Founded in 1938, Samsung is the largest chaebol in South Korea. The myriad of companies under its brand are some of the biggest in their respective industries, but Samsung Electronics is the most notable. It makes some of the most popular phones in use today, and its flagship portfolio includes the Galaxy S-series and foldable Z-series devices. It also makes televisions, tablets, computers, headphones, and many of the displays, chips, and batteries found in devices from Apple, Sony, and others.
Announced at CES earlier this year, Samsung’s 27-inch Odyssey OLED G6 gaming monitor is now available in the US for $999.99. It has a 1440p resolution, two HDMI 2.1 ports, a single DisplayPort 1.4 port, and that all-important 500Hz refresh rate. Samsung is also launching the 37- and 40-inch Odyssey G7 4K monitors in the US.
Samsung is fulfilling its promise to upgrade the voice assistant with generative AI, with new features now rolling out to its 2025 TVs in the US.
Bixby should now be better at answering natural language queries about anything, whether on the TV screen or not, and will help turn your TV into a smart home hub with voice controls for SmartThings appliances.
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Verge Score
More cover screen is indisputably better.
Yes, we tested Samsung’s latest premium foldable, but we didn’t try to destroy every surface and angle of the phone.
For that, there’s JerryRigEverything on YouTube, with the usual scratching and bending, with the results you’d probably expect, although the new hinge design is surprisingly resilient for something so skinny (and with the protruding camera lenses that make it a bit wobbly).
A regulatory filing surfaced Monday morning in Korea showing the underperforming electronics giant won an order to build chips for an unnamed large global tech company in a contract that runs through 2033.
Then, a few hours later, Elon Musk tweeted the arrangement was for Tesla’s “next-generation AI6 chip,” built at Samsung’s plant in Texas, confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg.
Update: Added info from Elon Musk’s tweet.
It took Samsung four and a half months from announcing the Galaxy A56 to quietly adding it to its US store, though other countries have had the phone since March.
Starting at $499.99, it comes in gray or gray, and is a pretty standard midranger: Exynos 1580 chip, 6.7-inch OLED display, 50-megapixel main camera, and a 5,000mAh battery with 45W wired charging.
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Verge Score
It’s thinner and lighter, but you’ll need some deep pockets for this foldable.
Today Korea’s Supreme Court cleared Lee Jae-yong of stock manipulation charges related to a merger which helped him take control of the company founded by his grandfather. He was acquitted by a lower court last February, which prosecutors appealed, but the country’s top court sided with the Samsung man.
In 2017 he was found guilty of bribery and embezzlement, but later released from prison on appeal and pardoned in 2022. He’s currently Samsung’s executive chairman.
If you missed anything from Samsung’s big event earlier this week, we’ve got the highlights for you to watch right here, along with our first impressions of the new Fold / Flip and Galaxy Watch 8 series.
Victoria Song and Allison Johnson also joined Jake on this week’s episode of The Vergecast to give more of their opinions on everything we saw this week, plus some other tech news.
If you thought Samsung’s more affordable flip phone felt like an afterthought during yesterday’s Unpacked, apparently so did every major US carrier. SamMobile points out that none of Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T lists the FE, and even Samsung’s own site only offers the phone unlocked.
In fact, the only US provider we’ve found offering the FE is Boost Mobile — maybe that’s what it meant when it announced it’s a real carrier now?
Doesn’t look like we’ll get a trifold tease as a “one more thing” thing here. Guess there’s always January...
Sigh. Oh well. That’s a wrap. I guess BTS is just out of the military, and Stray Kids already finished their North American tour. Sob. Well, at least we had the K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack blasting earlier.
The crowd has been relatively quiet thus far, but Gemini on the wrist got some claps, woos, and enthusiasm from the crowd. Gemini isn’t just coming to the Galaxy Watch 8 series though; It’s rolling out to compatible Wear OS watches — the Galaxy Watch 8 series is just the first to get it out of the box, without relying on a software update.
Samsung is highlighting the acquisition of Xealth to enable connected healthcare so that physicians can see your wearable metric data. This is essentially telehealth, and signaling where Samsung’s head is at for its overall wearable and health tech strategy. To quote Xealth’s CEO just now: A “bridge between wellness and healthcare that allows digital health to scale.”
We just got a big video about the Running Coach feature on the Galaxy Watch 8 series. “If you’re a runner, this definitely made you want to run.” As a runner, I plead the fifth. But we do have Jacob Kiplimo, the half-marathon world record holder onstage now sporting a Galaxy Watch. Blink, Jacob, if you need our help.
There’s one more flip phone this year and this “Fan Edition” didn’t exactly get a big spot in the presentation. It’s $899, which sure, that’s a few hundred bucks cheaper than the Z Flip 7. But its... not that cheap? I dunno. It exists.
You can read everything that’s up in my hands-on, but here in the Unpacked warehouse, we were just treated to a light show and a 50-foot SQUIRCLE view of the Galaxy Watch 8 and 8 Classic. “These aren’t just pretty faces,” Samsung says. They’re calling it a “cushion system” but I’m telling you this is a SQUIRCLE.
The bigger front screen on the Galaxy Z Flip 7 makes space for my favorite new lock screen feature: a clock the gets dynamically shorter and longer depending on your wallpaper photo. It’s on iOS 26 too, so I guess Long Clock is officially a trend.
They should’ve just done a livefeed of Allison liveblogging. Do I want a $2,000 foldy phone now? I think I do? Am I losing it? I can’t get over it.
That’s the starting price for the Z Fold 7, which goes up for pre-order starting now. Better hope those trade in deals are strong!
Samsung has been highlighting creators and their work throughout this keynote. We just saw one video from a creator highlighting the new blue color of the Z Fold 7. (It’s very blue and fetching.) There was even an influencer sign at check-in, and they have their own prime seating inside Duggal Greenhouse while several tech journalists were scrambling to find a single seat. It’s a new era, man.
We are two years into the era of AI on phones and I’m just going to say it: I don’t need any more explanations about how AI can generate useful summaries of text for you. I get it! Let’s just take this for granted and not trot it out at every product launch, please? Anyway, the new foldables have lots of AI. Again.
She has Slack pulled up, she’s taking photos, she has the CMS on one screen. This is the future of mobile blogging. Meanwhile, I have two phones and a laptop too and I’m struggs to func.
Android and Pixel boss Rick Osterloh is here to talk about Gemini on Samsung phones. He’s plugging Circle to Search getting access to AI mode, plus Gemini Live on the Z series. Samsung and Google are good friends, Google and Samsung would like us to remember.
The newest Fold is the thinnest Samsung foldable ever, and Samsung calls it an “ultra” experience... without actually calling it an Ultra phone. Weird! But it really is super thin!
Unpacked is underway, but just before “Golden” from K-Pop Demon Hunters was blasting in this industrial warehouse. I’m bopping along to it while Allison is blogging from the Z Fold 6. That’s dedication. The wifi is struggling, though, because, well, it’s a metal warehouse.
