I love air fryers. They offer microwave-like convenience, but stuff actually tastes good. If you want to see what all of the fuss is about, a standout Cosori air fryer is on sale via Amazon for $90. This is a fairly substantial discount of 25 percent, as the original price is $120.

This particular model made our list of the best air fryers, and for very good reason. It’s a great device that gets the job done. It’s a six-quart model that offers plenty of cooking space, which we found ideal for side dishes like sweet potato fries and onion rings. However, it’s no slouch with mains like chicken wings, tofu and more. The rounded basket is particularly roomy.

The touchscreen is easy to use and there are plenty of preset cooking modes, including a handy preheating option for starting things off. Most people will rely on the standard air fry mode, I know I do, but it’s nice to have the option for broiling, baking and roasting. We also appreciated the basket release button, which is a nice safety feature.

This is pretty much the ideal air fryer, so it’s tough to find complaints. There isn’t a see-through window, for those who like taking a look at tater tots crisping up. This particular unit is also on the wider side, which could make placement difficult in tiny kitchens.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/one-of-our-favorite-air-fryers-is-25-percent-off-right-now-161542670.html?src=rss

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© Cosori

Following a two-year wait, NVIDIA’s highly-anticipated GeForce 50 series of GPUs are nearly here. Engadget has published its review of the $2,000 RTX 5090, but if you’re reading this article, chances are you already know if you want to splurge on a 50 series card. The question then is how to buy one of them? Depending on when you read this story, the good news is that we’re at most a week away from major retailers, including Best Buy and Newegg, stocking the new cards on January 30.

As for the bad news? If the 50 series launch is anything like the 40 series one before it, expect high demand and limited initial availability. If you’re set on buying an RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti or 5070 at release, be sure to use the notification feature Best Buy and other retailers offer to have the best chance of securing one of the cards before they all sell out.

GeForce RTX 5090 for $2,000: The RTX 5090 is the most expensive consumer GPU NVIDIA has ever released. It’s also one of the most powerful and power-hungry, with the 5090 featuring 21,760 CUDA cores, 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM and a potential total power draw of 575W.

Of course, as with all of NVIDIA’s new GPUs, raw specs are only half the story. In conjunction with DLSS 4, the entire 50 series is capable of multi-frame generation. With the tech, RTX 50 GPUs can generate up to three additional frames for every frame they render using traditional techniques. DLSS 4 is the reason the 5090 can produce an average of 246 frames per second with full ray tracing in games like Cyberpunk 2077.

If you prefer to buy from Newegg or B&H, both retailers will stock models from third-party OEMs, including ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Zotac.

GeForce RTX 5080 for $999: Despite costing half as much as the RTX 5090, the 5080 is no slouch. It features an impressive 10,752 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM, with a memory bandwidth of 960GB/sec. Like the 5090, you get the benefit of DLSS 4 multi-frame generation. Moreover, total power draw is more modest at 360W, meaning you probably won’t need a 1,000W PSU to power the 5080. 

Again, both Newegg and B&H will stock third-party options. For a Founders Edition model, your best bets are NVIDIA and Best Buy. 

GeForce RTX 5070 Ti for $749. If I had to guess, the 5070 Ti is probably the model with the most interest from people who want to buy a 50 series card. That’s because it features 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM compared to the 5070’s 12GB. An extra 4GB of VRAM might not seem like much, but it will likely translate to the 5070 Ti being a much better purchase over the long run. Modern AAA games use a lot of VRAM, so much so that 8GB GPUs like the RTX 3070 are starting to show their age. 

Unfortunately, the 5070 Ti is the one model NVIDIA won't offer a Founders Edition version of, so finding one to buy may be tricky. Your best bet here is likely to be B&H. The retailer is showing a few 5070 Ti models on its website. 

GeForce RTX 5070 for $549: At launch, the RTX 5070 will be NVIDIA’s most affordable 50 series GPU. It’s also the GPU NVIDIA claims is as fast as the RTX 4090. Of course, that’s with DLSS 4 enabled. If you’re interested in the 5070, I strongly advise waiting for reviews to come out before you commit to buying one. As mentioned, with only 12GB of VRAM, the 5070 could quickly become a bottleneck to your system.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/how-to-buy-a-nvidia-rtx-50-series-gpu-160902797.html?src=rss

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© Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Get enough Star Trek fans in a room and the conversation inevitably turns toward which of the series’ cinematic outings is the worst. The consensus view is The Final Frontier, Insurrection and Nemesis are duking it out for the unwanted trophy. Each film has a small legion of fans who will defend each entry’s campy excesses, boldness and tone. (I’m partial to watching The Final Frontier every five years or so, mostly to luxuriate in Jerry Goldsmith’s score.) Thankfully, any and all such discussions will cease once and for all on January 24, 2024, when Star Trek: Section 31 debuts on Paramount+.

It is the single worst thing to carry the Star Trek name in living memory.

Spoilers follow for Star Trek: Section 31.

Star Trek: Section 31 is a made for TV streaming movie focusing on Philipa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) after her departure from Star Trek: Discovery. It was originally greenlit in 2019 as a series but, for a wide variety of reasons, it languished in development hell until 2022. In the interim, showrunners Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt, along with credited screenwriter Craig Sweeny, sweated the idea. Director Olatunde Osunsanmi told SFX Magazine (via TrekMovie) that Sweeny would eventually write (and re-write) the project seven different times, first as a TV series, then as a movie. Trek head honcho Alex Kurtzman was eager to get production underway to take advantage of Yeoh’s 2022 Academy Award win for Everything Everywhere All At Once.

The result is a film that, even if you’re unaware of the pre-production backstory, sure feels like a series hastily cut down to feature length. It’s not incoherent, but suffers from the same issue that blighted Discovery, where you’re watching a dramatized synopsis rather than a script. There are thematic and plot beats that rhyme with each other, but the meat joining them all together isn’t there. It’s just stuff that happens.

It doesn’t help that the plot (credited to Kim and Lippoldt) is very much of the “and then this happens” variety that they warn you about in Film School 202. So many major moments in the film are totally unearned, asking you to care about characters you’ve only just met and don’t much like. There’s a risible scene at the end where two people who haven’t really given you the impression they’re into each other have to hold hands and stare into their impending doom. The pair in question have shared their backstories with each other, but there’s no suggestion that they are anything more than just people working together on a job, let alone friends.

Michael Gibson/Paramount+

Weak material is less of an issue if you have a cast who can elevate what they’ve been given but, and it pains me to say this, that’s not Michelle Yeoh. Yeoh is a phenomenal performer who has given a litany of underrated performances over her long and distinguished career. But she made her name playing characters with deep interiority, not scenery-chewing high-camp villains. Even in her redemptive phase, it’s impossible to believe Yeoh is the sort of monster Star Trek needs Georgiou to be. Rather than shrinking the scene, and the stakes, to suit her talents, the film makes the canvas wider and expects Yeoh to fill space she’s never needed.

The rest of the gang is similarly underserved by the material and the sheer volume of clutter the film has little time to get past. Making the Section 31 team six people deep before they meet Georgiou means every character beyond her is a thumbnail sketch at best. There’s the broody one, the “funny” one, the uptight one, the robot one, the hot one and the one with the bad Oirish accent.

If Section 31 was a series, you’d forgive the pithy introductions, knowing you’d get to fill in these characters over the coming weeks, maybe even grow attached to them. In the space of a movie, it doesn’t work since the shocking twists — like an early character death to raise the stakes or a sudden heel-turn in a moment of crisis, don’t work. Worse still, the dialog is so often indecipherable crosstalk that feels more like woeful improv than useful characterization. That, or it’s just characters reminding the audience of basic story points over and over again, like the fact Georgiou used to be a baddie.

Olatunde Osunsanmi’s direction has always made an effort to draw attention to itself, with flashy pans, tilts, moves and Dutch angles. Jarringly, all of his flair leaves him when he needs to just shoot people in a room talking — those scenes invariably default to the TV standard medium. Worse still is his action direction, that loses any sense of the space we’re seeing or the story being told. There’s a final punchfight that requires the audiences to be aware of who has the macguffin at various points. But it’s all so incoherent that you’ll struggle to place what’s going on and where, so why bother engaging with it?

And that’s before we get to the fact that Osunanmi chose to shoot all of Michelle Yeoh’s — Michelle Yeoh’s — fight scenes in close-up. When Yeoh is moving, you want to capture the full extent of her talents and allow her and her fellow performers a chance to show off, too. And yet it’s in these moments that the camera pulls in tight — with what looks like a digital crop with a dose of digital motion blur thrown in. All of which serves to obscure Yeoh’s talents and sap any energy out of the action.

Jan Thijs/Paramount+

Before watching Section 31, I re-watched the relevant stories from Deep Space Nine and tried to interrogate their ethics. That series asked, several times over, how far someone would, could or should go to defend their ideals and their worldview. The Federation was often described as some form of paradise, but does paradise need its own extrajudicial murder squad? It wasn’t a wicked cool plotline, but a thought experiment to interrogate what Starfleet and its personnel stands for when its very existence is in jeopardy. If there’s one thing that Section 31 isn’t, it’s cool, and if you think it is, then your values are at least halfway in conflict with Star Trek’s founding ethos.

Unfortunately for us, Trek honcho Alex Kurtzman does think Starfleet having its own space murder squad is wicked cool given their repeated appearances under his watch. Kurtzman has never hidden his love of War on Terror-era narratives, which remain as unwelcome here as they were in Star Trek: Into Darkness. Sadly, Section 31 is Star Trek in its face-punching, forced-interrogation, cheek-stabbing, eye-gouging thoughtless grimdark register. Fundamentally, it’s not a fun thing to sit down and watch, beyond its numerous deficiencies as a piece of cinema.

The biggest tell that Section 31 wasn’t going to be a winner was when Rob Kasinsky, who plays Section 31's Zeph, started getting his excuses in early. He said (via ScreenRant) he was worried the film would be received poorly given all the fans want is “just 1,000 more episodes of TNG.” I’ll admit, there is a chunk of fandom who do just want to be fed a conveyor belt of ‘memberberries. These are the people who thought season three of Picard was good and are clamoring for Star Trek: Legacy. I, and a lot of other people, just want something that’s halfway thoughtful, entertaining and well-made, and this is none of those things.

I keep checking my notes for anything positive and the best I can manage is that the costumes, co-created with Balenciaga, are quite nice. They’re a bit too Star Wars, but I like the focus on texture and tailoring in a way that’s better than Trek’s current athleisure trend. Oh, and the CGI is competent and doesn’t slip below the standards set down by Strange New Worlds. There you go, two things that are good about Section 31.

Fundamentally, I don’t know who this is for. It’s too braindead for the people who want Star Trek in any sort of thoughtful register. It’s not shot through with the fan-service onanism that would pander to please the Star Trek: Legacy crowd. It’s not quite shamelessly brutal enough for the gang who want Star Trek to turn into 24. And it’s not high camp enough for the folks who’d like to coo over Michelle Yeoh in a variety of gorgeous costumes. Remember how Warner Bros. junked several movies for the tax break? I wish Paramount’s accountants had been as ruthless here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/star-trek-section-31-review-an-embarrassment-from-start-to-end-150051501.html?src=rss

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© Jan Thijs/Paramount+

A $2,000 video card for consumers shouldn't exist. The GeForce RTX 5090, like the $1,599 RTX 4090 before it, is more a flex by NVIDIA than anything truly meaningful for most gamers. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said as much when he revealed the GPU at CES 2025, assuming that it'll be for hardcore players who have $10,000 rigs. Personally, I don't know anyone who actually fits that bill, not unless you count parasocial relationships with streamers. (My own setup doesn't even cross $5,000.)

But we all know why NVIDIA is hyping up the unattainable RTX 5090: It lets the company show off benchmarks that AMD can't touch, once again cementing itself as the supreme leader of the high-end video card market. It's not just about gaming, either. The RTX 5090 is also being positioned as an AI workhorse since it's powered by NVIDIA's new Blackwell architecture, which leans on the company's Tensor Cores for artificial intelligence work more than ever. Realistically, though, the $549 RTX 5070 is the GPU more gamers will actually be able to buy.

I'll admit, I went into this review with a mixture of excitement and disgust. It's astonishing that NVIDIA was able to stuff 91 billion transistors and 21,760 CUDA cores in the RTX 5090, and I couldn't wait to see how it performed. Still, I find it genuinely sad that NVIDIA keeps pushing the bar higher for GPU prices, in the process making the gaming world even more unequal. A $2,000 graphics card, in this economy?!

But after hours of benchmarking and playtime, I realized the RTX 5090 wasn't much of a threat to gaming accessibility. Wealthy PC gamers have always overspent for graphics performance — I've seen people (unwisely) pay thousands more than consumer GPUs just to get extra VRAM from NVIDIA's Quadro cards. But the rise of PC handhelds like the Steam Deck, which are a direct offshoot of the Nintendo Switch's success, is a clear sign that convenience matters more than raw power to mainstream players today. I don't think many Switch 2 buyers are saving up for an RTX 5090.

For the few who can afford it, though, NVIDIA's new flagship sure is a treat.

Hardware: Leaning more on AI

In many ways, the RTX 5000 GPU family is the convergence of NVIDIA's decades-long GPU expertise and its newfound role powering the AI hype train. Sure, they'll run games faster than before, but what makes them unique is their ability to tap into "neural rendering" AI for even better performance. It's at the heart of DLSS 4, the company's latest AI upscaling technology, which can now generate up to three frames for every one that's actually rendered by the RTX 5090.

That's how NVIDIA can claim this GPU is twice as fast as the RTX 4090, or that the RTX 5070 matches the speed of the 4090. Does it really matter if these frames are "fake" if you can't tell, and they lead to smoother gameplay?

Before I dive further into the AI side of things, though, let's take a closer look at the RTX 5090. Once again, it features 21,760 CUDA cores, up from 16,384 cores on the 4090, as well as 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM instead of the 4090's 24GB of GDDR6X. (I thought I was future-proofing my desktop when I equipped it with 32GB of RAM years ago, but now that video cards have caught up I'm almost convinced to go up to 64GB.) The 5090 also sports 5th-gen Tensor cores with 3,352 of AI TOPs performance, while the 4090 had 1,321 AI TOPS with last-gen Tensor hardware.

	RTX 5090	RTX 5080	RTX 5070 Ti	RTX 5070	RTX 4090
Architecture	Blackwell	Blackwell	Blackwell	Blackwell	Lovelace
CUDA cores	21,760	10,752	8,960	6,144	16,384
AI TOPS	3,352	1,801	1,406	988	1,321
Tensor cores	5th Gen	5th Gen	5th Gen	5th Gen	4th Gen
RT cores	4th Gen	4th Gen	4th Gen	4th Gen	3rd Gen
VRAM	32 GB GDDR7	16 GB GDDR7	16 GB GDDR7	12 GB GDDR7	24 GB GDDR6X
Memory bandwidth	1,792 GB/sec	960 GB/sec	896 GB/sec	672 GB/sec	1,008 GB/sec
TGP	575W	360W	300W	250W	450W

I tested the RTX 5090 Founder’s Edition GPU (provided by NVIDIA), which is dramatically slimmer than its 4090 counterpart. The 5090 has a sleek two-slot case that can actually fit in small form factor systems. The three-slot 4090, meanwhile, was so massive it felt like it was going to tear my PCIe slot out of my motherboard. NVIDIA also added another cooling fan this time around, instead of just relying on a vapor chamber and a single fan. The 5090's main PCB sits in the center of the card, and it's connected to other PCB modules at the PCIe slot and rear ports (three DisplayPort 2.1b and an HDMI 2.1b connection).

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

DLSS 4: The real star of the show

While multi-frame generation is the defining feature for the RTX 50 cards, there are several other DLSS 4 features that should help games look dramatically better. Best of all, those capabilities are also trickling down to earlier RTX GPUs. RTX 40 cards will be more efficient with their single-frame generation, while RTX 30 and 20 cards will also see an upgrade from AI transformer models used for ray reconstruction (leading to more stable ray tracing), Super Resolution (higher quality textures) and Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA).

These transformer models should also fix some rendering artifacts present in earlier versions of DLSS. At NVIDIA’s Editor’s Day earlier this month, the company showed off how the updated version of Ray Reconstruction made a chainlink fence in Alan Wake 2 appear completely sharp and clear. An earlier version of the feature made the same fence look muddy, almost as if it was out of focus. In Horizon Forbidden West, the new version of Super Resolution revealed more detail from the texture of Aloy’s bag.

DLSS 4 will be supported in 75 games and apps at launch, including Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Cyberpunk 2077, according to NVIDIA. For titles that haven’t yet been updated with new DLSS menu options, you’ll also be able to force support for the latest features in the NVIDIA app.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

In use: An absolute powerhouse, with fake frames and without

I could almost hear my motherboard breathe a sigh of relief when I unplugged the RTX 4090 and swapped in the slimmer 5090. Installation was a cinch, though I still needed to plug in four PSU connectors to satisfy its demand for 575 watts of power and a 1,000W PSU. If you’re lucky enough to have a new PSU with a 600W PCIe Gen 5 cable, that will also work (and also avoid tons of cable clutter).

I tested the RTX 5090 on my home rig powered by an AMD Ryzen 9 7900X and 32GB of RAM, alongside a 1,000W Corsair PSU. I also used Alienware’s 32-inch 4K QD-OLED 4K 240Hz monitor to get the most out of the 5090, and honestly, you wouldn’t want to run this GPU on anything less.

Once I started benchmarking, it didn’t take long for the RTX 5090 to impress me. In the 3DMark Steel Nomad test, which is a demanding DX12 demo, it scored 14,239 points, well above the 9,250 points I saw on the RTX 4090. Similarly, the 5090 hit 15,416 points in the 3DMark Speedway benchmark, compared to the 4090’s 10,600 points. These are notable generation-over-generation gains without the use of frame generation or any DLSS sorcery — it’s just the raw power you see with more CUDA and RT cores.

None	3DMark TimeSpy Extreme	Port Royal (Ray Tracing)	Cyberpunk (4K RT Overdrive DLSS)	Blender
NVIDIA RTX 5090	19,525	36,003/166fos	246fps (4X frame gen)	14,903
NVIDIA RTX 4090	16,464	25,405/117fps	135fps	12,335
NVIDIA RTX 4080 Super	13,168	18,435/85fps	80fps	8,867
NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti Super	11,366	15,586/72fps	75fps	7,342

Once I started gaming and let DLSS 4 do its magic, my jaw just about hit the floor. But I suppose that’s just a natural response to seeing a PC hit 250fps on average in Cyberpunk 2077 while playing in 4K with maxed-out ray tracing overdrive settings and 4x frame generation. In comparison, the 4090 hit 135fps with the same settings and single frame generation.

Now I know most of those frames aren’t technically real, but it’s also the first time I’ve seen any game fill out the Alienware monitor’s 4K 240hz refresh rate. And most importantly, Cyberpunk simply looked amazing as I rode my motorcycle down rain-slicked city streets and soaked in the reflections and realistic lighting from robust ray tracing.

Like Cypher in The Matrix (far from the best role model, I know), after suffering through years of low 4K framerates, I couldn’t help but feel like “ignorance is bliss” when it comes to frame generation. I didn’t see any artifacts or stuttering. There wasn’t anything that took away from my experience of playing Cyberpunk. And the game genuinely looked better than I’d ever seen it before.

And if you’re the sort of person who could never live with “fake frames,” the RTX 5090 is also the only card I’ve seen that can get close to 60fps in Cyberpunk natively in 4K with maxed out graphics and no DLSS. I hit 54fps on average in my testing, whereas the 4090 chugged along at 42fps in native 4K. You could also compromise a bit and turn on 2x or 3x frame generation to get a solid fps boost, if the idea of 4x frame generation just makes you feel dirty.

And if you can’t tell, I quickly got over any fake frame trepidation. When I used the NVIDIA app to turn on 4x frame generation in Dragon Quest: The Veilguard, I once again saw an average framerate of around 240fps in 4K with maxed out graphics. I’ve already spent over 25 hours in the game, but running through a few missions at that framerate still felt revelatory. Combat sequences were clearer and easier to follow, possibly thanks to better Ray Reconstruction and Super Resolution, and I could also make out even more detail in my character’s ornate costumes. On the 4090, I typically saw around 120fps with standard frame generation.

The 5090’s DLSS 4 performance makes me eager to see how the cheaper RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti cards perform. If a $550 card can actually get close to what I saw on the $1,599 4090, even if it’s relying on massive amounts of frame generation, that’s still a major accomplishment. It would also be great news for anyone who invested in a 4K 120Hz screen, which is tough to fill with other mid-range GPUs.

Outside of gaming, the RTX 5090 also managed to convert a minute-long 4K clip into 1080p using the NVENC H.264 encoder in just 23 seconds. That’s the fastest conversion I’ve seen yet. In comparison, the RTX 4090 took 28 seconds. Add up those seconds on a much larger project, and the 5090 could potentially save you hours of repeated rendering time. Naturally, it also saw the fastest Blender benchmark score we’ve ever seen, reaching 14,903 points. The RTX 4090, the previous leader in our benchmarks, hit 12,335 points.

3Dmark

Throughout benchmarks and lengthy gaming sessions, the RTX 5090 typically reached around 70 degrees Celsius with audible, but not annoying, fan noise. The card also quickly cooled down to idle temperatures between 34C and 39C when it wasn’t under load. Aiming to push the limits of NVIDIA’s cooling setup, I also ran several stress test sessions in 3DMark, which involves looping a benchmark 20 times. It never crashed, and achieved over 97 percent accuracy in most of the tests. There was just one Steel Nomad session where it scored 95.9 percent and failed 3DMark’s 97 percent threshold. That could easily be due to early driver issues, but it’s still worth noting.

The only time I really got the RTX 5090 cooking was during an exploration of the Speedway benchmark, where I could move the camera around the ray traced scene and look at different objects and characters. The card hit 79C almost immediately and stayed there until I quit the demo. During that session, as well as typical gaming, the 5090 drew between 500W and 550W of power.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Looking ahead: AI NPCs and neural shaders

On top of DLSS, NVIDIA is also planning to tap into its RTX cards to power AI NPCs in games like PUBG and ZooPunk. Based on what I saw at NVIDIA’s Editor’s Day, though, I’m more worried than excited. The company’s Ace technology can let NPCs generate text, voices and even have conversational voice chats, but every example I saw was robotic and disturbing. The AI Ally in PUBG makes a lot of sense on paper — who wouldn’t want a computer companion that could help you fight and find ammo? But in the demo I saw, it wasn’t much of a conversationalist, it couldn’t find weapons when asked and it also took way too long to hop into a vehicle during a dangerous firefight.

As I wrote last week, “I'm personally tired of being sold on AI fantasies, when we know the key to great writing and performances is to give human talent the time and resources to refine their craft.“ And on a certain level, I think I'll always feel like the director Hayao Miyazaki, who described an early example of an AI CG creature as, "an affront to life itself."

NVIDIA’s Neural Shaders are an attempt to bring AI right into texture shaders, something the company says wasn’t possible on previous GPUs. These can be implemented in a variety of ways: RTX Neural Materials, for example, can use AI to render complex materials like silk and porcelain, which often have nuanced and reflective textures. RTX Neural Texture Compression, on the other hand, can store complex textures while saving up to 7 times the VRAM used from typical block compression. For ray tracing, there’s RTX Neural Radiance Cache, which is trained on live gameplay to help simulate path-traced indirect lighting.

Much like NVIDIA’s early ray tracing demos, it’s unclear how long it’ll take for us to see these features in actual games. But from the glimpses so far, NVIDIA is clearly thinking of new ways to deploy its AI Tensor Cores. RTX Neural Faces, for example, uses a variety of methods to make faces seem more realistic, and less like plastic 3D models. There’s also RTX Mega Geometry, which can help developers make up to “100x more ray traced triangles,” according to NVIDIA. Demos show it being used to construct a large building as well as an enormous dragon.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Wrap-up: The new unattainable GPU king

The $2,000 GeForce RTX 5090 is not meant for mere mortals, that much is clear. But it points to an interesting new direction for NVIDIA, one where AI features can seemingly lead to exponential performance gains. While I hate that it’s pushing GPU prices to new heights, there’s no denying that NVIDIA has crafted an absolute beast. But, like most people, I’m more excited to see how the $549 RTX 5070 fares. Sure, it’s also going to lean into frame generation, but at least you won’t have to spend $2,000 to make the most of your 4K monitor.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-review-pure-ai-excess-for-2000-140053371.html?src=rss

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© Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Google and Apple are having a bad day. The tech giants are facing a new investigation into their mobile ecosystems from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and growing pressure to adopt a new app store initiative in India. 

Let's start with the probe, which comes one day after the CMA named a former Amazon executive as its interim chair. The CMA is investigating whether Apple and Google's mobile ecosystems should have Strategic Market Status (SMS) and thus can be subjected to greater regulation and pro-competition directives. However, they're not fully clear what aspects exactly are being investigated. This new designation stems from the UK's Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act, which went into effect on January 1. Google is also the subject of the first SMS investigation, launched earlier this month and focusing on possible antitrust practices around the company's search services. 

The CMA's SMS investigations can last up to nine months, with both cases currently accepting comments on the investigation and possible interventions. The regulator is accepting submissions around the joint Google and Apple probe through February 12. 

Now to Apple and Google's other headache. In India, the technology ministry is pushing Apple and Google to offer the state-backed GOV.in app store in their marketplaces, Bloomberg reports. The Indian government also wants the suite of apps to be pre-installed on all mobile devices, available for third-party downloads and not labelled with warnings such as "untrusted source." It is billing the push as a means for further distributing public-welfare services. These apps are currently available on Apple and Google's app stores, but as separate entities. 

The initial request reportedly came in a meeting last month but, as it stands, Google and Apple are unlikely to say yes. The Indian government is reportedly discussing using mandates or taking legal steps to force compliance. In 2021, Apple began offering a similar option for Russian users due to regulations. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/uk-investigating-google-and-apples-mobile-ecosystems-135204025.html?src=rss

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© ASSOCIATED PRESS

Google is paying HTC $250 million in cash for a deal that will give the bigger company's plans for Android XR a boost. Under the terms of their agreement, some members of the HTC Vive engineering team will be joining Google, which describes them as an "incredibly strong technical team with a proven track record in the VR space." HTC released the consumer version of its first Vive VR headset, designed in partnership with Valve, back in 2016. Last year, it launched the Vive Focus Vision more than a year after it released its first standalone headset for consumers, the Vive XR Elite. 

In addition to absorbing certain Vive team members, Google will also get a non-exclusive license to use HTC'S extended reality technologies. HTC can still use its own IPs, and it vows to continue developing and supporting its XR headsets. The companies will also "explore future collaboration opportunities." Google says the deal will help "its acceleration across the headset and glasses ecosystem." The company laid out its vision for a unified Android XR ecosystem in December, which will span a range of virtual and mixed reality headsets and glasses. We're bound to see the first Android XR devices this year, including one codenamed Project Moohan from a Google-Samsung collaboration.

Google's and HTC's agreement is still subject to customary closing conditions and will be finalized sometime this first quarter.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-buys-part-of-htcs-vive-vr-team-for-250-million-130046567.html?src=rss

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© HTC

Xbox is hosting its Developer Direct showcase today, and you'll be able to watch along live on YouTube, Twitch or our handy embed below.

The stream starts as 1PM ET / 10AM PT and is supposed to feature updates from the developers of South of Midnight, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Doom: The Dark Ages. Xbox is also promising to "visit a surprise location to see another studio’s brand new game." Windows Central reports the mysterious unannounced game is "a new entry in a legendary Japanese IP which has decades of history," which certainly sounds intriguing. At the very least, the rest of the games featured are slated to launch in 2025.

Xbox spent most of 2024 adjusting its strategy around releasing games, delaying some titles to this year, and bringing some formerly exclusive games to the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. The company seems like it's favoring timed exclusives over hoarding everything for Xbox and PC, so the job of this Developer Direct is a little bit different this time. Besides letting developers sell their games, the real test of the show is if it can get you excited about games that are coming to Xbox first, rather than only coming to Xbox at all.

You can watch the Xbox Developer Direct showcase on YouTube, Twitch, or right here in the embed above when it starts at 1PM ET / 10AM PT.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/how-to-watch-the-latest-xbox-developer-direct-showcase-110013502.html?src=rss

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© Compulsion Games

We all want to protect our phones from the inevitable drops, scratches and tumbles of daily life, but what if your phone case could protect more than just your device? The best eco-friendly phone cases offer a great blend of durability and sustainability, helping to reduce plastic waste and better the planet.

Made from natural materials like biodegradable plastics, recycled ocean waste or even sustainable bamboo, eco-friendly and compostable phone cases prove that you don’t have to sacrifice style or protection to go green. They’re designed to safeguard your device while actively combating plastic pollution, making them a win-win for both you and Mother Earth.

Whether you’re looking for something sleek and minimal or bold and artistic, there’s an eco-friendly option out there that will fit your style. Instead of a standard plastic case, you can choose one that’s both practical and planet-friendly.

Eco-friendly phone case FAQs

What makes a phone case eco-friendly?

A phone case can be considered eco-friendly when it’s designed to protect not just your phone but also the planet. What sets these cases apart is the use of sustainable materials like biodegradable plastics, recycled plastic waste or even natural materials like bamboo or flax straw. Instead of contributing to plastic pollution, these materials break down naturally over time, or are made from recycled content that reduces waste.

Eco-friendly cases can also go a step further by being compostable, meaning you can toss them in a compost bin at the end of their life and they’ll decompose into the earth without leaving harmful residues. Plus, many brands behind these cases focus on sustainable practices, like reducing carbon emissions during production or offering recycling programs for old cases.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/best-eco-friendly-phone-cases-150016494.html?src=rss

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Canon announced that it has created a new 410-megapixel, 35mm full-frame CMOS sensor, "the largest number of pixels ever achieved" in a sensor of its size.

Because of the level of detail the new sensor can capture, Canon expects it to be used by"surveillance, medicine and industry," where there's demand for "extreme resolution." With 410 megapixels, Canon's sensor has a resolution of 24K, 198 times greater than HD, and 12 times greater than 8K. That makes it simple to crop and then enlarge a photo captured by the sensor without losing detail.

Typically, sky-high megapixel counts are limited to cameras with medium-format sensors. But the beauty of Canon cramming this many pixels into 35mm is that it should be able to be used "in combination with lenses for full-frame sensors."

Canon had to make more than a few design changes to make this happen. The new sensor has a redesigned circuitry pattern and a "back-illuminated stacked formation" where "the pixel segment and signal processing segment are interlayered." That translates to a readout speed of 3,280 megapixels per second, and video at eight frames per second. A monochrome version of the sensor can bin four pixels together at once to shoot even brighter images and capture "100-megapixel video at 24 frames per second," Canon says. 

It doesn't sound like this kind of sensor is going to make it into a consumer camera anytime soon, but the fact this level of miniaturization is possible means one day it could, for the photography sickos who want it.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/canon-has-developed-a-410-megapixel-full-frame-sensor-001851969.html?src=rss

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© Canon

Extremely OK Games has cancelled its upcoming game Earthblade. The followup to the team's beloved indie sensation Celeste was announced in 2022 and expected to release last year. Maddy Thorson announced the news on the studio's website today.

"Noel and I…began to reflect on how the game has felt for us to work on day-to-day, and realized that it has been a struggle for a long time," she wrote. "Sure, working on one project for so long is bound to become a slog, but this feels like a deeper problem. Celeste's success applied pressure on us to deliver something bigger and better with Earthblade, and that pressure is a large part of why working on it has become so exhausting."

The studio, led by Thorson and Noel Berry, parted ways with EXOK co-founder Pedro Medeiros in November. However, Thorson was clear in her message that the rift between team members was not the reason for cancelling Earthblade. In fact, all of the public conversation between the former colleagues thus far has remained amicable. Thorson offered firm support for Medeiros and his new game project Neverway in her post: "If you were excited about Earthblade and angry about its cancelling, Pedro and the Neverway team aren't the enemy and anyone who treats them as such isn't welcome in any EXOK community."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/extremely-ok-games-has-cancelled-its-follow-up-to-celeste-000352550.html?src=rss

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© Extremely OK Games

Ten video games have received nominations for the 36th Annual GLAAD Media Awards. This program celebrates media works that feature "fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community and the issues that affect their lives." There are nominees for television, film, music, theater, journalism and comics as well as video games.

One of the 2024 nominees for outstanding video game is the re-release of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for the Nintendo Switch. The original Japanese version of the GameCube title included a minor character named Vivian who was transgender. The game contained dialogue about her challenges being misgendered and her journey to understanding her own identity. However, the 2002 international translations of the game, including the English version released in the US, erased that side to the character, removing language around Vivian's gender and pronouns. Last year's Switch re-release restored the character's original lines and story arc for English-speaking players to finally experience.

The video game nominees also include Dragon Age: The Veilguard. BioWare has a long history of portraying queer characters and romance options in their games, and it's great to see them continuing that practice with the latest title. Horror film outfit Blumhouse's first foray into games, the fascinating indie project Fear the Spotlight, also received a nod. Here is the complete list of game nominees:

• Caravan SandWitch (Studio Plane Toast / Dear Villagers)

• Dragon Age: The Veilguard (BioWare / Electronic Arts)

• Dread Delusion (Lovely Hellplace / DreadXP)

• Dustborn (Red Thread Games / Spotlight by Quantic Dream)

• Fear the Spotlight (Cozy Game Pals / Blumhouse Games)

• Life is Strange: Double Exposure (Deck Nine / Square Enix)

• Minds Beneath Us (BearBone Studio)

• Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Intelligent Systems / Nintendo)

• Sorry We’re Closed (à la mode games / Akupara Games)

• Until Then (Polychroma Games / Maximum Entertainment)

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/glaad-media-awards-nominates-paper-mario-after-nintendo-restored-trans-representation-232157090.html?src=rss

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© Nintendo

Sega has introduced a new system for player accounts. A Sega Account will connect all of a player's games and services from both Sega and Atlus. It will also be a place for the two studios to share news, events, updates and promotions about their titles. The accounts are free and anyone can register.

To sweeten the pot, Sega will also offer bonuses and goodies to account members. The first reward people can unlock is a Kazuma Kiryu Special Outfit DLC for Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which is due out next month. The ensemble can be redeemed by anyone who sets up a Sega Account before March 7.

With so many studios turning to games as a service, it's becoming standard practice to require players to create accounts or online profiles. Sega is a little slow to hop on this train, and there are some industry standard features in that are still in development for Sega Accounts, such as a page for records related to games played. There's no language on the website now about if or when an account might be required.

In announcing this platform, Sega said there will be "various new services and features coming soon." We already know that Sega is working on a brand new Virtua Fighter game, but we've also said good-bye to other old-school classics from the company. Seems like Sega is in a phase of transition, so it should be interesting to see what else they've got in store for this year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/sega-unveils-a-player-account-system-221029962.html?src=rss

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© Sega

Dozens of subreddits have opted to block links to X in their communities over the last 24 hours in a movement that appears to be gaining momentum across Reddit. Hundreds more appear to be actively discussing or considering a similar move with their members.

Engadget counted more than two dozen subreddits, which collectively have millions of members, that have already restricted their communities’ ability to post content from X in some way in recent days. These include large subreddits, like r/formula1, which has nearly 5 million members, and smaller communities like r/ultraman, which has 30,000.

The movement seems to have been popularized, at least in part, by r/newjersey, whose mods announced a ban on X links Tuesday. “Fuck this guy. X links are now banned from r/newjersey,” they shared in a post that now has more than 65,000 upvotes. Accompanying the post was a photo of Elon Musk extending his arm, Musk made two apparent Nazi salutes during a speech at Donald Trump’s inauguration which have been widely celebrated by fascists online.

A number of other subreddits quickly followed suit, with many sharing a link to the r/newjersey post. X links have been barred from r/military (489,000 members), r/comics (2.7 million), r/casualnintendo (184,000), r/spiderman (1 million), r/pcgaming (3.8 million), r/rupaulsdragrace (1 million), r/KingdomHearts (345,000), r/therapists (142,000), and many others. “We weren't trying to start a trend, and we never expected to go viral,” the mods of r/newjersey said in a statement to Engadget. “Not everyone will agree with our choice, but Reddit has always been a place where each community gets to decide these things individually. If our announcement has inspired discussions about the role social media is playing in our current times, we think that's a good thing.”

Many mods, in announcing their ban on X links have also cited the fact X has made it increasingly difficult for users to view posts if they aren’t logged in. “There’s no doubt that over the past years Twitter has become a low-quality source: the login requirements, the flood of bots, the prioritization of content from paying users and promotion of sensationalist content,” r/formula1’s mods wrote in a post. “But unlike with news sites in our source-rating system, for Twitter there wasn’t really an alternative.”

The subreddit is instead encouraging members to share content from Bluesky, which doesn’t require a login to view posts. The mods said they will allow “screenshots of relevant posts by teams, drivers & F1” when the same content isn’t available elsewhere.

Moderators for r/antiwork, which has 2.9 million members, noted that their rules prohibit links and screenshots to X and all other social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram and even LinkedIn. “We'd prefer for the message of antiwork to come organically from you, here, in OC form, but if it comes from a picture or post of something else, that catches hold, we want that, too,” they wrote. “Just not Twitter.”

Many other subreddits are considering similar measures. Mods of r/dnd (4 million members), r/baseball (2.8 million), r/AlanWake (80,000) and r/Xmen (270,000) are currently running polls among their members. Moderators in r/hockey (2.7 million), r/georgia (237,000) and r/popheads (2.8 million) have also shared that they are discussing a potential ban.

Not all moderators have been receptive when such a ban has been raised. A mod in r/chess said that such a ban would “pose a bit of a logistical problem” for the community. “The unfortunate reality is that Twitter is the source of a big portion of content on the subreddit,” they wrote. “A ban would thus require some rule changes. We're open to suggestions, but can't promise anything at the moment.” Likewise, a moderator of r/fauxmoi, a subreddit dedicated to gossip, noted that “we do prefer to still have the link so we can ensure that people are not submitting fake or doctored screenshots.”

While this is far from the first time that Redditors have joined together in a form of protest, it’s notable that so many are calling to remove a popular source for Reddit posts.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/dozens-of-subreddits-are-banning-x-links-from-their-communities-215441510.html?src=rss

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Samsung just held its Unpacked event and the company announced all kinds of new products. The most notable of the bunch, however, was likely the Galaxy S25 Ultra flagship smartphone. It's the most powerful of the just-announced S25 line and Amazon is offering a pretty swell pre-order bonus, to the tune of a $200 gift card.

That’s right. If you pre-order a Galaxy S25 Ultra handset, you get a $200 Amazon gift card that can be used on just about anything. This can help shave off some of the sticker shock of that $1,300 price tag.

If the price still isn’t right, Amazon is offering similar promotions for the standard S25 and the slightly beefier S25+. However, the gift card amount shrinks to just $100. The regular S25 starts at $700 and the S25+ starts at $1,000.

Pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy S25 series are open right now. Deliveries should start going out on February 7. We have full reviews of all three phones coming soon, if you want to wait make sure the handsets are worth the cost.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/amazon-includes-a-200-gift-card-when-you-pre-order-the-samsung-galaxy-s25-ultra-195455473.html?src=rss

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© Engadget/Sam Rutherford

Samsung is making a thin version of the Galaxy S25. The Galaxy S25 Edge was teased at the end of the company's Unpacked event, and it does appear to be meaningfully thinner than the other phones Samsung launched today.

There's very little to go off of in Samsung's tease. Voiceover describe the phone as "a culmination of our most innovative technology" and hypes up the device's apparent sleekness. Scrub through Samsung's livestream and you'll see components like a vapor chamber, cameras and metallic frames, but only the barest glimpse of the Galaxy S25 Edge's actual silhouette. At Samsung's live event in Korea, the new phone was actually on display. You can get a look at it in the embed below.

Samsung didn't share any more details about when the Galaxy S25 Edge will come out at its event, but Bloomberg reports that the phone will launch "in the US and other markets by the middle of the year." The device will also "use some of the same technologies as the new Ultra model," just in a slimmer package. "Samsung hasn’t settled on a price," Bloomberg writes, "but acknowledged it will be cheaper than the $1,299-and-up Ultra."

The company won't be the only one trying to woo customers with thinness in 2025. Apple is also reportedly introducing the iPhone 17 "Air" later this year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/samsung-teased-a-very-slim-phone-called-the-galaxy-s25-edge-193553033.html?src=rss

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© Samsung

Samsung and Google are introducing a new Wear OS software experience called "Galaxy Watch for Kids" that's designed to make the Galaxy Watch 7 LTE (and presumably future wearables) safe and fun for children to use. The new software features and setup process is similar to Apple's "Apple Watch For Your Kids" just with Android devices rather than iOS ones.

According to Samsung, parents will be able to set up their child's Galaxy Watch 7 directly from their phone and activate its eSIM. After that, kids don't need a phone to use the Galaxy Watch. The core features of Wear OS are available, just with added guardrails for kid's safety and parent's peace of mind. Those include the ability to enable location sharing, manage who kids can contact through the Galaxy Watch, and set up a Do Not Disturb mode that's enabled during school hours. Settings can be tweaked at any time from Google's Family Link app.

To make being tracked more enticing, Galaxy Watch for Kids will come with new kid-friendly customization options, like a Rubik's Cube or Tech Deck watch face (admittedly right up my alley when I was 10), Wear OS apps featuring characters from Barbie, Marvel, or PBS Kids and new colorful watch band options. Activity tracking and health data are accessible in the Galaxy Watch for Kids experience, too.

Samsung isn't reinventing the wheel with this feature — Google's Fitbit Ace LTE kid smartwatch just launched in 2024 — but parents love being able to keep track of their kids, and a smartwatch might ultimately be a healthier to make your children always-connected than a phone.

Galaxy Watch for Kids is available to use now on Galaxy Watch 7 LTE models from Samsung, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/samsungs-galaxy-watch-for-kids-software-makes-wear-os-a-family-affair-190332986.html?src=rss

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© Google

Amazon just announced it will be closing its Quebec facilities in the coming weeks, according to reporting by CBC. This move will cut more than 1,700 jobs. The company said it will begin outsourcing deliveries to smaller contractors, instead of relying on its in-house team.

"Following a recent review of our Quebec operations," the company said in a statement, "we found that returning to a third-party delivery model supported by local small businesses, similar to the one we had until 2020, will enable us to offer the same excellent service and deliver even greater savings to our customers in the long term."

This follows a successful unionization bid at an Amazon warehouse in Quebec. The workers joined the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), which represents around 330,000 people across many industries in Canada. Amazon allegedly fought these efforts, going on to say that union accreditation would not “respect the interests of its employees.”

"This decision makes no sense whatsoever," CSN president Caroline Senneville said in a statement. "Neither from a business point of view, nor from an operational point of view. Amazon, one of the most integrated companies between the click of a mouse and home delivery, would entrust all its warehousing and distribution operations throughout Quebec to a third party?"

Don’t worry. Amazon says the massive layoffs aren’t because of the aforementioned union, indicating it was a simple cost-cutting measure. We should absolutely take the company at its word because it has always been particularly friendly to unions and a friend to workers everywhere. That was sarcasm.

In any event, it is expected that the company will close the facilities within the next two months. Employees will be given a severance package of some kind, but the details have yet to be revealed. Apropos of nothing, Amazon is worth nearly $2.5 trillion dollars. It has doubled in value in the past year or so.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazon-to-close-quebec-facilities-but-says-its-not-because-of-that-new-union-185744378.html?src=rss

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© Unsplash / Adrian Sulyok

Samsung’s first Unpacked event of 2025 delivered the Galaxy S25 series — as expected. Although the phones don’t have dramatically upgraded specs, the company stuffed — you guessed it! — more AI into the devices. This latest batch is more context-sensitive and predictive, and some of it even squeezes more out of the phones’ mildly upgraded hardware.

Galaxy S25 Ultra

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is still the biggest, best and most expensive of the bunch. It has a 6.9-inch display and a more rounded edge for a “comfortable grip.” Samsung says it’s the “slimmest, lightest, and most durable Galaxy Ultra device ever,” rocking a titanium body with Corning’s Gorilla Armor 2 for “advanced drop protection” and scratch resistance.

Unlike the two smaller models, one of the Ultra’s camera sensors got a spec upgrade: Its ultrawide lens is now 50MP, up from the mere 12MP one in last year’s model.

Like its siblings, the S25 Ultra is powered by a customized version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, which lets the trio of phones process many of their AI experiences on-device. Of course, that’s better for privacy.

Although the phone continues the tradition of including an S Pen (it’s now essentially the long-retired Galaxy Note), Air Commands — which bridged the gap between the two — have bit the dust. Samsung told Engadget in a briefing that fewer than one percent of S Pen-toting customers used the feature. And those who did mostly used it as a camera shutter, which is easily replicated in other ways. Samsung says the removal let it shed some weight and boost the S Pen’s durability.

Engadget’s Sam Rutherford got an early hands-on with the Galaxy S25 Ultra and said it “looks like a good phone” and described Samsung’s AI suite as “much more cohesive and easier to get into," but also felt the company "could be doing more for its most expensive non-folding phone.”

The Galaxy S25 Ultra has 12GB of RAM, and it ships in 256GB, 512GB and 1TB storage tiers. It’s still quite the investment, though — starting at $1,300.

Galaxy S25 and S25+

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

The Galaxy S25 and S25+ saw their RAM upgraded to 12GB (same as the Ultra), up from 8GB in their 2024 predecessors. It combines with the Snapdragon 8 Elite to better handle the phones’ many AI features. (More in a minute.)

The rest of their hardware is remarkably similar to the S24 and S24+. They still have 6.2-inch and 6.7-inch displays, respectively. But Samsung’s new ProScaler AI tool can upscale images in real time to perhaps make up for the unchanged specs. Samsung says it can boost the quality of what you see by 40 percent.

Engadget’s Mat Smith tried the Galaxy S25 and S25+ and praised the phones’ “premium and solidly built” slim designs and “vivid, bright and gorgeous” displays. However, he was skeptical of the phones’ AI-centric focus. “In just a few years, Samsung has built up a substantial collection of artificial intelligence tricks, features and apps,” he wrote. “While some of them have been impressive, like live translation and annotation, others (often involving generative AI) aren’t actually helpful — or notable — enough to warrant regular use."

Storage is also unchanged from the S24 series: 128GB or 256GB in the Galaxy S25 and 256GB or 512GB in the Galaxy S25+. Fortunately, pricing is also unchanged. You’ll pay $800 or more for the S25 and $1,000 and up for the S25+.

Galaxy AI

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

With most hardware upgrades (apart from the Snapdragon chip) coming in soft this generation, Samsung is leaning hard on AI features to make you want to throw down hard-earned cash on the new models. This year, Samsung’s One UI 7 on top of Android 15 combines to create what Samsung calls “a new AI-integrated OS.” It aims for a more personalized and context-sensitive AI, rather than just a series of one-off tools.

AI plays a central role in the phones’ camera features, with the Qualcomm chip making the phones better at analyzing noise — leading to what Samsung says is better low-light performance. Audio Eraser is a tool that Samsung claims will use AI to remove unwanted noises from videos like wind or a random stranger talking.

Samsung gathers its new collection of on-device AI tools into what it calls the Personal Data Engine. The series of multimodal (text, images, video, audio) machine learning agents leads to features like AI Select, which builds on Samsung’s legacy Smart Select tool. The new AI-powered version can scan your screen and suggest context-aware tasks — like creating a GIF from a YouTube video you’re watching.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

You could say the AI-powered Now Bar is Samsung’s answer to the iPhone’s Dynamic Island. The pill-shaped bar sits at the bottom of the lock screen and below the digital clock when the phone is unlocked. It generates a series of reminders based on context. Within the Now Bar is another AI feature, the Now Brief, which generates morning, midday and evening summaries of info it thinks will be relevant to you.

Samsung’s Sketch to Image tool has been rebranded as Drawing Assist, and Samsung says the feature is more polished and accurate. It also adds an option to import existing images for your prompt. The S25 series also adds an upgraded version of Google’s Circle to Search (activated by long-pressing the home button). It can now recognize phone numbers, emails and URLs, letting you trigger their corresponding actions with a single tap.

Galaxy S25 Edge

Samsung

Well, I hope you like being teased because, well, there isn’t much to go on here. Much like it did a year ago with its grand reveal of a... render of the Galaxy Ring, Samsung gave Unpacked viewers a teeny-weeny glimpse of its rumored “Galaxy Slim” phone, which will instead be called the Galaxy S25 Edge.

The teaser shows a quick glimpse of a phone that’s indeed slimmer, but the company showcased its vapor chamber, cameras and metallic frame more than the full-on handset. (And the engineers go wild.) We also don’t know its price or release date. However, Bloomberg reports that it will use many of the same components as the S25 Ultra but cost less.

Samsung Wallet updates

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

The company added two new payment features: Instant Installment and Tap to Transfer.

As its name suggests, Instant Installment is a “buy now, pay later” service that lets you turn purchases into an offline payment plan experience. It’s managed entirely on-device and available for Visa and Mastercard purchases.

Engadget’s Cherlynn Low was briefed by Samsung on the service. “It’s not that Samsung is pivoting to becoming a credit provider and taking on loans,” she wrote. “Instead, it facilitates your purchases and turns your payments into what the company’s rep said is ‘the first offline payment plan experience.’’

Meanwhile, Tap to Transfer is a peer-to-peer payment service, rivaling the likes of Apple’s Tap to Cash. Like the iPhone equivalent, you only need to bump phones with someone you want to pay (or be paid by). But it isn’t limited to Samsung Pay; you can use it with third-party apps, too, since it’s instead tied to the associated card or account. Like Instant Installment, it works with Visa and Mastercard.

Galaxy Watch for Kids

Google

The Galaxy Watch for Kids may sound like a new piece of gear, but it’s instead a new setup option for the cellular Galaxy Watch 7 (and likely future wearables). You know, kinda like Apple Watch for Kids.

Samsung, which partnered with Google on the experience, says parents can set up a child’s watch from their phone and activate its eSim. From there, the kid can use the smartwatch without a paired phone. As you’d expect, parents can set up guardrails — like which apps are installed or a do not disturb status during school hours. Location sharing is optional, and Samsung and Google are offering new kid-focused apps and watch faces to keep things fun.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/everything-samsung-announced-at-the-galaxy-s25-unpacked-event-183331979.html?src=rss

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© Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Samsung's Galaxy S25 smartphones launched today, but when it comes to the all-important cameras, the company leaned on AI rather than making any meaningful changes. There is one welcome addition, though. Samsung finally caught up to to rivals like Honor by introducing log video to allow more precise color grading. Other key updates include improved low-light capability on all models, the new "ProVisual engine," a "virtual aperture" and a much higher resolution ultrawide camera on the high-end Ultra. 

Last year the Galaxy S24 Ultra's big selling point was the 200MP camera, which made the 12MP ultrawide look weak in comparison. Samsung remedied that with the Galaxy S25 Ultra by more than quadrupling that sensor to 50MP. That also helps Samsung match up better against Google's Pixel 9 Pro and its 48-megapixel ultrawide camera.  

Mat Smith for Engadget

With that, the Ultra now has a formidable suite of cameras: a 200MP wide, 50MP ultrawide, 10MP 3x telephoto and 50MP 5x tele. However, that makes the more mainstream Galaxy S25 and S25+ look a bit weak in comparison. Those only come with a 50MP wide, 12MP ultrawide and 10MP 3x tele, just like the last two models. All phones have a front 12MP selfie camera with up to 4K 60p video.

Samsung also rectified a weak point we addressed in our reviews on the S24: sub-par low-light performance. With Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip, Samsung says the new cameras can analyze noise more effectively using a new "spatial-temporal filter," that can detect moving and static objects more precisely. That in turn allows for cleaner video, particularly with moving objects in dim environments. The downside is that applying stronger noise reduction can generate weird artifacts, something we'll test further in upcoming reviews. In fact, during Samsung's presentation, I couldn't help but notice a strange separation between the moving subject and background.

Other key new camera features are also available across the S25 lineup. The most important one for content creators is Galaxy Log, which finally enables log video to improve dynamic range and allow more accurate color grading. That's a much-requested feature for Galaxy phones that was only available previously with third-party apps. It also records with 10-bits of color like the HDR mode. However, the new feature still falls short of the ability to capture ProRes log video on the latest iPhones.

Samsung

I tested log on Honor's Magic smartphone series and it can meaningfully improve video by boosting dynamic range in tricky lighting situations (a backlit subject or sunny day, for instance). The problem is that transforming log into regular footage requires an editing app and some knowledge about things like LUTs — so whether this will catch on with users depends on how Samsung implements it. 

Samsung also enabled 10-bit HDR video capture by default, which allows you to shoot more colorful and detailed images. However, be aware that such content might not display properly on apps and devices that don't support HDR (other smartphones, PCs, TVs, etc.). 

To treat photos after you take them, Samsung enhanced Portrait Studio with new features like personalized avatars with more true-to-life facial expressions. It also added new analog filters for a more film-like aesthetic for photos and videos. 

Mat Smith for Engadget

There are two other new tricks: Audio Eraser and Virtual Aperture. Though all the cameras have a fixed aperture, the latter simulates having an adjustable one just like mirrorless cameras. However, the feat is accomplished through computational tricks, so it's likely to look a bit artificial. 

Audio Eraser, meanwhile, is an AI-powered noise reduction system designed to cut out background sounds in busy environments when shooting video, no doubt inspired by Apple's Audio Mix and the Audio Magic Eraser on Pixel devices. During the demo, Samsung showed how it could cut different types of noises like wind, waves and nature. 

The Galaxy S25 Ultra's new camera is great if you can afford that $1,300 model, while the improved low-light handling, Galaxy Log and AI should provide nice, but not spectacular, benefits. All told, Samsung didn't bring as much to the table as the iPhone 16 with its Camera Control button, or the Pixel 9 (Video Boost, Add Me, Auto Frame). For more on how the Galaxy S25's cameras work in the real world, check out our hands-on tests and stay tuned for full reviews.  

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/the-samsung-galaxy-s25-lineup-leans-on-ai-to-keep-its-cameras-fresh-181056862.html?src=rss

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© Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Alongside the launch of the Galaxy S25 series today, Samsung also made a slew of software updates that might not have gotten much attention during the keynote. Specifically, two updates are coming to Samsung Wallet that not only sound very similar to existing features on iPhones, but might also be better. The new features are called "Instant Installment," which is the company's take on "buy now pay later," as well as peer-to-peer payments, which it's named "Tap to Transfer." The latter is basically Apple's Tap to Cash, which allows iPhone owners to hold their phones together to send money to each other. Crucially, though, Samsung's method would support work with third-party digital wallets. 

At a recent briefing with members of the media, Samsung's reps said that Tap to Transfer "is not going to be limited to just Samsung Wallet." Instead of being tied to specific digital wallets, it will be linked to the associated debit card or account, and works via Mastercard and Visa.

As for Instant Installment, it's not that Samsung is pivoting to becoming a credit provider and taking on loans. Instead, it facilitates your purchases and turns your payments into what the company's rep said is "the first offline payment plan experience." It's available at brick-and-mortar stores or online, with Visa or Mastercard credit cards. Samsung Wallet just helps you manage the payment plan on your device.

Both of these features aren't launching with the Galaxy S25, but Samsung said at the briefing that they would be available "shortly thereafter." A spokesperson I talked to at the event indicated it would be closer to the second quarter of the year, and that the features would be backward compatible and work on older Galaxy phones, too. Details are scarce, though, and with seemingly months to go before launch, things could change. But if Samsung actually makes it possible to tap to transfer cash between friends with different devices and digital wallets, it could truly be a better, more seamless approach than Apple's version right now.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/samsung-borrows-from-the-apple-wallet-playbook-with-layaway-and-tap-to-send-for-wallet-181052578.html?src=rss

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© Sam Rutherford for Engadget