Recode Daily: Apple is going bigger, cheaper— and maybe gold-er — with three new iPhones for fall

Apple is readying three new iPhones for this fall — a high-end OLED model with a near-6.5” screen (don’t call it a phablet), an updated iPhone X and a cheaper iPhone; all three will have Face ID and an edge-to-edge screen — and at least one may come in gold. Despite the months of hype, the iPhone X hasn’t sold as well as expected since its debut last year; Apple’s decision to also build a cheaper phone is an acknowledgment that the current entry-level iPhone 8 models too closely resemble the iPhone 6 introduced back in 2014. Famed investor Warren Buffett said yesterday that he loves Apple because of consumers’ psychological attachment to the iPhone. [Mark Gurman and Debby Wu / Bloomberg]

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Comcast made a surprise $31 billion bid for Sky, the European satellite TV company. The bid (purposefully) disrupts the planned Disney/Fox deal: Fox’s Rupert Murdoch founded Sky and has been trying to get majority control of it for years, and Disney was planning on acquiring Murdoch’s stake as part of its $52 billion deal for Fox assets. [Reuters]

In one of the larger deals in the crypto-economy, Circle bought cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex for around $400 million. Here’s more about Circle, which allows larger clients to trade bitcoin and also functions as a social payments company for people to send cash or cryptocurrencies to one another. With the acquisition of Poloniex, it’s positioning itself as a competitor to Coinbase. [Theodore Schleifer / Recode]

Digital currency meetups can be a bit of a bro-fest, so women are trying change that. Entrepreneur Brit Morin was “pissed off” that so many women were missing out on a new kind of investment — women make up less than 30 percent of bitcoin investors — so earlier this month, she organized an event to educate them. Crypto leaders are now organizing events, clubs and conferences to attract women to the industry. [Shirin Ghaffary / Recode]

Here’s a look inside an upcoming book about billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, infamous for exacting fatal revenge on Gawker Media. The generally press-averse Thiel cooperated with Ryan Holiday, the author of “Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue.” Last week, BuzzFeed News revealed the identity of “Mr. A,” a previously unknown associate who helped conceive and orchestrate Thiel’s campaign to ruin Gawker. [Lloyd Grove / Daily Beast]

Top stories from Recode

Driverless cars can operate in California as early as April.

The California DMV passed regulations that allow for the public testing and deployment of autonomous cars without drivers.

CBS will let you watch sports news — but not live games — with its new free streaming service.

CBS Sports HQ won’t compete with CBS, which is the point.

Netflix spends more on content than anyone else on the internet — and many TV networks, too.

Last year it spent almost as much as Disney on non-sports programming.

Hollar — a dollar store mobile app worth $200 million — is looking for a new CEO.

Founder and current CEO David Yeom is helping to lead the search.

This is cool

Forget the robot apocalypse. Just order lunch.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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