Samsung employs Corning’s new Gorilla Armor 2 glass on the S25 Ultra, which supposedly has 29 percent better resistance to fractures than the original Gorilla Armor on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. Interestingly, Samsung says it saw a 60 percent drop in screen repairs from the S24 over the S23 series, which could mean the S25 is even more durable.

The phones are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which has debuted in phones like the Honor Magic 7 Pro and OnePlus 13. This will be the processor in all Samsung Galaxy S25 series phones globally, unlike prior years when Samsung opted for its own Exynos chips in some markets. Samsung claims this chip offers a 37 percent CPU upgrade, a 30 percent graphics boost, and a 40 percent improved neural processing unit when compared to the S24 series.

Samsung and Qualcomm collaborated on optimizing the chip, and that close tie has enabled new features like ProScaler. On the S25 Ultra and S25+, this feature can upscale images on the screen to match the display resolution. Say you’re browsing Instagram and someone uploaded a 1,080p image—it will be upscaled to QHD+.

The vapor chamber cooling system is larger on all three—a crucial component to keep the phones from getting too hot during intense gaming sessions—with the chamber in the S25 Ultra getting a 40 percent size bump. Samsung also says sitting on top of the chip is a new “tailored thermal interface material” that leaves zero gaps for air, pulling heat from the processor directly to the vapor chamber cooling system to increase performance and reduce stress on the battery.

Arguably the most disappointing part of the hardware story is the lack of support for Qi2 charging. This is the new version of the Qi wireless charging standard, which borrows a lot of features from Apple’s MagSafe charging system. It embeds magnets into the phone, allowing users to magnetically attach the phone to a Qi2 charger for more efficient and faster wireless charging, plus the convenience of magnetic accessories to enhance the phone. I expected to see several Qi2 Android phones in 2024, but all we got was HMD’s Skyline. Now, in a move that’ll make things more confusing, the Galaxy S25 series is being classified as “Qi2 ready.”

This is a new classification for phones that won’t have the built-in magnets but will feature official and third-party Qi2 cases with magnets inside, essentially bringing a similar if not the same magnetic experience as a proper Qi2 device. Android users who want MagSafe’s utility have had to rely on these cases so far, so it’s just a shame that Qi2 is still not natively part of these brand new phones.

Camera specs are roughly the same as before, with the ultrawide being the exception on the Galaxy S25 Ultra—it now packs 50 megapixels instead of 12. Samsung says this in turn boosts the quality of macro photos. There are some more interesting changes to the image processing algorithm. Samsung’s next-gen ProVisual Engine uses a “spatial-temporal filter” to distinguish between moving and stationary objects to ensure photo subjects don’t blur when capturing a picture in low-light conditions. Double-analysis noise removal analyzes every pixel for noise, looks at eight pixels around it, and removes the noise to clean up the image.

How to watch Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked 2025.

Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event kicks off at 1PM ET. We’re expecting the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus, and Galaxy S25 Ultra, but Samsung may have a few surprises. Who knows? We’ll also have a story stream with all the news from San Jose, California, if you want to follow along.

Billionaire Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are fighting on X about Stargate, the enormous infrastructure project to build data centers for OpenAI across the U.S.

Stargate, announced Tuesday during a press conference at the White House, would funnel as much as $500 billion from investors including SoftBank and Middle East AI fund MGX into data centers to support OpenAI’s AI workloads. Partners in Stargate have initially pledged $100 billion, some of which is being put toward a data center under construction in Abilene, Texas.

Elon Musk claims that Stargate doesn’t have the money it says it does.

“The don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote in a series of posts on X on Tuesday. “SoftBank has well under $10 billion secured. I have that on good authority.”

SoftBank has well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2025

Musk, of course, is not a neutral party. He has his own AI company, xAI, that competes — and is currently embroiled in a lawsuit — with OpenAI. In the suit, xAI and Musk accuse OpenAI of anticompetitive practices, including discouraging investors in OpenAI from backing AI rivals.

Altman fired back at Musk in an X post Wednesday — and called his bluff.

“Wrong, as you surely know,” Altman said, responding to Musk’s allegation that SoftBank was short of capital. “[Stargate] is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role, I hope you’ll mostly put America first.”

wrong, as you surely know.

want to come visit the first site already under way?

this is great for the country. i realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role i hope you’ll mostly put 🇺🇸 first.

— Sam Altman (@sama) January 22, 2025

Musk is spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a U.S. government advisory commission recommending deep cuts to federal agencies. DOGE was made more official Monday by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, but the commission faces a number of legal challenges.

xAI, like OpenAI, is hungry for infrastructure to develop its AI systems. Musk’s company is estimated to have spent $12 billion on its single data center in Memphis, Tennessee, and could spend billions more upgrading the facility.

Asked about Musk’s X posts during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, a close OpenAI collaborator and investor, declined to weigh in. “All I know is, I’m good for my $80 billion,” he said, referring to Microsoft’s recent pledge to spend a record amount on AI data centers this year.

California-based Vast Space has big ambitions. The company is aiming to launch a commercial space station, the Haven-2, into low Earth orbit by 2028, which would allow astronauts to stay in space after the decommissioning of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2030. In doing so, it is attempting to muscle in on NASA’s plans to develop commercial low-orbit space stations with partner organizations—but most ambitious of all are Vast Space’s goals for what it will eventually put into space: a station that has its own artificial gravity.

“We know that in weightlessness we can live a year or so, and in conditions that are not easy. Perhaps, however, lunar or Martian gravity is enough to live comfortably for a lifetime. The only way to find out is to build stations with artificial gravity, which is our long-term goal,” says Max Haot, Vast’s CEO.

Vast Space was founded in 2021 by 49-year-old programmer and businessman Jed McCaleb, the creator of the peer-to-peer networks eDonkey and Overnet, as well as the early and now defunct crypto exchange Mt. Gox. Vast Space announced in mid-December a partnership with SpaceX to launch two missions to the ISS, which will be milestones in the company’s plan to launch its first space station, Haven-1, later in 2025. The missions, still without official launch dates, will fall within NASA’s private astronaut missions program, through which the space agency wants to promote the development of a space economy in low Earth orbit.

For Vast, this is part of a long-term business strategy. “Building an outpost that artificially mimics gravity will take 10 to 20 years, as well as an amount of money that we don’t have now,” Haot admits. “However, to win the most important contract in the space station market, which is the replacement of ISS, with our founder’s resources, we will launch four people on a [SpaceX] Dragon in 2025. They will stay aboard Haven-1 for two weeks, then return safely, demonstrating to NASA our capability before any competitor.”

Space for One More?

What Vast Space is trying to do, by showing its capabilities, is get involved in NASA’s Commercial Destinations in Low Earth Orbit (CLD) program, a project the space agency inaugurated in 2021 with a $415 million grant to support the development of private low-Earth orbit stations.

The money was initially allocated to three different projects: one from aerospace and defense company Northrop Grumman, which has since exited the progam; a joint venture called Starlab; and Orbital Reef, from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. Vast has no contract with the US space agency, but it aims to outstrip its competitors by showing NASA that it can put a space station into space ahead of these others. The agency will choose which project’s station to back in the second half of 2026.

By doing this, Vast is borrowing from SpaceX’s playbook. Not only has Vast Space drawn some of its employees and the design of equipment and vehicles from Elon Musk’s company, it’s also trying to replicate its approach to market: to be ready before anyone else, by having technologies and processes already qualified and validated in orbit. “We are lagging behind,” Haot says. “What can we do to win? Our answer, in the second half of 2025, will be the launch of Haven-1.”

Haven-1 will have a habitable volume of 45 cubic meters, a docking port, a corridor with consumable resources for the crew’s personal living quarters, a laboratory, and a deployable communal table set up next to a domed window about a meter high. On board, roughly 425 kilometers above Earth’s surface, the station will use Starlink laser links to communicate with satellites in low Earth orbit, tech that was first tested during the Polaris Dawn mission in the autumn of 2024.

Google Fiber’s next big expansion is underway in Las Vegas, Nevada. After first announcing the expansion last year, Google has confirmed that it has started construction in Las Vegas and Clark County where its fiber internet service will be available “later this year.”

GFiber, as it’s increasingly being branded, is currently available in select cities across 19 states, including California, North Carolina, Texas, Tennesee, and more. The company most recently lit up its services in Pocatello, Idaho; Logan, Utah; and Lakewood, Colorado, and it plans on bringing GFiber to Lawrence, Kansas as well. Like other fiber internet services, GFiber has symmetrical internet speeds, meaning the speeds for uploads and downloads are the same.

On Wednesday, Google also confirmed that it’s piloting simplified, “lifestyle-based” plans in Alabama and Tennesee, which were first spotted last month. The new $70 / month Core 1 Gig, $100 / month Home 3 Gig, and $150 / month Edge 8 Gig plans replace the 1 Gig, 2 Gig, 5 Gig, and 8 Gig plans that GFiber widely offers.

These new plans are also launching in all of the locations where GFiber is currently available in Arizona and North Carolina, GFiber spokesperson Sunny Gettinger tells The Verge. They’re coming to most of GFiber’s remaining cities within the next month, too.

On Tuesday, a day after Donald Trump’s inauguration as the new U.S. president, the Department of Homeland Security told members of several advisory committees that they were effectively fired. 

Among the committees impacted is the Cyber Security Review Board, or CSRB, according to sources familiar with the board who spoke to TechCrunch, as well as reporting by other news outlets. The CSRB was made up of both private sector and government cybersecurity experts.

One person familiar with the CSRB, who received the letter informing them that their membership in the CSRB was being terminated, criticized the decision.

“Shutting down all DHS advisory boards without consideration of the impact was horribly shortsighted,” the person, who asked to remain anonymous, told TechCrunch. “Stopping the CSRB review when China has ongoing cyber attacks into our critical infrastructure is a dangerous blunder. We need to learn from Salt Typhoon and protect ourselves better. The fact this isn’t a priority for Trump is telling.”

“You can’t stop what you don’t understand and the CSRB was arming us with understanding,” the person added.

The person was referring to the CSRB’s review of the devastating recent breaches at several telecoms in the U.S., allegedly carried out by Chinese government hackers. 

CISA spokesperson Valerie Mongello referred TechCrunch’s request for comment to DHS, which did not respond to a request for comment. 

“In alignment with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security, I am directing the termination of all current memberships on advisory committees within DHS, effective immediately,” read the letter sent to members of the CSRB. 

Another person familiar with the matter pointed out that “it’s interesting that the rationale is ‘misuse of resources’ because all advisory board members get an excitingly rich salary of…$0.” 

Katie Moussouris, a cybersecurity expert with more than two decades of experience, and a former member of the CSRB, told TechCrunch that “the people who serve as government advisors should be judged by skills and merit, not by political affiliation. I’m hopeful that these critical advisory board vacancies will be filled with the most qualified people without delay.”

The CSRB investigated the breach of U.S. government email systems provided by Microsoft, also allegedly carried out by Chinese government hackers. In March of last year, the committee published a report on the incident, which was widely lauded in the cybersecurity community. 

Other DHS advisory committee members that are reportedly impacted by DHS’s decision are those dedicated to artificial intelligence, telecommunications, science and technology, and emergency preparedness.

The U.K. government has unveiled a set of digitisation plans within the public sector to save £45 billion each year in productivity. The headline announcement is “Humphrey,” a set of AI tools to speed up policy-making activities.

Most Humphrey tools summarise government data, including debates, meetings, policies, laws, and responses to consultations, so civil servants can search through it more quickly when making decisions. Before this, the collation of consultation responses was outsourced to contractors, costing the taxpayer £100,000 a pop.

Another plan is to establish a new team within the Department for Science, Technology, and Innovation that will be in charge of identifying how tech can be used to improve the efficiency of public services. Current systems result in the U.K. tax authority taking 100,000 phone calls daily and the driving licence agency processing 45,000 physical letters, making response times unnecessarily long.

This team will start by developing solutions to help people with disabilities or long-term illnesses more quickly access the services they need, such as financial support or healthcare. The tech will connect the relevant government departments or local authorities so individuals don’t have to be passed between up to 40 of them in a series of phone calls.

Other initiatives, announced on Jan. 21, include:

A full roadmap of these plans on how the government will renew its £23 billion a year tech spend will come in the summer.

SEE: UK Trails Behind Europe in Technical Skills Proficiency

UK public services are plagued by legacy technology

European companies tend to specialise in mature technologies, meaning the region is often seen as technologically behind, particularly compared to the U.S. The U.K. is a top culprit, particularly in critical national infrastructure, which is difficult and expensive to update without downtime.

SEE: 99% of UK Businesses Faced Cyber Attacks in the Last Year

A government report published this week found that nearly half of public services, such as those offered by the NHS and local councils, cannot be accessed online. For example, registering a death must be done in person and, businesses must place a newspaper advert when they want to buy a lorry.

The report found that a quarter of all digital systems used by the central government are outdated, leading to high maintenance costs and a heightened risk of cyber attacks. NHS England alone saw 123 critical service outages last year, leading to missed appointments and disruptions relating to staff being forced to use paper-based systems.

Cybercrime disruption can have even more severe consequences. In June, a ransomware attack on pathology company Synnovis led to months of NHS disruption and, according to Bloomberg. This resulted in harm to dozens of patients, with long-term or permanent damage in at least two cases.

Government is dedicated to making the UK an AI leader, reaping economic growth

This announcement comes just a few days after the government’s “AI Opportunities Action Plan,” outlining the 50 ways it will build out the AI sector and turn the U.K. into a “world leader.” The strategy involves boosting public computing capacity twentyfold, creating a training data library, and building AI hubs in deindustrialised areas.

Last year, the U.K. signed an agreement committing to explore how AI can improve public services and boost economic growth, along with the other Group of Seven nations.

SEE: UK Government Announces £32m of AI Projects

Science Secretary Peter Kyle said in a press release: “We will use technology to bear down hard to the nonsensical approach the public sector takes to sharing information and working together to help the people it serves. We will also end delays businesses face when they are applying for licenses or permits, when they just want to get on with the task in hand – growth.”

A “Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence” will also be forged as part of the overhaul, which will look at how public sector firms can invest in U.K. tech startups and scaleups, simultaneously boosting their efficiency and creating jobs.

As we begin our venture into a brand new month all the best streaming services, most recently Max, are dropping their February 2025 schedules one after the other. Last month, Max welcomed its first wave of 2025 titles, which included some of the best Max movies, from A Star is Born (2018) to The Imitation Game (2014). This month, the streaming service looks to be continuing its run of highly-rated additions.

It’s always a treat to see what new Max movies and shows are headed to Max each month, especially since it’s one of the few platforms that have a jam-packed first day of titles (there are 80 new additions being added on February 1 alone). And in addition to the slew of movies on day one, one of the most-awaited TV renewals – The White Lotus season 3 – will finally be here on February 16.