Is Google Calendar down? The widely-use calendar service provided by Google, and synced with many of our work and personal email accounts, appears to be live once more, after an hour of flitting in and out of functionality.

At around 9:24am GMT, Google Calendar went down for users across the globe, including the UK, Europe, and even India, pointing to a widespread server issue.

A number of TechRadar staff saw Google Calendar dip in and out of live service, with a '500' error code coming up instead of our usual view of events, meetings, reminders, and more meetings. Users took to social media and issue reporting forums in their thousands too.

Google has contacted us directly to say that "this issue is fully mitigated", and all aspects of Google Calendar are working for us once again. The service appears to have been down for roughly an hour.

The issue appears to have been limited to browser versions of the service, rather than mobile applications, so some of you may not have even noticed! We're very happy for you – though if you want to see how the story developed, read through the live blog we were updating below.

It looks like a global problem

Google Calendar appears to be down for TechRadar's UK staff, flitting in and out of service. We have word that the service is experiencing issues worldwide, from contacts in India and Spain too.

Reported cases are rising

Downdetector is reporting a surge in user-generated reports of Google Calendar issues since 9am GMT (1am PST / 4am EST). Only 16 reports in the view so far, but 0-16 in the space of 20 minutes shows something is picking up.

Users are taking to social media

People are cottoning on to the service being down, though the official Google Calendar Twitter account has yet to post anything about the issues.

Be free, workers!

Some are taking the outage on a lighter note, such as Twitter user @jerelleaj, who celebrates that they must "have nothing planned for today". Performance review? What performance review?

Partial functionality?

You may find that you can enter the Google Calendar, and only see a few events out of your usually-packed schedule. I'm able to see my own events, and things I've confirmed attendance to – stored locally – but my work calendar of everything else going on in the company is absent. Sorry boss.

I was able to use a Google Calendar event to jump into a Google Meet video call, so you may be able to briefly gain access for an important meeting if you keep trying. We tend to switch between half-filled screen and full-on error message every time we refresh the page, though.

Reports continue to pour in

Downdetector is now reporting a whopping 2,960 issues – and the real number is likely to be far beyond that, given that the site relies on user-generated complaints.

Users commenting on the website say that Calendar is "down for Romania as well", "Not working in Czech Republic", "Unable to sync in India", and "Down in Denmark." France and Greece appear to be affected too – is anyone left out?

A Google in denial

No official word from Google yet, and the Google Workspace Status Dashboard shows Google Calendar as working perfectly fine. Read the room, Google.

Mobile users appear to be fine

Some light recon shows that the Google Calendar issue is limited so far to those on desktop, using either MacOS or Windows. Anyone trying to access Calendar on their mobile app, for either Android or iOS, should be fine – though do drop us an email if you're experiencing any related issues not covered here.

Is Google Calendar live again?

Some of us are seeing our Google Calendar functionality restored in full, so we're very hesitantly celebrating – but others are continuing to have issues. Some of our writers are being asked by Google to complete a CAPTCHA as a security measure too – but still not being able to access Calendar once they've done so.

It looks like a fix may be in the midst of being pushed through, but we're not entirely out of the woods yet.

What does the 500 error code mean?

What is that ominous 500 on your computer screen? As the support site for Wix tells us, "The error code 500 is a general response from the server that something has gone wrong. The problem could have happened when the server requested resources, or it could be an issue with outdated or corrupted cache and cookies."

Given the problem is so widespread, it seems like a server issue, so there's little affected users can do but wait.

Is Google responding to the issues?

It's been almost an hour since users started reporting issues, but no official word from Google, or acknowledgement of "Service Disruption" on its Status Dashboard. We're sure work is happening behind the scenes to address the issue, though.

Is it over?

It's been quite the ride, but regular Google Calendar functionality appears to have returned. Some TechRadar writers are reporting the service is still working "slowly", but you should be able to use, view, create and RSVP to events as before through the Google Calendar browser app. We're seeing user reports on Downdetector steadily decreasing after an initial spike too.

December is usually a quiet month for smartphone news, but December 2021 definitely isn't - case in point, the Realme GT 2 Pro is launching on the 9th day of the month, which is tomorrow at the time of writing, and also the same day the Moto Edge X30 is coming.

A post by the company on Chinese social media platform Weibo schedules an event for December 9, and says "The world's first GT 2 Pro user will be born at the event site!". Machine translation has wrought havoc with the meaning of that sentence, but it's safe to say the company's upcoming top-end phone will show its face at the live stream.

While that post makes it sound like the mobile will be teased and not unveiled, Realme recently confirmed that the GT 2 Pro would be launched in December, which makes it sound more likely that we'll get an official showing.

• These are the best Realme phones
• Check out our Realme GT Master Edition review
• The Samsung Galaxy S22 is coming soon too

There's no word on the Realme GT 2 - as in, the non-Pro sibling to the aforementioned mobile - and while Realme has been busy teasing its upcoming flagship phone, it's been silent on its 'standard' equivalent. So while we could see it tomorrow, we wouldn't be surprised if it didn't show up.

Nor is there word of the Realme GT 2 Fold, the brand's first foldable phone which has been rumored a little bit. The actual existence of this is a little hazy though, so we'd be surprised if it did show up.

This launch is a China-only one, so we'll only hear local pricing and availability of the phone, and we'll likely have to wait until the new year to hear about a global launch. This is the pattern we saw for the Realme GT earlier in 2021, as well as many other mobiles from the brand.

Analysis: why so early?

The original Realme GT is far less than a year old, with an unveiling at the beginning of 2021 and a global launch in August, and its siblings are even more recent than that. Since most phone lines come out in yearly schedules, it's a little surprising that the GT 2 is breaking cover so early.

But there's a very good reason, and it's all thanks to the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 - that's a new top-end chipset we'll likely see in loads of Android phones.

Each year companies compete to be the first to put out a phone running Qualcomm's newest top-end chipset. For the previous model, the Snapdragon 888, Xiaomi won by launching the Mi 11 earlier than originally expected.

For the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, it seems a few companies are desperate not to let Xiaomi win again, because although the Xiaomi 12 is expected in the next few weeks, we've heard both Realme and Motorola are fighting for the crown too.

And that battle will take place on December 9, because we recently heard the Moto Edge X30 will be unveiled in China on that date - and now Realme has scheduled a launch for just a few hours earlier.

Depending on what it shows, then, Realme could win the Qualcomm crown with its GT 2 Pro - that's if this is a real unveiling, and not a tease - and steal Motorola's thunder.

The competition is a little daft, as not only are all these phones only being unveiled in China and not worldwide, but winning the Qualcomm crown doesn't actually come with that much merit. 

General phone audiences don't know enough about tech or smartphones to even know what a chipset is, let alone care about which company used a certain processor first - but that doesn't stop these brands from competing anyway.

• Realme GT 2 looks weirdly like the Google Pixel 6, according to leaked renders

Customers of mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Lyca Mobile can now access 5G if they have a compatible Android handset.

5G is included in all data plans by default, so subscribers won’t need to make any changes if they want to benefit from faster speeds and greater reliability. Lyca Mobile uses O2’s network to deliver its services to customers.

The company adds that iPhone customers will also benefit from 5G in the new year, but hasn’t provided a more specfic launch date.

Lyca Mobile 5G

“We believe our customers should be able to take advantage of the benefits of ultra-fast next generation 5G connectivity, which is why we are excited to offer our customers using 5G enabled Android devices this service in the UK and US at no extra cost,” explained Lyca Group CEO Navanit Narayan.

“The pandemic has expedited the emergence of a new set of consumer mobile behaviours and customers increasingly expect more diverse, differentiated, and value-added services – all at competitive prices."

"5G will help deliver this, and we are proud to offer this service at a price point that will appeal to value-hunters, enabling a new wave of customers to experience the benefits of next-generation connectivity. We look forward to the rollout of 5G in our other markets in due course.”

Lyca was formed in 2006 and has a presence in 23 countries, specialising in the sale of SIM cards with favourable international calling rates for expatriates and those with friends and family living abroad. 

It recently announced plans to invest £250 million in order to expand into new markets and to offer new digital services that attract customers beyond its traditional reach.

• If you need a new tariff, here are the  best mobile phone deals

Nvidia believes that supply of its hard to find graphics cards will improve by the second half of 2022, yet another glimmer of hope in a year full of false starts on the graphics card front.

The prediction comes courtesy of Nvidia's chief financial officer, Colette Kress, who spoke at the UBS Global TMT Virtual Conference on December 6. 

During the 45 minute event, Kress addressed Nvidia's attempts to get ahead of the semiconductor shortages and boost supply of its most in-demand graphics cards like the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 that no one seems to be able to find more than a year after their release.

"It's early to speculate in terms of demand trends as we go forward into the next year," Kress said, "but we do believe demand is strong, we believe right now that channel inventories are very lean. We believe we still have a great opportunity in front of us to upgrade gamers to that Ampere architecture."

"The company as a whole will take the appropriate work to continue to procure more supply,” Kress went on to say, "because right now we have situations where that demand exceeds our overall supply."

Kress was optimistic about Nvidia's prospects for 2022, however.

“We believe we will be in a better situation in terms of supply when we look at the second half of next year."

It's been a very long year for gamers, to say the least

Nvidia has been trying for more than a year to get more of its graphics cards into the hands of gamers, and there is some evidence that its efforts are real. 

Immediately after the first Ampere cards launched in September and October 2020, they sold out at every retailer within minutes. Initially, the shortage was blamed on higher than expected demand, but as time went on, other problems quickly revealed themselves.

Soon after the new RTX 3080 graphics cards sold out before legitimate customers could buy them, Nvidia announced that it would review purchases on its site to root out bots buying up all the available stock. Even we thought that this would be a temporary problem, but it hasn't been. 

Graphics cards, as well as video game consoles like the PS5, are essentially unattainable through normal means because automated bot networks have been clearing out stock all year with no signs of stopping.

On top of that, a boom in Ethereum prices in 2021 caused even more demand for the cards from cryptominers.

Nvidia made two major efforts to stop graphics card diversion from gamers to cryptominers: Light Hash Rate (LHR) GPUs, which halved the hash rate used for mining Ethereum to hopefully cut off demand; and cryptomining processors (CMPs), which Nvidia hoped would be more attractive to cryptominers than the consumer RTX cards.

Neither of these efforts have made an appreciable difference in gamers ability to buy a new graphics card. Even a crash in cryptocurrency prices hasn't seemed to slow things down, and with cryptocurrency prices on the rise again, we could be in for more of the same.

All through 2021, gamers in particular have been looking for signs that an end to the shortage was at least on the horizon, and whenever the price of cryptocurrencies crashed or a new contract was announced, many hoped that it would make a dent in the problem.

It hasn't though, and Nvidia's latest graphics cards are effectively as hard to find as they were the day they went on sale, so repeatedly disappointed gamers can be forgiven for looking at Nvidia's optimism for the second half of next year with a bit of skepticism and even a touch of bitterness.

Kress, though, believes that Nvidia LHR cards, the introduction of CMPs, and renewed government interest in regulating cryptocurrencies will reduce demand for Nvidia cards.

Nvidia hopes that new supply contracts will make a difference

"A large part of the strategy for improving supply is locking in more supply capacity by entering into longer term contracts," Kress said.

"We also have to think about our add-in card partners, our OEMs, which are also integral in terms of getting our cards in the hands of gamers."

"That takes us working not only procuring inventory now in the next couple quarters, but as you've seen us also procuring longer-term – longer term can be more than a year – and you've also seen us now enter into agreements that will take us out many years in terms of long-term capacity needs."

While Kress certainly sounds optimistic, as PC Mag notes, none of this necessarily translates into more cards getting into the hands of gamers.

Specifically, securing longer term capacity doesn't automatically mean that all demand can be met by this time next year. This means scalpers are still likely to buy up those cards too and resell them at grossly inflated prices, though the prices gamers might have to pay could be less than they are now.

And there isn't an upper limit on how many graphics cards crypto miners will want to buy. If a graphics card is profitable, they will buy it. If anything, the best hope any of us has for getting a new graphics card before the latest cards become last-gen tech is for Ethereum 2.0 to finally be implemented.

That will move the cryptocurrency over to a proof-of-stake model from its current proof-of-work model that requires GPUs to perform intense mathematical operations in order to mine the currency. Without proof-of-work, you don't need graphics cards.

Ethereum 2.0 is expected to roll out some time next year, so Kress might not be wrong to say that the supply situation should improve by the second half of 2022. Between more capacity on Nvidia's part and the drop in demand from Ethereum 2.0, it may be easier for gamers to get the graphics cards next year.

We wouldn't blame you if you were skeptical, though. We've heard this before, and you can only have your hopes dashed so many times.  

• AMD vs Nvidia: who makes the best graphics cards

Smart thermostat brand Tado is introducing a new feature that will make it easier to see at a glance how much it’s costing you to heat your home.

While many of the best smart thermostats can generate reports that show how the temperature may have fluctuated in your home over a particular period, this doesn’t help to visualize just how much you’re spending on heating. 

This is something Tado is looking to fix with its new Energy IQ feature for its smart thermostats connected to gas heating systems. Energy IQ imports your gas usage and your tariff’s cost from a smart meter, if you have one installed, to provide a clear indication of exactly how much you are spending on your heating.

If you don’t have a smart meter, you’ll be able to manually input the reading from your gas meter along with your tarrif details to get the same info. You can even use the feature without inputting energy meter readings, although Tado says the estimate will be far less accurate. 

Opinion: saving money and energy

Smart thermostats are already a handy way to save energy and money, as they ensure that, for example, if you know you’re going to be late home you can remotely switch the thermostat off to ensure you’re not heating an empty property. This new feature will ensure that you can see exactly how much money your heating is costing you, and may prompt you to make choices such as putting a jumper on rather than turning the heating up.  

Tado isn’t the first smart thermostat brand to launch this function. Drayton Wiser offers a similar feature, called Insight+, which costs £14.99 per month and again imports meter readings into the app.  Similarly, Samsung’s SmartThings app also offers a feature that also lets you view information from your smart meter in the app, so you can keep track of your energy usage in terms of cost.

However, with both of these, there’s no way to manually enter readings from your gas meter, which you’re able to do with Tado’s new feature

Tado says the Energy iQ feature will get even better in the coming months and will be able to use the data to provide suggestions on how much you could save both in terms of energy and money, by doing things such as lowering the temperature by one degree or turning on the geofence function, which switches the heat on or off based on your location provided by your smartphone. 

With the price of energy on the rise and many of us tightening our belts, being more aware of just how much turning the thermostat up will cost us can be extremely handy. In the UK, 27 energy providers have stopped trading in the UK in 2021 alone, and energy regulator Ofgem has increased the price cap on bills to ensure the remaining providers can continue to trade.

However, this is hitting consumers' pockets hard. Heating and hot water are vital, so it’s never been more important to ensure you’re not wasting energy and money. 

The features that Tado, Drayton, and Samsung are offering can certainly help with this, and it seems logical that other smart thermostat manufacturers will follow suit, allowing more of us to use information about our energy tariffs to find out just how much we’re spending on keeping warm. 

Every household in the UK connected to the Virgin Media broadband network can now receive speeds of 1.13Gbps following the completion of the company’s nationwide upgrade programme.

The process has taken around two years and ensures Virgin Media O2 is the country’s largest provider of gigabit broadband.

It says the speeds will help customers who have become more reliant on their connection for work, education, and everyday life, and will support bandwidth-intensive services like video streaming, online gaming, and videoconferencing.

Virgin Media O2 upgrade

The government has also welcomed the development as it targets 85% ultrafast coverage by 2025.

“Our investment to bring gigabit broadband to every home on our network has catapulted the UK’s digital infrastructure forward by a decade and forced others to up their game,” declared Lutz Schüler, Virgin Media O2 chief executive.

“Having reached this major milestone in just two years, we’re doubling down on our mission to upgrade the UK by continuing to innovate and invest in our network to support the technologies of tomorrow – there’s no slowing down at Virgin Media O2.”

Virgin Media and O2 promised to invest £10 billion over the next five years across its business and further advances in mobile and broadband will form part of that commitment.

“We had a purpose when we combined as one company, and that was to upgrade the UK,” Virgin Media O2 chief operating officer told TechRadar Pro, adding that there was a technical roadmap in place for the next seven years for its cable, fibre, and mobile networks.

“We’re already trialling 2.2Gbps [broadband] and we’re going to upgrade our entire network to fibre to the premise (FTTP) by 2028. We also expect to have 50% outdoor 5G coverage by 2023.”

Virgin Media O2 has previously spoken of its intention to be a genuine converged challenger to BT-EE, capable of offering services that combine 5G and fibre for seamless connectivity.

Dodds added that the initial focus on convergence was on customer service rather than technology for technology’s sake at present, highlighting the success of the Volt converged product and the expansion of the Priority loyalty programme as examples.

While the future might include more technological use cases, Dodds said the focus on making its fixed line network as good as possible would make features such as the 4G/5G backup capabilities that rivals have introduced as redundant.

Of course, as the UK’s largest provider of gigabit broadband, Virgin Media O2’s network would be an attractive prospect for other operators that don’t own their own infrastructure. However, there are no immediate plans to open up the network on a wholesale basis just yet.

“Our shareholders have said there are future possibilities,” he said.

• If you want some gigabit connectivity, you should take a look at the best Virgin Media broadband deals