea existed. In general, dark energy is represented by the same symbol as Einstein’s old cosmological constant, λ, and that’s probably a more intuitive way to refer to it.

The big problem with this energy-of-space idea is that we can calculate what the value of λ should be—that is, the strength of the hypothetical repulsive force of dark energy—and that calculation leads to figures much higher than we actually observe. If the cosmological constant were what it is supposed to be, the universe would be flying apart at a much faster rate than we actually observe, unless some other unknown force is counteracting it.

This leads to the so-called “Hubble tension” between the observed expansion and the expansion predicted from the early universe.

Still, evidence for the idea of dark energy as a universal constant is mounting. The Dark Energy Survey (DES) observed light from 26 million galaxies to determine how the universe has evolved over the past 7 billion years. There’s also the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which was able to measure the “redshift” of galaxies to determine how quickly they were moving away from the Earth, and directly measure universal expansion.

This work found that λ appears to be reasonably accurate. That doesn’t tell us anything about the nature of dark matter, but it does tell us that we can at least fairly accurately quantify its impact. Some aspects confound theory, such as the finding that dark energy may have evolved over time and may continue to evolve; that would undermine the idea that it is a “constant” and remove the necessity that the universe will continue to expand into eternity.

Other surveys, such as Planck, eBOSS, and Pantheon+, largely converge on the conclusion that dark energy behaves very much like Einstein’s cosmological constant. The new Nancy Grace Roman space telescope is about to start contributing incredibly high-resolution data, as well.

The language used for new observations is that they “constrain” the possibilities for dark energy’s attributes, narrowing the range of possible values as observations falsify all but a progressively smaller set of possibilities. In the past decade, scientists have constrained dark energy enough to take it from a vague placeholder idea to a real theory with increasingly concrete tendencies.

We’ll keep you up to date on the latest in the years to come.

In the past, video content used to be a luxury. Now, it is the baseline. If you run a business or build a brand, you are in the video business. The problem is that traditional editing hasn’t really caught up with this reality. It is still slow, technical, and you even have to worry about frame rates and codecs. This is the friction point that Vmake AI targets. It isn’t trying to be a better version of Adobe Premiere. It is trying to be a production assistant that handles the tedious parts of the job for you.

The most common starting point for using these tools isn’t usually creation; it’s repair. You often have a video that works, but it’s trapped in the wrong format or covered in old branding. Maybe you downloaded a clip from TikTok, and it has that bouncing logo. To use it on Instagram, you need to clean it up. 

A reliable way to remove watermark from video files is essential here. It analyzes the pixels around the logo and fills in the gaps. It turns a “dead” file into a usable asset without forcing you to crop out half the frame.

What is Vmake AI Agent?

Many other AI Agents are complex and wait for you to click a button. While Vmake introduces a “Video Agent” that works differently. It feels less like using a tool and more like giving instructions to a freelancer. You don’t hunt for the “crop” tool or the “caption” button. Instead, just use a chat window.

You can paste a URL to a product page and tell the Agent to “make a promotional video.” It reads the page. It pulls the product images. It writes a script based on the selling points. This changes the workflow from “how do I do this?” to “what do I want?” It handles the technical translation. You provide the intent; the machine handles the execution. 

This is particularly useful for User Generated Content (UGC) styles. The system is able to generate speaking videos of people, using AI avatars to deliver the script. Plus it looks pretty natural. 

How To Use Vmake AI Agent For Workflow?

Talking about features is abstract. Seeing how the work actually flows makes it clearer. Here is what a typical session looks like when you move from a raw idea to a finished post.

1. Briefing the System: You start in the chat interface. You don’t need raw footage yet. If you are selling a backpack, you drop the link to your store. You type a command: “Create a fast-paced video for TikTok focusing on durability.” The Agent scans the link. It identifies the key features—waterproof material, reinforced zippers, and hidden pockets. It generates a storyboard and a script.
2. The Generation Phase: The system builds the video. It selects stock footage or uses the images from your URL. It adds a voiceover. This takes a minute or two. The result is a draft. It might be 80% there. The tool gets the timing right, picks the music, and structures the narrative according to your needs.
3. Refining in Canvas: No AI is perfect. You will likely want to change something. This is where you switch to the Canvas editor. It looks more like a standard editor, but simplified. You might swap out an image that doesn’t fit. You might tweak the voiceover speed. This step is about polishing. You take the “good” draft and make it “great.”
4. Captions and Optimization: Social video needs text. Most people watch on mute. The Auto Captions feature comes in handy here. You can use it to generate captions for your videos. Moreover, you can also pick the style you want. 
5. Final Packaging The last step is the thumbnail. A bad thumbnail kills a video before it starts. The AI analyzes your video and generates a few options. It finds the most interesting frame. It adds a hook title like “Best Travel Hack?” You pick the winner and export.

Using Hooks to Improve Viewer Engagement

Getting a video made is only half the battle. Getting people to watch it is the other half. The platform includes specific tools for this, focusing on the “Hook.” This is the first three seconds of the video. It is the make-or-break moment.

The AI Hook tool generates specific opening clips designed to stop the scroll. It uses visual effects and motion to grab attention immediately. It isn’t guessing; it uses data on what actually works in performance marketing. If you are running ads, this is crucial. You can test three different hooks for the same video to see which one drives more views.

Using Auto Captions for the Audience That Watches Videos Without Audio

Transcribing audio manually is painful. It takes forever. You have to type, pause, rewind, type again. Vmake automates this for seven languages. It handles English, Spanish, Portuguese, and others.

This isn’t just about translation. It is about accessibility. If your video doesn’t have text, you are ignoring the commuter on the train who doesn’t have headphones. The tool ensures your message lands even when the volume is zero. It also allows for batch processing. If you have ten videos from a campaign, you don’t have to caption them one by one. You can upload the whole folder and let the system run.

Who Vmake Is Designed For?

This isn’t for filmmakers. If you are editing a documentary, you want manual control. You want to color grade every pixel. This tool is for marketers and for the solo entrepreneur who needs to post three times a day. It is for the e-commerce store owner who needs product videos for fifty items.

It democratizes the “agency” look. In the past, getting a polished video, having captions, and 4K quality required hiring freelancers. But now? It’s simple to use tools like Vmake.  Vmake is an efficient video editor to edit videos online, and it is available in multiple video editing features, including video enhancer, watermark remover, auto caption generator,  hook generator and more. 

Final Thoughts

The biggest change here isn’t any single feature. It is the logic of how people create. The world is moving away from manual assembly and towards a direction where you act less like an editor and more like a producer. You verify the work rather than doing it from scratch.

Vmake represents this shift clearly. It bundles the strategy (script generation), the production (video creation), and the post-production (editing and captioning) into one flow. It removes the friction. It lets you focus on the story you want to tell, rather than the software you need to learn.