Latest Andru Edwards Videos
The Galaxy S26 FE Costs $50 More, and Only the Chip Really Changed
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Features,
The Fan Edition pitch has never been complicated. Samsung takes a flagship, shaves off the parts most people won't miss, and sells it for a few hundred dollars less. The Galaxy S26 FE, official as of August 27, keeps that pitch intact. It also raises the entry fee to $699.99, up $50 from where the S25 FE started last year.
For that you get a 6.7-inch FHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X running at 120Hz and rated for 1,900 nits, a 4,900mAh battery, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB or 256GB of storage. It arrives September 3 at select carriers and September 4 at Samsung.com and everywhere else, in Pistachio, Blueberry, and Graphite. Nearly all of that carried over from the S25 FE unchanged.
Click to continue reading The Galaxy S26 FE Costs $50 More, and Only the Chip Really Changed
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Samsung Put a Processor Inside Your Phone’s RAM
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Misc. Tech, Artificial Intelligence,
Every time your phone runs an AI feature on-device, most of the energy goes into hauling data out of memory, over to the processor, doing a bit of math, and hauling it back. Again and again. The math is cheap. The commute kills your battery.
Samsung's answer, shown at the Hot Chips conference this week, is to stop commuting. LPDDR5X-PIM puts small compute units inside the memory chip, so the calculations happen where the data already lives. It's the first time this has been done with LPDDR, the low-power memory that goes into phones and laptops instead of data center racks.
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Samsung Sold More Phones Than Ever and Still Lost Money
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Corporate News,
Here's a sentence that shouldn't make sense. Samsung sold plenty of phones last quarter, grew its mobile revenue year over year, and still managed to lose money doing it.
The number is 800 billion won, roughly $544 million, and it's the first operating loss Samsung's DX division has ever posted. DX is the half of the company that makes things you actually buy: phones, TVs, appliances. The loss came almost entirely from the mobile side. And the reason is the one everybody in tech has been bracing for since last year. Memory got expensive.
Click to continue reading Samsung Sold More Phones Than Ever and Still Lost Money
Samsung’s Galaxy Glasses Skip the Screen and Bet Everything on Gemini
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, Google, Artificial Intelligence,
The whole fantasy of smart glasses has always been the same one: a computer on your face that nobody else notices you are wearing. Samsung's new Galaxy Glasses, shown off at Unpacked, take that idea about as far as it will go. They leave out the one thing you might assume a pair of smart glasses needs, which is a screen you can see through.
Instead of putting anything in your field of view, the Galaxy Glasses lean entirely on cameras, audio, and Google's Gemini assistant. This is the first pair built on Android XR, the platform Samsung and Google have been teasing for what feels like ages, and it is aimed squarely at the Ray-Ban Meta crowd rather than anyone still waiting on Iron Man overlays. You look at something, you talk to it, and it talks back.
Click to continue reading Samsung’s Galaxy Glasses Skip the Screen and Bet Everything on Gemini
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Hands-On: The Foldable Finally Got the Shape Right
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Design, Product Reviews,
For six years, Samsung's big foldable has been shaped a little like a TV remote. Tall, skinny, and a bit awkward to hold shut. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 finally does something about that, and the fix is almost embarrassingly simple. It got wider.
That one change reshapes the entire phone. Closed, the new Fold looks and feels like a passport, with a 5.5-inch cover screen at a 10:16 aspect ratio that you can actually type on with two thumbs without popping the thing open. Samsung is calling this the biggest redesign since the original 2019 Z Fold, and after a few minutes in the hand, that reads as more than marketing. It borrows the squat, wide silhouette the first Pixel Fold pioneered, and it turns out that shape was right all along.
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The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra Is Samsung’s Best Foldable, and Its Own Worst Enemy
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Product Reviews,
Ultra is supposed to be the word that ends the argument. It's the phone you reach for once you've decided money is no longer the point, the one with the biggest battery, the longest zoom, the most of everything. So here's the strange thing about the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra: after a couple of hours holding it, the device that kept nagging at me was the cheaper one sitting right next to it on the table.
Don't get me wrong, the Z Fold 8 Ultra is a genuinely lovely piece of hardware. But Samsung has quietly built itself a problem. For the first time there's a standard Z Fold 8 and an Ultra sitting side by side, and the roughly $200 you pay to move up buys you less than you'd expect. Working out whether that gap is worth it is the whole story of this phone.
Samsung Is Betting Titanium Can Finally Flatten the Galaxy Z Fold 8’s Crease
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Design, Displays,
Every foldable phone comes with an asterisk, and it sits right in the middle of the screen. The crease. That soft valley where the display bends has been the one thing keeping foldables from feeling like the future they keep promising to be, the little dip your thumb finds every time you scroll. Samsung has spent seven generations trying to make it go away. With the Galaxy Z Fold 8, the company says it finally has a real answer, and its name is titanium.
Ahead of its July 22 Unpacked event, Samsung revealed a new display technology it’s calling Flex Titanium, built to flatten the crease on the Z Fold 8 and the higher-end Z Fold 8 Ultra. Notice the careful wording, though: Samsung is promising “reduced crease visibility,” not a crease that’s gone for good. That gap between “better” and “invisible” is the whole story here, so it’s worth understanding what the titanium is actually doing inside the phone.
Samsung S95C: The OLED TV You Can’t Afford (to Ignore!)
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Displays, Features, Home Entertainment,
The Samsung S95C OLED TV, a game-changer in home entertainment that brings the cinematic experience right into your living room! In this video, we'll dive into the cutting-edge QD-OLED technology that combines the best of OLED and Samsung's QLED TVs, delivering bold contrast, dramatic sound, and vibrant colors that will blow you away.
We'll also take a closer look at the sleek Infinity One Design and the ultra-convenient Slim One Connect, which keeps your space clutter-free and modern-looking. If you're a movie buff or a gaming enthusiast, you'll definitely want to know about the Samsung S95C's impressive 4K Upscaling, the Neural Quantum Processor, and the range of gaming features that make this TV a top contender for smooth and responsive gameplay.
Click to continue reading Samsung S95C: The OLED TV You Can’t Afford (to Ignore!)
Geared Up: The Future of Foldable Phones, & Apple’s Key Advantage w/ Guest Michael Fisher!
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Features, Handhelds, Home Entertainment, Podcasts,
This week Michael Fisher joins the show to talk about foldables like the Galaxy Z Flip, Galaxy Fold 2, and what makes this tech so exciting. We also dive into Apple’s advantage in chip-making, and how the iPhone SE may be the ultimate iOS trojan horse. We’ve also talk about our favorite tech for getting through social isolation, and much more!
LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW
- Subscribe to Geared Up!
- iPhone SE Unboxing & First Impressions
- iPhone SE Feature Overview
- OnePlus 8 Pro vs iPhone 11 Pro
- Samsung Galaxy Z Flip: 10 Things Before Buying
- Geared Up on YouTube
- Jon Rettinger on YouTube
- Andru Edwards on YouTube
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Listen to the episode in the player above or subscribe to Geared Up in your favorite podcast app to listen on the go!
A Deep-Dive Conversation with Samsung about Powering the Future of Innovation
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Smartphones, Corporate News, Features, Transportation, Videos, Wireless / WiFi,
I had the opportunity to sit down with Jim Elliott, Corporate Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. at Samsung Tech Day last October. He runs Memory sales and marketing at Samsung’s North America Semiconductor subsidiary. We talked about how Samsung Semiconductor's technology is ushering the future of artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, super-fast 5G wireless networks, and more. Talking to Jim, it became clear that we're on the cusp of some major technological advancements that will drive forward a new age of innovation. This is similar to what we saw when 4G enabled us to carry devices in our pockets that let us order cars directly to our precise location, stream music and videos no matter where we happen to be, and the ability to post content to social networks for anyone to read or watch. So the question becomes, what's next?