Sony announced earlier this week that the PS5 is getting a price increase, with the new $649.99 price taking effect on April 2nd. Anyone willing to act in the next few days can still pick up the current 1TB disc edition at the existing $549.99 price from major retailers, which amounts to a $100 saving well worth acting on if a PS5 has been on your list.
Once you have one in hand, the performance speaks for itself. Demanding games load in seconds rather than minutes, large open worlds snap into place almost instantly, and moving between areas happens fast enough that waiting around simply stops being part of the experience. The DualSense controller adds a layer of physical feedback that changes how games feel. Adaptive triggers shift their resistance depending on what you are doing, whether that is the tension of drawing a bowstring or the grip of a steering wheel under load, and the haptic feedback translates things like surface textures and environmental details into subtle sensations in your hands.
PlayStation 5 Console – 1TB, includes wireless controller, 1TBSSD, Disc Drive, 2 Horizontal Stand Feet, HDMI cable, AC power cord, USB cable, printed…
1TB of Storage, keep your favorite games ready and waiting for you to jump in and play
Ultra-High Speed SSD, maximize you play sessions with near instant load times for installed PS5 games
The first party library is where the PS5 really makes its case. Studios like Santa Monica and Insomniac have built games specifically around the hardware, and it shows in the detail of the worlds, the depth of the characters, and the overall sense that you are somewhere that actually exists. Multiplayer holds up just as well, with co-op and competitive options that have a way of turning a quick session into several hours without you noticing. Plus you get compatibility with loads of PlayStation 4 games, which is just a lucky break. You get instant access to a whole bunch of content you can dive into right away, without having to start from scratch all over again, and the older games all run a lot faster and sharper on this newer hardware. It’s a ready made library that instantly turns this console into the total entertainment package.
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Sony’s release schedule for the months ahead is looking strong, with familiar franchises alongside new titles that should keep the library fresh well into the future. Regular system updates continue to improve performance and add features over time, which means the console you buy today will quietly keep getting better without any additional cost.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Rivian “just won a yearslong battle with car dealers in Washington state that threatens the model of how cars are sold.”
After fighting to sell its vehicles directly to buyers, Rivian threatened to take its case to voters with a ballot measure to permit direct sales. The dealers blinked. The state’s dealer lobby not only dropped its opposition to a sales loophole for Rivian and rival EV-maker Lucid, but also encouraged lawmakers to approve one. The measure became law this month…
New auto entrants like Rivian, and Tesla before it, have spent years contending with long-established U.S. state laws that require new cars to be sold through independent franchised dealers. The auto startups — typically makers of EVs — argue that they can offer a better experience by selling directly to consumers, much as Apple sells iPhones through its own stores and online. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe has said the company is committed to direct-only sales because it’s more profitable and gives the company control over how its vehicles are sold, marketed and maintained. The Washington compromise riled traditional automakers, including General Motors, Ford and Toyota, which lobbied against it, arguing it unfairly advantages startups. A trade group representing the automakers called it discriminatory and argued the exception could one day open the door to Chinese EV makers…
German automaker Volkswagen is currently facing several lawsuits from dealers over its plan to sell new Scout vehicles directly to consumers. Dealers say independent franchises are vital to the car-buying process, creating competition between dealerships that keeps prices affordable for consumers, while providing valuable services such as repairs, warranty work and financing… Yet for Washington’s dealers, the prospect of putting franchise laws up for a popular vote laid bare a tough reality: given the choice, many car buyers want the freedom to avoid dealerships. Rivian’s polling, which the company shared with lawmakers, showed nearly 70% of respondents favored allowing direct sales when asked whether they would support manufacturers selling cars directly to consumers…
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The fight comes at a critical time for Rivian, which is launching a new, more affordable SUV in a bid to make consistent profits amid a downturn in U.S. EV sales… Rivian is able to directly sell cars in roughly half of U.S. states, but a number of them limit how many locations the company can operate. They can’t disclose the price, though. For that, customers must go online. The article notes that “Following the win, Rivian executives are eyeing other states that, like Washington, ban direct sales but also allow ballot initiatives: Arkansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota…” It adds that lawmakers (from both parties) in the state of Washington had said “they have long felt pulled between giving consumers more car-buying freedom and protecting dealers, essentially small-business owners who are vital to local economies — and politically powerful.”
But an executive at the Washington State Auto Dealers Association said dealers supported this new law partly because it protects them by barring future automakers from selling directly in the state, and by requiring Rivian and Lucid to adhere to the same regulations that govern how dealers operate.
The garage occupies a weird spot when it comes to a home. Not fully outside and not fully inside, it’s an area that often gets neglected when it comes to cleanliness and organization. We all have visions of our garages as neatly organized spaces where we park our vehicles, keep tools, and work on projects — but reality often gets in the way.
In daily life, garages tend to become a place where random things just pile up, and it doesn’t take long to get to a point where their functionality starts being limited — including situations where a vehicle doesn’t even fit inside anymore. Fortunately, there are many ways to address the garage clutter problem, including purchasable upgrades that can make the workspace more functional. But sometimes decluttering your garage into a functional work and storage space doesn’t require buying anything at all — it simply requires a different mindset. This is where the so-called “Two-Foot Rule” comes in.
Created by organization experts who praise the importance of focusing on the two feet of space that are used most in a given room, the rule can be used in all rooms or areas of a home — and not just for initial decluttering, but for keeping it that way. The Two-Foot Rule can be applied everywhere from kitchen counters to bedroom nightstands, but a cluttered, disorganized garage might just be the best place to use it.
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What is the Two-Foot Rule?
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Decluttering and organizing can be a daunting task, especially in the garage, where things can pile up for months before you get around to it. When you want to clean up, there are some helpful garage lifehacks to clear up space, but the Two-Foot Rule takes a more universal, repeatable approach to organization.
Rather than going for a massive decluttering or organization project, the Two-Foot Rule is about starting small, setting aside the two-foot space that you use most, and starting there. By limiting the focus to one highly used area, the idea is that it’s much more manageable to organize and easier to maintain that organization going forward.
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Experts say this two-foot zone is something that can be double-checked every single day, and if something is out of place, it can be easily put back where it belongs. This hopefully eliminates the possibility of the clutter piling up until it reaches an unmanageable level. While the Two-Foot Rule won’t make every corner of your garage spotless and perfectly organized at once, it could very much improve the areas you use the most.
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The perfect workbench solution?
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Focusing on a specific two-foot zone allows you to determine exactly what you use that area for and focus your efforts on that specific place. Inside a garage, the workbench — or just a small section of the workbench — could be the perfect place to start with the Two-Foot Rule.
It’s easy for tools and other junk to pile up on a workbench after you use them, but with the Two-Foot Rule, you could implement specific solutions for reducing clutter, like workbench-mounted pegboard that easily turns empty wall space into an organized storage space. Working vertically is a key part of the Two-Foot Rule, with the emphasis on using walls or shelving to permanently clear up the surface space you want to use.
Keeping common tools organized ties into another related de-cluttering concept called the Two-Touch Rule, which states that when you use an item, you should only touch it twice — once to use it, and once to put it back. Otherwise, tools and other items are likely to pile up on the workbench until you get around to putting them back, which can be days or weeks later — if ever. If they are stored within easy reach, the easier it is to put them back. The basic premise of the Two-Foot Rule is that it’s manageable and easy to stick with. Plus, if you have good results, there’s no reason it couldn’t be expanded from the workbench to other areas in the garage.
Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.
Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a tough one. You’ll need to know a little about four very different sports in order to solve it. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle, read on for hints and the answers.
Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.
Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups
Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.
Yellow group hint: Make a racket.
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Green group hint: Goooooal!
Blue group hint: Baseball stars.
Purple group hint: Toss the pigskin.
Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups
Amazon’s bet on “Project Hail Mary” has paid off handsomely, with the film recently surpassing “Creed III” to become the company’s highest grossing movie ever.
And it was a big bet, with a reported budget of around $200 million. That’s a big price tag for any film, but especially one that’s not a sequel or part of an existing franchise. Instead, it’s based on a bestselling science fiction novel by Andy Weir, whose book “The Martian” was adapted into a successful film a decade ago.
And that’s not the only thing that makes “Project Hail Mary” feel unconventional. For long stretches of the film, Ryan Gosling is the only human actor on screen, as the scientist he plays works with a rock-like alien to solve the mystery of of why multiple stars — including our own — seem to be dimming.
But after 10 days in theaters, “Project Hail Mary” has brought in an estimated $164.3 million in North America, as well as $136.2 million overseas, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Domestically, it only fell 32% in its second weekend, to $54.5 million, so its final box office numbers should be significantly higher when it leaves theaters.
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That makes “Project Hail Mary” the biggest hit of 2026 (so far), as well as one of the most successful non-franchise, non-sequel films of the past decade.
Until “Hail Mary,” those movies — including “After the Hunt,” “Mercy,” and the controversial “Melania” documentary — seemed to be falling flat with audiences.
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Amazon’s head of film Courtenay Valenti told The New York Times that “Project Hail Mary”‘s big opening weekend validated the company’s strategy of making “big, bold entertaining commercial films.” And it has more movies coming to theaters soon, including “The Sheep Detectives” starring Hugh Jackman in May, then a “Masters of the Universe” reboot in June.
Smart glasses were already under fire for privacy concerns. But now, there’s a new problem brewing. Cheating. And it’s surprisingly easy.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
A recent report by Rest of World highlights how AI-powered smart glasses are being used to scan exam questions and display answers directly on the lens, essentially turning them into a real-time cheating tool. In some cases, students are even renting these glasses for as little as $6 a day, using them not just for navigation or translation, but specifically to gain an unfair advantage in exams.
How does this even work?
It’s a mix of hardware and AI catching up. Modern smart glasses come equipped with cameras, microphones, and AI assistants that can analyze what you’re looking at and respond in real time. That means a question on paper can be scanned, processed by an AI model, and fed back as an answer. All without pulling out a phone. And because these devices look like regular glasses, they’re much harder to detect compared to traditional cheating methods.
Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends
Adding fuel to the fire, devices like the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have already sparked concerns around covert recording and privacy, with critics pointing out how easy it is to capture photos or videos without people noticing. Now, with cheating entering the picture, the concerns aren’t just about being watched but also about fairness, trust, and how institutions even enforce rules anymore.
When smart gets… a little too smart
This goes way beyond just exam cheating; it challenges the entire system. Experts warn that devices like AI-powered smart glasses could break traditional ways of detecting misconduct, since they’re subtle, always-on, and hard to track. Some regions have already started taking drastic steps, like temporarily disabling AI tools during exams, just to stay ahead.
At the same time, we’re stepping into an era of “invisible tech,” where these devices are genuinely useful but also easy to misuse. And that’s the real dilemma: when technology becomes this seamless, the line between helping and cheating starts to disappear.
Sky TV has now been a broadcasting powerhouse in the UK for nearly 40 years, offering a premium alternative to the country’s traditional channels and delivering some of the best dramas, films, sport, comedy and factual TV of the past four decades.
While Sky has been the go-to destination for prestige television such as Game of Thrones, Succession and The Last of Us, and biggest film releases on its Sky Cinema suite, it’s the provider’s domination of the live sport landscape that has sustained its success. Sky Sports is almost a byword for Premier League soccer coverage, and has carried dozens of the biggest tournaments and events across tennis, golf, cricket, NFL, rugby, boxing, darts and more.
Thanks to the broadcaster’s Sky Go app that launched in 2011, all those shows, movies and live sports have been available to subscribers across a multitude of mobile platforms and devices.
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And although Sky’s content is restricted only to people located in the UK, there is a simple, low-cost way of getting around the frustrations of having your Sky Go access blocked when traveling out of the country. Below we explain how using one of the best VPN services will keep Sky Go active when you want to watch it while on vacation or away on business.
How to watch Sky TV subscriptions
Signing up to Sky TV for the first time can be quite a dizzying experience – there seems to be an endless array of options to consider.
The entry-level plan is Sky Essential TV, which costs £15 per month (at the time of writing) and includes 100+ channels as well as access to Netflix and Discovery+. Pay an extra £7 a month and upgrade to Sky Ultimate TV to add Disney Plus, HBO Max, Hayu and another 30-odd channels.
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Once you’ve chosen your base plan, you then get to decide what additional premium channels you want. This is where Sky Sports (from £35 per month) and Sky Movies (from £25 per month) come in.
But it doesn’t stop there. If you’re also on the lookout for a new television, you can choose a Sky Glass package that bundles in a 43-, 55- or 65-inch 4K TV.
And you can further tailor you plan best suit you and your family, with options to add UHD and Dolby Atmos content, ad skipping, availability on more screens, upgraded Netflix, and even more channels like TNT Sports and Sky Kids.
While we’d never describe Sky TV as cheap (especially to some Brits who still remember when all television was free-to-air), there are ways to reduce your costs.
For starters, Sky frequently has offers and discounts through its official website. So if you’re in no rush to sign up for Sky, it may be worth waiting until it drops the prices. Unsurprisingly, Black Friday and the January sales are prime times to get a great Sky TV deal.
You can also save money if you also choose Sky as your broadband provider and mobile phone network. The company offers lower tariffs on both to existing Sky TV subscribers. Or buy a Sky TV and broadband package off the bat.
Another way to watch Sky content for less is through Now, which offers Entertainment, Sports and Movie memberships on a more flexible basis. Just note that, although owned by Sky, Now is effectively a standalone service and so doesn’t let you watch through the Sky Go app.
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Use a VPN to watch Sky Go from anywhere
Why is a VPN a good option to watch Sky Go from anywhere?
While Sky Go has brought the enormous mass of the broadcaster’s content to mobile phones, laptops and other streaming devices, it simply won’t work if you try to use it when outside the UK. The app will load, but you’ll be faced with an error message the second you try to watch something live or on demand.
Thankfully, you can overcome this hurdle by using one of the best streaming VPNs. The cybersecurity software doubles up as a way to watch online content when overseas and they work a treat with Sky Go.
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What devices and platforms are supported by Sky Go and NordVPN?
Amazon Fire TV Android (7.0 and up) Android TV (5.1 and up) Apple TV (tvOS 13 and up) Desktop app (Windows, Mac, Chromebook) iOS (13 and up)
Although you can’t run NordVPN directly on other devices, such as PlayStation and Xbox consoles, an easy workaround is running NordVPN on your smartphone or computer and setting up a hotspot.
(Image credit: Future / Harry Padoan)
What shows can you watch on Sky Go?
Everything you’d normally be able to watch with your Sky TV subscription can be watched online thanks to Sky Go.
Essential hosts more than 100 channels in all, meaning Sky Go also features 24-hour rolling headlines from Sky News and Sky Sports News, handpicked favorites from Sky Mix, stations such as TLC, Quest, and the Food Network, and traditional linear channels ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Note that no BBC content is available on Sky Go, so you’ll need BBC iPlayer to stream that online.
Upgraded plans make more channels available, with Sky Ultimate TV adding shows from the likes of Sky One, Sky Docs, Sky Comedy, National Geographic and MTV to the Sky Go catalog. Sky One is a relatively recent reintroduction to the service, and is set to be the home of new Sky Originals such as Saturday Night Live UK and The Dyers’ Caravan Park.
Got Sky Movies as part of your subscription? That opens up a library of more than 1,000 films you can watch on demand, and has been the first place to watch the likes of Jurassic World Rebirth, The Materialists and Oscar-winning One Battle After Another outside of the cinema in the UK.
Are there any live sports on Sky Go?
Just a few! Again, everything that goes out across the provider’s 12 Sky Sports channels are available to stream on Sky Go, too.
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For starters, that means an enviable 215 Premier League games over the course of each season as per its current deal. Sky also has an astonishing quantity of other football, including coverage from the Football Leagu, EFL Cup, Women’s Super League, Scottish Premiership and Bundesliga.
Outside of soccer, you’ll find hours and hours of other top sport on Sky Go. Cricket, for example, has found a regular home on Sky Sports, with England’s home internationals, World Cups, The Hundred, T20 Blast and India Premier League (IPL) all present.
Live coverage of all golf’s majors, PGA Tour events and Ryder Cup is the exclusive domain of Sky, while it also shows every F1 Grand Prix, British and Irish Lions rugby union, Super League rugby league, and all the biggest PDC darts tournaments. Tennis fans can watch the US Open and ATP/WTA tour events.
Various NFL and NBA coverage from across the Atlantic goes out on Sky Sports, too, together with other selected boxing, MMA and motorsport events.
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(Image credit: ichael Regan/Getty Images)
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We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.
Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.
I’m unfamiliar with “wax apples,” so 2-Down was a mystery to me until the other answers filled in. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.
If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.
The Samsung Galaxy A57 is a distinctly mid-range smartphone – and I don’t mean that as an insult.
The Galaxy A57 separates itself from much of the mid-range competition with a particularly premium glass and aluminium build that’s both thinner and lighter this year, along with Samsung’s polished One UI 8.5 software, a smattering of new AI features and a much longer OS upgrade promise, making the £529 price tag for the entry-level 256GB model much easier to swallow.
However, it’s not exactly the perfect phone – the focus on a premium build has meant sacrifices in other areas.
The 6.7-inch Super AMOLED screen, for example, has slimmer bezels, but they’re still not symmetrical like those on the cheaper Honor 400, while the camera setup leaves much to be desired.
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The 50MP main camera is fairly well-specced for the price, but the accompanying 12MP ultrawide and 5MP macro lenses have all but been outshone by the competition, particularly the Nothing Phone 4a Pro, which is both cheaper and boasts higher-res, more advanced lenses. Really, you’d expect to find those secondary lenses on something in the sub-£300 market from any other brand.
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Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
It’s also not exactly a performance beast, featuring Samsung’s distinctly mid-range Exynos 1680 chipset and 8GB of RAM. It’s fine for day-to-day use in early testing, but it can’t hold a candle to the flagship-level A19 chipset in the iPhone 17e, nor to the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Poco F8 Pro.
But, again, at £529, you can kind of accept those shortcomings. It’s not a full-fat flagship, after all, and most mid-rangers have a particular ‘focus’, be it camera hardware, design or performance, where other areas take a hit to get to the price point.
However, that metric changes completely when you look at the 512GB/12GB model, which rather inexplicably, costs £699.
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Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
That’s £170 more, for 4GB more RAM and an additional 256GB of storage, the former of which you probably won’t notice all that often in everyday use. £699 isn’t mid-range – that’s premium, almost flagship-level money, and the A57’s shortcomings are much harder to forgive at that price point. What I’m trying to say is, avoid that model at all costs.
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Much better options available at the price
For £699, there are plenty of more capable phones than the Galaxy A57 available to you – case in point, Samsung’s own Galaxy S25 FE. The phone comes in at £649, and while you don’t get the same 512GB of storage as the A57, you do get much more bang for your buck in other areas.
The phone has a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with an LTPO-enabled 120Hz refresh rate and those all-important symmetrical bezels, along with better performance from the Exynos 2400 chipset and nice extras like wireless charging – all for £50 less than the A57.
It’s even harder to vouch for the Galaxy A57 once you look beyond Camp Samsung at the price point. That’ll net you a phone like the £649 OnePlus 15R with its bigger, faster 6.8-inch 165Hz AMOLED screen, a much more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor, a frankly massive 7400mAh battery and similarly rapid 80W charging.
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Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
There’s also the £699 Motorola Edge 70, and while it doesn’t offer much of an uptick in the performance department, it’s impressively thin and light at 6mm and 159g, making it one of the slimmest options on the market – and complete with a relatively big 4800mAh battery and a gorgeous 6.7-inch 120Hz AMOLED screen.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
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Xiaomi’s 15T Pro is another solid alternative, coming in at £649. It packs not only the flagship-level Dimensity 9400+ chipset but also a premium camera setup comprising a 50MP main with a large 1/1.3-inch sensor, a 50MP 5x periscope, and a 12MP ultrawide, along with a 6.8-inch 144Hz AMOLED display that’ll give some of the best around a run for its money.
Xiaomi 15T Pro Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
In fact, you can even get proper flagship-level phones for the price. The Nothing Phone 3 cost £799 at release in late 2025, but at the time of writing, it’s available for just £559 at Amazon with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM – and you’re getting a much more capable phone than the Galaxy A57, with change to spare.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
You’re getting oodles of power in the form of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, along with a proper high-end 6.6-inch screen with an LTPO-enabled 120Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 4500nits, a solid camera combination comprised of triple 50MP main, ultrawide and 3x periscope lenses, and to top it all off, Nothing’s stylish Nothing OS experience.
And that’s not even mentioning the design, with the Phone 3 offering one of the most unique looks of any smartphone around right now.
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Frankly, the Galaxy A57 pales in comparison to any of these phones, and you’d be much better off with those than the overly expensive 512GB model.
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It’s likely down to the spiralling cost of RAM
But why is the 512GB Galaxy A57 so much more expensive than the 256GB model? While Samsung hasn’t confirmed it outright, I’d expect that it all comes down to the rapidly increasing cost of components, particularly storage and RAM.
Since the price of RAM skyrocketed in the second half of 2025, driven mainly by AI data centres hoovering up as much RAM as possible, reports and leaks have suggested that mobile manufacturers would essentially pass that cost on to consumers. And that’s what’s starting to happen. It’s not the first phone we’ve seen with a notable price jump compared to its 2025 equivalent – though the other example is, once again, from Samsung.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
The Samsung Galaxy S26 has jumped to £879, an £80 increase on last year’s Galaxy S25, while the S26 Plus comes in at £1099, a £100 difference compared to the S25 Plus – and with very few upgrades to speak of. The only model that didn’t really see much of a price hike was the already-premium Galaxy S26 Ultra, which costs a similar £1,279 to last year’s S25 Ultra.
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Samsung knows that the S26 Ultra would no doubt be the most popular in the range, so making it more expensive wasn’t really an option. Instead, the less popular models would cover much of that hit, especially for the larger storage options. The 512GB Galaxy S26, for example, costs £1049 – £170 more.
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It’s pretty much the same story here: Samsung has tried its best to keep the entry-level 256GB A57 model as affordable as possible and is trying to recoup additional cash from the 512GB/12GB model to offset any potential losses.
That makes sense for Samsung, but honestly, it makes zero sense for consumers to opt for it at such an inflated price – especially when more capable phones are available at the same price.
Apple’s AI strategy might be taking a very familiar turn, one that made the iPhone what it is today. As per Bloomberg’s recent report, Apple is working on a new “Extensions” system in iOS 27 that would allow third-party AI assistants to plug directly into Siri, including services like Google Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude.
Rachit Agarwal / Digital Trends
More importantly, this won’t just be a hidden setting. Instead, Apple is reportedly planning a dedicated section inside the App Store for these AI integrations, effectively creating a marketplace for AI tools, very similar to how apps are distributed today.
What does this actually mean for Siri?
It’s a pretty massive shift. Instead of trying to build one perfect AI, Apple seems to be turning Siri into a hub or “router” for multiple AI models, letting users choose which assistant handles their queries. That means Siri could act as the front-end, while different AIs handle different tasks, one for writing, another for coding, another for research. It’s less “Siri vs ChatGPT” and more “Siri + everything.”
Apple
As things stand, Apple is reportedly pursuing a two-pronged strategy: building its own in-house AI (Apple Intelligence), while also opening the door to third-party services. This lets Apple stay competitive without relying on just one model. It also keeps users from jumping ship to Android.
jotform / Unsplash
There’s also a business angle here. By turning AI tools into something users can install via the App Store, Apple could take a cut of subscriptions, just like it does with apps today.
So… is Siri becoming the new App Store?
This could completely change how AI works on phones. Instead of relying on one assistant to do everything, Apple seems to be moving toward a modular setup where users can mix and match different AI tools based on what they need. And if this vision plays out, Siri won’t just be an assistant anymore, but a platform.
Keen to stop other companies from poaching its engineers, Apple has reportedly approved substantial bonuses for its iPhone hardware engineers.
Apple has allegedly approved new bonuses for its iPhone hardware team.
Talk of an AI brain drain at Apple continues even if it is difficult to determine exactly how individual departures affect the company. Over the years, Apple has lost various engineers to rival firms like OpenAI and Meta, with some even being lured in by a massive $200 million pay package. Equally noteworthy is the departure of Abidur Chowdhury, the industrial designer behind the iPhone Air. He left Apple to become the design lead of an AI startup, which we later learned was known as Hawk AI. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums
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