Enlarge / The Galaxy S24 line. (credit: Samsung)

Electric design is a field full of varying opinions and trade-offs. Companies agonize over the physical shapes of their devices and the materials used, all trying to create a high-quality, premium-feeling device that fits with the constraints of mass production. Material choices usually center around cost, feeling, and durability, but how often do manufacturers take into account smell? Samsung users are finding that if you pop out the Galaxy S24 Ultra's "S-Pen" stylus and give it a whiff like you're huffing a marker, you'll find that it... smells bad?

9to5Google found the following incredible post from Reddit user "LatifYil" titled, "Why does my s pen smell so bad?" The post has almost 250 comments of users all mostly agreeing with the post's sentiment that "the S-Pen in my Galaxy S24 Ultra absolutely reeks. Either I have a sensitive nose or this thing is being barbequed by the internals while it's unsheathed." The top-rated, very-online comment is, "Op got me to smell my pen. Can confirm it's a stinky boi."

Those describing the smell all seem to agree Samsung's stylus often smells like an electrical fire. One user writes that it's "a very burnt and plastics smell." Another says the S23 Ultra stylus "smells like new tech with a hint of burning." A more descriptive commenter says it smells like "an electric mixer that's turned on, but the beaters are jammed up and can't turn, so the motor is overheating." The S-Pen is mostly plastic but has a soft rubber tip, and a lot of users identify that soft bit as the smelly part.

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  OnLeak's render of the Z Fold 6. [credit: https://www.smartprix.com/bytes/exclusive-samsung-galaxy-z-fold-6-say-hello-to-boxy-aesthetics/ ]

Samsung has an event coming up in July, which will see the launch of the Galaxy Ring smart ring and new versions of Samsung's foldable phones, the Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip. We're up to version six now! Both foldables have had renders posted recently from OnLeaks and Smartprix. These are usually based on CAD files passed around to accessory makers, so they should be spatially accurate down to the millimeter, with some guesses as to the colors, materials, and a few small details.

First up, we have the big foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 6. This year, the device is getting a boxier design with sharper screen and body corners, making it more in line with the S24 Ultra. The dimensions of what a foldable should be is still something no one can seem to agree on, and the report says the Z Fold 6 is "1.4 mm shorter and 2.6 mm wider" than the Fold 5. The body has the same thickness as last year, 6.1 mm when open, but that doesn't say how much thickness the hinge adds. (The Fold 5 is 13.4 mm when folded.)

The flat sides in the render look great, making the Z Fold look even more book-like than normal. There are three cameras on the back, a hole-punch camera on the front cover screen, and an under-screen camera on the inside. What would help the Z Fold keep pace with the competition is a big battery upgrade: The Z Fold 5 was thicker than the competition yet only packed a 4400 mAh battery. The Pixel Fold and Honor Magic V2 both shipped with a 5000 mAh battery.

Enlarge / Samsung's SD Express-compatible microSD cards. (credit: Samsung)

Big news for people who like (physically) small storage: Samsung says that it is sampling its first microSD cards that support the SD Express standard, which will allow them to hit sustained read speeds of as much as 800MB per second. That's a pretty substantial boost over current SD cards, which tend to top out around 80MB or 90MB per second (for cheap commodity cards) and around 250MB per second for the very fastest UHS-II-compatible professional cards.

As Samsung points out, that 800MB/s figure puts these tiny SD Express cards well above the speeds possible with older SATA SSDs, which could make these cards more useful as primary storage devices for PCs or single-board computers that can support the SD Express standard (more on that later).

Samsung is currently sampling a 256GB version of the SD Express card that "will be available for purchase later this year."

Enlarge / The Galaxy Ring. It's shiny. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung's big item at Mobile World Congress is the odd little "Galaxy Ring," a fitness and health-tracking device shrunk down into a tiny, finger-worn circle. There are fitness rings out there already, like the Oura Ring and a few others, but this is the first one from one of the world's largest tech companies. Samsung already teased this device last month at the Galaxy S24 launch, and what we're getting at MWC are renders, brief glimpses of prototypes, and a few scraps of information.

What can you say about the design of the Galaxy Ring? It's a circle. Samsung's primary color has a shiny metal outside (the colors are not finalized yet) and what looks like a black plastic interior for the ring, which is packed full of sensors. Fitting health-tracking sensors, a battery, CPU, and Bluetooth into a ring form factor is a huge challenge, so it's no surprise that the whole contraption is thicker and wider than a jewelry ring would normally be.

Like all smart rings, the Galaxy Ring is bigger than a normal piece of jewelry. (credit: Samsung)

We don't have a comprehensive list of features, battery size, or other specs right now, but The Verge spoke to Samsung and says the ring can at least track "sleep, activity, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability" and includes period and fertility tracking. All of this data will be built into the Galaxy Health app. The Verge couldn't get a battery-life estimate out of Samsung, but Korean site FNNews was told the ring would last "about 5 to 9 days" before needing to be charged.

Enlarge (credit: Samsung)

Samsung's big Galaxy S24 launch was yesterday, and to hear Samsung tell the story, the big highlight of the event was "Galaxy AI." Another view is that Galaxy AI is the usual bundle of baked-in Samsung features skinned on top of Android, but with generative AI being the hot new thing, Samsung went with AI-centric branding. Whatever value you want to place on Samsung's AI features, it might soon be an actual monetary one: Despite devices like the Galaxy S24 Ultra costing $1,300, Samsung might start charging for some of these AI phone features.

The fine print on Samsung's Galaxy S24 promotional page features 44 asterisks and footnotes, and tucked away in that pile of caveats is the line "Galaxy AI features will be provided for free until the end of 2025 on supported Samsung Galaxy devices." That means Samsung reserves the right to charge for Galaxy AI after 2025.

Enlarge / The back of LG's DukeBox speaker with a transparent OLED screen. (credit: LG Global/YouTube)

CES is a mixed bag featuring real products you might want, announcements about upcoming tech you may not see for years, and vaporware that makes you wonder, "Who would want this?"

But the wacky, wild, and, at times, unrealistic are part of what makes CES, CES. With any hope, some of these developments could lead to innovative new products that consumers could benefit from. While some of the bizarre ideas feel mostly like ways for tech brands to show off, they are also ripe for ridicule.

Either way, let's open our imaginations and check out the most outlandish displays, including concepts and real products, announced at CES 2024.

Enlarge / The Galaxy S24 render from OnLeaks. This sure does look familiar. (credit: OnLeaks×SmartPrix)

Samsung is gearing up to launch its next big flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S24. The show has officially been announced for January 17, with Samsung's reservation website promising "Zoom with Galaxy AI is coming." Of course, 2023 was the year of generative AI, and Samsung's interest in the technology is a safe bet.

The show will launch the Galaxy S24, which has already leaked quite a bit, with the big news being a new titanium body. The iPhone made titanium the hot new thing recently with the launch of the iPhone 15, and Samsung has taken notice. The best leak so far has been from Windows Report, which scored official press images of the phones. (The report is no longer online due to a DMCA takedown, which is a good sign of its legitimacy.)

The Windows Report photos showed the smaller Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus are getting flat metal sides, reminiscent of the classic iPhone 4/iPhone 15 design. Samsung's usual design of rounded corners and individual camera lenses complete the phone design, and while they look nice, they also look a lot like an iPhone. Older leaks claimed these two cheaper phones were getting titanium bodies, but well-known Samsung leaker Ice Universe says only the bigger model will be titanium, and these cheaper models will be aluminum.

Enlarge / A Huawei Technologies Co. Mate X5 smartphone arranged in Hong Kong, China, on Saturday, Sept. 16, 2023. (credit: Bloomberg via Getty)

Every large smartphone maker except Apple is betting that “foldable” phones will help revive a lacklustre mobile market, despite the devices still largely failing to attract mainstream consumers.

Foldables, which have a screen that opens like a book or compact mirror, barely exceed a 1 per cent market share of all smartphones sold globally almost five years after they were first introduced.

But Samsung has doubled down on the product, investing heavily in marketing this year. In July, the Korean group released its 5G Galaxy Z series.

Enlarge / The Galaxy Z Fold5 and Flip5, being carefully taken apart. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung says it's doing a big expansion to its self-repair program this month. The repair program launched last year in partnership with iFixit, and now Samsung will be offering parts and repair manuals for more phones in more countries.

First up, the device list is adding some of Samsung's newest and most expensive models. Foldables are landing in the self-repair system for the first time, with the Galaxy Z Flip5, and Z Fold5 getting parts and manuals soon. The parts aren't up for sale yet, but we're dying to know the cost of a Z Fold5 display. (The Pixel Fold, a similarly sized flexible Samsung display, costs $900.) Samsung's current slab-phone flagship is also hitting the repair system for the first time, with all S23 models getting included. The Galaxy A05s, the first mid-range phone, is landing in the system, too. All the Galaxy S9 and A9 tablets are now repairable, as is the Galaxy Book 2 Pro laptop.

The number of countries where you can buy parts is increasing, too. Samsung's repair program is currently active in the US, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. Samsung now says it's expanding the repair program to 30 additional companies, with the full list being: "Albania, Andorra, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Switzerland." Forty-three countries is a huge progression in just a year, but the flagship S23 is sold in 130 countries if Samsung wants complete coverage.

Enlarge (credit: zf L via Getty)

The world’s leading semiconductor companies are racing to make so-called “2 nanometer” processor chips that will power the next generation of smartphones, data centers, and artificial intelligence.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company remains the analysts’ favorite to maintain its global supremacy in the sector, but Samsung Electronics and Intel have identified the industry’s next leap forward as a chance to close the gap.

For decades, chipmakers have sought to make ever more compact products. The smaller the transistors on a chip, the lower the energy consumption and the higher their speed. Today, terms such as “2 nanometer” and “3 nanometer” are widely used as shorthand for each new generation of chip, rather than a semiconductor’s actual physical dimensions.

Enlarge (credit: Scharon Harding)

Burn-in is always possible with OLED displays, but for computer monitors, which tend to display static content (like icons and taskbars), the risk is even more concerning than with other OLED devices, like TVs.

Generally, OLED monitors are much better at fighting burn-in than before, thanks to improved OLED materials, compensation algorithms, brightness efficiencies, manually operable features, and heat management techniques.

At the same time, there's still much to learn about OLED monitor burn-in. Because OLED monitor selection only began significantly improving over the last couple of years, long-term usage data is minimal. Further, new types of OLED monitor technologies, like QD-OLED, are still evolving.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Until recently, OLED computer monitor selection was limited. Today, there's more than a handful available. LG Display and Samsung Display have made picking an OLED monitor exciting by designing competing models—white OLED (WOLED) and quantum dot OLED (QD-OLED), respectively—and monitor vendors are steadily addressing OLED scarcity and price barriers.

But what about longstanding fears of OLED burn-in?

People tend to display static images on computer monitors more frequently than on TVs—things like icons, taskbars, and browser address bars—making burn-in risk a concern.

Enlarge / The square one is the S23 Ultra; the other two are the S23 and S23 Plus. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung is getting Android 14 out the door in record time. SamMobile spotted that the operating system update is rolling out now to European users with the Galaxy S23, S23 Plus, and S23 Ultra. If past timelines are any indication, US users should get the update in the next week or so once Samsung huddles up with your cellular carrier.

Android 14 came out for Pixel phones on October 4, so Samsung is releasing the OS in under a month. That is easily a new record for the company and a huge improvement over the usual multi-month wait. Like previous years, Samsung started a beta program for the new Android release about a month before Google's official release. Is this increased speed the result of Google's constant work to make Android easier to upgrade or just a side effect of Android 14 also being one of the smaller releases in recent years?

In Samsung land, Android 14 is called "One UI 6" and also comes with a range of Samsung UI changes. Apparently, the quick settings have been redesigned, and there are a lot of changes to the camera and photo editing experience. For now, the first release is for users of Samsung's latest flagship, but eventually, the update will hit devices from the last three years. For S23 users on Android 13, expect about a 3GB download.

Enlarge / Sony announced the A95K QD-OLED TV in early 2022. (credit: Sony)

Image retention is scary to see on your OLED TV but often easy to eliminate. Many modern OLED TVs subtly work their own magic when you're not watching in order to remove the problem, as RTINGS demonstrated in a video released Friday. However, TV vendors aren't all doing perfect jobs at implementing OLED screens' compensation cycles.

Temporary image retention differs from permanent image retention, aka burn-in, in that it points to a change in the panel's thin-film transistor (TFT) layer, rather than degradation of the OLED layer. Untreated temporary image retention doesn't lead to burn-in, a Sony spokesperson confirmed to me, but anyone looking at a screen suffering from image persistence will want to eradicate the sticky images, fast.

These temporary artifacts can be the result of heat affecting the amount of light emitted by the OLED pixels and can happen within minutes of usage. But letting the TV cool down by turning it off usually fixes this.

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  Samsung's new smart tags. [credit: Samsung ]

Samsung has announced its next Tile/AirTag competitor, the Galaxy SmartTag 2. The new Bluetooth trackers are $30 each and ship globally on October 10.

The design is interesting, with a giant ring on the top and a large overall size. Samsung says the battery, a removable CR2032, will last for 500 days in "normal" mode, while a new "Power Saving" mode will last 700 days (Samsung did not expand on what "power saving" mode does). It's also IP67-rated.

The big ring on top feels like it should somehow attach to an object, but it's a solid ring that never opens; it's not a clip. The press release says you'll need a "clip or keyring" to attach the SmartTag 2 to something. Samsung's hero shot shows the tag directly attached to some objects like a key, but this does not appear to be possible outside the world of Photoshop.