Future Samsung phones may use AI to replace frequent visits to the Settings menu, with the phone anticipating, learning, and altering aspects of the device without you having to dig through different options and menus to make the phone operate in the way you want.

Samsung has already pushed AI functionality as a selling point on its smartphones through Galaxy AI, but the features focus on summaries, translations, notes, and photo editing. By using AI to change the phone’s operation by learning our preferences, or anticipating what we may require during a task, Galaxy AI may be about to take a far more active role in our phones, should several reports prove to be accurate.

According to a report from a South Korean business publication, Samsung is exploring this new AI feature within the keyboard and camera on its phones at this stage, but details on how it will work or what the AI will be able to change have not been revealed. It’s possible the keyboard may automatically change languages or build on its existing ability to generate messages and writing styles, while the camera may activate different filters or set timers, based on circumstances, which are actions that currently require accessing different menus.

Smartphones already adapt to our environments automatically with features like auto brightness enabled by ambient light sensors, and we can use voice control to activate different features without digging into different settings menus. But it’s easy to miss specific features purely because we don’t know they exist, or miss them in large, congested menu pages. If AI could learn how we use our phones, particularly in the early stages, and introduce different features that may improve our experience without us needing to prompt it, it could prove very helpful.

It’s not the first time we’re hearing about what Samsung big plans for its mobile AI future. Samsung’s Head of Customer Experience Patrick Chomet said his dream for Galaxy AI was where he “didn’t need to go to Settings,” in an interview with TechRadar earlier this year, where he also stated he wanted the accessibility menu to be a thing of the past because the, “AI intelligently adapts to me and my needs.” Samsung Mobile’s Head of Business TM Roh wrote the company is, “only getting started” with AI earlier this year following the announcement of the Galaxy S24 series, and these reports indicate interesting things may arrive in the future.

No timeline has been indicated for when this type of feature will arrive in the Galaxy AI suite, but it’s expected Samsung’s next major smartphone release will be the Galaxy S25 series sometime in early 2025.

The Xiaomi 15 Ultra launch timeframe has just been tipped, and the phone’s 200MP camera detailed. This information comes from Digital Chat Station, one of the best-known tipsters out there.

The Xiaomi 15 Ultra launch timeframe has appeared, along with 200MP camera details

Let’s start with the launch timeframe, shall we? While responding to a user question, he said that the Xiaomi 15 Ultra is coming “after the New Year”, meaning the Chinese New Year, of course. That means after January 25.

He did not say when exactly, but this kind of points to the first quarter of the year, probably February. That makes all the sense in the world as the Xiaomi 14 Ultra also arrived in February, so… it fits.

The tipster also detailed the 200-megapixel periscope telephoto camera that will be included on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. That camera will come with a 100mm lens, and allow for 4.3x optical zoom. We’re looking at an f/2.6 aperture here.

In addition to that periscope telephoto camera, the device will also include a 50-megapixel telephoto camera. That camera will offer a 3x optical zoom. It will be the same as on the Xiaomi 15 and Xiaomi 15 Pro.

The Xiaomi 15 and Xiaomi 15 Pro are coming later this month

While the Xiaomi 15 Ultra is coming next year, its siblings, the Xiaomi 15 and Xiaomi 15 Pro will launch later this month. All three of those phones are expected to use Qualcomm’s new flagship chip. That processor will be announced soon, and it will be called either the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 or Snapdragon 8 Elite.

Based on the renders that we’ve seen recently, and the real-life image of the Xiaomi 15 Pro, Xiaomi will tweak the design a bit, but not much. It’s sticking with its design language from the Xiaomi 14 series.

Both of those smartphones will be quite powerful, though the ‘Ultra’ will trump them in the camera department. It will be a more versatile shooter, even though the ‘Pro’ model is getting a periscope telephoto camera too.

NASA has launched its Europa Clipper spacecraft, the biggest one it has ever built for a mission heading to another planet, on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Mission controllers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have confirmed that the Europa Clipper successfully separated from the rocket’s second stage and has already deployed the two solar arrays flanking its main body. Now, the spacecraft has started its 1.8 billion-million journey Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons and one of the most promising habitable worlds outside our own planet, which will take it five-and-a-half years to reach.

The Europa Clipper will not be heading straight to Jupiter — it will instead fly by Mars and, in 2026, by Earth to use the planets’ gravity to boost its momentum. NASA’s plan is to use that momentum to slingshot the spacecraft towards the outer solar system. Europa has a thick icy shell that’s estimated to be around 10 to 15 miles thick, covering a saltwater ocean that could have twice the water in our planet’s oceans combined. Since scientists believe that life on our planet originated from the ocean, Europa’s could also host organic compounds and contain energy sources.

“Scientists believe Europa has suitable conditions below its icy surface to support life. Its conditions are water, energy, chemistry and stability,” said Sandra Connelly, the Deputy Associate Administrator in the NASA Science Mission Directorate.

Upon reaching Europa in 2031, the Clipper will fly by the moon 49 times, coming as close as 16 miles to its surface. NASA equipped the spacecraft with nine instruments, including an ice-penetrating radar, cameras and a thermal instrument, housed inside a vault made of titanium and aluminum to protect them from the intense radiation produced by Jupiter. The Clipper will operate its instruments simultaneously every time it passes by the moon to investigate how thick Europa’s outer shell truly is and how deep the ocean underneath all that ice is. It will also look for areas with warmer ice and find any plumes of water vapor that could be escaping from Europa’s icy shell.

In a typical organization, finance is one of the most important functions. Yet teams are often bogged down by manual workflows. According to a survey by Paylocity, an HR software provider, 38% of finance teams spend more than a fourth of their time on manual jobs, like reviewing invoices.

Matthieu Hafemeister, an ex-fintech investor at Andreessen Horowitz, says he’s seen many finance orgs struggle to scale up as a result of all the work they’re doing by hand.

“​The status quo for finance is countless point solutions that are cobbled together within the finance department,” Hafemeister told TechCrunch. “Excel continues to be the lowest common denominator, limiting the promise of automation.”

To Hafemeister’s point, most finance departments are indeed heavily reliant on spreadsheets. One survey found that 82% still use Excel files for budgeting, forecasting, and other core financial planning activities.

After experiencing these frustrations firsthand while leading growth at fintech firm Jeeves, Hafemeister decided to team up with Ted Michaels, Jeeves’ previous head of finance and an old friend, to launch a platform to automate financial tasks.

Called Concourse, the platform connects to a businesses’ financial systems to let finance teams retrieve and analyze data, generate charts, and ask ad-hoc questions such as “What’s our non-GAAP revenue?”

“Concourse can proactively surface insights that allow finance teams to be better prepared by enabling them to stay ahead of trends,” Hafemeister said. “Instead of a tool that tries to improve the speed or efficiency of completing a task, Concourse can be given discrete tasks to do entirely on its own.”

Now, finance automation isn’t exactly new technology. Linq recently emerged from stealth with AI to automate aspects of research for financial analysts. Ledge and Doopla are also building a range of finance-specific generative modeling tools.

But what makes Concourse different, according to Hafemeister, is its ability to execute financial workflows with “complex, multi-step operations.” For example, the platform can retrieve data from a company’s NetSuite dashboard to download CSV files, then copy that data to an Excel spreadsheet.

“We leverage large language models to do what they are best suited for and pair them with more traditional methods of data analysis,” Hafemeister explained.

There’s great interest in AI for finance. One poll found that 58% of finance teams are now using some form of AI technology, up 21% from 2023. Grand View Research estimates that the “AI in fintech” segment, worth $9.45 billion three years ago, is growing 16.5% annually.

But to stand a chance of making a dent in the market for finance automation tech, Concourse will have to demonstrate its product’s ROI — a challenging feat. Per Gartner, showing or estimating the value of AI is a top barrier to adopting it for close to half of companies.

Concourse will also have to assuage potential customers’ fears of AI-introduced errors and hallucinations. In a poll of U.K.-based executives by HR specialist Peninsula, 40% said inaccuracies from AI tools were a key concern, followed by concerns around data confidentiality.

Hafemeister said that Concourse employs “a variety of tools and techniques” for fact-checking and validation to try to ensure its AI performs tasks as intended. He added that Concourse doesn’t use companies’ data to train its AI models — at least not without explicit permission — and that the platform only collects data customers share with it.

“Data accuracy is paramount in finance, where answers are typically either entirely correct or entirely incorrect,” Hafemeister said. “As such, at Concourse we’ve spent a lot of time and effort on delivering AI that can accurately perform the task it’s been assigned. We also take data privacy and security very seriously, and have built Concourse using industry best practices.”

Folks seem willing to be take Hafemeister at his word.

Concourse, which is still in beta ahead of a broader launch planned for next year, has several customers, including Instabase and Shef, and $4.7 million in capital. Hafemeister’s ex-employer, a16z, has invested in the startup, along with Y Combinator, CRV, and Box Group.

Hafemeister says the focus at the moment is product development and growing New York-based Concourse’s six-person staff.

“We raised money to hire more engineers, build out more workflows that our AI can take on, increase coverage on data integrations, and start to scale our go-to-market function,” he said. “The strong focus on engineering recruiting is to hire backend, machine learning, and AI engineers.”