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.
Graphical representation of Haven-1 in orbit.
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Photograph: Vast Space
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.”
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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.
As avian influenza rages through birds and dairy cattle across the United States, Georgia has become the latest state to detect the virus in a commercial poultry flock, and on Friday, it halted all poultry sales to mitigate further spread of the disease. Nationally, egg prices are soaring—if you can find them at all in your local grocery store.
The US has previously licensed three H5N1 vaccines for humans, but they’re not available commercially. The government has purchased millions of doses for the national stockpile in case they’re needed. But even as the outbreak spread, federal health officials under President Joe Biden were hesitant to deploy them. Experts say the decision comes down to risk, and currently, the risk of H5N1 remains low. Rolling out a vaccine to farm workers and others at higher risk of infection would be a more targeted tactic, but even that measure may be premature. Now, with a changeover in federal health leadership imminent as President Donald Trump begins his second term, the decision rests with the new administration.
“At the moment, from the point of view of severity and ease of transmission, it does not seem like an imperative to get a vaccine out to protect humans,” says William Schaffner, a physician and professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
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So far, no person-to-person spread of H5N1 has been identified, but health officials are monitoring the virus for any genetic changes that would make transmission among people more likely. Most bird flu infections are related to animal exposures. Of the 67 known human cases in the US, 40 have been linked to sick dairy cattle and 23 are associated with poultry farms and culling operations. In the other four cases, the exact source isn’t known.
In the US, human cases have been mild, with many of them causing only conjunctivitis. In some cases, people have had mild respiratory symptoms. Aside from the Louisiana patient, all the individuals who tested positive for H5N1 recovered quickly and never needed to be hospitalized. Historically though, H5N1 has been fatal in around 50 percent of cases. Since 2003, a total of 954 cases of human H5N1 have been reported to the World Health Organization, and about half of them died. Egypt, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and China have reported the highest number of human bird flu deaths.
Those numbers come with a few caveats. For one, many of those deaths occurred in places where people live very close to the sick poultry. “In those circumstances, the thinking is that they likely got a very large dose of the virus,” Schaffner says.
Plus, the case fatality rate—the proportion of infected people who die from the disease—only takes into consideration known cases, and some cases of H5N1 are no doubt going undetected in part because bird flu symptoms are similar to other respiratory viruses. In the US, language barriers among farm workers, lack of testing, and a reluctance among workers to report that they’re sick are also factors. “We probably miss more cases than we detect, and we’re much more likely to detect a case that’s severe,” says Shira Doron, chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine in Boston and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center.
One in 10 game developers lost their job in 2024. That’s according to the results of the annual Game Developers Conference state of the video game survey. The survey sampled over 3,000 developers and covered a number of topics including industry layoffs and what kind of games developers are working on.
Prolific layoffs have ravaged the industry over the last two years making the question of their impact on developers one of the most important in the survey. In addition to 10 percent of developers losing their jobs, 41 percent of respondents said they had been impacted by layoffs in some way, either by being laid off directly or seeing coworkers or colleagues in other departments let go. The survey also noted that the number of people impacted is potentially much higher because of the students and graduates who reported having a difficult time simply getting a job in the industry at all.
When asked what reason companies gave for layoffs, 22 percent said restructuring while 18 said declining revenue. 19 percent gave no reason at all. Developers, though, have their own ideas about why layoffs keep happening. In an analysis of responses to what developers think the reason behind layoffs is, the majority were general statements about the industry’s over-expansion during the pandemic. Companies acquired workers and studios in hopes of meeting a level of demand for games that dried up as covid restrictions loosened. However, some developers believe the reason for layoffs is much simpler. Companies like Microsoft and Sony still reported growing revenues despite multiple rounds of layoffs and studioclosures. It’s no surprise then that 13 percent of respondents attributed layoffs to corporate greed.
In addition to layoffs, the last few years have also seen the failure of a number of high-profile, big-budget, live-service games. While there has been some success in that area with new games like Marvel Rivals, it’s generally tough to launch a live-service game that can compete with the overbearing likes of Fortnite, Roblox, and Call of Duty. 2024 was also the year that Balatro, Animal Well, and Astro Bot dominated headlines and award lists suggesting a greater appetite for those kinds of smaller-scoped, single-player experiences. It’s interesting, and perhaps concerning then, that according to the survey, over 30 percent of AAA developers are working on a live-service game.
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When it asked developers their thoughts on live-service games the survey answered, “One of the biggest issues mentioned was market oversaturation, with many developers noting how tough it is to break through and build a sustainable player base.”
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OpenAI is making gains at the expense of its chief rivals.
On Tuesday, the company announced the Stargate Project, a new joint venture involving Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, Oracle, and others to build AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the U.S. Stargate could attract up to $500 billion in funding for AI data centers over the next four years, should all proceed according to plan.
The news was surely to the chagrin of OpenAI competitors like Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI, which will see no comparable enormous infrastructure investment.
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xAI intends to expand its data center in Memphis to 1 million GPUs, while Anthropic recently signed a deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing division, to use and refine the company’s custom AI chips. But it’s difficult to imagine that either AI company can outpace Stargate, even, as in the case of Anthropic, with Amazon’s vast resources.
Granted, Stargate may not deliver on its promises. Other tech infrastructure projects in the U.S. haven’t. Recall that, in 2017, Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn pledged and subsequently failed to spend $10 billion for a plant near Milwaukee.
But Stargate has more backers — and momentum, from what it seems at this juncture — behind it. The first data center to be funded by the effort has already broken ground in Abilene, Texas. And the companies participating in Stargate have promised to invest $100 billion at the outset.
Indeed, Stargate seems poised to cement OpenAI’s incumbency in the exploding AI sector. OpenAI has more active users — 300 million weekly — than any other AI venture. And it has more customers. Over 1 million businesses are paying for OpenAI’s services.
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OpenAI had first-mover advantage. Now it could have infrastructure supremacy. Rivals will have to be smart if they hope to compete. Brute force won’t be a viable option.
Microsoft exclusivity no more: Microsoft was once the exclusive provider of data center infrastructure for OpenAI to train and run its AI models. No longer. Now the company only has a “right of first refusal.”
Perplexity launches an API: AI-powered search engine Perplexity has launched an API service called Sonar, allowing enterprises and developers to build the startup’s generative AI search tools into their own applications.
AI speeding the “kill chain”: My colleague Max interviewed the Pentagon’s chief digital and AI officer, Radha Plumb. Plumb said that the Department of Defense is using AI to gain a “significant advantage” in identifying, tracking, and assessing threats.
Benchmarks in question: An organization developing math benchmarks for AI didn’t disclose that it had received funding from OpenAI until relatively recently, drawing allegations of impropriety from some in the AI community.
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DeepSeek’s new model: Chinese AI lab DeepSeek has released an open version of DeepSeek-R1, its so-called reasoning model, that it claims performs as well as OpenAI’s o1 on certain AI benchmarks.
Research paper of the week
Image Credits:Microsoft
Last week, Microsoft spotlighted a pair of AI-powered tools, MatterGen and MatterSim, which it claims could help design advanced materials.
MatterGen predicts potential materials with unique properties, grounded in scientific principles. As described in a paper published in the journal Nature, MatterGen generates thousands of candidates with “user-defined constraints” — proposing new materials that meet highly specific needs.
As for MatterSim, it predicts which of MatterGen’s proposed materials are stable and viable.
Microsoft says that a team at the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology was able to use MatterGen to synthesize a new material. The material wasn’t flawless. But Microsoft has released the source code of MatterGen, and the company says it plans to work with other outside collaborators to further develop the tech.
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Model of the week
Google has released a new version of its experimental “reasoning” model, Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental. The company claims it performs better than the original on math, science, and multimodal reasoning benchmarks.
Reasoning models like Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental effectively fact-check themselves, which helps them to avoid some of the pitfalls that normally trip up models. As a consequence, reasoning models take a little longer — usually seconds to minutes longer — to arrive at solutions compared to a typical “non-reasoning” model.
The new Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking also has a 1 million token context window, meaning it can analyze long documents such as research studies and policy papers. One million tokens is equivalent to about 750,000 words, or 10 average-length books.
Grab bag
Image Credits:GameFactory
An AI project called GameFactory shows that it’s possible to “generate” interactive simulations by training a model on Minecraft videos and then extending that model to different domains.
The researchers behind GameFactory, most of whom hail from the University of Hong Kong and Kuaishou, a Chinese company that’s partially state-owned, published a few examples of the simulations on the project’s website. They leave something to be desired, but the concept is still an interesting one: a model that can generate worlds in endless styles and themes.
Samsung is already the king of folding phones – and at the first Samsung Galaxy Unpacked of 2025, the tech giant teased its potential next frontier.
During the launch, which saw the reveal of the Samsung Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Ultra and Galaxy S25 Plus, Samsung showed off a brief roadmap of its future products – complete with a tri-folding foldable phone.
There were no timings or dates included, and no suggestion that such a device will be with us this year, but I’d suggest such a phone is coming sooner than later, as the Galaxy Z Fold 6 seems to have reached a plateau for folding phones at Samsung.
While even the best foldable phones aren’t exactly perfect, with chunky frames and visible creases. But even with these caveats, they are rather good productivity devices, so having another display could turn them into serious devices that can double up as Android tablets.
Samsung’s display arm has already shown off a couple of prototype tri-fold concept phones at CES 2025, so such a folding phone was definitely being considered by the South Korean company. But seeing such a phone on a roadmap is a very strong indicator that a tri-folding phone will become a legitimate consumer product.
It’s over to fellow Managing Editor and TV/display specialist Matthew Bolton for his thoughts on the tri-fold concepts he got to see at CES: “I saw two versions of a tri-fold screen prototype device. One that folds in a Z-shape, just like what Samsung hinted at in its announcement, and one where left and right screens folded on top of the center screen.
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“I wasn’t allowed to fold these phones (no one was, it’s not a reflection on my brutishness), but it showcased the potential designs of these phones, and just how much extra space this layout can give you – it really feels like these reach the promise of ‘a tablet that turns into a phone’, in the sense that when folded out, they’re around the 10-inch size of a full tablet, instead of the mini-tablet size of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. However, don’t expect much change in the key flaw of folding screens: you’re going to be looking at two creases instead of one.”
We’ve already gone hands on with other tri-folds, most notably the Huawei Mate XT that impressed Phones Editor Axel Metz. So there’s no doubt in my mind that the next step for foldable phones will be tri-folds, at least from the Android camp of the smartphone arena.
This is important because, while we MagSafe lovers have made do with MagSafe Android phone cases these past few years, there’s always been a caveat that these cases may not work with all MagSafe products. With Qi2 Ready cases, you can rest easy knowing they’ll work with Qi2 chargers.
It’s worth noting that OnePlus’ latest flagship phone, the OnePlus 13, is not a Qi2 Ready phone, however, OnePlus sells a magnetic case to enable Qi2-like charging. This is the old approach of adding magnetic charging to phones with basic Qi support, and it will not turn your phone into a Qi2 device. While it may feel similar, you may not enjoy faster charging speeds, it will not be as energy efficient, and it’s not guaranteed to work with all Qi2 accessories. Golden says Qi2 Ready phones have “special features built into them” to enable proper Qi2 functionality when paired with a Qi2 Ready case.
Alas, as soon as you take these Qi2 Ready cases off the phone, the magnetic functionality disappears. This may not be a problem for most people. It’s hard to find recent statistics, but a 2023 YouGov survey found that roughly 68 percent of Americans use a phone case, and a 2017 study put that number at 79 percent. But it does stink for those of us who don’t like using a case. Pour one out for the case-less fiends.
I can recall dozens of times when I’ve had to take my iPhone case off to attach a wireless microphone to the USB-C port or to fit the phone on a gimbal. Removing the case didn’t change anything because iPhones have magnets built in, but this is something that will impact Qi2 Ready phones, and it’s a frustrating limitation.
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I think Qi2 Ready phones are an acceptable in-between measure. Considering it’s cheaper than embedding magnets into a phone, I hope it means more budget and midrange smartphones can enjoy Qi2 capabilities.
Still, I worry that this will make things confusing for the average person. New phones will support Qi but not Qi2, but they’ll have Qi2 Ready cases to enable Qi2—my brain hurt just writing that. If they just had native Qi2 support, magnetic charging would work all the time with any Qi2 accessory. Easy peasy.
The good news is that Samsung and Google have committed to releasing official Qi2 Android phones in 2025, so it is on the way, though it does feel bizarre that Samsung may not end up debuting it on its flagship smartphone series.
I’ll make do with a magnetic case (again), but for the love of God, can someone just give me my magnetic Android already?
Google worked with the Israeli military in the immediate aftermath of its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, racing to beat out Amazon to provide AI services, according to company documents obtained by the Washington Post.
In the weeks after Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel, employees at Google’s cloud division worked directly with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — even as the company told both the public and its own employees that Google only worked with civilian government ministries, the documents reportedly show.
Weeks after the war began, an employee with Google’s cloud division escalated the IDF’s military’s requests for access to Google’s AI technology, according to the Post. In another document, an employee warned that Google needed to quickly respond to the military’s requests, or else Israel would turn to Amazon for its cloud computing needs. In a November 2023 document, an employee thanks a coworker for handling the IDF’s request. Months later, employees requested additional access to AI tools for the IDF.
Amid this, Google was punishing employees for protesting Project Nimbus, Israel’s $1.2 billion contract for Google and Amazon’s cloud computing services. Google fired 28 employees who staged sit-in protests at the company’s offices in New York and California, some of whom were also arrested during the demonstrations.
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At the same time, Google denied that it was working with the Israeli military. “We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy,” Anna Kowalczyk, the external communications manager for Google Cloud, told The Verge in April 2024. “This work is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services,” Kowalczyk said.
Google did not immediately respond to The Verge’s request for comment.
Streaming servicePlex has long since grown beyond its original focus of being a home for personal media to offer a more comprehensive solution for discovering, streaming, and sharing content across services, including Plex’s own ad-supported free TV and movies. More recently, the company added social networking features, which it’s today expanding with its rollout of new functionality. Notably, this includes a way to share your Plex profile publicly and tools to let others read your TV and movie reviews and then comment in return.
Plex first introduced social networking in November 2023 when it launched a feature called “Discover Together,” which allowed users to create profiles on the service and then find and follow friends to see what they were watching. (The feature initially received some backlash as some Plex users were unhappy about its opt-out nature. Plex now notes that content flagged as adult won’t appear in users’ Activity fees, which was one of the users’ concerns.)
While it was a shift for the company, offering a more social experience on Plex allows it to better compete not only with other free, ad-supported streamers but also with dedicated social networks for movie and TV reviews like Letterboxd and TV Time, among others.
Image Credits:Plex
With today’s release, Plex says users will now be able to share a public URL that points to their profile on the service on watch.plex.tv. By default, users will be findable by others on Plex via the app’s search, unless they’ve already turned this off in their settings.
People who view your user profile will be able to see what you’ve been watching, what’s on your Watchlist, and more. This does not change any of your existing privacy settings, Plex notes.
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In addition, Plex users will have the option to make their Ratings & Reviews visible to other users on Plex through a new setting. Here, you can choose between allowing anyone to see these reviews or only those signed in to Plex. You can also choose that your reviews are only visible to Friends or Friends of Friends, or you can make all your Ratings & Reviews private if desired.
Alongside the social networking features, Plex is also launching a preview of its new user interface, initially on Apple TV. The redesign includes updated navigation, more personal media customization, easier feature access, a richer experience with more artwork, and Plex’s various social networking features, the company says in its announcement.
Image Credits:Plex
For power users, Plex Pass subscribers (paid users) will gain access to HEVC hardware encoding for better video quality while saving bandwidth. This option was previously in preview mode with select users but is now available to all subscribers.
A joint venture called The Stargate Project will contribute $500 billion over four years to generative AI infrastructure in the U.S., representatives of SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle announced in partnership with President Donald Trump on Jan. 21.
The joint venture will support infrastructure, including data centers, contributing to what OpenAI calls a “computing system.”
“This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world,” OpenAI wrote in a Jan. 21 post on X (formerly Twitter). “This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”
“It’s big money and high-quality people,” Trump said at a White House press conference, according to the Associated Press.
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At least one location confirmed in Texas
OpenAI will initially contribute $100 billion to the project, with the other $400 billion coming at an undisclosed pace over the next four years.
OpenAI said building a data center associated with the project has already begun in Abilene, Texas.
“We are evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as we finalize definitive agreements,” OpenAI wrote.
Oracle Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison said 10 data centers were already built or under construction.
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SEE: AI adoption tends to weaken companies’ chances of meeting sustainability goals, according to a report released in January.
MGX, a technology investment firm located in the United Arab Emirates.
SoftBank will be responsible for The Stargate Project’s finances, while OpenAI will handle operations.
Other initial technology partners are:
“This builds on a deep collaboration between OpenAI and NVIDIA going back to 2016 and a newer partnership between OpenAI and Oracle,” OpenAI wrote.
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Trump’s administration will ease the way for more data centers in the United States, he said on Tuesday, according to The New York Times. That easement may include unspecified “emergency declarations” around The Stargate Project potentially generating its own electricity.
Building out AI involves rethinking data and power needs
“Our current infrastructure is not ready for the demands AI will require for full maturation,” said Sean Tufts, managing partner for critical infrastructure and operational technology at Optiv, in an email to TechRepublic. “This team is a perfect trifecta to embolden a new ecosystem. Bringing together the boldest AI firm, one of the largest data and cloud companies, and one of the most innovative financiers. This is the type of public/private partnership that America’s innovators thrive on.”
Tufts suggested a power generation company should join the group to address electrical needs. In addition to chips, robust data centers, and more efficient cooling, he said, power is one of the pillars required for increased support for generative AI technologies.
Samsung is showing off improvements to features we’ve seen before, like transcripts on calls, and other improved AI generative text and speech features.
Samsung’s Drew Blackard is showing a preview of upcoming Galaxy AI, and we get to see the Now Brief and Now Bar, two new AI driven features that will deliver news and updates about your day.
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(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
Roh is saying today marks a beginning of a new reality. We’re going to hear a lot of this sort of talk today. A new beginning, opening a door, starting something big. We’re at the start of the new mobile AI phase, not in the middle. Samsung is going to start collecting what it needs to build a more robust Galaxy AI, but it isn’t quite here yet.
That’s fine, the phone is still going to be a top performer. Hopefully we’ll see more about the features available today, instead of just talking about tomorrow.
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(Image credit: Samsung)
Roh is back on stage saying the Galaxy S25 will understand not only your commands, but also your intentions. You can talk the way you talk to your friend, and initiate multiple actions with one button press. Roh says it will anticipate your needs.
No specifics on how it will do all of this, but Roh is moving onto privacy. The Personal Data Engine on the Galaxy S25 will keep all of this personal data secure with Samsung’s KNOX security, which is no joke. But what data will it store? We haven’t heard specific examples yet.
(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
Samsung’s President of the Mobile eXperience group, TM Roh, has taken the stage and immediately announced the Galaxy S25 family. Now Roh has handed off to Google to talk about Gemini and new features coming first to the Galaxy S25.
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(Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)
Go go go! We are go for Galaxy Unpacked. The Live stream should start any minute, and I’m watching at Samsung.com.
I can also tell you now that I’ve gotten hands-on time with the entire new Galaxy S25 family, including the Galaxy S25 Plus and Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Samsung isn’t just throwing a party in San Jose, today. Our reporters in the UK are also on the scene for a special hands-on opportunity with Samsung and the new phones. Clearly the 10am Samsung crowd in California is different from the 6pm Samsung crowd across the pond.
If you weren’t sure that today’s star would be Galaxy AI, even more than the Galaxy S25, just look at that drink! When the ice cube says AI, believe it.
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Viktoria and Lance at Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked in San Jose, CA (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
One of the biggest questions we have remaining today surrounds the mysterious, so-called Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim. Apple has been rumored to be working on a slimmer version of its iPhone, now presumably called the iPhone Air. Samsung could also be leading the charge with a slimmer Galaxy S25 today, a Galaxy S25 Slim.
Last minute rumors suggest that the slimmer Galaxy S phone may not appear today, but could show up later in the year, around May. The Galaxy S25 Slim may not come to the US, either, presumably because we don’t like things that are Slim here? Who knows.
We’ll keep a look out for any executives carrying incredibly slim Galaxy phones, but until we know for sure, keep following for the latest news and rumors.
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(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
Ok Galaxy fans, today is your day. If you’ve been following the leaks and rumors about the upcoming Galaxy S25 family so far, you haven’t seen a whole lot that’s new. We’re expecting a new look for the Galaxy S25 Ultra that brings it closer to the other Galaxy S25 family, with rounded corners and a smooth back, but we haven’t seen many other new hardware features. Is Samsung hiding all the good stuff inside?
Undoubtedly, as Samsung will definitely be using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, and it will probably be overclocked just for Samsung with a for Galaxy badge attached. That means the Galaxy S25 could the fastest phone ever, even faster than the iPhone 16 Pro. What will Samsung do with so much power? That’s what we’re waiting to find out.
(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
We’re 30 minutes from Galaxy Unpacked and your TechRadar editors are live on the scene at the SAP Center in San Jose, CA! Our Editor-at-Large Lance Ulanoff is covering the news as it happens, then going hands-on with all the new devices, while our video guru Viktoria Shillets captures live footage for all of our TechRadar channels. We’ll keep this Live Blog going throughout the show, so stay tuned to this channel.
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.
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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.
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