News continues to pour in about the delicate situation at Samsung Foundry, the company’s semiconductor production division. Things seemed to be improving following the good performance of the Exynos 2400 chip. However, recent developments revealed severe hurdles to overcome in order to get back on track. Interviews with Samsung employees indicate that the company is currently facing a “crisis.”

Samsung Foundry and its low yield rate issues

Samsung Foundry’s main problems stem from the low yield rate of its 3nm GAA wafers. The company had hoped to make the Eynos 2500 chip an attractive, powerful, and efficient SoC thanks to the new process. However, its factories have not been up to the task. Recent reports claim that only about 25–30 chips out of every 100 produced are usable. Meanwhile, at their worst, wafers have shown a yield rate of just 10%.

Samsung is reportedly trying to improve the yield rate of its 3nm GAA wafers before deciding which chip to use in the Galaxy S25 series. Given the severity of the situation, it is highly likely that Samsung will have to replace its Exynos 2500 chip with the more expensive (yet powerful) Snapdragon 8 Elite. However, the South Korean giant is keeping the faith and is still testing the Exynos 2500 in case they manage to turn things around at the last minute.

Samsung employees and former employees see a crisis in the company

Damnangyi, a YouTuber and former Samsung employee, shared a video with views from people related to the company. The opinions are about the current situation and the potential causes. First, seven former employees and 24 current employees claim that Samsung is in crisis. Most of them believe that Samsung’s current pace of innovation is slow. This would be a direct consequence of a lack of vision on the part of the board of directors. Some have even expressed concerns about the management’s treatment of employees.

Damnangyi currently works at Qualcomm in the US. However, his time at Samsung was enough to know what was going on internally. Plus, the situation is no secret, as representatives apologized to investors this month for the disappointing financial results and lack of innovation.

The company will seek to change the situation with more innovation

In its official apology, Samsung Electronics teased its strategy to try to turn things around. The company mentioned that it will bet more on innovation and on the development of long-term solutions. Only time will tell if Samsung manages to get back on track or if the internal crisis worsens. Recently, Samsung Mobile launched the Galaxy Z Fold Special Edition in an attempt to compete with the ultra-thin foldables of Chinese brands.

A Canadian research firm called TechInsights took a deep dive on one of Huawei’s artificial intelligence accelerators and found a chip manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Bloomberg spoke with several people familiar with the investigation who asked to remain anonymous since TechInsights’ report has been released to the public.

The anonymous sources says TechInsights’ investigation found an Ascend 910B chip made by TSMC in one of Huawei’s AI accelerators. The company that conducted the investigation declined to comment.

Reuters reports that TechInsights informed TSMC of its findings before publishing its report. This prompted TSMC to notify the US Commerce Department earlier this month. The Financial Times reports, citing people familiar with the matter, that TSMC told the department that a customer had placed orders for a chip similar to Huawei’s Ascend 910B. One of the FT‘s sources said that TSMC “had spoken both to the customer involved and to the commerce department” after recieving the suspicious order.

The US Commerce Department implemented additional trade restrictions against Huawei that barred the electronics company from obtaining chips made by foreign firms. Earlier this year, the US government tightened its restrictions even further by revoking its licenses with Intel and Qualcomm to produce chips for its devices.

TSMC denied that it had a working relationship with Huawei since mid-September of 2020 in a statement provided to the Commerce Department. TSMC also told Bloomberg that it hasn’t produced any chips for Huawei due to the amended restrictions. Huawei denied that it had ever “launched the 910B chip.”

This isn’t the first time Huawei has been caught trying to subvert US sanctions and trade restrictions. Bloomberg also uncovered in May that Huawei funded secret research in the US at universities including Harvard by funneling the money through a Washington-based scientific research foundation called Optica. The foundation said it decided to return the money in June and chief executive officers Elizabeth Rogen and Chad Stark stepped down the following August.

Update, October 22, 7:10PM ET: This story was updated after publish with more details from the Financial Times‘ reporting on the matter.

Netflix today closed one of its internal game studios, one which was poised to release a triple-A title, before it was able to produce anything. The studio was called Team Blue, founded in 2022 and based on Los Angeles, and was allegedly working on a PC game. As a result of this studio closure, the company has also lost the talent it very publicly hired, and has also reportedly made other layoffs in its games division.

Game File reported the closure, saying that Team Blue was working on a “big-budget multi-device strategy” at the time. To staff out this new studio, Netflix hired several recognizable names from major games companies — including studio lead Chacko Sonny, formerly Overwatch’s executive producer; creative director Joseph Staten, formerly creative lead on Halo; and art director Rafael Grassetti, formerly of Sony Santa Monica. According to the Game File report, all three have left the company with the closure of the LA studio.

Netflix has several internal studios where it’s building games for its platform. It acquired the likes of Night School, Boss Fight, Next Games and Spry Fox, and built two studios of its own — aside from Team Blue, it also has a studio in Helsinki. At present, those studios all appear to be intact, though a recent report from Business Insider suggests that Netflix has laid off several people within its games division.

The streaming company has also shifted its games strategy this year, as Mike Verdu, who spearheaded its games initiative, shifted to a new role. It also hired Alain Tascan as its president of games earlier this year. Shortly before Tascan’s hiring, Netflix’s VP of external games Leanne Loombe told the Washington Post that the company wanted to take a mobile-first approach to games launches, and mentioned that Netflix’s subscribers appear to favor short, “snackable” mobile games.

Almost exactly two years after releasing the Orba 2, Artiphon is completing the trilogy. The newly announced Orba 3 finds the Nashville-based startup baking live sampling into its clever handheld instrument. The feature arrives by way of a built-in microphone, which lets users record their voice, instruments, and other sounds.

All of that can be accomplished on-device, meaning there’s no need for an external system to load sounds onto the instrument. Instead, you click the big, red Sample button on the side, record a sound, and that’s pretty much it.

Switching the Orba into one of the four different modes — bass, chord, drum, lead — assigns different properties to the sound. It’s a clever addition to what was already an extremely fun little gadget.

“In Drum mode, each pad can hold a unique sample, while in Chord mode, samples are automatically tuned to fit musical chords,” the company explains. “This is made possible by a sophisticated sound engine that automatically crops, tunes, and perfects the audio.”

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As with its predecessors, the Orba 3 can be used as a MIDI controller when connected to an external device via USB-C.

The instrument is available for $160 on Artiphon’s website. The Orba 2 is sticking around, meanwhile, now priced at $120. Artiphon announced the Chorda last year, which TechCrunch described as a mashup between Orba and the company’s first offering, Instrument 1.

Boox has announced the Palma 2, the next version of its popular smartphone-sized e-reader. The Palma 2 addresses some of the original’s shortcomings, with a faster processor to address the original’s laggy interface and by running a newer version of Android.

But it was the Palma’s compact size and access to thousands of apps that helped it become a popular Kindle and Kobo alternative, and Boox isn’t messing with that formula for the Palma 2. It features the same 6.13-inch 300ppi E Ink Carta 1200 screen as the original (a generation behind what’s found in the latest Kindle Paperwhite) and once again comes with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Although Boox hasn’t shared specific details, it says the new Palma 2 now runs a “faster octa-core CPU,” which will hopefully help speed up the new e-reader’s interface. It also runs Android 13 instead of Android 11. That’s still a few generations behind the latest version of Android, but it means the Palma 2 will get newer features like improved copying and pasting. It should also give the e-reader a few more years over the original before apps stop supporting its version of the OS.

The other notable upgrade for the Palma 2 is the addition of a fingerprint sensor integrated into its power button, making it easier to secure the device while still being able to quickly unlock it with just one hand.

Although leaked images from earlier this week suggested Boox could be eliminating cameras from its smartphone-sized e-readers, that was only the case for a version of the Palma limited to China. The Palma 2 has the same 16MP rear camera with flash as the original, which the company suggests is useful for digitizing documents.

Alongside the Palma 2, Boox also announced two new e-paper note-taking devices. The 10.3-inch Note Air4 C features the latest-gen Kaleido 3 color E Ink display with improved refresh rates and an octa-core processor that Boox says makes the tablet 50 percent faster than the previous model. The $499.99 Note Air4 C also runs Android 13 and has a new “tablet-like UI” that the company says makes it easier to customize its homescreen and organize apps.

The new Boox Note Max is a black-and-white, stylus-capable tablet featuring a larger 13.3-inch E Ink Carta 1300 display powered by a 2.8GHz octa-core CPU. At just 4.6 millimeters thick, the Note Max is almost half as thick as the Boox Palma 2. But unlike Boox’s other two devices introduced today, it won’t be available for preorder from the company’s online store for a few more weeks.