Samsung has revealed three new foldable models, including the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, and an all-new shape for the standard Z Fold 8.

The Galaxy Unpacked launch, which also included a new Flip 8, included many new features, such as a new durable titanium structure and more on-device AI tools and capabilities.

Of the three new models, the Z Fold 8 Ultra is the biggest and highest-spec'd. Folded, it looks like a standard phone thanks to an ever-decreasing thickness (5.9mm folded, 4.1 mm unfolded).

It has a 6.5in cover display and opens up to an 8in main display, which is essentially two 6.5in screens side by side.

On first impression, the Z Fold 8 Ultra is better in every way than before. It's slightly thinner and somehow stronger.

This is thanks to a new titanium structure beneath the display that includes a panel and plate that reinforce the folding mechanisms and make it stronger and more durable than before, while maintaining its thin, streamlined look.

Beneath those titanium additions is a 5000mAh battery that promises 27 hours of video playback and 45w fast charge with 67% in just 30 minutes.

You get five camera lenses on the 8 Ultra, with a 10MP selfie lens on the cover display, a 10MP lens on the main display, and then three cameras on the rear of the device: A 200MP wide lens, a 50MP ultrawide one, and a 10MP telephoto lens.

From our brief experience ahead of its launch, we found the camera setup on the Fold 8 Ultra to be very crisp and dynamic.

Powering all of this is the Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite 8 chip (CPU, NPU, GPU), and that is the case for all three new models. It's also been customised for Samsung's OS to provide more on-device AI tools, like the new 'Now Nudge' feature, which is like an information overlay that was launched in beta on the S26.

It takes contextual information from apps and offers suggestions via the keyboard – similar to predictive text. It can appear across multiple parts of the screen or in a more subtle way called 'Ambient Nudge ' or simply 'Notification Nudge'.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Flip 8

Now Nudge is also on the new Z Fold 8, which comes in a distinctive new shape. It's a slightly wider, more square design compared to the Ultra. Similar to Huawei's Pura X smartphone, but much bigger.

When unfolded, it has a 4:3 aspect ratio (3:4 in portrait), which is more suited to the types of content we consume, according to Samsung. So reels and scrolling video content can be viewed in their entirety.

Folded, the 8 has a 10.16in cover display and looks very square. And it unfolds to a 7.6in main display – almost an inch smaller than the Ultra, but arguably a more content-friendly size.

The other differences from the Ultra are a slightly smaller battery at 4,800mAh, and no telephoto lens. Instead, you have a pair of 50MP lenses, one wide and the other ultrawide. It still promises 26 hours of video playback.

As with the most recent Galaxy S26, video stabilization is a big feature on the Z Fold 8. This is best used in the My Fan Cam feature, which allows for instant cropping of video.

You can select a subject from a 16x9 video and have it cut to a vertical shot – you can even select an object or person, regardless of where they are in the frame, and have them as the main focus within a crop.

There is also a new Flip 8, though this is of the least business interest. It's lighter than before and thinner too (180g, 6.1mm thick, when folded).

You have a 50MP main camera and an intuitive Flex Window on the cover display that offers suggestions and automations for you to operate the phone quickly without opening it up every time.

The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition is a business-focused update of the Galaxy Book models that debuted at MWC 26. This isn't the premium models, to be clear, the Pro and Ultra are the more powerful devices, but the Enterprise Edition goes in a slightly different direction, with features and capabilities to make laptop deployment easier for IT departments.

It comes in either 16in or 14in, and only one gray color option. And it starts at £2,049 for the lowest configuration (16GM RAM, Intel 5). But, as with all of Samsung's Enterprise Edition devices, the real benefits are in setup and security...

Samsung Galaxy Book6: Design

Although this is an 'Enterprise Edition', the outer design of the Galaxy Book6 is the same as the standard model with two size options (14in and 16in) and just a 0.64 lbs difference between those. The 16in model we have is just 14.6mm when closed, giving it a moderately thin profile.

The laptop comes only in gray – 'Mocha' gray, according to Samsung – which gives it a serious, but unremarkable look. It's squared with little rounded edges and a minimalist Samsung logo on the lid. The result is that the Galaxy Book 6 doesn't really stand out in the crowd – we've seen more striking Windows machines recently, such as the Asus ZenBook 16A, or the HP EliteBook 8, or even the MSI Prestige 16 AI+.

Configurations start at 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD, but can be ramped up, like our machine to 32GB RAM and 1TB of storage. And for the Enterprise Edition, there are three Intel options: either the Core Ultra 5 325, Core Ultra 7 365 vPro or the 355 – like our review unit.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition: Display

The Enterprise Edition of the Galaxy Book6 has a 16-in IPS panel with a wide-screen WUXGA (1920 x 1200) resolution by default. At face value, it's not the most impressive screen – certainly not compared to the Pro and Ultra models – and it's clear that the focus here is productivity rather than immersive graphics.

So the Enterprise Edition is slightly duller – its peak brightness is only 350nits, according to Samsung. The Pro model can reach 1,000nits, so there is a gulf in quality. In our own tests, with our colormieter, the Enterprise Edition peaked at 354 cd/m2, which is on the low side; certainly not up to Samsung's lofty standards.

But we have to remind ourselves that a laptop aimed at enterprises doesn't necessarily need to have a fancy display, just a practical one. The 16in screen is nice and big, there's next to no glare, and it does a fairly decent job with colors. Nothing mind blowing, but equality is neither over-saturated nor poor.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition: Keyboard and trackpad

One reason to opt for the 16in Galaxy Book6 is the inclusion of a numberpad. That is, of course, if you like/need one. So that's data entry workers and number nerds. For the rest of us, you just get a bigger typing space and more area to rest your palms.

On the business of typing, however, the keys feel quite shallow. There is only 1.33mm travel, and I did feel I was basing the bottom, a lot, at full typing speed. They do look smart and level, and they make a nice clicky sound. However, the space bar has a slight rattle to it.

There is a medium-sized trackpad (approximately 4x3) with a fairly good range and nice click action. The only issue here is its position, just off-center (presumably due to the number pad). I constantly hit the right-click button by accident when not looking down, which caused no end of frustration.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition: Specs and performance

Our review unit came with an Intel Core Ultra 7 355 (Panther Lake) chip, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD. As mentioned above, you can opt for a lower Core Ultra 5 325 model or a vPro. Though all three are suitable for most business needs, aside from heavy AI workloads.

In Geekbench 6, the Enterprise Edition came back with a score of 2,671 for single-core workloads and 6,846 for multithreaded, which are both good scores. You're not looking at a MacBook Pro replacement here, but it does hold up well against Windows machines with a similar score to the Asus Zenbook A16.

And, it lasts. Samsung's estimates for battery life say it can run for 24hrs in an office setting. In our looped video test, the Galaxy Book 6 lasted 17hrs, 38mins. Which is short of that expectation, but we have to add that our tests are intentionally intensive. In real use, we found the Galaxy Book6 lasted well into a second day of work.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition: Features

The Enterprise Edition, as its name suggests, is about making the setup and management of work machines as seamless as possible, while also keeping security tight. So the Galaxy Book6 can be prepared before deployment with a few customizations, like BIOS settings and asset tagging. There's also Windows Autopilot, which IT admins can set up before the device reaches its user.

These pre-customizations also extend to security, with Samsung's Knox platform deeply embedded in the Galaxy Book6. This includes the standardized configurations that we are all familiar with, like biometric authentication (fingerprint sensor, facial recognition). And also some data protection at the firmware level with a discrete Trusted Platform Module with cryptographic capabilities.

There is a wealth of connections on both sides of the machine. Two USB-C ports, two USB-A, an HDMI slot, one for a microSD card, an RJ45 Ethernet port, a security slot, and a headphone jack.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition: Is it worth it?

While it may lack the gloss of rival laptops (or even other Galaxy Book models) the 6 is a solid choice for a business. A quality build with a smart look, a fast processor, and a long battery life. Just what you need for an office of knowledge workers or even entry-level ones.

Price may be a sticking point; there are similar devices for less than £2,000, but the question is, do they also come with Knox-level security, or even the breadth of controls and capabilities for IT departments?

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition specifications

Samsung is set to pay employees in its memory chip division a bonus averaging £310,000 each, after a highly contentious profit-sharing agreement was reached.

The agreement was mediated by the South Korean government, according to Reuters.

Memory chip workers with a base salary of 80 million won (roughly $53,400 or £40,000) should receive a bonus of about 626 million won ($416,000 or £310,000) this year, largely paid in stock. These figures were from a union source, reported by Reuters last week.

Samsung's profits have been boosted by the AI boom, but the deal itself is aimed at avoiding a strike with two unions for the South Korean giant.

The unions said that 74% of the 62,616 workers who cast their votes had backed the deal. Samsung will set aside 10.5% of its operating profits at its semiconductor division to pay special bonuses to those who work on memory chips.

There is a hope that the deal will end a long-running dispute at the tech giant. That said, there are new concerns that it may actually create tensions between other divisions, such as those that work in its consumer electronics divisions.

Memory chip wars

Samsung has seen record profits thanks to a global shortage of memory chips amid the boom in AI. Along with SK Hynix, the two companies account for the majority of global memory production.

However, last year, SK Hynix abolished its cap on bonus pay for 10 years, according to reports. Without the cap, it was able to pay bonuses that were considerably larger than those at Samsung. This, reportedly, led many to leave Samsung for SK Hynix, which in turn sparked a surge in union membership, according to Samsung.

Negotiations saw many proposals tabled, such as a 50% to 100% bounce offer, as a one-off payment that would keep the cap on bonuses.

AMD and Samsung Electronics have announced plans to team up on “next-generation” chip development for AI.

The agreement between the duo will see Samsung supply high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) for AMD’s Instinct MI455X AI accelerators, the companies said in a statement.

AMD chief executive Lisa Su said the agreement aims to drive collaboration amidst a sharpened focus on AI infrastructure development.

“We are thrilled to expand our work with Samsung, bringing together their leadership in advanced memory with our Instinct GPUs, EPYC CPUs and rack-scale platforms,” she said.

The partnership will also ramp up integration “across the full computing stack, from silicon to system to rack”, Su added.

Young Hyun Jun, vice chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics said the company is “uniquely positioned to deliver unrivaled turnkey capabilities that support AMD’s evolving AI roadmap”.

Closer ties

The new agreement builds on long-standing ties between the two companies, with Samsung already providing AMD with HBM3E chips used to power AMD’s MI350X and MI355X accelerators.

Samsung’s HBM4 is built using its 6th-generation 10-nanometer (nm) DRAM process (1c) and a 4nm logic base die, boasting processing speeds of up to 13 gigabits per second, as well as a maximum of 3.3 terabytes per second bandwidth.

AMD said this will be crucial in underpinning the Instinct MI455X GPU range, which is designed specifically for use in high-performance systems that handle AI model training and inference.

MI455X GPUs form a key component of AMD’s Helios open rack-scale architecture, a platform designed for AI workloads, which is due to launch in late 2026.

The partnership will also see the pair collaborate on development of optimized DDR5 memory for AMD’s sixth-gen EPYC CPUs, also for use in the Helios architecture.

Crunch time for chipmakers

As part of the agreement, Samsung said the two companies will also “discuss opportunities” for a foundry partnership, with the South Korean firm providing services for future AMD products.

This aspect of the agreement comes as Nvidia fosters closer ties with the company.

Speaking at Nvidia GTC 2026 this week, CEO Jensen Huang noted Samsung is manufacturing the Groq 3 LPU, which is set to be integrated within the firm’s Vera Rubin architecture.

The deal also comes as the tech industry contends with acute memory and storage shortages. Samsung previously warned that the memory shortage could continue into 2027, while SK Hynix also issued a similar warning.

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ITPro had hands-on time with the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra way back in February and was left impressed by its privacy display. But two months on, with an Enterprise Edition review unit in our possession, the most impressive feature is arguably its video capabilities.

From its five high-quality lenses to its innovative stabilization controls, the S26 Ultra is a video powerhouse perfect for today's content creation needs. Sure, it's expensive, but for social, promotional, or even mini film needs, the S26 Ultra is almost an all-in-one solution.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Design and specs

There really isn't much to say about the S26 Ultra's design, other than a few new color options and a slight reduction in thickness (7.9mm). To the naked eye, it looks the same as the S25 and the S24, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It has a great design, with those nice flat edges and a minimalist back cover, both made from 'Armor Aluminum'. It's a very distinctive look, particularly with the camera island and its many lenses.

The many lenses seem to be a big bulk of its weight too; despite the flat edges, it doesn't stand up on its own and tends to fall backwards – I even noted this when I tried to support the device with a stand – the weight of those lenses still pulled it backwards. So if you are filming, you need a case with a stand or a tripod of some kind as it won't stay up on its own.

Most of the changes and improvements are software or internal. It's powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, which brings a range of new capabilities for both on-device artificial intelligence and quite striking improvements to the camera software.

The S26 range has been designed under the banner of 'effortless AI', with more generative capabilities and shortcuts with simpler operations. Each of the models in the range will offer tailored experiences as they learn about the user, and produce impressive-looking capabilities for managing daily life and work – all through a new data engine. Bixby is also still lurking on your Samsung device, though it can now search the web. I didn't find this to be much better or quicker than simply searching the web in the old-fashioned way.

Other notable updates include the battery, which has been improved, with faster charging; Samsung says this can go from 0-75% in 30 minutes, which is near enough there in our experience. And it also sends the bare minimum power to certain apps – so it gives you enough to WhatsApp, but doesn't waste power.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Display

As always with Samsung, the screen technology is top-notch. On the S26 Ultra, the display is a 6.9in Dynamic LTPO AMOLED, with a 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ capabilities.

It has two options for color profiles: vivid and natural. The former is punchier and good for streaming, while the latter is for more authenticity, particularly with camera shots. With our colorimeter, the natural setting showcased sRGB gamut color coverage at 96%, and 98% for color volume, which is about the same as the S25 Ultra and other models in this price range.

For those who feel the prying eyes of the world peeking over their shoulder, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has something special for you: a new pixel-level feature that blocks out the display from the side and above. 'Privacy Display', as it is known, is arguably the most important feature on a phone in some time. This is a type of anti-shoulder surfing technology that obscures your screen. It works automatically on notifications, but needs to be activated for individual apps. Once on, sideways viewers will only see a dark display.

The feature works at 'the pixel level', according to Samsung. And it is the result of five years of software engineering and tests. It's an appealing capability for the Samsung S26, but we expect it won't be long before other vendors have alternatives.

It is quite brilliant. No one can see your phone from the side or above, and all passwords have the feature on automatically. I kept it on for about a week, traveling on trains, buses, and in a car, with complete privacy. The only downside is it limits your view when you're shooting video or taking photos.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Specs and performance

Samsung has opted for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 inside the S26 Ultra, with 12GB or 16GB of RAM and either 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage. And, for Android devices, this combination is the most powerful.

In Geekbench 6, the Ultra hit 3702 for single-core workloads and 11307 for multi-core workloads. The only device that pips that is the iPhone 17 Pro Max, according to the Geekbench website. Not that you would be able to notice the difference in real use, but the score is there for those who use their devices to the absolute limit.

Using the 5,000mAh battery to its absolute maximum is also a rarity, as it lasts and lasts. ITPro's standard battery test is a looped video that lasts 20 hrs, but we are starting to see handsets last much longer – and the S26 Ultra was just five hours short of doing two rounds of our in-house test. It lasted a whopping 35hrs and 43mins, which is simply amazing.

What’s more, the Enterprise Edition comes with a range of specific features for security and maintenance. These include the Knox Suite Enterprise Plan, which protects devices and data from malware and other malicious threats via multi-layered government-grade software. Along with a three-year warranty, business customers will also get up to seven years of security and maintenance releases and an extended product lifecycle.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Cameras

The cameras (as always) are where the Ultra really shines. There are four lenses (200MP, 10MP, and two 50MP – one telephoto) with vast improvements to the software that underpins them. Case in point, night shots which use the Snapdragon chip to pull more detail out in low light settings, with a brighter aperture and less noise. I used this feature a lot, capturing stunning images later in the evening and at night. The only issue is that you need steady hands to hold the phone still while it captures enough details to make the shot, though the on-device stabilization does help a lot.

I noticed limits to the stabilization elsewhere, such as the maximum telephoto range, which gives you very melty-looking images. Up to 30 times zoom, and it becomes very shaky, but there are many impressive levels before that. And you also get an AI assist, which is largely how people get such detailed shots of moons and faraway sights.

For video, the Ultra goes even bigger, with an 8K sensor recording at 30fps. It boosts stabilization, allows for auto framing, and automatic corrections for action shots. For professionals and content creators, the Ultra also has Advanced Professional Video (APV) capabilities, which preserve the quality of your shoots from capture through to edits, which is also aided by the improvements to storage.

The auto framing feature is a little jaw-dropping. Essentially, you lock on to a subject, and no matter how much shaking goes on, the footage remains still, stabilized, and aligned with the person or thing you're shooting. You have to believe me, I tried spinning the camera and violently rocking it side to side, and it still came back with perfectly still video. This could well be the death of the gimbal.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Is it worth it?

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra costs $1,999.99 (£1,279.99), and for that you get a giant slab of a smartphone with a privacy display, long battery life, a super processor, AI features, and a brilliant camera system. It's a lot, both in price and quality. So it really is worth weighing up your needs.

If you are a business that creates lots of video, or you're part of the team within a business that needs a smartphone that can be used for quick video production, then the S26 Ultra is almost an all-in-one production kit. It shoots crisp footage, gives you unparalleled stabilization, and allows you to transfer those files with little to no loss of quality. It simply is a (mini) filmmaker's dream.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra specifications

CPU Snapgragon 8 Elite Gen 5

Display 6.9in Dynamic LTPO AMOLED 2X, 120Hz, HDR10+

RAM up to 16GB

Storage up to 1TB

Cameras 200MP f/1.4 (wide), 10MP, (telephoto), 50MP f/2.8 (periscope telephoto), 50MP f/2.9 (ultrawide). Front: 12 MP f/2.2, (wide)

Connectivity Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4

Dimensions 163.6 x 78.1 x 7.9 mm

Weight 214 g

Operating system Android 16, up to 7 major Android upgrades, One UI 8.5

2026 will be Samsung’s “year of leaps forward” in its devices division as the company promises to bring AI to all its products.

Roh Tae-moon, Samsung Electronics’ president, CEO, and head of device experience (DX) division said in his new year’s address that the company “must organically integrate AI technology into all devices and service ecosystems in the DX sector”. “Through this,” he said, “we can leap forward as a leading company in AI transformation”.

This transformation, which the company has dubbed “AX”, goes deeper than just AI technology, according to Roh, who said it’s “a process that fundamentally changes our thinking and work processes”.

While Roh said he wants the DX division to make 2026 “a year of leaps forward”, there’s no indication of time scales for this pan-device AI roll-out – including if it will be completed in the next 12 months.

That doesn’t mean we can expect nothing from the company in terms of new devices, though. With CES starting on 6 January, just four days after Roh’s address, it’s strongly rumoured the company will be making some significant announcements. Given the mood music, there’s reason to think these may mark the first steps in his vision for a transformed DX division.

AI takes center stage in semiconductor business

Samsung has already been making hay from the AI boom in its semiconductor business and that looks set to continue in 2026. Jeon Young-hyun, the company’s EVP and head of device solutions (DS) division, claimed in his new year’s address that “Samsung Electronics is that world’s only semiconductor company capable of providing a ‘one-stop solution’”.

“Leveraging this strength, we will respond to the unprecedented demand for AI semiconductors and, together with our customers, lead the AI era,” he added.

In its Q3 2025 financial results, the company revealed its DS division had brought in 33.1 trillion South Korean Won ($22.9 billion) in revenue during the quarter, generating 3.6 trillion South Korean Won ($2.5 billion) in profit. This is a quarter-over-quarter increase of 19% and 6.6% respectively.

Most of this was driven by its memory range, with the HBM3E DRAM called out as being particularly popular “in line with strong AI demand”. Its Q4 2025 and FY 2026 outlook also focused on the potential for AI to drive revenue not only through the HBM DRAM range (which is already sold out) but also DDR5 and LPDDR5x, as well as high-density QLC SSD.

Samsung has also benefited from a deal with OpenAI to supply AI-focused memory for the Stargate project – a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and MGX. With hyperscalers also reportedly locking in multi-year deals and a boom in high-performance computing (HPC), this segment of the business will likely continue to be a solid stream of revenue.

Samsung's 'Fan Edition' of its Galaxy S25 range is more premium than you would expect. One of its four camera lenses is 50MP, the display is big and beautiful, and it has the kind of long battery life my old Nokia 3210 would be proud of.

However, there are some specifications that you will only find on a budget handset; you only have 8GB of RAM, and the storage options only go up to 512GB. This is also the Enterprise Edition, which means it comes with some business-only perks. And its $650 (£450) price is very reasonable.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: design

The Fan Edition of the S25 looks exactly the same as the other S25 models, with a flat back cover encased in a cold metal chassis. It has a smart and polished look, with power buttons and a volume rocker down the right-hand side, and a SIM tray to the left of its single USB-C port at the very bottom.

With its 6.7in display, the S25 FE feels big in the hand. The whole handset is a whopping 161.3mm in height and 7.4 mm in thickness, which makes it slightly awkward to swipe or open apps in one hand. But this long screen is absolutely great for watching content – it was even good on a few Zoom calls.

Around the back, the three camera lenses are the main point of focus; they protrude to the point that the handset doesn't lie flush on a desk. Arguably, most people will fix that with a case, but if you don't, it rocks like a seesaw when you use the touchscreen. I didn't purchase a case (didn't have it for long), and it became an issue using it in tandem with my laptop. You don't get this on the Google Pixel as it has a wide camera bar that stretches across the device.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: Display

Samsung is arguably the king of screens, and what you have here on the S25 FE is the same size display you find on the S25 Plus – it's just more affordable. The 6.7in Dynamic LTPO AMOLED display is ridiculously stunning. It comes with a 120Hz refresh rate, HDR10+, and a 1080 x 2340 resolution with 385 ppi density – all very premium specifications.

Now it isn't exactly as good as the S25 Plus; you have a lower peak brightness (1,900 nits), but it doesn't struggle in bright conditions. I found it more than capable of handling direct sunlight and harsh indoor lights. What's more, the refresh rate is buttery smooth, with scrolling on social media fluid.

You can choose between vivid and natural settings for the display, although both are excellent. Colors pop off the screen no matter what content you view, and everything looks warm and vibrant. Video calls are high quality with the selfie camera, and all your favourite shows look at their best – again, I have to point out, Samsung is the king of displays. And the S25 FE is a testament to that.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: Specs and performance

Unlike the standard S25, the Fan Edition has a 4nm Exynos 2400 processor, which scores lower in benchmarks. In Geekbench 6, the FE hit 2190 for single and 7098 for multi-threaded workloads. That is quite a drop, on paper, from the standard S25, which came in at around 9,800 for multi-threaded.

This, however, isn't something I can say I noticed while using the S25 FE. I found it to be super fast and fluid regardless of the apps I used. And there is a lot going on inside the S25 FE, with multiple systems and programs running in the background for image enhancement or prompts for what app you're going to use next.

It's all very subtle and largely helpful, until you get to typing, as there is something very aggressive and wholly wrong with the default setting of predictive text. I found the number of typos and whole words it puts in place frustrating. You can clearly see when and for how long I was using the S25 FE across Slack, Gmail, and WhatsApp, where my corporate messaging was riddled with errors – frankly, it's a feature that can duck off.

On a more positive note, the battery is brilliant. In our looped video test, the S25 FE lasted 29hrs and 27mins. That's comfortably a day's worth, though I did find it drains quicker after a heavy session on the socials. Workwise – Slack messaging, emails, proofreading docs – it has all the hours of juice you'll need.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: Cameras

There are so many camera lenses on the S25 FE that you will wonder if this is actually a mid-level device. You get three on the back: a 50 MP, f/1.8, 24mm wide lens, an 8 MP telephoto one, and a 12 MP one for ultrawide shots. And, within the screen, is a 12 MP, f/2.2, 26mm lens that also shoots wide. It's a 'fan edition' but also heavily stocked.

You can shoot both images and video in their respective Pro modes, which is similar to what Sony Xperia used to offer. For video, it doesn't work as well as just using the default settings. This is arguably where the BlackMagic app has found success, which is a strange consequence of this age of influencers. It seems perplexing that Samsung and its rivals haven't simply added those types of LUTs and controls to their own camera apps.

The controls are slightly better for photos, though you'll be hard-pressed to make them any better than the S25's point-and-shoot capabilities. In our tests, we were able to match the point-and-shoot capabilities. The only time we were able to do better was in misty conditions, or where there was a nice beam of sunlight – the standard camera settings seem to remove these from view in their attempts to improve image clarity, which nearly all smartphone camera systems do.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE: Is it worth it?

My only real issue with the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE is its default settings for certain systems. Predictive text, for example. Which, of course, can be changed. Beyond that, what you have is an affordable smartphone with some quite brilliant premium features.

I love the big, bright display, all four of its camera lenses, and the fact that its battery lasts over a day. This is a device I would recommend for any office worker – or anyone in general. There are also plenty of Enterprise perks to be had with this device, such as next-day replacements and the Knox Suite Enterprise security plan. All of which makes this as good a business phone as there ever has been.

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE specification

As with phones and TV sets, the trend in tablet design seems to be heading towards a bigger-is-better mentality. 12in and 13in screens are now commonplace, with flagship slates like the iPad Pro M5 or Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra boasting 13in or even 14.6in screens. Last year, Samsung didn't even release its usual 11in Galaxy Tab S10, focusing instead on the S10+, with a larger 12.4in panel.

Yet there's still a case to be made for a smaller tablet, particularly where low weight and mobility are paramount. You still have a device that can handle serious workloads, but that won't take up much luggage space or weigh you down while you're on the go.

In fact, no Android tablet makes this case better than the new Samsung Galaxy Tab S11. It's powerful, super portable, and has stamina to spare while weighing in at less than half a kilogram. And while it's undeniably expensive, it's also the only Android tablet fit to go up against Apple's killer combo of the 11in iPad Air M3 and iPad Pro M5.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11: Design

The Galaxy Tab S11 sees Samsung return to the smaller 11in form factor it last used for the Galaxy Tab S9. Indeed, it looks near-identical to the older version, in a dark grey metallic or silver metallic 'armor aluminium' frame, with a light but cleverly reinforced back and edges, slim bezels, and scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 5 upfront. At 253.8 x 165.3 it's a fraction of a millimetre smaller on both axes than the Galaxy Tab S9, not to mention 0.4mm thinner and nearly 30g lighter. Is that a difference you can feel? Maybe not, but it still makes the Tab S11 one of the slimmest, lightest Android tablets around, not to mention smaller in surface area, thinner and lighter than the 11in iPad Air.

There are downsides to the 16:10 aspect ratio compared to Apple's roughly 3:2 format, but it has to be said that the Galaxy Tab S11 feels fantastically easy to hold and well-balanced in the hand, whether you're holding it single-handed vertically or with both hands horizontally. Plus, while it's light, it's still surprisingly robust. In fact, its IP68 rating means it's completely dust-proof and could handle submersion in up to 1.5m of fresh water for up to 30 minutes. That doesn't mean you can work while floating in the hot-tub or a hotel swimming pool, but a coffee spill or being shoved into a backpack shouldn't do it any harm at all.

As with any tablet, there's little in the way of physical connectivity; just a USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port and a micro-SD card slot. The USB-C port can hook up to an external display via a dock or HDMI/DisplayPort adapter, while it charges at a maximum 45W wired charging speed. Otherwise, you have Bluetooth for connecting headphones, mice, and keyboards – including Samsung's £139 Book Cover Keyboard Slim – plus Wi-Fi 6E for your Internet connection. Sadly, only the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra gets Wi-Fi 7.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11: Display, audio and cameras

As with its bigger brother, the Tab S11 Ultra, the AMOLED 2x display on the Galaxy Tab S11 is almost predictably superb. In our colorimeter tests it covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut, with a 127.6% gamut volume, and 88.7% of DCI-P3. The 2560 x 1600 resolution makes for pin-sharp, highly detailed image quality when watching high-resolution video or viewing and editing photos, and colors are extremely vibrant, particularly in the default Vivid color mode. Thanks to the 120Hz refresh rate, you can scroll through documents or webpages at lightning speed without a pause or flicker to be seen.

As for brightness, we measured a maximum output of 435nits in normal lighting, rising to 978nits with a torch beam shining in the light sensor, so you shouldn't have a problem seeing the screen in anything bar fierce sunlight. With HDR content, it can hit peaks of 1600 nits, and with HDR10+ support it certainly looks spectacular. In fact, I'm not sure there's a better tablet for late night movies and Netflix binges if you're travelling for work. The 16:10 format isn't always perfect for viewing single websites or working on a single document, but it's perfect for side-by-side views when multitasking and a better fit than 3:2 for streaming video.

The audio, meanwhile, is ludicrously and almost supernaturally meaty. There's a limit to how much bass a tablet can product, but there's definitely weight and presence to the tone, not to mention some impressive clarity and detail. It's great for video calls, of course, but almost begs you to pump up the volume if you are streaming after work is done – though ideally not on public transport.

Tablet cameras are widely considered to be something of a joke, but Samsung's tend to be usable and practical. The Galaxy Tab S11 is a bit too big to be used for shooting video or casual snaps, but the rear-facing camera can take detailed, well-exposed images in a wide-range of lighting, and works well for quick document scans or taking photos of invoices and receipts. The front-facing camera has a slightly lower resolution and a slower lens, but still does a fine job of capturing your face for video calls. You can look professional on screen and keep track of a meeting without lugging a laptop around.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11: Software and accessories

Android is often a poor cousin to iPad OS when it comes to tablet functionality, but Samsung has spent the last decade or so refining its UI to make it work effectively on bigger screens. Not only is the One UI one of the most effective and feature-packed interfaces for productivity and multitasking, but it can switch with a keyboard and a trackpad or mouse attached to the desktop-style DEX UI.

Here you have something close to a Windows interface, complete with floating windows, multiple desktop views, and a taskbar at the bottom. Hook your Galaxy Tab S11 up to an external screen, and you have a viable platform for some pretty complex productivity tasks, though you may still find file management and access to cloud resources a barrier, and you may not be able to use all your normal apps – though Microsoft 365 and Google's Workspace Apps both work pretty well in this format.

Another thing the Galaxy Tab S series has going for it is the inclusion of Samsung's S-Pen stylus with every device. It transforms the Galaxy Tab S11 into a superb tool for taking notes or marking up documents, and can also be effective if you're working in image or video editing apps.

However, Samsung's big software push this generation is – you guessed it – on AI enhancements. Some features, such as Circle to Search and the Gemini app, will be familiar from Samsung or Google smartphones, but Samsung has also integrated generative AI editing tools into its Gallery app, plus a Sketch to Image tool that enables you to add new elements to photos by sketching them in with the S-Pen. Meanwhile, there are tools to auto-format, summarize, and spell-check notes, plus Writing Assist tools that can translate, proofread, and restyle your text. Given Apple's tablets are currently running low on genuinely useful AI features, Samsung has a slight advantage here, for however long it lasts.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11: Specs and performance

The Tab S10 Plus and S10 Ultra set new standards for performance on Android tablets, and the S11 Ultra and S11 don't disappoint on this front. Both share the same MediaTek Dimensity 9400+ processor, with a single high-performance ARM Cortex-X925 core running at up to 3620MHz, three Cortext-X4 cores running at 3300Mhz and 4 energy-efficient Cortex A720 cores running at 2400MHz. There's an ARM Mali-G925 Immortalis MP12 GPU running at 3620MHz, and the only real difference between the two tablets is that the S11 Ultra has either 12GB or 16GB of RAM, while the S11 has 12GB across its 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB variants.

In Geekbench 6 there's not much to separate the two. In fact, the S11 scored 2768 in the single-core benchmark and 8950 in the multi-core test, beating the S11 Ultra's scores of 2699 and 8434. What's more, this puts the S11 ahead of the S10 Ultra, too, with 2159 and 7154. With its Snapdragon 8 Elite processor the OnePlus Pad 3 is even faster, scoring 3130 and 9083, but not to the extent that you'd notice much difference. With a score of 2447 in 3D Mark's Steel Nomad Lite test, the Tab S11 is also something of a 3D graphics powerhouse. In the tablet realm, only the OnePlus Pad 3, iPad Air, and iPad Pro score much higher, though the S11 Ultra has the edge here, scoring 2555.

Sadly for Samsung, neither the Galaxy Tab S11 or S11 Ultra can beat Apple's finest on performance. With its desktop-class M5 processor the iPad Pro is significantly faster, and the M3-packing iPad Air has a speed advantage, too. The iPad Pro scores 4193 and 16777 in Geekbench 6, while the M3 iPad Air scores 3117 and 11948. The Samsung can handle a wide range of demanding Android apps, but it doesn't have that kind of power. Nor can Android match iPad OS's impressive gallery of professional-grade creative and productivity apps.

On the plus side, battery life is impressive. With its 8400mAh battery the S11 keeps going for 14 hours and 11 minutes in our usual HD video rundown test, not quite matching the 17 hours and 21 minutes of the S11 Ultra or the 15 hours and 33 minutes of the OnePlus Pad 3, but still improving on the 13 hours of the S10+. It's also fairly quick to recharge, hitting 38% in half an hour of charging.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11: Is it worth it?

This is a great, relatively compact Android tablet, blessed with a fantastic screen and solid performance. It's a shame that it's outperformed and – in some respects – outclassed by the OnePlus Pad 3, meaning you have to weigh up whether you can compromise on performance and a longer battery life to get a slimmer and lighter design.

At its £799 RRP the Tab S11 also feels slightly overpriced. You can buy the equivalent iPad Air for £499 to £599, or the Pad 3 for around £500. Recent sales have seen the price fall to £649, making the Tab S11 a more attractive deal, but it's a shame that Samsung is charging so much when the competition is so good and so affordable.

For some business users, the portability and bundled S-Pen will be worth the premium, while Samsung's software and AI features remain the best on Android. Yet with rivals upping their game, you can't help feeling that Samsung either needs to match them at every level or take a look at bringing down the cost.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 specifications

Researchers have uncovered a new class of Android attack based on a years-old data-stealing browser attack method.

The technique, dubbed Pixnapping by US-based researchers, allows attackers to stealthily steal sensitive information displayed by other apps or even websites without users ever realizing their data has been compromised.

This data can include two-factor authentication (2FA) codes, private messages, and even financial information.

In proof-of-concept tests, the team was able to recover sensitive information from widely used apps and websites such as Signal, Venmo, Google Authenticator, Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Accounts.

Notably, the malicious app was able to steal 2FA codes from Google Authenticator in less than 30 seconds, all without requiring any Android permissions or displaying suspicious activity to the user.

Pixnapping allows a malicious Android app to 'snap' pixels from other apps or websites by exploiting Android APIs and a GPU hardware side channel known as 'GPU.zip', which leaks information about how the graphics hardware processes visual data.

How Pixnapping attacks work

Pixnapping works in a three-stage process, with the first being invoking a target app, such as Google Authenticator, to cause sensitive information to be submitted for rendering.

The next step involves inducing graphical operations on individual sensitive pixels rendered by the target app - for example, the pixels that are part of the screen region where a 2FA character is known to be rendered by Google Authenticator.

A side channel such as GPU.zip is then used to steal the pixels operated on during step two, one pixel at a time. Steps two and three are repeated for as many pixels as needed to run optical character recognition over the recovered pixels and recover the original content.

The researchers demonstrated successful attacks on modern Google and Samsung phones, including the Pixel 6 through Pixel 9 ranges, and the Galaxy S25, running Android versions 13 through 16.

However, because the core mechanisms used by Pixnapping are typically available in all Android devices, the vulnerability is likely to affect a wide range of smartphones across manufacturers.

“Conceptually, it is as if any app could take a screenshot of other apps or websites without permission, which is a fundamental violation of Android’s security model,” said researcher Riccardo Paccagnella, assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Software and Societal Systems Department.

Initial patches failed to solve the issue

In February, the research team disclosed its findings to Google, which rated Pixnapping High Severity and began tracking it as CVE-2025-48561.

While Google attempted to mitigate the issue by restricting access to certain APIs, the research team said it later discovered a workaround that restored the attack’s effectiveness.

There's no evidence that the vulnerability has been exploited in the wild. However, as of October 13, researchers said Android remained vulnerable – although Google plans to issue an additional patch in its December Android security bulletin.

"Fixing Pixnapping will likely require changes to core Android mechanisms, for example, by allowing apps to prevent other apps from drawing over their sensitive content," said Paccagnella.

To prevent Pixnapping, the researchers recommend that users keep their Android devices updated with the latest patches as soon as they are released.

They plan to release Pixnapping’s source code once effective patches are available, to support further academic research and industry defenses.

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The amazing thing about the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra is how much more it is than last year's heavily packed S10 Ultra. It's thinner, lighter, but also more powerful and longer lasting. It is quite the feat to take something so 'ultra' and add more to it.

And it has done so with some panache, giving users more of what they want: power, endurance, and AI innovation. The does, unfortunately, come at a pretty hefty price (£1,200/$1,200), practically double the OnePlus Pad 3, but the same as the S10 Ultra from last year.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra: Design

There is not a great deal of difference between the S11 Ultra from last year's S10 Ultra; it's slightly thinner, but largely the same height and width. There is a newer Mediatek chipset, but the same resolutions for both front and rear camera lenses. And the display is the same size and resolution. These are not in any way terrible specifications, but it's worth noting that it's perhaps not worth upgrading from the S10 Ultra.

It is, though, a thoroughly lovely-looking slab of technology. Our review unit is a cool, bluely-gray affair, with a white Samsung logo and grey accents on the back. The two camera lenses have a minimal look, and the corners are neatly rounded. At 326.3mm tall, it's large, almost to the point of being unwieldy, but also thin as a wisp at 5.1mm. Taking photos is a little awkward, as is holding it in one hand. However, that is the price one pays for a lovely, big-screen tablet. We would have loved to see the keyboard and or cover case, but, alas, we were not supplied with one.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra: Display

When it comes to displays, Samsung sets its own lofty standard as it is the clear market leader in most form factors. The S11 Ultra has a 14.6in AMOLED panel, with HDR10+, 120Hz refresh rate, and a 1,848 x 2,960 resolution. All that is encased in some skinny bezels.

We tested the display with our colormeter and DisplayCal, with the screen in its 'Natural' mode. And we were suitably impressed with the results. The S11 Ultra reproduced 99.7% of the color gamut, which is almost the same as last year's S10 Ultra. To the naked eye, its black level is deep and dark, and it reproduces vivid colors.

You can't really avoid touching the screen, though; your thumb will encroach due to the skinniness of the bezels and the thinness of the whole thing, but it seems relatively good at determining what is a deliberate touch and an accidental one.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra: Specs and performance

When it comes to the chipset, there is a considerable upgrade with Mediatek 9400+ processor with either 12GB or 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage. This is a faster, more efficient chip that's been developed with a 3nm process. And that is very apparent in Geekbench scores and our in-house battery test results.

In Geekbench 6, the S11 Ultra hit 2,699 for single-core performance and 8,434 for multi-threaded performance. Both are significant increases over the S10 Ultra (2,159 and 7,154, respectively) and most other tablets, though neither score can match the iPad or the OnePlus Pad 3.

In day-to-day use, however, the S11 Ultra is superb; great at all it does and all you don't know it does. Hours of streaming, scrolling social media, and even some light Excel work. Provided you get the keyboard accessory (which we sadly didn't), this is as good a work tablet as any around.

The new processor also aids battery life, and we found the S11 Ultra had much more endurance than its predecessor. The S11 Ultra lasted 17hrs and 21mins in our looped video test, a rather large improvement over the 13hrs and 45mins for the S10 Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra: Features

There is a glut of features on the S11 Ultra, with AI again front and center. So much so that there is a dedicated AI button on the keyboard – in the same style as your Copilot button on a Windows AI PC.

Bixby is still somewhere in the mix, but Gemini Live is somewhat in the way. This is a type of AI assistant that can help you with a range of tasks, along with the Galaxy AI tools. These mainly focus on writing prompts, language interpretations, and email summaries. There are plenty of other features here, but it's a little hit and miss in terms of usefulness.

The two camera lenses on the back are 13MP and 8MP, the latter is ultrawide. Both are fairly decent for tablet cameras – but it always feels unnecessary when you have such amazing cameras on your phone.

Although we didn't get a keyboard, we did receive the new redesigned S-Pen stylus. It also has a new place on the tablet for charging (top right edge). It doesn't look very nice – sort of like a white version of a pen you might fill your Lotto numbers in with. But it is highly responsive and comfortable to use.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra: Is it worth it?

And so to the real question: should you get a Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra? If you're a consumer who hasn't got the S10 Ultra, then it is a worthy purchase. If you're looking for tablets for your staff, the answer is also yes, provided you get all the accessories that your staff need, and your team has reasons to use an AI-powered tablet.

We can't say that there are a lot of useful capabilities on this tablet that one can't find on, say, the OnePlus Pad 3, or last year's S10 Ultra. Our view may have been different if we had the keyboard – we could have given a fairer assessment of its business capabilities. That being said, it is a wonderful slab of technology, packed with AI features, and the battery life is fantastic. In that regard, it is very much a tablet worthy of the name.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra specifications

OpenAI has announced a series of partnership agreements on global AI data center infrastructure.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are to supply advanced memory chips for OpenAI's global Stargate initiative, scaling up existing production to hit 900,000 DRAM wafer starts per month.

"The world is at a pivotal moment with the advent of AI, and the industry must collaborate to effectively chart the future," said Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee. "Samsung is excited to partner with OpenAI, where we will together catalyze breakthroughs and possibilities."

Samsung SDS is looking at a deal with OpenAI to jointly develop AI data centers and provide enterprise AI services, as well as collaborating with OpenAI in the design, development, and operation of the Stargate AI data centers. It will also provide consulting, deployment, and management services for businesses looking to integrate OpenAI's AI models into their internal systems.

Samsung C&T and Samsung Heavy Industries, meanwhile, will work with OpenAI on global AI data centers, with a particular focus on the joint development of floating data centers.

OpenAI has also signed a separate deal with SK Telecom to explore building an AI data center in Korea.

"Partnering on Stargate represents a landmark moment for SK and the official starting point for comprehensive technological innovation, with SK bringing powerful synergies across the full AI stack – memory semiconductors, data centers, energy, and networks," said SK chairman Chey Tae-won.

"As primary partners, SK and OpenAI will jointly drive global AI infrastructure innovation through expanding collaboration spanning infrastructure, model development, applications, and breakthrough research on next-generation AI computing solutions."

OpenAI has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), looking specifically at opportunities for building AI data centers outside the Seoul Metropolitan Area, spreading economic growth and job creation across the country.

"Korea has all the ingredients to be a global leader in AI – incredible tech talent, world-class infrastructure, strong government support, and a thriving AI ecosystem," said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

"We're excited to work with Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and the Ministry of Science and ICT through our global Stargate initiative to support Korea's AI ambitions."

The news comes as OpenAI finalizes a secondary share sale totaling $6.6 billion, making it now the world's most valuable startup – ahead of SpaceX – at a $500 billion valuation.

"As we have seen with other disruptive technologies, the competitive AI arms race will soon impact the global economy while influencing technical innovation, productivity, market efficiencies, and the actual GDP of countries," said Jitterbit president and CEO Bill Conner.

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On first impressions, the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro is, almost incredible: a 16in laptop with a gorgeous display in a body less than half an inch thick. It packs in one of Intel's new Lunar Lake processors, giving you significant built-in GPU and AI performance, along with a spacious keyboard with a dedicated numeric pad. Without wishing to spoil the rest of the review, performance is solid and battery life is off the chart. It's one of the most elegant big-screen laptops that we've reviewed this year. Yet much as we think Samsung's latest has a lot to offer business users, it's also frustrating as it gets most of the big things right, only to fumble in one key area.

Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360: Design

Like LG with its Gram range, Samsung seems to have mastered how to make a big screen laptop without the attendant weight and bulk. The Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 has a 355 x 252mm footprint that's not a whole lot bigger than its 16-inch screen. It's 12.8mm thick and 1.69Kg in weight, yet the alloy chassis feels incredibly solid, with barely noticeable seams and almost no flex in the lid. It looks fantastic with its dark grey metallic finish and works as comfortably on the lap as on the desk. Only when the hardware is pushed hard does it emanate the slightest bit of noise or heat, and even then we're talking a little surface warmth and not much of a racket.

What's more, the design is versatile. As the name suggests, the Book 5 Pro 360 has a 360-degree hinge, enabling you to push the back of the screen against the base and use it as an oversized tablet, or in a tent configuration as a smart screen or compact all-in-one PC. Samsung has even provided an S-Pen stylus for making notes or freehand sketching. There's no garage to stow it away in, only a magnetic area on the lid, but it's a useful addition for a laptop of this type.

Where many recent slim-and-light laptops have offered a tiny range of ports, The Book 5 Pro 360 goes beyond the usual two Thunderbolt 4/USB Type-C ports to fit in a full-sized HDMI 2.1 video output and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port too. Throw in Wi-Fi 6 for the home or office network, and you've got everything you need for work or presentations in the body of the laptop itself.

But now we come to the Galaxy Book 5's biggest problem: everyday usability. Its touchpad is just too damn big, measuring roughly 15 by 10.9cm and occupying a huge chunk of the laptop's deck. It gives you a big working area to go with the big screen, and it's as smooth and effective in its tracking as you could wish for. Yet it also leaves your left hand crammed into the bottom-left hand corner while you're typing, which is an issue when the keyboard is also so large and the layout so spacious.

As for that keyboard, the off-balance typing position is only the start. The layout itself is mostly fine, despite the disappointingly small left Shift and Ctrl keys, but the action is very shallow, giving you not quite enough tactile feedback when you click down on a key. Initially, we also found the keys were occasionally tough to actuate, though this did improve with time and practice. Usability is always subjective, but the keyboard makes the Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 less of a pleasure to use. It's a laptop you slowly get accustomed to, rather than one that feels right from the word go.

Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360: Display

The AMOLED screen is an absolute knockout. With a maximum 377cdm/2 with SDR content, It doesn't go insanely bright in normal use, but whites look pretty dazzling and it's usable in anything bar direct sunlight. Meanwhile, the combination of the 16in screen size and the 2880 x 1800 resolution gives you both a pin-sharp picture and an enormous space to work on, perfect for the kind of task where you're pulling in information from multiple apps and documents or doing complex creative work.

Color reproduction is almost flawless, with the AMOLED tech covering 100% of the sRGB color gamut with a volume of 150% and 98.5% of DCI-P3 with a volume of 106%. The average Delta-E creeps just above 1, at 1.19, but it's still low enough for color-critical design work.

The front-facing camera isn't always so impressive, delivering slightly noisy video in low light conditions with a weird color creep effect on areas of skin. Still, it's perfectly adequate for online meetings during daylight hours. The sound, meanwhile, is clear, warm, and unexpectedly full-bodied. Neither voice calls, videos nor background music will leave you wishing that you'd plugged some headphones in.

Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360: Performance

The Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 we had in for testing pairs an Intel Core Ultra 7 265V processor with 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 1TB SSSTC PCIe 4.0 SSD. The CPU has four performance cores running at up to 5GHz and four low power efficient cores at up to 3.7GHz, with none of the SMT tech that, on earlier Intel chips or current AMD CPUs, allowed a single core to run two threads at once.

Intel's new architecture is extremely efficient and most apps run at impressive speeds. In our time with the Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360, it never felt anything less than snappy and super-responsive. In the PCMark10 productivity applications benchmark its score of 6779 isn't massively behind the Asus Zenbook S16 (7229) or the Asus ProArt PX13 (7534), both of which have AMD's 12-core/24-thread Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chips.

Yet in benchmarks that focus on multi-threaded performance, the Core Ultra 7 265V struggles to keep up. The Galaxy Book 5 scores 11037 in the Geekbench 6 multi-core benchmark and 618 in Cinebench 2024's multi-threaded rendering tests. The Zenbook S16 scores 13508 and 877 in the same tests, with the ProArt PX13 at 15080 and 1023.

The Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 is also competing with machines based on Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite chips. These won't run the PCMark10 benchmark, but they deliver even higher figures in Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024. For example, the Asus Vivobook S15 scored 14337 in Geekbench 6's multi-core tests and 941 in Cinebench R24.

To be honest, this shouldn't worry you if you're not a heavy user of demanding multi-threaded apps. If your focus is on office and productivity work, the Galaxy Book 5 Pro is going to be more than fast enough. What's more, the Core Ultra 7 is a good all-rounder, with impressive 3D performance and an NPU that meets and beats the requirements of Microsoft's Copilot+ PC spec. You won't find any Spapdragon X laptops scoring 4302 in the 3D Mark TimeSpy test, and 47TOPS of AI processing power isn't to be sniffed at, either. As more applications roll in AI features, the Galaxy Book 5 Pro should be well-equipped to run them.

At the time of writing, the Copilot+ features of Windows 11 still don't install and run on Intel or AMD's tech. What's more, Samsung is pushing a number of Galaxy AI features with the Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 that actually require a linked Samsung phone with Galaxy AI to run them, merely using the laptop as an external screen. It would be slightly more impressive were these features running on the laptop itself.

Still, let's not hold Samsung's marketing against it. Instead, let's end with an unexpected strength. We fully expected the Book 5 Pro 360 to fall down on battery life, even with the energy efficiency of Intel's CPU taken into account. After all, no machine with a massive OLED screen can give you much more than a working day?

Well, we were wrong. In our standard video rundown test with the screen calibrated to a brightness of 170cdm/2, the Book 5 Pro 360 kept going 21hrs and 57min, making it the longest-lasting Windows laptop that we've ever tested.

There is one big caveat here. Intel's CPU can now run 1080p and 4K video on its most power-efficient cores, meaning what you get when playing video won't necessarily be matched when running business apps. All the same, it's incredibly impressive, and in practice, we've found that the Samsung can get me through one working day and most of the next morning without having to plug into the mains.

Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360: Is it worth it?

The Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 comes close to being the best big-screen laptop we've seen this year. There's nothing much to fault about the screen, the core design or the performance, and its NPU and connectivity should keep it relevant for years to come. Yet the keyboard and general usability aren't quite at the same level, acting as a drag on the overall experience. If you can get used to the off-kilter position and shallow travel, you'll find a serious productivity machine with epic stamina. If not, you might be left wondering how Samsung got so much right, yet missed something so crucial.

Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 specifications

With Apple dominating the tablet market, selling over 1 in 3 of all devices sold, Samsung has established itself as the only serious competition, with the Galaxy Tab S series as the flagship model. You know what you're getting with a Tab S tablet: cutting-edge specs, Samsung's most advanced features, and arguably the best screens in the business, all at price points that position them directly against Apple's high-end iPad Pro. Well, the new Tab S10+ fits that profile perfectly. It's as good as Android tablets get.

This year there is no 'standard' Tab S10, making the S10+ the most affordable option in the two-strong line-up. With prices starting at £999 and a smaller 12.4in screen, it's both physically and financially more manageable than the 14.6in/£1199 Tab S10 Ultra, and arguably a more practical choice for many users. But do you miss out on anything by plumping for the S10+, and how does the smaller slate hold up against Apple's finest?

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+: Design

With a few exceptions, the Galaxy Tab S10+ is basically the Tab S10 Ultra, only smaller. Its 285.4 x 185.4mm frame and 571g weight make it easier to stuff inside a bag or use one-handed, and the Tab S10+ works better in situations where space may be limited or you're trying to use your tablet on the go. It comes in the same attractive Moonstone Grey and Platinum Silver finishes, with slim bezels around the screen and the module for the front-facing cameras encroaching in at the center of the top or right-hand edge.

There's no headphone socket, just a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, which doubles up for charging (up to 45W) and data transfer (up to 5Gbits/sec). The only features on the rear worth noting are the slightly inset magnetic strip that holds the bundled S-Pen securely in place, and the 13MP and 8MP cameras which sit to one side.

Oddly, the S10+ is slightly thicker than the larger S10 Ultra, but only by an unnoticeable fraction of a millimeter. Otherwise, it feels every bit as premium and every bit as robust, with a redesigned framework that's supposed to protect the tablet from drop damage, and IP68 water and dust resistance to keep it safe out on the road.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+: Display

The display is smaller than the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra's and it doesn't go as bright. Where we measured the larger screen hitting 603cd/m2 with SDR content and adaptive brightness turned on, the smaller version maxed out at 497.1cdm/m2. In no other respect could you call it inferior. In fact, the 2800 x 1752 resolution image is spectacularly crisp and clear, with a 266ppi pixel density that beats the Tab S10 Ultra and the 11in iPad Air.

What's more, Samsung's AMOLED tech gives you stunning contrast, punchy colors, and beautifully subtle darker tones. It covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut and 92.8% of DCI-P3, and you could use it for editing movies, not just watching them. Having said that, it's a fantastic way to enjoy Dolby Vision and HDR material, where you can also make the most of the clear and surprisingly rich sound.

We think the 12.4in screen size puts the Tab S10+ in something of a sweet spot, giving you a bigger picture and more working space than you'll get on a standard 11in tablet, without the bulk of the larger 13in and 14in models. It's great for split-screen multitasking, but there's not too much in the way of wasted space when you're working in a single app.

The S10+ gets extra credit for having an effective set of cameras. The dual 12MP front-facing cameras are brilliant for video chats and online meetings, with the option of a wide-angle view. The image is bright, detailed, and consistently well-exposed. And while the rear-facing cameras aren't going to replace a decent smartphone's, they can still take good shots in most lighting, especially if you don't make too much use of the digital zoom. For business purposes, you have everything you need.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+: Software and accessories

Samsung's S-Pen has long been one of the Tab S range's killer features, not just because you get it in the box, but because Samsung's apps assume you're going to use it. It makes the Tab S10+ a note-taking, document-annotating, idea-sketching machine out of the box, while also working well for navigating complex productivity and design apps.

What's more, Samsung has designed many of its new Galaxy AI features around the S-Pen, transforming handwritten scrawl into editable text or dubious doodles into slightly less awful illustrations or cartoons. You can also rely on Galaxy AI to translate notes, transcribe recordings, and even craft responses in the messaging and chat apps. The results aren't always perfect – one sample transcription was riddled with misheard nouns and embarrassing mistakes – but there are signs here that Samsung is working out what AI can do to make a tablet more useful in and out of work.

The other strength of Samsung's One UI software is its support for multitasking. Just about every Android tablet now offers split-screen views, but Samsung's approach is more flexible and – with familiarity – more efficient. What's more, Samsung's DEX interface, available at the tap of an icon, transforms One UI into a functional desktop UI, perfect for navigating with the optional AI Book Cover Keyboard or you're a third-party Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. With resizable, floating windows and a dock, you get a laptop-like experience that's perfect for more demanding tasks, especially where you need to work across multiple apps.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+: Specs and performance

The Tab S10+ doesn't have the exact same spec as the S10 Ultra. It has Wi-Fi 6E for its network connection rather than the Ultra's Wi-Fi 7, and the battery capacity is smaller, with 10,090mAh instead of 11,200mAh. But when it comes to the MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ CPU and 12GB of RAM, it's identical. It's the joint-fastest Android tablet that money can currently buy.

This translates to Geekbench 6 scores of 2154 in the single-threaded tests and 7154 in multi-core. To put that in perspective, the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2 we looked at recently scored 1298 and 4272 in the same tests, while the old Galaxy Tab S9 Plus scored 2115 and 5695. With a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 CPU, the old model was itself no slouch. The S10+ also has some serious 3D horsepower, delivering 30fps in the 3Dmark Wildlife Extreme benchmark, and 13.15fps in the most intensive Steel Nomad Lite test. That might not sound that impressive, but the majority of Android tablets can't get much above 5 to 10fps in the latter test.

The only issue Samsung faces here is that the newest iPad Air and iPad Pro tablets are faster, thanks to their desktop class M2 and M4 processors. There's an argument that most tablet apps don't actually need that kind of power, but if you're looking for maximum performance and the best line-up of professional and creative apps, the iPad Pro is still the way to go. Just bear in mind that the cheapest 13in model will still cost you north of £1250, while the £999 model has a smaller 11in display.

Battery life isn't quite as good as on the iPad Pro or Tab S10+ Ultra. The 11in iPad Pro can last for over 16 hours in our video rundown test, while the bigger Tab S10 can do close to 14 hours. With the S10, the battery ran dry four minutes shy of 13 hours; not a bad result, but a little underwhelming from a tablet that's exceptional in almost every other way.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+: Is it worth it?

The Galaxy Tab S10+ is either the best or second-best Android tablet you can buy, depending on how much you value the additional size of the Ultra model. Through the S-Pen, AI features and the One UI, Samsung has done its best to make it a powerful business tool that can run the most demanding Android apps. It is expensive, but the screen, features, and overall quality do a solid job of justifying the premium price. And while Apple still has the performance advantage and the richer app and service ecosystem, a lot of business users are going to find all they need through web-based apps and the Google Play Store. That's enough to make the S10+ a viable alternative to a laptop for travel and mobile use – especially with the right accessories. It's still not going to be your primary PC, but it's a brilliant sidekick slate.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10+: Specifications

How big do you need a tablet to be? Over a week of using the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra, this question came up again and again. Samsung's super-sized slate is a marvel of engineering, packing a powerful spec and a massive 14.6in screen into a device that's incredibly thin. Yet, as with its predecessor, the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, and the version before that, we've grown to love the enormous display and its expansive working space, while wondering exactly who it's for.

The answer is that the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra is not the ideal tablet for everyone – or even everyone with more than £1200 to spend. It is, however, a fantastic option for a specific niche of users. And if you're looking for a tablet that makes a big first impression, they really don't get better than this.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra: Design

In terms of the physical design, there's not much difference between the S10 Ultra and the outgoing S9 Ultra. The 208.6 x 326.4mm footprint is the same and the drop from 5.5mm to 5.4mm thick is imperceptible. A reduction in weight from 732g to 714g is hardly a game changer, while the dual front-camera setup is unchanged from last year's model, as is the dual rear camera setup at the back. The bundled S-Pen stylus still clamps magnetically to a strip next to the rear cameras, and you'd be hard-pressed to tell new from old by sight apart from a change of colors, from graphite or beige to moonstone grey and platinum silver.

Samsung has apparently redesigned its Enhanced Armor Aluminium frame to make it even more durable, and with IP68 water and dust resistance, the Tab S10 Ultra is tougher than you might expect. The styling, fit, and finish is exemplary, as you'd hope for a tablet at this price. There's a single USB Type-C port for data transfer and charging, running at a maximum 5Gbits/sec. You've also got Wi-Fi 7 networking onboard, making this the first tablet that we've tested with support for the latest standard.

Let's not beat around the bush: this is a big and heavy tablet. You can hold it one-handed and use the onscreen keyboard or use the S-Pen stylus to sketch or take notes, but it's not really comfortable over long periods. In fact, it's better if you can leave it on a desk or rest it on your lap or knee. You will also notice the size if you try to pack it in a bag or backpack. It's more like cramming in an unusually thin laptop than a conventional slate. Even while watching video, we had to wonder whether the benefits of a bigger image outweighed the effort of holding it in place, and we even found it more comfortable to hold the tablet further away than we normally would, just to see the picture as a whole. All the same, there are other scenarios where the bigger format brings real benefits. we will circle back to these once we've talked about the display itself.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra: Display

Even without its sheer size, the Tab S10 Ultra's screen would be absolutely stunning. It's a top-notch AMOLED affair with a 2960 x 1848 resolution, giving you a pixel density of 266ppi. It's bright, hovering at around 380cd/m2 when used indoors with SDR content, but going up to 603cd/m2 for visibility in sunlight, and exceeding 775cd/m2 with HDR video. Couple that with the spectacular contrast levels of AMOLED, and you have an incredibly sharp and vibrant display that's easily as good as anything else out there.

Color performance is just as spectacular. The Tab S10 Ultra's display covers 99.7% of the sRGB color gamut and 99% of DCI-P3, with gamut volumes of 141% and 99.2%. With an average Delta-E of 0.22, color accuracy is superb. If you need a tablet for professional video or design, the Tab S10 Ultra will meet your screen requirements.

Audio quality is also impressive, particularly given the thinness of the device. You can't expect booming bass, but the sound is warm, detailed, and spacious, only growing harsh when the volume levels have already become uncomfortably loud.

It's also worth mentioning the Tab S10 Ultra's cameras. The 12MP front-facing cameras are unusually good, capturing crisp, well-exposed video with the option of a wide-angle view if you need to fit in more than one face for an ad-hoc virtual meeting. And if the rear 13MP camera isn't quite at the level of Samsung's better smartphone snappers, it's fine for quick snaps or document scans, with a usable 2x digital zoom – though the 8x maximum is pushing it, creating fuzzy, low-quality images.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra: Software and accessories

It's become a truth universally acknowledged that Apple has the best tablet OS and the best line-up of software, but Samsung has worked hard to position its own One UI spin on Android as a business-grade alternative with its own tangible strengths. A big part of the Galaxy Tab S line's appeal is that the S-Pen stylus is included with each tablet, meaning Samsung can work stylus functionality into its pre-installed apps. As a result, the Tab S10 Ultra is a joy for taking notes, marking up documents, sketching, and drawing, both using those apps and third-party packages. Video and photo editing also feels more natural with the S-Pen than with a finger.

What's more, Samsung has gone big on AI in this year's release. AI features are built into the notes, messaging, and voice recorder apps, so that you can transcribe, summarise and translate with ease. There's even a Sketch to Image tool that, like Microsoft's Co-creator feature, transforms your hapless doodles into illustrations, faux watercolors, and 3D cartoons.

Yet Samsung's biggest strength is its support for multitasking, and it's here that the massive screen size becomes a massive plus. With One UI's flexible split-screen views you've got plenty of space to research in the browser and make notes at the same time. Where apps have complex interfaces with multiple palettes, playback views, and timelines, the larger screen also makes them far more usable. What's more, with Samsung's DEX UI you can go even further, into a full desktop UI with floating, resizable windows and a proper taskbar. Suddenly your Tab S10 Ultra feels less like an oversized slate, and more like an incredibly thin and light detachable PC.

This works best with Samsung's £339 AI Book Cover Keyboard with Trackpad, which effectively transforms the Tab S10 Ultra into an Android laptop. However, even with a third-party Bluetooth keyboard, it can transform the way you use the device. You won't have all the apps you'll find on a Windows or MacOS laptop, but you can easily find the basics to keep you working for a few days away from the office, in a setup that's still going to be noticeably lighter.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra: Specs and performance

Admittedly, the Tab S10 Ultra can't quite deliver high-end laptop levels of performance. Its Geekbench 6 scores – 2159 in the single-core tests and 7154 in multi-core – are impressive by the standards of other Android tablets; The Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2in we looked at recently scored 1298 and 4272. I've seen budget Windows laptops score lower. The MediaTek Dimensity 9300+ has serious multi-threaded chops, not to mention a built-in NPU for AI acceleration. Yet the M2 iPad Air typically scores over 10,000 in the multicore test, and the M4 iPad Pro scores close to 15,000, which puts them in 'proper laptop' territory.

Does this matter? Probably not. From Web-based research to image-editing, 4K video-editing, and more, we couldn't find anything that made the S10 Ultra struggle, and it's exceptionally slick and speedy in day-to-day use. It's also got more 3D graphics power than any other Android tablet that we've looked at, running 3Dmark's Wild Life Extreme test at 30fps and the challenging Steel Nomad Lite test at 13.65fps. To put that in perspective, the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra with its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, manages around 22fps in Wild Life Extreme.

Big screens and high-end CPUs don't tend to tie in with epic battery life, but the Tab S10 Ultra has a reasonable amount of stamina. With the screen brightness turned down to 170cd/m2 it pushed through 13 hours and 45 minutes of HD video playback in our rundown test. In practice, a daily charge got us through a working day and well into the evening, and it's quick if you need a recharge. 30 minutes on a 65W charger took it back up to 30%, though the Tab S10 Ultra only supports charging at up to 45W.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra: Is it worth it?

With prices starting at £1199 and going upwards if you need more storage, the Tab S10 Ultra is one of the most expensive tablets you can buy. For around the same money you could have a Surface Pro or a MacBook Air with more power and a wider range of software. The 13-inch iPad Air with the M2 processor will cost you £400 less.

Yet Samsung's monster tablet still makes a compelling argument for itself, thanks to its awesome screen, multitasking capabilities, good performance, and lightweight design. The consistent S-Pen support and AI features only make that case stronger. Not all of us need a tablet this big – and not every business will have the budget – but if you've ever wanted the convenience of a tablet but felt cramped by the smaller screen, the Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra might be your ideal device.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra specifications

Empowered employees can make or break a business. In fact, according to a Virgin Media O2 Business and Samsung Tech Untapped report, almost three-quarters (72%) of companies admit that outdated technology is holding them back from working efficiently. 

“Technology is meant to empower employees, create better customer experiences and redefine workplace processes to save time and money. But despite all this, it is still only a tool,” the report states.

“And what happens when that tool is no longer fulfilling its role properly? If tech isn’t creating positive outcomes, it’s not much use to you and your team.”

This isn’t just about having the right devices, though. Indeed, it's about creating an environment where employees feel equipped, valued, and supported. 

The skills gap and the rising importance of talent retention

As the cost of recruitment continues to rise, it's clear that keeping skilled employees is no longer a nice to have — it's a critical factor for long-term success. This is especially true in the context of return-to-office (RTO) mandates. According to recent Gartner research, strict RTO mandates can significantly impact employee retention.

The intent to stay among average employees was eight percent lower with strict RTO mandates, while for high-performing employees, it was 16% lower - double the rate of average employees. Moreover, among millennials and women, the intent to stay was 10% and 11% lower respectively when faced with rigid RTO policies. These statistics underscore the importance of flexible work arrangements in retaining valuable talent. 

Employee retention isn't solely about work location policies or competitive salaries. Increasingly, it's about the work environment, culture, and the sense of empowerment employees feel within their roles.

Productivity challenges in a resource-constrained world

Many businesses today are expected to deliver more with less while maintaining the same high standards of service. This creates immense pressure on employees to stay productive, and yet, without the right tools, productivity is often stifled. According to Virgin Media O2 Business and Samsung research, 65% of businesses say they are now expected to deliver results faster than they were just six months ago, but outdated technology frequently slows them down.

Imagine providing your team with slow devices or unreliable software - it’s not just frustrating; it actively reduces productivity. Employees need fast, reliable tools that allow them to collaborate effectively and solve problems in real-time.

Inadequate technology is more than an inconvenience; it’s a productivity killer. Businesses that invest in modern, flexible tools are not just boosting productivity; they are also enabling their employees to meet ever-increasing demands without burnout or frustration. For example, early adopters of hybrid working technologies have reported a 13% increase in productivity and a 7% reduction in costs, showing the tangible benefits of equipping employees with the right technology.

What does tech empowerment look like?

True empowerment goes beyond giving employees a laptop and a smartphone. It’s about providing them with the right tools that not only enable them to work but inspire them to excel. As the workplace becomes more flexible and hybrid models of work become the norm, the technology employees use has to keep up. Flexible working environments demand seamless experiences across different devices and locations. Employees need to feel that their tools are working for them, not against them.

Take, for example, the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, which is designed to enhance productivity no matter where employees are working. With features like automatic transcription and AI-powered assistants, employees can stay focused on what matters most, whether they’re on the road or in a meeting. Tools like these give employees the freedom to collaborate in real-time, from anywhere, without the fear of losing information or falling behind. This kind of empowerment keeps employees engaged and helps them unlock their full potential, leading to better outcomes for the business.

Accessibility, connectivity, and security

While empowering employees through technology is critical, businesses must also address the core concerns of accessibility, connectivity, and security. These elements are foundational to any productive, flexible working environment. Without reliable access to the tools and resources they need, employees cannot do their jobs effectively, no matter how powerful their devices are.

Connectivity is essential for hybrid workers, ensuring they can perform at their best whether they’re at home, in the office, or traveling. With Virgin Media O2 Business’ robust infrastructure, businesses can guarantee fast and reliable connectivity, keeping employees connected and productive across multiple locations. At the same time, security remains a top priority, especially when sensitive data is being accessed remotely. Ensuring that employees have secure, remote access to business-critical systems protects both the company and its employees from potential cyber threats.

Businesses create an environment where employees can thrive by addressing these key concerns and providing employees with the tools and confidence to work from anywhere securely. This, in turn, leads to increased productivity and a more satisfied, engaged workforce.

Leveraging partnerships for maximum benefit

Empowering employees with the right technology isn’t just about buying the latest devices; it’s about forming strategic partnerships that bring together expertise from different fields. 

The Virgin Media O2 Business and Samsung partnership exemplifies how businesses can benefit from such collaborations. By combining Samsung’s cutting-edge technology with Virgin Media O2 Business’ unparalleled connectivity solutions, businesses can offer their employees the best possible tools to work efficiently in any environment.

“When budgets are tight and deadlines even tighter, you need to know that your teams can get on with their work without worrying about frozen screens, patchy phone lines or unreliable internet access,” the Virgin Media O2 Business states.

“That’s why we’ve partnered with Samsung to help you work smarter. You’ll have access to the best devices and flexible financing offers, all backed up by the UK’s most reliable network.”

Partnerships like this go beyond the provision of technology -  they offer transparency, reliability, and innovation that help businesses stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market. With both companies prioritizing security, flexibility, and performance, businesses can be confident that they are equipping their teams with solutions that drive productivity and protect data integrity. By leveraging partnerships that focus on long-term success, businesses can unlock new efficiencies and enhance employee satisfaction, ultimately leading to better overall performance.

Empowerment ROI

“Technology is a force to be reckoned with in the hands of an empowered employee. Tech and employee skills are intertwined, each one less effective without the other. To get the most out of your legacy technology, you need your employees to be using the tech as efficiently as possible,” the Virgin Media O2 Business and Samsung report states. 

Empowering employees with the right tools and technology isn’t just an investment in the workforce; it’s an investment in the business itself. The return on investment (ROI) is clear. Early adopters of hybrid working technology report a 35% increase in ROI, significant boosts in productivity, and reductions in operational costs. The right tools allow employees to work smarter, not harder, and businesses are seeing the benefits of this every day.

By investing in flexible infrastructure and modern devices, businesses are also future-proofing their operations. As technology continues to evolve, businesses that have already adopted these empowering tools will be in a better position to adapt to new innovations and stay ahead of the competition. Whether it’s through reduced employee turnover, lower operational costs, or increased productivity, the ROI of empowering employees speaks for itself.

Providing the right technology, fostering strong partnerships, and addressing key concerns like accessibility and security can unlock significant productivity gains and improve employee retention. The collaboration between Samsung and Virgin Media O2 demonstrates how strategic partnerships can amplify these efforts, equipping businesses with the tools and confidence to thrive in a dynamic work environment.

“Technology has the power to unlock efficiencies across all our organizational touchpoints, from the way employees work together to how we interact with customers and citizens and how we handle time-consuming admin tasks,” claimed Jo Bertram, Virgin Media O2 Business’ managing director, Business and Wholesale in the Tech Untapped report. 

“Times of difficulty are also ones of opportunity and a chance to challenge the status quo. I believe our team is our strongest asset, and I know I’m not alone in this thinking among UK decision-makers. We can’t lose sight of the progress we’ve already made in transforming how we work. We must stay focused on the battle for talent, building digital skills, enhancing employee experiences, and closing the digital divide.

“Together we can help you make the most of what you already have, reach smarter tech investment choices, and create better outcomes for customers, citizens and employees alike.”

For businesses looking to boost their success, the path forward is clear: empower your employees with the right tools, invest in the right partnerships, and watch as productivity, satisfaction, and overall performance reach new heights. This powerful combination will set your business up for success today, tomorrow, and beyond. 

To learn more about the VMO2 and Samsung partnership and how it can benefit your business, click here. 

Samsung Electronics has acquired Oxford Semantic Technologies, an Oxford University spinout specializing in knowledge graph technology, for an undisclosed amount.

Established in 2017 by three University of Oxford professors, OST specializes in Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KRR), a branch of AI that represents a logical and knowledge-based approach.

Unlike machine learning, which finds patterns in vast datasets and draws statistical outputs, KRR enables AI to draw accurate and correct conclusions, and make logical and explainable decisions based on data combined with expert knowledge.

Through the acquisition, OST’s knowledge graph and reasoning software, RDFox, will be combined with Samsung’s AI technology and incorporated into all of Samsung’s products, from mobile devices to televisions and home appliances.

“We are delighted to be working with Samsung. By integrating Samsung’s expertise in user experience and data with our advanced knowledge graph and reasoning technology, we will provide Samsung’s customers with even more sophisticated personalization," said Peter Crocker, CEO of Oxford Semantic Technologies.

"In addition, developing RDFox with Samsung, and being part of the larger group, will provide all of our clients with an even better product, service and support."

Samsung looks to build out on-device AI capabilities

The two companies have been collaborating on a number of projects since 2018, and, with this acquisition, Samsung will secure advanced core engines for personal knowledge graphs. 

These graphs integrate information and context dispersed across various services and apps, tailoring the user experience as it becomes familiar with users’ preferences and usage.

Combined with on-device AI technology, such as that on Samsung’s Galaxy S24 series, the aim is to create a hyper-personalized user experience, while keeping sensitive personal data secure on the device.

"As global consumers realize their growing need for more personalized AI experiences, the acquisition of Oxford Semantic Technologies will further boost Samsung’s strong capabilities in knowledge engineering," said Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, head of Samsung Research and CTO of Samsung Electronics.

"This acquisition is another important step forward as we strive to deliver tailor-made AI experiences built upon our hallmark technological innovation."

OST already has customers in the financial, manufacturing, and e-commerce sectors in Europe and North America. In financial services, its technology is being used for autonomous complex decision-making and tracking financial crime.

In other industries, such as manufacturing and retail, it allows engineers and designers to quickly determine the compatibility of products and parts, providing instant recommendations to customers.

RDFox is also used for smart diagnostics in healthcare, along with decision-making in self-driving cars.

"Oxford Semantic Technologies represents a significant advancement in the field of AI, showcasing how academic research can be transformed into real-world applications that drive industry innovation," said Mairi Gibbs, CEO at Oxford University Innovation.

"Their acquisition by Samsung Electronics underscores the commercial value and potential of their technology in multiple sectors. We see this catalyzing further innovation and partnership in Oxford’s Deep Tech ecosystem between our academic and research community, industry and investors."

Samsung UK has announced the appointment of former Amazon and Nike executive Deborah Honig as its first ever chief customer officer. 

Honig’s arrival adds fresh global executive experience to the Samsung UK leadership team, thanks to an extensive track record of building high-performing teams and delivering growth across consumer-facing sectors.

In her new role, the commercial veteran will be responsible for delivering an “innovative, customer-first experience” across the entirety of the company’s business offerings, Samsung said, as well as evolving its overarching brand in the UK.

“From its rich cultural heritage to the breadth of innovative technology that our customers are using in their daily lives, Samsung is such an exciting brand to help steward and I’m thrilled to be joining the team,” Honig commented.

“Our technology puts the power into our customers’ hands and gives them tools to save time and money, bring joy to their homes and communities, and solve the problems that matter most to them.”

Honig spent the first part of her career as a managerial consultant at global management consulting firm McKinsey, where she was tasked with advising global businesses on strategy, marketing, and commercial leadership.

She then went on to work for prominent global names such as Nike, Amazon, M&S, and Starbucks, holding roles that saw her responsible for developing brands and customer propositions, strategic partnerships, leading retail businesses and building new omni-channel capabilities, as well as leveraging data and technology to transform the customer experience.

“Throughout my career I’ve always put myself in the shoes of our customers to fully appreciate what they want and expect from a brand,” Honig continued. 

“I look forward to working with the fantastic team here at Samsung to deepen our connection with our customers, and help them get the most out of their technology and their relationship with us.”

Driving "transformational change" at Samsung UK

Commenting on the appointment, Samsung UK and Ireland president, Inha Cho, said Honig brings attributes that will help drive “transformational change” and create a more customer-orientated culture.

“She brings a wealth of experience from her strategic and commercial leadership roles at a number of world-class companies, and a unique understanding of UK consumers and the retail landscape,” Cho said.

“I am proud to have her by my side to drive transformational change across our brand communications, partner engagement and cross-divisional collaboration.

“Deborah will be key to us developing a more customer-centric culture, alongside building long-term loyal customers through more tailored and personalized relationships.”

Samsung announced on Friday that it will spend roughly $15 billion on building a new chip research complex in South Korea by 2028, as the tech giant seeks to ease restraints on semiconductor scaling.

Casting light on the complex’s deliverables, Samsung said the new chip facility will be built at the company's Giheung campus to foster research into new technologies, including novel wafer fabrication processes for memory and system semiconductors.

Upon completion, the South Korean facility, which will stretch over 109,000 square meters at Giheung, will further strengthen the tech giant’s foothold in the semiconductor industry.

The Giheung campus also hosted Samsung's 1992 development of the world's first 64MB DRAM, which led the company to scoop the top spot among chip manufacturers the following year.

"We are taking on a new challenge from the very location where we broke ground 40 years ago to build our first semiconductor plant," said Jay Y Lee, Samsung vice chairman.

"If we hadn't made bold R&D investments for next-generation products and in products that came after that, there would be no semiconductor business for Samsung today. We need to continue our tradition of investing preemptively and emphasizing technology," added Lee.

As the global chip shortage continues to stress the big tech, Samsung is continuing to benefit from inflation resulting from the deficit. Increasing semiconductor prices helped Samsung achieve its highest quarterly profit since 2018, according to an earnings guidance published by the company late last year.

Additionally, Samsung announced in July that it would build 11 new chip manufacturing facilities in Texas’ Austin and Taylor, with an investment of $191.2 billion.

Samsung may not have been the first company to bring a foldable phone to market, but its Galaxy Z range has nonetheless gone some way to defining the category. It’s continuing to iterate on this formula, and the latest additions to its lineup - the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 - promise subtle tweaks and improvements in a range of areas.

While the larger Z Fold 4 is aimed at the power users of the world, the compact Z Flip 4 is geared towards much more casual use-cases. This newest model isn’t exactly a huge revision from the previous Galaxy Z Flip 3, but there are a few changes underneath the hood that may elevate it above its predecessor.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Design

Looking at the Z Flip 4, you’d be hard-pressed to find many obvious changes from the previous generation. Samsung tells us the hinge is slimmer and the bezels around the screen are smaller, offering a more immersive experience - if not quite the edge-to-edge display seen on other Samsung devices.

The hinge itself is easy to open and close one-handed, and the 22:9 aspect ratio made it comfortable for us to use without stretching our thumb, although larger-handed users may find it a bit of a struggle to type with both hands at once.

It still uses the same Armor Aluminium construction to protect the chassis and hinge mechanism (which is once again rated for 200,000 folds and unfolds), and both front and rear are protected against drops and scratches by Corning’s Gorilla Glass Victus+. The rear glass has a frosted matte finish which is pleasing to the eye as well as the touch.

The whole affair looks and feels as polished as you’d expect, and the four default colour options - graphite, purple, pink and gold - are all elegant enough to suit any style. If you want something a bit more unique, you can also create your own bespoke colour scheme from one of 75 combinations. It fits in your pocket as well as it fits in with your wardrobe too, thanks to its slim dimensions; while the 7.2mm thickness is actually an almost-imperceptible increase from the last generation, the weight is the same at 183g.

If we have one complaint, it’s that the crease in the screen is still very noticeable. We found this off-putting when we reviewed the Z Flip 3, and we’re expecting it to be similarly jarring to move over while scrolling through social media. This is an inherent issue with foldable displays though, rather than with Samsung in particular.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Display

Crease aside, Samsung’s displays have always been top-notch, and the Z Flip 4 is no exception. The 6.7in main screen uses a 2,640 x 1,080 Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel with a 120Hz maximum refresh rate, and while we haven’t yet put it through our suite of display performance tests, it looks bright, vibrant and colourful, with good viewing angles and excellent clarity. We’d be surprised if it doesn’t match the 100% sRGB gamut coverage of its predecessor.

The smaller 1.9in cover screen is also a super AMOLED model, with a 260 x 512 resolution, and while fidelity is less important than with the main screen - considering most of the time, you’ll only be using it to check notifications and the like - it looks sharp and colourful nonetheless.

Despite the visible crease, watching movies and videos is a joy on the Flip’s display, and content looks fantastic even when viewing it on half the screen with the phone partially folded.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Hardware

That lush display is powered by Qualcomm’s 4nm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, rather than one of Samsung’s first-party Exynos chips, which should offer plenty of horsepower for day-to-day tasks. Unlike the Z Fold 4, the Flip isn’t designed to be a productivity powerhouse, so the 3.2GHz octacore chip and 8GB RAM allocation won’t have to handle too much heavy lifting.

We’ll know more about its capabilities once we’ve had the chance to benchmark it more thoroughly, but in our hands-on session, we found it to be as fast and responsive as you’d expect, with no performance issues to speak of. Performance hasn’t been much of a factor in smartphones for several years, and it’s extremely rare to see a device that isn’t powerful enough to meet expectations.

The same isn’t always true of battery life, however. The previous Galaxy Z Flip featured a 3,300mAh power cell, and hit 12hrs in our battery benchmark tests, which was distinctly disappointing. With an expanded battery capacity of 3,700mAh, this updated model should perform at least somewhat better, but it’s unlikely it will be able to equal the impressive 20-hour result of the Galaxy S22 Ultra.

Even if it isn’t an absolutely top performer, though, the Flip 4 is now compatible with 25W fast-chargers and above (as opposed to the 15W limit on the previous generation), and Samsung promises it will manage 50% recharge in just half an hour. There’s also wireless charging and power-sharing on offer for extra flexibility.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Features

As you’d expect from a Samsung flagship, the Z Flip 4 is sporting the usual complement of usability features, including an IPX8 waterproof rating to protect against accidental dunks and splashes, as well as biometric security via facial recognition and a fingerprint reader embedded in the power button. Connectivity comes in the form of Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, with 5G support for good measure.

There’s no support for the company’s S-Pen stylus, as there is with the Z Fold 4, but software-based optimisations have been added to the UI. This allows various apps to take advantage of the folding screen, such as by previewing a photo on the top portion while providing expanded camera controls on the bottom.

It’s not just the main display that’s flexible; the smaller cover screen has been made a little more useful with expanded interactions and more widgets for things like timers and calendars. Samsung has also added the ability to send short responses to incoming messages directly from the cover screen, which was one of our biggest complaints with its predecessor.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Camera

On the subject of photos, this is one of the most obvious areas of improvement. The Z Flip 4 features a wider lens and 65% brighter pixel sensor to help improve night photos, while the Quick Shot feature (which allows you to take spontaneous selfies without unfolding the device) now supports portrait mode.

The handful of test shots we snapped were bright and clear on both front and rear cameras, with plenty of detail - although there was a touch too much post-processing on our selfies. We’ll have to wait until we can test it in more detail before reaching any final conclusions on quality, however.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hands-on review: Verdict

On first impressions, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 isn’t all that different from the previous generation, but there are a few key changes that make it worth a look. First of all, the expanded battery capacity should offer better longevity (up to a point, at least), while the camera improvements will be welcome for social butterflies.

The £833 price tag is a little steep compared to traditional smartphones, but isn’t all that extortionate for something in this category. This phone doesn’t seem like it’s going to set the world on fire, but if you’re after a compact foldable, it may be one to watch.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 specifications

Samsung has proposed the building of 11 new chip making factories in the Austin and Taylor areas of Texas, representing $191.2 billion of investment.

The proposals, published on the Texas comptroller’s website on Wednesday, mark a significant move by the South Korean manufacturing giant to corner the semiconductor market in the US, and would represent a sizeable investment in Texas' $2 trillion economy.

If approved, the facilities are expected to stimulate the local economy to the tune of 10,000 jobs. Approximately 1,800 of these jobs would be created in Austin, with the remaining 8,200 in Taylor.

It follows another major move by Samsung in Texas this year, with a $17 billion semiconductor facility in Taylor hoping to break ground in 2022. Just last month, Samsung identified Yates Construction, a Mississippi-based contractor, as the builder for this facility, which the company hopes will be operational in 2024.

Speaking to the Austin American Statesman, the executive director of the Austin Regional Manufacturers Association Ed Latson emphasised the scale of the proposal.

"Samsung's commitment and investment in this area are in a class of their own."

"We're talking about the largest foreign investment in the United States right here in our region. It's going [to] have a dramatic impact on the economic development and growth of Central Texas."

The documents published yesterday point to long-term expansion plans in Texas, with estimates that construction on the sites could begin between 2027-29. The proposals seek a Chapter 313 Agreement with the school boards of each area, an agreement named after a chapter in Texas tax law that states a taxpayer may agree to build property and create jobs in exchange for “a 10-year limitation on the taxable property value for school district maintenance and operations tax (M&O) purposes”.

In a statement to IT Pro, Samsung made clear that it is exploring options in the area without committal.

"We currently do not have specific plans to build at this time, however, the Chapter 313 applications to the State of Texas are part of a long-term planning process of Samsung to evaluate the viability of potentially building additional fabrication plants in the United States," said a spokesperson.

Texas is already established as a chip manufacturer, with semiconductors being the state’s 6th largest export in 2019, for a total of over $13.8 billion. Samsung is also well-established in the state, already operating a semiconductor facility that employs thousands of workers.

The expansion of localised semiconductor manufacturing is currently seen as a key goal in both the US and Europe. The EU continues to move ahead with its European Chips Act to accelerate the development of sites such as a planned €33 billion Intel facility in Germany.

Meanwhile, the US Congress is expected to pass a version of its own CHIPS Act soon, which seeks to provide $52 billion in grants for chip manufacturers in order to stimulate domestic production. Manufacturers have lobbied heavily for the funding, with Intel pausing construction on a planned facility in Ohio until the act is passed.

This article was updated to include a statement from Samsung.

The Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 isn’t just a gaming monitor – it’s the first gaming screen with a 4K resolution and 240Hz refresh rate. And while that might not sound suitable for work, there are plenty of reasons why this panel could make professional sense.

The 4K resolution delivers loads of on-screen space, for starters, and the Neo’s 1000R curve matches the shape of the human eye – which means better viewing angles and reduced eye strain.

It’s an impressive proposition, but the Neo G8 costs £1,083 exc VAT, so it’s hardly cheap – indeed, it’s far pricier than conventional office screens, unless you consider pro-level design and photography displays. Can it find a place among the best business monitors?

Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 review: Design

Samsung’s 32in unit has a 3,840 x 2,160 resolution, which means a density level of 137.68ppi. That’s a superb start for any screen, whether it’s a gaming display or professional panel, and it means that the Neo G8 delivers crisp imagery and text alongside loads of on-screen space, while professional users have plenty of room to zoom in on creative tasks or use multiple windows.

Underneath the 32in display you’ll find Quantum Mini LEDs. They’re Samsung’s proprietary version of the Mini LEDs that can be found in high-end TVs, and there are 1,196 of them inside the Neo. They can turn off and alter their brightness levels independently, and they’re brighter and more versatile than conventional backlighting systems. It’s as close as you’ll get to OLED technology without the extortionate price tag.

It’s important not to overlook the Neo G8’s gaming credentials when so many people work at home or use hybrid working arrangements. The 4K resolution, Quantum Mini LEDs and 240Hz refresh rate mean that the Neo G8 offers unparalleled quality among 16:9 gaming screens, but you will need a hugely powerful graphics card to run the latest titles.

Unsurprisingly, the Samsung Neo G8 includes more tech than any conventional business monitor. If you spend this much on a professional product you’ll get a 4K panel without Quantum Mini LEDs or a 240Hz refresh rate, and the handful of 4K OLED panels available either cost more than £2,749 exc VAT or have vast 48in diagonals. If you want to spend this cash on a gaming panel, expect a Samsung Neo G9 widescreen or settle for a 4K screen with few of the Neo’s features.

There’s an awful lot of innovation inside the G8, but it looks just as bold on the outside. The base is wide and made from sandblasted metal, and the rear uses glossy white plastic.

Happily, the Neo G8 has plenty of adjustment options too: you get 120mm of height adjustment, 22 degrees of tilt and 30 degrees of swivel, and compatibility with 100mm VESA mounts. The Neo rotates into portrait mode, too, which isn’t a given on a large gaming screen, and especially not on curved displays.

In other areas, though, the Neo G8’s physical design disappoints. While the back of the display is robust, it’s too easy to wobble when nudged. You don’t get tool-free building here, either. And with a weight of 8.9kg and a depth of 310mm, it’s not a small screen - so make sure your desk has enough room to comfortably accommodate it.

Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 review: Image quality

This VA screen is a heavyweight in more than just the physical sense, however. It’s got 10-bit colour with 12-bit gradation, and Samsung says that it renders 100% of the sRGB colour space and 95% of the DCI-P3 gamut. The 240Hz refresh rate with adaptive sync might not be a professional feature, but it makes motion smoother and will aid animations and game designers.

That sounds great on paper, and the Neo G8 doesn’t disappoint in benchmarks. Out of the box the G8’s brightness level of 192cd/m2 was joined by a stunning 0.02cd/m2 black point thanks to those Quantum Mini LEDs. The resulting contrast ratio of 9,600:1 is sensational – far beyond any IPS or VA screen with conventional backlighting. The 240Hz synchronised refresh rate delivers butter-smooth motion in games, animation apps and everyday tools, and the backlight variation level of just 7.7% means impressive uniformity.

The huge contrast ratio means the G8 supplies vibrant, nuanced, and bold imagery with incredible depth. If you need a display for content creation, the G8 will be great, and this screen makes web browsers, everyday apps and games look incredible too.

Switch over to HDR mode and the Neo continues to impress. The panel delivered a consistent peak brightness level of 1,411cd/m2 and its black point remained at 0.02cd/m2, which means a maximum contrast ratio of 70,550:1. Combine that with the complexity on offer from the Quantum Mini LEDs and you’ve got a display that does justice to HDR material.

That brilliant contrast performance means everything looks superb, but the Neo G8 can’t quite keep up with colour accuracy. The panel’s average Delta E of 2.17 is good, but the maximum Delta E of 4.14 is a bit too high, and it sits alongside a slightly warm colour temperature of 6,065K.

They’re not bad results, and they mean that the G8 can handle any everyday task, including mainstream creative and design work, alongside games and media. But if you want to tackle top-tier photography and graphics jobs, you’ll get more accuracy from a true professional display.

The Neo’s gamut figures underline this situation. The G8 did a sterling job with sRGB colours, rendering 99.5% of the space, but it only rendered 91.2% of the DCI-P3 gamut. That’s good enough for mainstream HDR work and HDR games, but professionals will want closer to 100%. An 80.7% Adobe RGB coverage level also precludes the G8 from working in that space.

The Neo might not have flawless image quality, but it’s bright, deep and vibrant, and it has good colours. For the vast majority of professional workloads it’s very capable. If you’d like to go beyond the Neo with a display that can nail the DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB gamuts with improved accuracy, you can pick up a high-end specialist panel like the BenQ PD2705Q, Dell UltraSharp 25 USB-C or the Philips Moda 27 for less half the price - although you won’t get a lot of the fancier features or the classy design.

Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 review: Ports and features

You’ll need plenty of bandwidth to run this screen properly and fully use those Quantum Mini LEDs, but happily the two HDMI 2.1 ports and single DisplayPort 1.4 socket can handle it. The rear also houses two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and a headphone jack. That’s fine connectivity, but the downward-facing ports are tricky to reach, and it’s a bit disappointing to see no USB charging and no USB-C.

Samsung’s on-screen display remains excellent, with a row of status indicators above sensible and responsive menus, and Samsung’s quick-access options enable fast source switching alongside rapid brightness and contrast adjustment. The Neo G8 has picture-in-picture options that support two display inputs at 120Hz. There’s also a widescreen mode that switches the screen to a 3,840 x 1,600 resolution, which will enable a wider field of view in games.

However, a D-Pad beneath the bottom bezel navigates the menu – and it’s not very good. The soft-touch buttons sit almost flush with the monitor casing, which makes them hard to grip, and they require too much force to activate.

Naturally, because this is a gaming display, the Neo G8 also includes RGB LEDs. There’s a ring of lights around the rear and two lines of lighting on the front. The G8 has a feature called CoreSync that matches their colour to on-screen action to provide ambient lighting, but the lights aren’t bright enough to have an impact unless you’re gaming in the dark. Customisation is also limited to 52 colours rather than the entire RGB gamut, which is a little disappointing.

Samsung’s panel has a cable-routing hook but doesn’t have a headphone hook or speakers, and since this isn’t a hard-nosed business display, don’t expect a KVM or built-in webcam. You’ll often find that professional displays have longer warranties, too – the Neo G8 only has one year of coverage.

Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 review: Verdict

Despite those physical issues, the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 is undoubtedly one of the world’s best gaming monitors. Look beyond that, and there are plenty of professional situations where the Neo can work well. Its huge resolution makes it easy to spread out windows and apps, the curve is immersive, and the Quantum Mini LED-powered backlight delivers huge contrast, depth and punch. Combine that with the decent colours and you’ve got a screen that can tackle many professional and creative workloads.

That said, the Samsung doesn’t have the accuracy or gamut ability for the most demanding colour-sensitive scenarios. It’s missing some features that you’ll find included on proper pro displays, and many of those screens will have longer warranties. The £1,083 exc VAT price is extremely steep, too.

If you’re willing to pay, though, the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 combines world-leading gaming imagery with the quality to tackle most work tasks. If you’re a home worker or want the best of both worlds, that makes it a tempting proposition.

Samsung Odyssey Neo G8 Specifications

Samsung and Red Hat have announced partnership that will see the two companies jointly develop software for next-generation memory hardware.

The landmark partnership - a first for Samsung - will see the two companies work on both new and existing hardware such as NVMe SSDs, CXL memory, and smart SSDs, and will aim to build “an expansive ecosystem” to integrate hardware and software.

Samsung said it has never partnered with any company in the open source space, but the Red Hat deal is poised to “foster engagements across the IT marketplace”, suggesting similar deals in the future.

Emerging applications such as the metaverse and existing technology still under rapid development, like artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR), are the driving force behind the disruptive changes to memory designs currently in use, Samsung said.

“In the upcoming data-centric era, the integration of memory-centric hardware and software architectures will become increasingly essential, and for this purpose, Red Hat is happy to participate in the joint undertaking with Samsung,” added Marjet Andriesse, Senior Vice President and Head of Red Hat Asia Pacific.

Both Samsung and Red Hat will collaborate on their research and new memory designs via the to-be-launched Samsung Memory Research Cloud (SMRC) - a “collaboration hub” through which both companies can develop new memory software to function across a range of server environments.

The SMRC will eventually be opened up to customers and other partners, the pair said, allowing for opportunities to test software developments and help to fine-tune the software’s configurations so that it performs optimally across different types of memory hardware.

In addition to developing new memory software, the companies will be working with the Linux community and feeding their findings into Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as well as other, unnamed, open source software stacks.

“Samsung and Red Hat will make a concerted effort to define and standardise memory software solutions that embrace evolving server and memory hardware, while building a more robust memory ecosystem,” said Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President and Head of the Memory Application Engineering Team at Samsung Electronics.

“We will invite partners from across the IT industry to join us in expanding the software-hardware memory ecosystem to create greater customer value.”

The companies say the SMRC platform is not just a purpose-built collaboration system for this specific project. They claim that it will be instead designed in a way that allows it to be re-used for future IT innovations, following its launch in the second half of the year.

The fact that Samsung didn't release a Galaxy Note handset in 2021 led to a lot of speculation about the range's apparent demise. In February, however, the South Korean giant offered up an unexpected plot twist by releasing a Galaxy S22 Ultra that looks suspiciously like a Note.

This is still the premium model of the S-series with top specs, extra cameras and a big beautiful screen - but it comes with lots of Note-like extras and business features. Oh, and there's a stylus, which is the clearest indication yet that the S22 Ultra has absorbed the Note, possibly for good.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Design

The death of the Note might actually just mean the name itself, because the design of the S22 Ultra has more in common with the Note than its fellow S-series devices. There's very little resemblance to last year's S21 Ultra beyond its size, and both the standard and plus models of the S22 look more traditional.

In fact, the S22 Ultra is very similar to 2020's Note 20 Ultra with the sides of the chassis curved so that the display blends with the back cover, while the top and bottom edges are both flat and squared off. Only the camera layout looks different, with a selection of lenses neatly dotted around the top corner, rather than housed in a bulky module.

Even without a protruding camera block for the lenses, however, the S22 Ultra is still a great big chunk of a handset. It's 8.9mm thick and 163.3mm tall, so it's very much a phablet that stays true to its predecessors. It's a device for those that want a massive screen, regardless of its weight or how it fits in the pocket. The problem here is that you're more likely to drop it, as we did, on a number of occasions. Thankfully it's encased with Gorilla Glass Victus+ and after a week of full use (and a couple of floor bounces), there wasn't a scratch or mark on it.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Display

This reinforced phone features a 6.8in WQHD+ AMOLED display with a 1,440 x 3,088 resolution, support for HDR10+ and a 120Hz refresh rate. There is a slight tweak compared to the S21 Ultra, with a smaller pixel density, but that hasn't affected the end result.

With the "Vivid" setting, the S22 scored 100% for sRGB colour coverage (including a colour volume of 148.4%) which is a smidge better than the 99.2% the S21 Ultra scored. Devices such as the OnePlus 9 Pro and Huawei P50 Pro can match this, but the Ultra leaves them in the dark when it comes to brightness scores. During HDR video playback, it reached a peak of 1,680cd/m2, which is blindingly good.

Unsurprisingly, we loved using the S22 Ultra's display; it's crisp and bright, with vivid colours and that high refresh rate gives you a silky smooth scrolling experience. What's more, the LTPO 2.0 technology helps to maintain the battery levels by switching between 1Hz and 120Hz depending on what you're using the screen for. We'll go into battery life in more detail later, but it feels like Samsung is so far the only vendor to get the right balance between refresh rates and power.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Specs and performance

When it comes to power, buying a Samsung S-Series in the US or Europe means different chipsets; American buyers get the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 while punters in the UK can sample Samsung's own 4nm Exynos 2200 processor. Even though there's an ongoing issue with semiconductor supply, processing technology improves yearly. However, the actual experience for the average end-user might not feel much different.

In GeekBench 5, the Ultra produced lofty scores with 1,166 for single-core performance and 3,475 for multi-threaded. That's actually down compared to last year's Ultra, and quite a way off the iPhone 13's A15 Bionic chipset, but we can't say we noticed any significant differences in day-to-day performance between the three. They're all snappy devices, so there isn't much reason to choose one over the other based on processing power.

There have been split-screen modes on most large flagship smartphones for a number of years, and it was once a decent way to test processing power. With the S22 Ultra, we regularly used two apps at once, or multiple tabs, switching between each fast and seamlessly.

There was a brief issue with audio syncing though, which affected apps like Netflix, Disney Plus and YouTube. Samsung has said it will have an update to fix this, though we managed to sort it by switching the RAM Plus allocation, which allows you to increase the amount of virtual memory, from 4GB to 6GB. Our review unit goes up to 8GB of physical RAM - though a 12GB model is also available - and there are storage options for 128GB, 256GB, 512GB or 1TB.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Battery

There's no year-on-year change in battery size, with the S22 Ultra packing the same 5,000 mAh battery as the S21 Ultra. However, as we mentioned earlier, the South Korean firm has found a successful way of optimising a power-hungry screen.

In our looped video test, the S22 Ultra lasted 20hrs 15mins, which is admittedly less than the S21 Ultra but only by a mere hour. In the context of premium smartphones with high refresh rates, there isn't much else on the market that can match this; the OnePlus 9 Pro, Huawei P50 Pro and the Google Pixel 6 Pro all failed to get beyond 18hrs in the same test. The iPhone 13, meanwhile, offered up 16hrs 5mins with just a 90Hz refresh rate.

Battery life could well be the biggest 'pro' of the S22 Ultra. We absolutely hammered it with work and play and still had upwards of 15% at the end of most days. When you do need to top it up, the 45W fast charger can take it from flat to full in just over 50 minutes and it also comes with 15W of wireless charging capabilities, as well as reverse charging.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Features

For the first time on the S-series, we have a built-in S-Pen stylus, which is housed at the bottom left of the chassis. Push it in and the pen pops out ready for doodling and notetaking or even to use as a remote camera shutter button. Compared to the Note 20 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold3, the writing latency is shorter. Samsung claims this has decreased from 9 milliseconds on the Note to just 2.8 on the S22 Ultra, and it does certainly feel sharper.

Beyond that, the One UI software feels a little too similar to the S21 Ultra, though the retractable sidebar helps to offer up your most popular apps. This is also the place to access split-screen modes and make the most of that S-pen inclusion. This arguably works best on the Fold, but it is passable on the Ultra's large 6.8in screen. It does depend on the app to a certain extent; a YouTube video fits quite well on half a screen, for instance, whereas a Google Doc is just too difficult to use.

Elsewhere, the S22 Ultra is filled with the usual fare, such as an IP68 dust and water resistance rating, Wi-Fi 6e and Bluetooth 5.2. There's also an under-display finger sensor and facial recognition, both of which are as fast as one would expect with Samsung.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Camera(s)

When it comes to camera technology, Samsung's Ultra really does come up trumps. It features a 108MP f/1.8 wide lens, a 12MP f/2.3 ultrawide one and a pair of 10MP telephoto lenses, one of which has 3x optical zoom. Once again there is a "Space Zoom" function, which is Samsung's name for the AI-enhancing tech that clears up images taken at full zoom. The company claims that its neural processing unit works twice as fast as the S21 Ultra and that does appear true from our use of the telephoto lenses. Images were very clean, no matter the distance.

Samsung has implemented AI to great effect across the whole system and a new sensor that works with the 108MP lens is a great example of that with its "nona-binning" process. Here multiple images are taken at full resolution and then merged to create a sharper image. This was also the case for the portrait mode, with smooth finishes thanks to a combination of these AI enhancements and the 40MP front camera.

Video is also of high quality with the S22 Ultra capable of shooting up to 4K with 60fps or 8K with 24fps. The Super Steady mode, which is another AI-based feature, is also good for removing camera shake, though it doesn't work well with the higher resolution.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra review: Verdict

The S22 Ultra is as good as it's ever been, but that doesn't necessarily make it better than the S21 Ultra. It has a lot of great features, fantastic cameras and a deliciously good screen, but there's a distinct lack of pizazz with this update. That might be down to the resurgence of quality in the iPhone and the very fun Pixel 6, both of which make the S22 seem a little dull by comparison.

It is also ultra-pricy at £1,149. However, the argument here is that you don't get these specs anywhere else; only the Fold3 is bigger and that hasn't got the same battery power or anywhere near the camera quality found here. What's more, this is the closest you'll get to a Galaxy Note anytime soon. If you want the very best then this is, by any measure, a truly noteworthy Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra specifications

The Samsung Galaxy Book Go may be an entry-level laptop, but it still has a few surprises up its sleeve. For one, the South Korean tech giant has opted to use the ARM-based Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor rather than Intel or AMD hardware, which allows for increased battery life and cellular connectivity.

Its starting price of £349 is also incredibly affordable. As such, there are very few competing products with similar specifications and pricetags.

Samsung Galaxy Book Go review: Design

Given the price, it’s no surprise that there's nothing especially inspiring about the Galaxy Book Go’s design. It comes in one colour - a dated but inoffensive matte silver - and the chassis is made entirely out of lightweight plastic.

It looks and feels cheap, but that’s because it is, and this approach brings a few added benefits. For one, it’s comparatively lightweight at just 1.38kg, and its slimline design is only 14mm thick, so despite being a well-proportioned 14in laptop, it feels practically weightless when carried around in a bag.

Better yet, despite that plastic chassis the build quality is actually very impressive for the price. The keyboard and chassis have very little flex when pressure is applied, and the screen has a 180-degree hinge that allows it to lay flat against a desk.

However, that hinge isn’t as stiff as we would like, and the display is prone to wobbling, with some noticeable sway even while just typing. You can easily access the innards by removing a few screws underneath the rubber feet, but the internal components are soldered in, so you won’t be able to make repairs or upgrades.

Sizewise, the Galaxy Book Go is larger and slightly heavier than the more premium Samsung Galaxy Book S and the M1-powered Apple MacBook Air, though both of these are considerably more expensive. It’s also no less stylish than a Dell Inspiron 15, so while it’s not the most glamorous looking laptop on the market, it’s no eyesore.

Samsung Galaxy Book Go review: Display

Sadly, the same can’t be said of the screen. Let’s not beat around the bush here - this is up there as one of the worst screens we’ve ever used. Even to the naked eye, the display was noticeably dim and washed out, and the viewing angles are so poor that visibility only gets worse if you don’t position both yourself and the screen in a specific way.

This is largely because the Galaxy Book Go is using a TFT display. This screen technology was previously commonplace on monitors and laptops, but has been almost entirely phased out over the last decade. It’s much more affordable than the now-standard IPS panels and generally more energy-efficient, but the trade-off in terms of quality simply isn’t worth it.

This was borne out in our testing, where it managed to cover a measly 52% of the sRGB colour gamut. That is astonishingly low for a laptop in 2022, and extremely noticeable when actually using the device. It almost feels as though you’re viewing the display through a pane of hazy, blue-tinted glass.

Screen brightness doesn’t fare any better. Our tests achieved a maximum brightness of 231cd/m2, which is dim enough already - and on top of that, there’s noticeable screen-bleeding and inconsistency towards the edges of the display, with just 187cd/m2 being recorded closer to the bezels.

The screen has a matte coating, presumably to help reduce glare when working outside in brightly lit environments, but this is effectively impossible to do given the poor quality of the display itself.

Samsung Galaxy Book Go review: Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard is yet another area where corners have been cut. It’s far from the worst typing experience we’ve had, but although the keys are well-spaced with some solid key travel, they can feel a little spongy compared to other budget-friendly alternatives such as the Microsoft Surface Go 3 or the Acer Chromebook Spin 513.

Another small gripe is the fact that the caps lock key doesn’t have a built-in light to indicate when active. In fact, none of the keys are backlit, so you may struggle to see what you’re typing in dim environments. It’s irritating, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

Which is more than can be said for the trackpad. Consider a wireless mouse an absolute must-have here – the trackpad is decently sized, but incredibly sluggish and often has a slight delay. On top of this, the buttons are especially squishy, which makes using them to navigate your desktop a real pain.

Samsung Galaxy Book Go review: Specs and Performance

Windows on ARM is a comparatively new hardware platform, and the Galaxy Book Go isn’t exactly the best advertisement for its capabilities.

It uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor, and as such, 64-bit apps only run via emulation.This means that while there are very few apps that will refuse to run entirely, and native apps like Microsoft Edge can run with few issues, things take a drastic and frustrating turn if you try and run something like the Google Chrome browser that doesn’t yet have native support.

Running Chrome is incredibly sluggish, with persistent lag and slow load times that quickly make using the Galaxy Book Go incredibly frustrating. Even apps with native support like Adobe Photoshop struggle.

In our Geekbench 5 tests, the Galaxy Book Go achieved a Single-core score of 557 and a Multi-core score of 1,606, which ranks as one of the lowest we’ve ever recorded on the benchmark. It’s surpassed by both the outdated Microsoft Surface Go 2 (single: 874, multi: 1637) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 Plus (single: 965, multi: 2814), which isn’t great. It would seem that Qualcomm’s laptop chips still have a very long way to go before they can sit at the adult table with the likes of the Apple M1 silicon.

Another glaring issue is that the base model of this laptop is available with just 4GB of RAM. That’s less than most smartphones, and simply isn’t enough to comfortably handle the demands of modern Windows builds.

Most of the 128GB eUFS storage is eaten by the OS, too. It’s expandable via microSD, and it’s faster than the 64GB eMMC storage offered in the base model Surface Go 3, but it’s still not up to the standards of a modern SSD. In our storage read/write tests, it only achieved a pitiful 492 MB/sec and 186 MB/sec respectively, which is one of the slowest scores we’ve seen in anything outside of a low-budget Chinese import like the Avita Liber.

Samsung Galaxy Book Go review: Battery life

Battery life is where ARM-based CPUs really start to shine, though, as was demonstrated by the 12hrs 16mins result that we recorded in our looped-video battery test, which was backed up in day-to-day use. The tech uses a lot less power than traditional processors, so while the performance is far from mindblowing, it can at least manage a full day of work.

By comparison, the Snapdragon-powered HP Elite Folio achieved 17hrs 50mins in our tests, but this is significantly more expensive than Samsung’s budget-friendly offering. The Core i3-powered Acer Chromebook 714, meanwhile, starts at around £500, but delivers similar results.

The 20W power supply provided by Samsung is ample to keep things topped up, and it takes around 1hr 45mins to fully charge the device, though the charger itself feels very low quality, with the USB-C connection visibly flexing with any slight pressure.

Samsung Galaxy Book Go review: Ports and features

As is the trend for many laptops these days, port selection isn’t especially plentiful on the Galaxy Book Go, with a USB 3.0 Type-C port for charging and data along with a combined audio jack and a microSD reader on the left hand side.

Along the right side you’ll find another USB-C, this being the only one of the available two that’s capable of video output, as well as a single USB-A 2.0, and a NanoSIM slot to allow for LTE. Neither of the USB-C ports are Thunderbolt, but that’s unsurprising given Intel owns the rights to the Thunderbolt trademark. The notable lack of HDMI or DisplayPort is disappointing but again, unsurprising given the price. Windows Hello isn’t supported either, so you’re restricted to using a password or pin for logging into the device.

The image from the poor-quality 720p webcam is rather fuzzy but you won’t get much better for the price, and it does a decent enough job for conference calls.

The built-in microphone is worse, unfortunately. You’ll be legible enough for colleagues to hear what you’re saying, but it struggles considerably in anything less than a silent environment. The cellular coverage built into the Galaxy Book Go will certainly allow you to make calls remotely, just ensure you have a dedicated headset or mic hooked up if you have any hopes of being understood.

There are a few additional benefits to be found if you use other products in the Samsung ecosystem, such as using a Galaxy Tab S7 or S7+ as a wireless second display. There's also a ‘Quick Share’ feature that allows you to wirelessly share files, images and videos with nearby Samsung Galaxy devices just like you can with the Apple and Huawei ecosystems.

Samsung Galaxy Book Go review: Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Book Go has plenty of appeal on the surface, but scratching below that reveals it’s only suitable for a very niche demographic: specifically people who have very low hardware demands and prioritise battery life over every other metric.

Without sugar coating it, it was hard to open the Galaxy Book Go without a sense of dread. Compatibility issues mean Windows on ARM is still somewhat unappealing despite its ongoing development, and the quality of the display on this laptop is unforgivable for a product released in 2022. We can’t think of a valid reason that justifies how bad it is, even when considering its affordability.

The Microsoft Surface Go 3 is available for £499 including the keyboard, but it has a fantastic display for the price and applications like Chrome don’t run like a pig in high heels. If we’ve learned anything from the Samsung Galaxy Book Go, it’s that a tight budget can only be pushed so far and Windows on ARM still needs more time in the oven. In the meantime, you should only consider buying the Galaxy Book Go if you want to experience what it feels like to use a laptop from 2012.

Samsung Galaxy Book Go specifications

Since the onset of COVID-19, and the mass shift to remote working, people have got on with their day jobs in all manner of places - and this newfound freedom has started to influence the way technology is being built.

This is certainly the thinking behind Samsung’s Galaxy Book2 Pro 360, a new 2-in-1 convertible laptop unveiled at MWC 2022. It’s been designed specifically for the anywhere worker and includes protections against the emerging security threats that we’re now susceptible to as we set up shop here, there and everywhere.

The Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 is available for pre-order from 18 April, with a starting price of £1,199 including VAT. It comes in both 13.5in or 15.5in versions, but we’re focusing on the latter here.

Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 hands-on review: Design

As its name suggests, the 360’s screen rotates, allowing it to be used in a variety of configurations. Last year’s Galaxy Book Pro 360 was very svelte and light, and little has changed in terms of its dimensions. It’s still 11.9mm thick, although it’s now slightly heavier at 1.41kg - around 200g more than its predecessor.

It’s still easy enough to slide into a rucksack, though, and the design itself remains as pleasing to the eye as before. It also comes in more shades - Silver, Graphite and Burgundy, as opposed to the ‘Mystic Navy’ option, which was the only choice for the original. Those are the only real aesthetic changes, though, as it keeps many of the Galaxy Book Pro 360’s fine stylistic touches, such as the squared corners and matte finish to the lid and keyboard surround.

Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 hands-on review: Display

Samsung has stuck with a 1080p resolution for its 15.6in Super AMOLED panel, again opting not to use a 4K screen. This is a good thing, though; Samsung’s track record with display technology is outstanding, and the Galaxy Book Pro released last year still managed to score high for sRGB colour coverage with the same resolution, so we expect a similar result (at the very least) with the Book2 Pro 360.

The only issue with last year’s Galaxy Book Pro was the screen lacked a little bit of punch in terms of brightness, peaking at just 308cd/m2 in our tests. The Galaxy Book2 Pro 360’s HDR capabilities should help boost the peak brightness of its touchscreen panel, with Samsung suggesting it can hit around 500cd/m2. Sadly, our hands-on session was at a lovely sun-soaked beach house, and we had a little difficulty making the screen visible in the direct sunlight, which isn’t as encouraging as we’d like.

Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 hands-on review: Keyboard and trackpad

The 15.6in Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 benefits from a full-size keyboard, including a numberpad, although the half-height arrow and return keys may be a little off-putting for those used to more spacious layouts. That aside, actually typing on the backlit chiclet keys felt like a smooth experience, with decent travel, crisp feedback and minimal noise when typing.

However, the buttons on the trackpad felt slightly stiff during our hands-on, requiring a firm degree of pressure to activate. It’s wide and expansive, with a pleasant glass finish, but there’s room for improvement, too.

Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 hands-on review: Specs and hardware

Under the hood, the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 is housing a 12th Gen Intel Core Evo processor with RAM options from 8GB to 32GB, and storage ranging from 256GB to 1TB. At face value, this doesn’t seem like a huge improvement over the Core i7-1165G7 chip used in the previous version, but further testing should reveal whether or not Samsung has managed to significantly increase the performance.

The device also comes with a 68W battery and super-fast 65W USB Type-C charging adaptor, which means you can use the same cable to charge your Galaxy Book2, Galaxy Tab and Galaxy smartphone - though charging times will vary slightly between devices.

Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 hands-on review: Ports and features

As mentioned earlier, the Galaxy Book2 Pro range has been built with security in mind. The company has worked with Microsoft to build a ‘secured-core’ PC that has hardware and software protections at the firmware level. The idea is that the machine continually checks the integrity of its own firmware and also scans for potential threats. As such, this is the first PC range to meet Microsoft’s secured-core PC requirements, which delivers an enhanced level of protection for Windows 11 - which is preinstalled on the machine.

The power button also doubles as a fingerprint reader, with all biometric data stored on the machine in a separate drive. The device also comes with Samsung’s fifth-generation S Pen included in the box for note-taking and drawing, as well as Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1 - although there’s no option for 5G connectivity, so anyone wanting to do some off-grid working will need to pack a portable hotspot.

For physical connections, there’s a Thunderbolt 4 port, two regular USB type-C ports, a headphone and mic connection, and a micro SD slot. Finally, videoconferencing duties are covered by a 1080p webcam, dual array mics and a pair of 5W AKG Dolby Atmos speakers.

Much like Huawei and its ‘Super Device’ software, Samsung is also showcasing multi-device collaboration features at MWC. Users can wirelessly add additional screen space with a Galaxy Tab and even use the keyboard and touch pad of the Galaxy Book to control the tablet. The aim here is to offer up more flexibility for those working remotely or on the go, and adding the extra devices is presented as a seamless process of simply pairing it over Bluetooth. Whether this is as convenient and straightforward in practice, however, remains to be seen.

Samsung Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 hands-on review: Early verdict

There’s much to love here, though it will need to be put through some rigorous testing before it gets the full IT Pro recommendation. However, our first impression of the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 is a good one; it has a vivid screen, decent keyboard and a pleasing design.

Our sole gripe at the moment is that stiff touchpad, but it's a very minor issue, and one that’s unlikely to ruin the experience. As such, we’re looking forward to a full review where we can take the Galaxy Book2 Pro 360 out and about, and see just how portable it really is.

Researchers have found “severe” security flaws in a long line of flagship smartphones made by Samsung whereby attackers can lift cryptographic keys.

Potentially affecting around 100 million Samsung devices including the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S20, and others dating back to the Galaxy S8, attackers can remotely lift cryptographic keys to bypass security authentication standards such as FIDO2.

Real-world applications of the vulnerabilities could see attackers extracting keys used for secure payments such as those made through Google Pay, and bypassing FIDO2 authentication which is often used in place of account passwords.

The researchers from Tel-Aviv University demonstrated how two feasible real-world attacks can be performed on even the latest Samsung devices. Said attacks allowed the researchers to extract cryptographic keys from hardware-protected elements of the device, and downgrade devices so that they’re vulnerable to these attacks, known as IV reuse attacks.

They explained how ARM devices use TrustZone technology which essentially splits a device into two parts: the ‘Normal World’ where normal applications on an operating system (OS) like Android can run; and the ‘Secure World’ which is essentially an isolated environment in which only trusted applications, like those critical to device security, are supposedly able to run.

The Android Keystore provides hardware-backed cryptographic key management via the Keymaster Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) and this is implemented in the Secure World of the TrustZone, where processes are not supposed to be accessed from the outside.

Cryptographic keys are protected here using the AES-GCM encryption standard, but Samsung’s implementation of Keystore, which allows keys to be retrieved and stored (while wrapped by an encrypted layer) from the Secure World by apps operating in the Normal World, is flawed.

This allows an attacker to predictably obtain the cryptographic keys if they know the contents of one plaintext sample encrypted using AES-GCM. The encryption standard protects items using the same key and relies on unique initialization vectors (IVs) never being reused.

The researchers were able to show how Samsung devices were vulnerable to the IV reuse attack, allowing attackers to assign IVs as part of the key parameters.

In approaching the research, the academics assumed an attacker could fully compromise the Normal World through mechanisms such as malware granting root privileges. The attacker would not need to be able to run code in the Android kernel, just be able to execute code in the Android user mode.

The researchers disclosed their findings to Samsung in August 2021 and the manufacturer addressed the issues by publishing the flaws to the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) register.

The initial IV reuse attack is tracked as CVE-2021-25444 with a ‘high’ severity rating, and patched in August 2021.

The downgrade attack which allowed newer devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy S20 and S21, to become vulnerable to the IV reuse attack, was patched in October 2021 after its CVE (CVE-2021-25490) addressed the issue for all devices running Android 9 or later.

Although Samsung's latest Galaxy S22 devices are also based on ARM architecture, they will not ship with OS versions before Android 9 as standard and as such will theoretically not be vulnerable to the researcher's attack.

"Samsung takes the security of Galaxy devices seriously. We are constantly looking for ways to enhance the security of our products and welcome any input from research communities," the company told IT Pro.

"The reported issue was acknowledged and has been addressed through security updates since August 2021. We recommend our users to keep their devices updated with the latest software to enjoy safe and convenient Galaxy mobile experiences."

Global smartphone shipments has grown for the first time in four years with 1.39 billion handsets sold around the world in 2021.

Annual shipments increased 4% year-on-year, despite the effects of the pandemic and the global chip shortage, according to Checkpoint Research.

However, the number of shipments was still below pre-pandemic levels, with 1.56 billion handset sales in 2017, according to Checkpoint data. The market saw a sharp decline in 2018 (-4.1%) with consumer demand continuing to stall throughout 2019.

Checkpoint suggests that "pent-up" demand in South America and India has helped the market recover, along with demand for 5G-enabled devices in North America.

"Growth in the US was driven largely by demand for Apple's first 5G-enabled iPhone 12 series seeping through to the first quarter of 2021," Harmeet Singh Walia, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, said in a statement.

The demand for the iPhone 12 continued through the year with strong October and December performance thanks holiday promotions like Black Friday, Walia added. Apple also reported record market share growth in China for Q4, becoming the top brand in the country. Its global smartphones sales also shot up 18% year-on-year.

Samsung still remains the dominant smartphone provider, shipping 271 million devices in 2021, but the biggest sales percentage increase was owned by Chinese brand Xiaomi, which has successfully capitalised on the demise of Huawei. Xiaomi is now the third-ranked manufacturer with a 31% year-on-year increase.

It's worth noting that China saw a 10% fall in demand in 2018; at the time IDC stated that it accounted for roughly 30% of the overall market. While there is an uptick globally, China remains somewhat sluggish, with Checkpoint data suggesting it saw a 2% drop, year-on-year. This is attributed to the ongoing semiconductor shortages, which are hindering manufacturing and its repair businesses.

"The market recovery could have been even better if not for the component shortages that impacted much of the second half of 2021," Walia added. "The major brands navigated the component shortages comparatively better and hence managed to grow by gaining share from long-tail brands."

Samsung has announced that it will build a new $17 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility in Taylor, Texas, as the company seeks to address the global chip shortage.

Construction on the new facility, which will build chips designed for use in smartphones, 5G, high-performance computing (HPC), and artificial intelligence (AI), is slated to start in the first half of 2022 with the target of having the facility operational in the second half of 2024.

The site will span more than 5 million square meters and is expected to serve as a key location for Samsung's global semiconductor manufacturing capacity along with its latest new production line in Pyeongtaek, South Korea.

The $17 billion investment is the largest ever made by Samsung in the US and includes buildings, property improvements, machinery, and equipment. The plant is expected to create 2,000 jobs in the area with thousands more across the supply chain. Samsung will also contribute cash to create a Samsung Skills Center for the Taylor Independent School District (ISD) to help students develop skills for future careers as well as provide internships and recruiting opportunities.

Samsung said the move was made after reviewing several other sites in the US for a potential manufacturing site. One advantage the Taylor site had was that it sits adjacent to Samsung's current manufacturing site in Austin, about 25 kilometers southwest of Taylor. This will enable the two locations to share infrastructure and resources.

Texas governor Greg Abbott welcomed the news, adding the facility will “bring countless opportunities for hardworking Central Texans and their families and will play a major role in our state's continued exceptionalism in the semiconductor industry.”

NEC Director Brian Deese and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement that the new factory would “protect our supply chains, revitalizing our manufacturing base, and creating good jobs right here at home”.

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement that domestic semiconductor production is critical to preserving and growing US leadership and innovation in one of the most critical industries.

“Semiconductors underpin our entire economy, and the demand for semiconductors will only continue to increase. The U.S. must invest in its domestic manufacturing and R&D capabilities to protect our national security, compete globally, create jobs, and strengthen our domestic supply chain,” she added.

​​It’s very hard for a SATA drive to set itself apart from the crowd. Every drive has to have the same basic size and shape, so it will fit into a standard bay. And performance is strictly limited by the interface, which can only transfer data at a rate of around 530MB/sec – even though today’s flash chips are capable of much higher speeds.

For that reason, when configuring or building a new PC we’d always choose a faster, more modern NVMe drive. But if you need to upgrade an older system, SATA is likely to be your cheapest and easiest option.

For that scenario, the Samsung 870 Evo is a perfectly good choice of SSD. There’s nothing really distinctive about it, but as we’ve discussed that’s hardly Samsung’s fault. And we have to say, it equally doesn’t get anything wrong.

Let’s start with performance: the 870 Evo didn’t falter in any of AS SSD’s tests. With sequential read and write rates of 528MB/sec and 499MB/sec respectively, it’s as fast as any other SATA drive you can buy. Likewise, random-access speeds of 378MB/sec and 339MB/sec were more or less in lock-step with other drives using the same connector.

In fact, in the PCMark 10 storage benchmarks it achieved pretty good scores, racking up a score of 1,178 in the System Disk test and 1,473 in the Data Disk stakes. For comparison, Kingston’s KC600 scored 931 and 1,231 in the same tests – although no SATA drive can come close to a fast NVMe model such as the WD Black SN850, which clocked up scores of 3,502 and 5,984.

The 870 Evo is reasonable value too. The 500GB model we tested can currently be had for £56 exc VAT, while the 1TB capacity is rather cheaper on a per-gigabyte basis, coming in at £86 exc VAT. These prices are pretty competitive with other comparable SSDs; Samsung’s own 870 QVO model is quite a bit cheaper, but its quad-level cell design means it’s not guaranteed to last so long. Samsung also offers the 870 Evo in 2TB and 4TB capacities, although these are niche options and are priced to match at £198 and £371 respectively.

While the Samsung 870 Evo doesn’t come with much in the way of bells and whistles, it does support 256-bit AES hardware encryption. This can be managed through the shiny Samsung Magician toolkit, and if you don’t have a cloning solution already in place you can also download Samsung’s free Data Migration software to clone the contents of your old drive onto your new one – although you will need to find a way to get both disks connected at once.

With a five-year warranty and a promised write endurance of 600TBW for the 1TB model, the Samsung 870 Evo ticks all of the important boxes. If you need to upgrade an old PC or laptop then this drive will do the job with no ifs or buts.

Samsung 870 Evo specifications

If you want to read and write files at top speed, you need an NVMe SSD. Older SATA drives are fine for everyday computing, but the technical limitations of the bus itself mean they can’t go much faster than around 530MB/sec. By contrast, NVMe uses a PCI Express x4 connection, which allows data to be transferred at much higher rates.

The Samsung 980 Pro takes full advantage of this. Plug it into a PC or laptop with a PCI Express Gen3 motherboard and it’ll deliver super-fast file transfers, hitting the maximum speed that the interface can handle – around 3GB/sec in each direction.

And on systems with the latest PCI Express Gen4 bus, the drive can go even higher. We tested the 980 Pro in a 2021 desktop PC based on an Asus Strix B550-F motherboard, and looked on in awe at the performance we got. With the drive formatted as NTFS, sequential files were loaded at an incredible 5,468MB/sec. Write speeds got a serious lift too, averaging 3,944MB/sec. For random-access operations, the 980 Pro averaged a still very creditable read speed of 2,880MB/sec, and a write speed of 3,687MB/sec.

These numbers translate to first-class real-world performance. Windows feels phenomenally snappy, and when you launch an application it typically leaps up in seconds. The PCMark 10 benchmark gave the 980 Pro an excellent system disk score of 2,977 – one of the fastest performances we’ve seen, beaten only by WD’s Black SN850 SSD.

The 980 Pro works brilliantly as a data drive too, though we doubt many people are buying this high-end SSD solely for file storage. All capacities come with a five-year warranty, and Samsung cites a write endurance of 600TBW per terabyte of storage. This means you can write and rewrite a huge amount of data before the memory cells are at serious risk of degrading: it might not do for a database server, but it’s more than fine for a workstation.

Like most NVMe SSDs, the 980 Pro comes as a bare board that plugs into a standard 80mm M.2 slot. But while the look may be basic, it comes with a reasonable set of extra features. For one thing, it has built-in 256-bit AES encryption, with support for the Opal and IEEE-1667 standards – reassuring for IT managers who need to worry about sensitive data falling into the wrong hands.

This can be configured from the Samsung Magician software, which also lets you monitor technical data and run benchmarks to check the health and performance of your drive. Just note that, unlike some SSDs, this model doesn’t come with any cloning software to aid installation.

A high-end drive like this doesn’t come cheap, though. The entry-level 250GB model costs around £59 exc VAT, with 500GB, 1TB and 2TB variants progressively increasing in price to a rather steep £288 exc VAT. The 1TB model on test works out to a rather precipitous 19p per GB, so you can save a lot of money by choosing a more cost-effective drive like the WD Blue SN550.

However, if you need top performance and hardware encryption, the Samsung 980 Pro fully delivers on both: if you’ve got the cash, it’s one of the most impressive SSDs around.

Samsung 980 Pro specifications

External storage drives aren’t necessarily something you’d think of when accessorising an outfit, but they can occasionally be very smart-looking indeed. With its smart metallic finish and rounded edges, for example, the Samsung T7 Touch looks rather like a business-card holder. In fact, it’s roughly the same size, with a footprint of 57 x 85mm, and it weighs a mere 58g without the cable. That makes it one of the most deliciously portable drives we’ve seen recently – only the Seagate One Touch is more compact.

It has a neat party trick, too. The little square on the front isn’t just ornamentation; as the name hints, it’s a biometric scanner. With the supplied software you can lock the entire drive using hardware-based 256-bit AES encryption, so it will reveal its contents only once you’ve authenticated with a fingerprint. If you want to share the drive with others, you can register up to four prints or set a password instead.

The only other external feature is a USB-C connector at one end. This is of the Gen2 variant, supporting 10Gbits/sec connections; thoughtfully, the manufacturer includes two cables in the box, so you can plug the drive directly into a corresponding Type-C socket or a full-sized USB-A port.

Samsung claims that a USB 3 Gen2 connection allows the T7 Touch to achieve sequential read speeds of up to 1,050MB/sec and write speeds of 1,000MB/sec. We measured a read rate of 912MB/sec – a little short of the promised performance, but not bad for this type of drive. Write speeds were rather lower, but well beyond the capabilities of a 5Gbits/sec Gen1 connection, and indeed faster than any SATA drive.

Notably, Samsung doesn’t shout about random-access performance, and there’s probably a reason for that. In AS SSD’s multithreaded read and write tests, the T7 Touch lagged substantially behind rival SSDs. Consequently, it achieved a comparatively low rating in the PCMark data drive test, scoring just 856 compared to the 1,788 figure achieved by the SanDisk Extreme Pro.

While that’s a disappointment, it shouldn’t rule the T7 Touch out of contention. It’s absolutely fine for personal use and the price isn’t bad, either – the 500GB model we tested works out to 14p/GB, albeit the 1TB model is a little pricier at £160, equivalent to 17p/GB.

Factor in the beautifully dinky design and the fingerprint reader and it’s a tempting choice for anyone who is seeking a secure travelling companion, or an upgrade for your home office that won’t eat up precious desk space. It’s not the fastest external drive around, but it’s one of the most likeable.

Samsung T7 Touch specifications

A senior UK-based cyber security researcher has been awarded $50,000 (£37,168) for successfully hacking a Samsung Galaxy S21 device using a novel exploit.

Sam Thomas, director of research at Pentest Limited, broke into one of Samsung's premium smartphones while competing in Pwn2Own Austin, a regular hacking competition run by Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI).

Thomas used a "unique three-bug chain" to compromise the Samsung Galaxy S21, a feat no other competitor was able to achieve.

The specific methods Thomas used to achieve compromise the device have not been detailed by either the researcher or the ZDI. IT Pro contacted Thomas for further details but he did not reply at the time of publication.

The researcher's success came a day after two other researchers from Singapore-based STARLabs also successfully achieved code execution on the Samsung Galaxy S21.

In Pwn2Own competitions, researchers are required to enter a disclosure room with the affected vendor after the competition round is over to detail the vulnerability they exploited. At this stage, it was revealed that the bug STARLabs researchers used to break the smartphone was already known to Samsung, though not known to the public.

Because of this, the STARLabs researchers were given a reduced prize of $25,000 (£18,620). Thomas received the biggest prize due to the novel nature of the exploit he used.

A day before Thomas' Samsung success, he also demonstrated how a different three-bug chain could be used to achieve code execution on a My Cloud Pro Series PR4100 network attached storage (NAS) device. The chain included an unsafe redirect and a command injection - a piece of work which earned Thomas a further $40,000 (£29,790) in prize money.

Pwn2Own tournaments see security experts compete against each other in a series of rounds over a number of days to accumulate prize money and 'Master of Pwn' points. The researcher with the most points wins the competition, a trophy, a champion's jersey, and 65,000 ZDI points.

The ZDI points give the researcher Platinum status in the ZDI, meaning they receive a one-time payout of $25,000 (£18,620), a 25% bonus on rewards for any future vulnerability disclosures, and a 50% point multiplier for further discoveries.

At the time of writing, and with one day remaining in the event, Thomas sits in fourth place with a total of nine points and $90,000 (£66,960) in accumulated prize money.

The devices to be targeted in Pwn2Own competitions are chosen before each event by the organisers. NAS drives were introduced last year, returning this year, with printers also being included as a new addition to the competition.

Apple's iPhone 12 and Google's Pixel 5 were both in the smartphone category for this year, but no attempts had been made on either of them at the time of writing.

The full list of device categories for Pwn2Own 2021 includes smartphones, printers, NAS drives, home automation, televisions, routers, and external SSDs.

So far, the ZDI has awarded $1,016,250 (£756,908) in prize money with one day left to go.

In previous Pwn2Own events, high-profile disclosures have been found in major products such as Microsoft Teams, Apple's iPhone, Zoom, Adobe Reader, Oracle VirtualBox, Google Chrome and many more.

After a few years in the wilderness, Samsung has returned to the laptop category in force, launching a number of notebooks over the last 12 months that have demonstrated its skills with smart designs and powerful hardware. The latest in this range is the Samsung Galaxy Book Pro, which launched this year alongside the entry-level Galaxy Book and the convertible Galaxy Book Pro 360.

Boasting a razor-thin chassis and high-spec components, this ultraportable machine has its sights set squarely on the likes of the MacBook Pro and Dell XPS 15. It has a big hill to climb, though, and despite Samsung’s prowess in the mobile space, laptops are often a different beast entirely.

Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15.6in review: Design

The days when opting for a larger screen meant sacrificing portability are long gone; the LG Gram 17 proved that you can fit a big display into a slim and light frame, and Samsung more than matches this with the Galaxy Book Pro. It’s incredibly petite considering the size, measuring just 13.3mm thick and weighing just 1.05kg. That’s less than the Gram 17 on both counts, and indeed less than almost any other laptop you’d care to name.

It comes in a colour scheme that Samsung calls ‘Mystic Silver’, which also includes a white keyboard surround. The design looks clean and professional enough, although as with all white laptops, we have concerns about how much of that pristine appearance will remain after a few months of regular use. The smaller 13in Galaxy Book Pro and the Galaxy Book Pro 360 both come in darker blue shades, and we’d have appreciated having the option here.

Still, it’s hard to argue with the stylish and understated appearance of this laptop, which is among the most boardroom-ready devices we’ve seen this year. The sharp lines and subtle accents come together to create a sumptuous effect that’s rather arresting.

Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15.6in review: Display

One area where Samsung definitely hasn’t cut any corners is the screen. The company is known for its display technology for good reason and the 15.6in AMOLED panel is absolutely gorgeous to look at. It sensibly uses a 1080p resolution, rather than opting for an excessive and power-hungry 4K panel, but quality is nonetheless high.

This is borne out by its 100% coverage of the sRGB colour gamut and an outstanding Delta-E of 1.39 as measured by our calibrator. It also covered 114% of the DCI-P3 colour space and 111% of the Adobe RGB gamut, meaning it’s as well-suited to professional graphics work as it is to making web pages and videos look their best. As with Samsung’s smartphones, the AMOLED panel also results in effectively perfect contrast.

In short, the Galaxy Book Pro’s display is as sophisticated as you can get outside of an enterprise-grade mobile workstation. The only minor point against it is the maximum brightness of 308cd/m2, which is a bit on the dim side for brightly-lit or especially sunny conditions. There’s no touchscreen either, but both of these are easily-dismissed gripes when stacked up against the panel’s overall quality.

Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15.6in review: Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard is similarly polished. The large keycaps are comfortable and accurate to type on, with firm actuation and crisp, pleasant feedback. There’s also multi-stage backlighting, a range of handy function keys for various operations, and even a full-sized numberpad. It’s easily the rival of most high-end ultraportables, although it still doesn’t quite match the ThinkPad or MacBook keyboards for sheer typing satisfaction.

The trackpad is nice and expansive too, measuring 160mm across the diagonal, and offering plenty of room for both navigation and multi-touch gestures. The smooth glass surface is silky-smooth to the touch, but one slight quirk we noticed was that when we had the device on our lap, in certain positions the pressure of our wrists on the keyboard surround had a tendency to accidentally activate the mouse buttons, leading to unexpected clicks. It’s not a huge issue, but you may find it a little frustrating until you get used to it.

Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15.6in review: Specs and hardware

What you certainly won’t find frustrating, however, is the power on offer. Our Galaxy Book Pro review unit came with a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor and 16GB of RAM under the hood, and racked up a highly capable overall score of 100 in our benchmark tests. The 512GB NVMe SSD is speedy too, racking up scores of 2.2GB/sec for sequential reads and 1.6GB/sec in sequential writes in AS SSD’s storage tests.

While that’s not going to set any records as a powerhouse device, it’s certainly enough to cope with everything short of high-intensity specialised tasks, and it didn’t feel at all underpowered in practice.

With that having been said, better performance can be found for less money elsewhere. The Acer Swift 5, for example, comfortably sailed past the Galaxy Book Pro with a score of 122 despite being around £500 cheaper and using lower specs. A Core i5 version of the Galaxy Book Pro is available for those that want a more budget-friendly package, but beware the corresponding drop in performance.

This underwhelming result is likely down to the CPU being throttled as a result of poor thermal management. The laptop gets noticeably hot when under load, and while it does have a cooling fan built in, it’s clearly not large or powerful enough to prevent the Galaxy Book Pro from choking under serious strain.

Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15.6in review: Battery life

Thankfully, things are a little more impressive when it comes to battery life. A score of 13hrs 55mins in our tests is up there with some of the best Windows laptops we’ve seen, and while it can’t match Apple’s M1-driven MacBooks or the outstanding 22hrs 6mins racked up by Asus’ ExpertBook B9450F, it should be more than enough to get through a full workday.

Even if it does run low, it’s not going to be a problem, as the USB-C charger has been radically redesigned. It’s much smaller, for starters, looking more like a smartphone plug than a traditional laptop power brick – perfect for taking on the go. It’s also got fast-charging, which offers a claimed eight hours of battery life after just 30 minutes plugged in.

Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15.6in review: Ports and features

Most ultra-thin laptops have a tendency to skimp on all but the barest essentials when it comes to ports, but thankfully that’s not the case here. Not only has Samsung included two USB-C ports (one of which supports the newer Thunderbolt 4 specification), it also manages to pack in a full-size USB 3.2 port, a microSD card slot and even a HDMI output.

Wireless connections are equally capable, with Bluetooth 5.1 and support for the latest Wi-Fi 6E standards. However, there’s no LTE option and although there is a fingerprint reader built into the power button for biometric authentication, the 720p webcam does not support facial login, which seems like an odd oversight.

Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15.6in review: Verdict

When you’ve got a record as polished as Samsung’s, products come with certain expectations attached, and there’s certainly a lot to like about the Galaxy Book Pro. The display is characteristically breathtaking, the dimensions are fabulously slim and light, and there’s a surprisingly versatile range of features.

There are some notable flaws, though. The performance is uninspiring, considering the price, and the trackpad niggles are a little off-putting. These shortcomings just barely keep the Galaxy Book Pro from an award, but although it’s not quite perfect, this laptop makes a worthy business companion – particularly for anyone who needs a device that’s as comfortable on the road as it is in the office.

Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 15.6in specifications

Back in 2019, it seemed as though foldable smartphones were the answer to a question that nobody had asked. Worse, they quickly became problematic for their manufacturers; Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold, for example, suffered multiple delays, hardware faults and a full-on PR disaster when it launched three years ago.

But here we are, one long pandemic later, and not only do we have a third iteration of the Galaxy Z Fold, but it has also taken precedence over Samsung's highly popular Note series - which was not refreshed for 2021. So are we looking at the first 'mainstream' foldable smartphone, or is the Galaxy Z Fold 3 just a poor substitute for a Note 21?

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 review: Design

It's a little ironic that the Fold 3, with its squared frame, almost looks like two skinny Note handsets stuck together when folded; it's a slim smartphone, with a 6.2in outer display, that folds out into a mini tablet, with a 7.6in inner display. The key points for this to work are its hinge and its foldable display - both of which are very delicate innovations.

For 2021, there's a new hinge design, hidden away behind a black bar. It's also supported by a tougher frame built with new materials that Samsung calls 'Armour Aluminium'. This is said to be 10% stronger than last year's Fold 2 and to be fair, it does feel a little bit more solid. Take that with a pinch of salt though, as it isn't exactly drop resistant. The Fold 3 is, and probably always will be, a fragile beauty. That being said, it has an IPX8 water resistance rating which means you can dunk your Fold in 1.5m of water for around 30 minutes. This is because its insides have water-proof coating and rubber seals on all its components.

It comes in 'Phantom Black', 'Phantom Silver' or 'Phantom Green', and each colour is beautiful - although we can't really explain the 'Phantom' part of the name, as they're neither spooky nor see-through. Our review unit came in black and had the same attractive matte finish as the S21 Ultra.

Sizewise, Samsung has also managed to shave off a millimeter compared to last year's model. It is now just 158mm tall and 67mm wide when unfolded. The weight has also dropped to 271g down from 282g which makes it easier to handle on the move. From our experience, we tended to use the smaller screen while walking and the larger screen when sitting down (or at least standing still).

There's an awkwardness to having it unfolded for long periods of time, particularly if you're holding other things like shopping bags or a drink. This device unfolds to a mini tablet, but it's still a mobile phone, and this awkwardness means the 'mobile' element is somewhat hampered.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 review: Display(s)

There's no change to either the size or resolution of the Fold 3's inner display compared to the Fold 2, though there is a slight tweak on the outer display, which has gone from an 816 x 2,260 resolution to 832 x 2,260. Samsung has also added a 120Hz refresh rate to the inner display, which appeared on the Galaxy Note 20, S20 and S21. This feature is adaptive and switches to suit the app or content you're viewing in a bid to save battery power.

In our tests both internal and external screens scored high for sRGB gamut colour coverage: 99.5% for the outer display and a perfect 100% for the inner display. Both match the quality of the S21 and surpass the Note 20, which was admittedly poor for a Samsung panel. For brightness, the smaller screen hit 345cd/m2, while the larger screen scored 374cd/m2.

The test scores confirm what we felt using both screens - these are crisp, vivid displays. Neither has any issue in bright conditions and both looked brilliant with all types of content we viewed - the top refresh rate makes social media scrolling smoother than Butterscotch Angel Delight. The only issue here is with the width of the smaller display. It's fine for checking notifications or even watching content, but with only 67mm to play with, the keyboard is rather squished, and any serious typing or interaction is very hard with average-sized digits.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 review: Specs and performance

Unlike the Exynos-powered S21, the Fold 3 is sporting Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 processor, which was used in the OnePlus 9 Pro. As with many of the mobile CPUs available today, this has been developed with a 5nm process which houses more power in a small space. As such, the Fold 3 is super fast; in GeekBench 5 it notched up single-core scores of 1,094 and multi-core scores of 3,313. The latter was just short of the One Plus 9 Pro (3,557) and the S21 (3,549), but that's close enough to be considered a decent competitor.

Considering it has dual displays and software able to seamlessly switch between the two, the Fold 3 is technically fantastic. Performance is like-for-like on both displays and that includes switching from one to the other while using an application. It also holds up well when using multiple applications in the split screen mode or running lots of tabs while browsing. If the argument for buying a foldable is that you can do more with it, it's backing that up with its processing power.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 review: Battery

All the extra things you can do, such as the switching between displays, does require a lot of power though. The Fold 3 has a 4,400mAh battery, which is actually slightly smaller than the Fold 2's 4,500mAh cell. In our looped video test, the Fold 3's larger screen lasted 18hrs 28mins, which is about standard for a phone fitted with a battery-draining 120Hz display. Unsurprisingly, the smaller 6.7in screen offered up almost two hours more at 20hrs 2mins.

For comparison, both actually last longer than the OnePlus 9 Pro, but are still off the S21 Ultra's 22hrs 32mins result by some way. However, the test on the larger display did offer almost the same score as the Note 20 Ultra, with just a two minute difference between them. It is worth noting that it holds up very well in day to day use; no matter how much we threw at it the Fold 3 never needed a mid-day charge, and often made it to the end of the day with a little juice left in it.

There's also 25W fast charging and wireless charging capabilities, though neither are particularly impressive; the fast charger takes almost an hour and 20 minutes to go from 10% to full. The warp charge on OnePlus, for example, took the battery from 5% to almost full in just 30 minutes.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 review: Features

Feature-wise, there are an abundance of work-centric improvements on the Fold. It has S-Pen support, with two stylus models available: the S-Pen Fold Edition or the S-Pen Pro. Both are sold separately and neither were made available to IT Pro for this review, presumably because - unlike the Note 20 - the Fold doesn't have a dedicated slot for a stylus. For that, you need to buy a case.

Elsewhere there's Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, 5G connectivity and support for Samsung's Desktop Experience (DeX). Unfortunately it still has Samsung's Bixby digital assistant baked in, but you can choose to use the Google Assistant - or like most people, use neither.

What you will use - which is also an improvement from previous Folds - is the software and user interface. It's far simpler and smoother to operate than before, with greater multitasking functions and an improved split-screen mode. You can now adjust the size of app windows and enable a static taskbar that has a similar function to a desktop PC. On the subject of PCs, Microsoft's partnership with Samsung has also resulted in more dual-screen optimisations throughout its Office 365 suite. Microsoft Office, for instance, can support two pages at once on the inner display, for a book-style reading experience.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 review: Camera(s)

Sadly, the cameras on the Fold 3 are a little disappointing; It has three 12MP rear lenses (wide, telephoto and ultrawide) and a wimpy 4MP selfie camera. On paper this looks poor, because that paper will also say Samsung and we've come to expect the absolute best from its flagships.

That's not to say it's a bad camera phone; it's just bad by Samsung's usual standards. None of the lenses offer anything really special aside from optical image stabilization. The telephoto lens, for instance, only has 2x optical zoom, which feels a little paltry compared to the S21's 10x Space Zoom. This is perhaps the most important facet that Samsung will need to improve if the Fold series is to be a mainstream success. The Note 20's 108MP wide lens and 10MP selfie cam make the Fold 3's lenses look amateur.

It's only when it comes to software that the Fold 3 is a little more fun. You can partially unfold the device so that it sits on a surface and take shots without holding it, which includes a live preview mode. Dual screens and multiple cameras can be a little confusing, but once you get to grips with it, the software allows you to switch screens and lenses for more shot variety, but this would have been a knockout feature with higher camera specs.

It also comes with decent video capabilities, as it allows users to record stabilized videos at up to 4k with 60fps. Again, it's not groundbreaking, but it's able to capture crisp footage and its focus is sharp and quick.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 review: Verdict

For all its qualities, there are still some conceptual issues with Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 3 that start to annoy over time. By the second week of use, we did grow tired of the smaller screen and its squished controls. It isn't always easy to fold it back either, particularly when you're in a rush; the average person looks at their phone all the time, so either make the unfolding easier or turn using the smaller screen into a better experience please, Samsung.

The low-spec camera is also off-putting. The S21 is almost £400 cheaper and that has arguably the best combination of lenses and software there has ever been on a smartphone. You have to question whether a device can be considered a flagship if it hasn't got flagship-quality cameras.

That being said, there are better reasons to buy the Fold 3 than there were for its predecessors: it's (slightly) tougher, the 120Hz refresh rate on both displays is a joy, it has much more power and the software is fantastic and intuitive. What's more, it's clear that the Fold is now a key part of the Samsung smartphone family, so we can presumably expect it to get even better. But for right now, we have a pretty worthy foldable at our fingertips.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 specifications

All SATA disks look somewhat alike, but the Samsung 870 QVO is almost a carbon copy of the 870 Evo. That’s because it’s effectively the same drive, with one important difference – it uses four-bit QLC chips, in place of the more mainstream TLC tech.

It’s a smart option to offer. Packing additional bits into a memory cell normally slows down performance, but that’s moot with SATA drives as the interface bottlenecks the available bandwidth anyway. The AS SSD benchmarks clearly illustrate the point, reporting precisely the same speeds from the 870 QVO and its TLC counterpart. The QVO even managed to pull ahead in the PCMark 10 storage tests – the 2TB model racked up a system disk score of 1,240 and a data disk score of 1,604, making it one of the speediest SATA drives we’ve ever seen.

Meanwhile, QLC is cheaper than TLC, as it requires fewer physical chips to store a given amount of data. The 1TB model costs £85, so just 9p per gigabyte, while the 2TB version we tested drops that further to 8p. The economics of QLC allow Samsung to produce reasonably affordable 4TB and 8TB models too, available online for £302 and £626 respectively.

The QVO might sound like a win-win, but there’s a compromise. The cells in a QLC SSD have to work harder than the ones in TLC drives, reducing their lifespan. While the 870 Evo is rated for 600TBW, the QVO promises a lesser 360TBW – and the warranty is shorter too, at three years versus five.

This doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker. While 360TBW would be unacceptable for a database server, it’s fine for an everyday desktop or data drive. Endurance scales with capacity too, so the 2TB model is good for 720TBW, which we doubt a regular desktop user will ever hit.

If you’re worried, you can use the Samsung Magician tool for Windows to keep track of the health of your drive. As well as providing technical diagnostics, this also lets you securely erase the disk or activate hardware encryption. It’s partnered with the Samsung Data Migration utility, which simplifies the task of cloning a working system onto a new disk.

The limited write endurance of the 870 QVO means we can’t recommend it for intensive, mission-critical roles. But if you want to give a new lease of life to a laptop or lightweight PC, it can provide the space you need, along with first-rate SATA performance, at an unbeatable price.

Samsung 870 QVO specifications

Using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology, Samsung Electronics has begun mass producing the world's smallest dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), measuring only 14 nanometers (nm).

Following the world's first EUV DRAM shipment in March 2020, Samsung has now increased the number of EUV layers for its Double Data Rate 5 (DDR5) solutions to five.

With DRAM scaling down to 10nm or smaller, EUV technology becomes increasingly important for higher performance and greater yields.

Samsung achieved the highest bit density while increasing wafer productivity by about 20% by applying five EUV layers to its 14nm DRAM. The 14nm process also contributes to a 20% reduction in power consumption when compared to previous generations of DRAM.

“We have led the DRAM market for nearly three decades by pioneering key patterning technology innovations,” said Jooyoung Lee, senior vice president and head of DRAM product and technology at Samsung Electronics.

Lee added, “Today, Samsung is setting another technology milestone with multi-layer EUV that has enabled extreme miniaturization at 14nm — a feat not possible with the conventional argon fluoride (ArF) process. Building on this advancement, we will continue to provide the most differentiated memory solutions by fully addressing the need for greater performance and capacity in the data-driven world of 5G, AI and the metaverse.”

Samsung's 14nm DRAM harnesses the latest DDR5 standard, allowing it to deliver unprecedented speeds of up to 7.2 gigabits per second (Gbps), more than double the speed of DDR4 at 3.2Gbps.

The firm also announced plans to expand its 14nm DDR5 product line to support data centers, supercomputers, and enterprise server applications. Furthermore, Samsung plans to increase its 14nm DRAM chip density to 24Gb to meet the rising demands of the global IT industry.

Earlier this year, Samsung unveiled an AI-integrated memory solution to enhance high-speed data processing in supercomputers and AI applications, an industry-first.

Samsung has unveiled its first open source software solution: scalable memory development kit (SMDK).

Earlier this year, the firm introduced compute express link (CXL) memory expander, which allowed memory capacity and bandwidth to reach levels far exceeding today's servers, an industry-first.

Samsung’s new solution facilitates the CXL memory platform with easy-to-integrate software tools. According to the company, SMDK will greatly increase CXL memory’s accessibility for data center system developers in emerging artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and 5G markets.

The extensive software kit includes libraries, reusable codes, application programming interfaces (APIs), and more.

"In order for data center and enterprise systems to smoothly run next-generation memory solutions like CXL, development of corresponding software is a necessity," said Cheolmin Park, vice president of memory product planning at Samsung Electronics.

Park added, "Today, Samsung is reinforcing its commitment toward delivering a total memory solution that encompasses hardware and software, so that IT OEMs can incorporate new technologies into their systems much more effectively."

Samsung’s SMDK allows the main memory and the CXL expander to operate seamlessly in heterogeneous memory systems. CXL memory can easily be integrated into advanced IT systems with the SMDK, eliminating the need to modify or optimize application software settings.

Additionally, SMDK’s memory virtualization feature enables system designers to manage memory pools in shared memory architectures dynamically. Thanks to a proprietary intelligent tiering engine, the SMDK can identify and configure memory types, capacities, and bandwidths most appropriate for each use case.

Samsung's SMDK is currently only available for limited testing and optimization. Samsung expects to open source the tool by the first half of next year.

This automatically-generated transcript is taken from the IT Pro Podcast episode ‘Are foldable phones more than a fad?’. To listen to the full episode, click here. We apologise for any errors.

Jane McCallion

Hi, I'm Jane McCallion.

Adam Shepherd

And I'm Adam Shepherd.

Jane

And you're listening to the IT Pro Podcast where this week we are flipping out over phones.

Adam

Most of our listeners will remember a time before every phone was a flat uniform slab of glass. The form factor of top phones hasn't changed much over the last five years. But the recent trend for foldable smartphones has reintroduced a bit of variety into the mobile market.

Jane

But while these new devices may be a bit more unique than our now traditional rectangular design, is this new wave of foldables an actual evolution of the technology or merely a passing fad that will be swiftly forgotten?

Adam

So before we get started with this, I think it's worth recapping a brief history of foldable devices because foldable devices aren't exactly new, per se.

Jane

No, no. And when the new generation of foldables came out, I was very much sort of like, oh, so we're doing this again then, are we? Cool. Okay, fine. And yeah, I mean, foldables, they date back to the days of sort of PDAs, really - personal digital assistants, if you're not au fait with the acronym. One of the earliest ones was the Psion series five, which came out in 1997. So like I say, it's, it's not a new idea. And that was had a little screen, your typical sort of grayscale type screen and integrated a physical QWERTY keyboard. And another contemporary of the Psion was the Nokia 9000 Communicator. It came out in 96. And once again, kind of physical keyboard, a much smaller screen, but something that's more recognisably a phone. When it's closed, it looks like an extremely chunky phone. But it was the 90s so everything was a bit brickish. Not quite one that you need to carry a suitcase sized battery around with but still sizable.

Adam

The big difference between kind of newer foldables and the older generation of devices is that the older generation were based around having a QWERTY keyboard, as opposed to the older T9 style of button layout. And that meant that you could get a lot more done in comparison, you know, it was easier to do things like making notes or typing emails, and you know, all of these kinds of productivity tasks in inverted commas that a traditional mobile phone just wasn't really suited for, you know, even when smarter phones started becoming a thing, you know, phones where you could do things like reply to emails, and check your stocks and all of these kinds of kinds of things, there was still a bit of a trend for, you know, mobile phones to have access to a QWERTY keyboard, whether through, you know, a little plug in accessory or through a kind of clever fold out mechanism where you could have access to a QWERTY keyboard. BlackBerrys for example, the the kind of first BlackBerry devices, that was a big selling point of them.

Jane

Well not even just the first ones like going up until sort of the 2010s. They were still people - I'm going to slightly age myself here, but, you know, when I left my first job, it was only the MD who had a blackberry and do price that was very kind of like high status. And then I went back into education a few years later, and suddenly all these people who, you know, kind of a good five years younger than me, who've all got the BlackBerrys. Clearly, in these few years, I slipped through some alternate dimension in which young people now want QWERTY keyboards as well, allegedly, although obviously it turned out to be slightly different to that. But yeah, I think that these older foldable devices are more like kind of mini computers. And I kind of appreciate that actually, what we have now as smartphones, despite the word phone on the end of it is very much a tiny computer with a software based keypad. But yet they they are little, almost like little laptops really, to look at them, like little proto-laptops.

Adam

Yeah, and with that in mind, modern foldable devices are very much kind of following that trend. So the likes of the Galaxy Z Fold 3, which has recently been launched by Samsung, the Huawei Mate X2 and the Surface Duo from Microsoft, have all been following that trend of essentially trying to merge a traditional phone and a traditional laptop. And while older foldable devices were reliant on QWERTY keypads, these combine essentially two touchscreens to recreate the same functionality.

Jane

Yeah, they use the sort of software keypad that we're used to from smartphones now. And I think that the idea is that you would be typing on them with your thumbs in the similar way that you do on a smartphone rather than kind of laying them out to type out, whatever.

Adam

Well, you say that, that is one of the use cases that I've seen, you know, if you are, like, for example, on a train, and you want to rattle off a couple of long emails in a manner that's a bit speedier than doing it with your thumbs, which, you know, can be a bit time intensive and, and prone to mistakes, you can set it down on a table, you know, with the with the screen propped up as, as you would a laptop and just rattle away. With a full proper QWERTY keyboard,

Jane

You see, you can tell from this discussion, but I'm not involved in the review side of things. I look at it and go, well, obviously, you wouldn't want to type on that. That's, that's quite kind of interesting. I think it also shows I have long nails, so like you couldn't possibly type on that.

Adam

Of course, it does depend on you know, things like how big your fingers are.

Jane

Yeah, which in fairness, I have quite small hands, as we have discussed previously on this podcast, whenever the topic of phones comes up.

Adam

So part of the raison d'etre for these devices is that they're merging the old kind of PDA functionality with the more modern kind of digital smartphone app experience, you know, so you can have both in the same device.

Jane

Yeah, and it does seem to me that these devices are bringing a bit more to the table than the previous PDAs, whereas they were tiny laptops, these ones do seem to, they do a bit more, it's not just, here's something that you can write an email on, and maybe make some calls. You can, for example, I've seen with the Surface Duo, when it's in sort of portrait orientation, if you like, that you could, for example, have a reference text on one side and a note taking thing where you can take notes with a stylus or your finger or whatever, on the other screen. So that's quite useful, quite kind of almost like the split screen function that you have on desktops and laptops, which which I am a frequent user, I'm a big fan, big fan. So I can see how that'd be like, super useful, actually.

Adam

And one of the big things for modern foldables is that for most of the time, they can just act as you know, a normal standard form factor smartphone with the standard, you know, roughly 16:9 screen. And you know, you can use all of your apps and whatnot in the way that you normally would. But when you need a little bit more real estate, if you're, for example, watching a video or taking notes, or whatever it is that you need a little bit more elbow room for, you can fold it out, and bang, you've got more more space to work with straight off the bat rather than having to hop between devices, you know, because at the moment, I can do, let's say 90% of what I need to do on a daily basis on my smartphone, you know, push comes to shove, I can do the vast majority of my work and my you know, day to day technology needs, they can be met with a standard smartphone, sometimes I need a little bit more room to work with. And for those situations, I will have to go back to you know, a desktop or a laptop or a large form factor tablet, something with a bit more room. The idea of these, or part of the idea of these is that you can fold them out and you have that extra room without having to switch devices.

Jane

Yeah, and you're kind of personally thinking about it. I also use my smartphone for not for a lot of things like even if I am working on my desktop, I'm dual-screening with my phone half the time as well. But if I for example, want to be on a mobile device, and I want to look at Pinterest, which works better in a mobile form factor anyway, I then have to hunt around my house for my iPad Mini because my phone is too just too small. While I appreciate they're not as big as the screen for the iPad Mini. There are an awful lot bigger than the iPhone 7 that I have for example, which isn't great for looking at Stuff that just needs a bit more space. Yeah, I don't want a massive phone.

Adam

So these devices then are very much geared around productivity, we've covered a lot of the things that they can do in terms of note taking and videos and multi app multitasking. There are many apps, for example, that are now being built around a dual screen or a foldable setup. So Outlook, for example, on the Microsoft Surface Duo is built specifically or has been optimised for the dual screen form factor. So you'll have your inbox on one side of the device, and then the actual, you know, email view on the other side, which makes for much easier inbox management, you know, you get a much more desktop style inbox on your phone.

Jane

That's what I was about to say, Yeah, kind of very similar to what you would have with either mail client, or, you know, webmail.

So I think we've spoken a lot about the 'what' of these foldables. But it's probably worth our while looking at the 'why' as well, because so much technology innovation, you've got to sit there and think why?

Adam

Well, this is the kind of form factor that it's easy to look at and go, Well, there's no point to this. This is just innovation, quote, unquote, for for its own sake, you know, it's just a fad. There's no real need for it. You know, that's certainly the initial reaction that I had when I first saw the kind of newer generation of foldable devices because of course, the big innovation that has enabled these devices is foldable touchscreens. So the Samsung foldables, and the Huawei foldables, among other manufacturers, have been built around flexible, flexible screen panels, which is a relatively new invention. The Surface Duo, we should note, is built slightly differently. So that's built over two separate panels with a connecting hinge. But most of them are built around a flexible screen. And that seems initially, like it's just a solution looking for a problem. But that might not be the case.

Jane

So it's not just that they invented this foldable polymer, I think it is, or whatever it is they've got on them. And when let's find a way to market this, it does have a genuine use case in your opinion.

Adam

Yeah, I think there's a lot of applications that this can be put to. So the the form factor, it does bring with it a number of functionality benefits. But it's important to recognise the the need that's driven this. You know, as I alluded to earlier, there are some tasks, which smartphones as good as they are just aren't equipped to deal with, you know, if anyone's tried looking at a spreadsheet, for example, on a standard smartphone. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's far from comfortable.

Jane

Yeah, yeah. Looking at it as one thing, have you ever tried to edit or input to a spreadsheet?

Adam

Oh god, it's just not worth it. But that's exactly the kind of thing where, you know, if you could grab the corners of your phone and stretch it by about, you know, four or five inches, it would suddenly be a lot more comfortable to use. And this is exactly the kind of use case that foldables have been designed for.

Jane

It would also suddenly be a laptop.

Adam

Well, yeah, but that's kind of the point, right?

Jane

True, true. And I guess the idea is also that say if you are a business person who is on the road a lot or something like that, that you don't have to cart around a laptop, in addition to your smartphone, you can have this one device that is both a smartphone and a laptop, in one.

Adam

All things to all people. So who are these devices for then? You know, we've spoken about a lot of the applications already. But most of these devices have been targeted at business people, you know, working professionals, power users, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, for example, has been kind of pretty clearly pushed towards the niche that the old Note range previously occupied. You know it has support for Samsung's S Pen stylus. It's clearly being marketed as the the evolution of that particular, you know, power user niche.

Jane

Can I just say that I am very disappointed that the Z Fold 3 doesn't actually fold up like a Z. I feel like, I feel like everybody's being conned. But yeah, you know that there is a reason why it is targeted towards, like you say, business people, I'd say even more so than power users. Because if you're out just like in everyday situations, you just use your phone for browsing the internet, you know, looking at a few apps, whatever, you're not going to need this. And you're not going to fork the extra money that is involved in getting one. But if you are a salesperson who is out and about a lot, traditionally, then this may be very useful to you or somebody who just needs to be connected on the go on a regular basis, I can see it being really quite useful for for people who are in that kind of working situation who don't really want to have to cart loads of stuff around with them because they're on the move, but may have to.

Adam

Yeah, but they aren't without their problems. You mentioned a second ago, the additional expense. And yeah, they are not cheap at all. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, for example, retails from just under £1600, £1599. And that's the starting price.

Jane

That's so much money, I realised that I've just said that about five times. But that's a lot of money, a lot of money. A lot of money to drop on a phone.

Adam

Yeah, but that's actually more expensive than most laptops, even. The average mid range to high end laptop will run you between, let's say £800 and £1200, the average high end smartphone will cost about £600 to £800. So even if you completely replaced both your existing smartphone and your existing laptop with one of these devices, you're still only saving a couple of hundred pounds, really.

Jane

If that.

Adam

If that. And realistically, as good as foldables are, they're not going to replace laptops anytime soon, you know, they might be a decent stopgap if you're, you know, out and about, and you don't have access to a laptop, but they can't, they can't replace laptops, if for no other reason, then they just won't run a lot of the desktop apps that laptops are used for.

Jane

They're also too small.

Adam

They are also too small, realistically.

Jane

Would it then rather than you and I thinking about ourselves individually, or individuals flogging off their laptop and smartphone and getting one of these instead, for IT departments, is it something that would be worthwhile investing in for certain segments of the company like say, hate to keep, I always feel like that whenever people talk about, you know, those who are on the road all the time, it's always salespeople, which makes it sound like they're never home, but you know, kind of, yeah, reps who are on the road a lot, people who do have to travel a lot for work - is it worth them being given one of these devices for work and say, having a desktop or a lower end laptop, such as a Chromebook back at the office?

Adam

Realistically, I don't think this is going to be a company issue device for anyone but Samsung. I mean, like it has a lot of applications. And I can absolutely see a lot of executives, and a lot of individuals wanting to pick one up. But I just don't think there are enough applications for IT departments dropping, you know, what is a considerable amount of money on a standard issue employee device, even if it's just for the sales department, it's a lot of money. And you've got to look at the ROI for this. And I don't think the productivity benefits of this kind of form factor are there yet. If they're ever going to be there, frankly.

Jane

Yeah. And the expense is not the only problem with these devices. They can also, while I have said that they are not quite as space consuming as predecessors, this still pretty chunky devices.

Adam

I would actually argue in some ways they're more space consuming than the devices of the 90s. And admittedly, you get a lot more for that than you did with stuff like the Psion Series 5, but they're really, they are really thick. If you think about it, it's essentially the the width of your average smartphone doubled, because it's basically a standard smartphone folded in half, and...

Jane

Is this because we're used to thin smartphones now, though?

Adam

It's partly because we used to thin smartphones, but also screen technology and, you know, mobile technology in general, has only come so far. Phones, you know, components still take up a certain width. And while yes, we can get a we can get a smartphone down to a thickness of eight millimetres, seven millimetres very thin for a single, a single flat panel. Yeah, when you're putting two of those together, that's suddenly a lot less convenient to carry around.

Jane

Yeah.

Adam

And it's, it doesn't feel like it should make much of a difference. But it really does, particularly when you're trying to use the device, in its kind of folded over form factor as a traditional smartphone, which, you know, realistically, you're probably going to be doing most of the time, you know, you're going to be trying to use it one handed. Yeah, because that's how most apps and most you know, user interaction models work these days. And when you're doing that, it's a big, like, inch thick brick of a thing that you're trying to trying to navigate.

Jane

And there is also perhaps less so for the current generation, but concerns that they may break more often, obviously, if you've got a hinge like the Surface Duo, that's another mechanical part that that can just break. And I'm sure they've tested it and put it in all kinds of machines that fold an open fold, nope, and fold and open, whatever. But it is a point of failure. And absolutely critical is a point of failure. And I'm sure that anybody who saw the first series of the Galaxy Fold is familiar with reviewers accidentally removing the screen, because it looked like it was a screen protector.

Adam

Yes. And Samsung to its credit has put in a lot of you know, protective measures and has introduced a lot of design elements to protect the screens protect the hinge to make it more durable. But as you say, there are more points of failure with this form factor, the hinges are point of failure. If any kind of water or debris gets into the hinge, it can then get into the internal components a lot easier. And on a very basic level, you've now got screens on the front, and on the inside, which is just additional areas that can shatter if and when you accidentally drop it.

Jane

Oh, yeah, I mean, I hadn't even thought about that. My phone is always in a protective case. So I don't really think not often when I'm consistently dropping it, like onto concrete or in my bathroom, and it's just a lovely little projector and a glass screen protector so that if anything does crack, it's the screen protector, not the phone. And that would be those kinds of mitigations against clumsiness, or not caring, lack of due care and attention. And would, that just wouldn't be possible with it.

Adam

It's possible, but it's more difficult. You know, we've already mentioned the thickness and the bulk of these devices straight out of the box. If you had a big thick rubber bumper case around them, that's even more size and weight that you've got to contend with. And they're stretching the limits of profitability as it is. plus the fact that protective cases and whatnot are likely to be much more expensive, just for if for no other reason, then they've got to be designed with a lot more kind of flexibility to accommodate a form factor.

Jane

Yeah, how do you get something that is both flexible and durable and protective enough that if I drop it when it's closed, it will protect that hinge and not flop around when I've got it open and also will protect the when it's open for when inevitably gets dropped in that form factor as well. So, ultimately, is this something that you could see yourself using Do you think I think I might know the answer. I'm asking the question anyway.

Adam

I think you may be surprised by the answer, actually, I could see myself using one. But what I really want more than anything else, is, I don't want a foldable phone. I've written about this for the site before, I don't want a foldable phone, I want a foldable tablet. So what I want is a six, seven inch tablet that folds out into a larger kind of roughly a4 size tablet, That, to me, seems much more useful, much more durable, much more ironically, much more portable, and much more user friendly than the current crop of foldable phones that we've got.

Jane

Interesting. I wonder if such a thing, whatever, kind of make it to the table, or if there's not really very much point in, in engineering such a thing when we have laptops and we have these foldable smartphones? What about you? Okay, so you are not going to be surprised by my art? No. I Well, I'm a bit of a technological stick in the mud. Anyway, I think when you and I first started working together, I possibly still had my feature phone that I kind of relied on for a really long time.

Adam

I think you'd moved on to your Windows Phone by that point.

Jane

Windows Phone rip, I accidentally three my HTC crossing the right ones. Luckily, it had one of the bumpers on it because otherwise, it exfo No, I don't. I don't you kind of my clumsiness, or lack of lack of attention beside. And I just don't think it's something that would be useful for me, it's too expensive, it doesn't really offer enough to persuade me that I should fork out for it. The only foldable I've ever ever wanted was the Motorola razor. And even then I couldn't be persuaded to leave my, my feature phone. Like my little Nokia and get one of those. So I don't think I'm really the target audiences I'm waiting for when we live in the future, whichever future you want to look at. But every imagined future for for books and games and TV and stuff, you either have a like hologram phone, or one that's basically just a screen of glass, and or it's just completely flexible for rolling rollout. That's I'm waiting for, for the future. The dystopian future that is a fiction.

Adam

Someone's been rewatching The Expanse.

Jane

This is a possibility.

Adam

So foldable smartphones, then may not necessarily be our cup of tea. But do we think that they have a long term future in the smartphone market? Or are they just going to be a flash in the pan thing that we'll look back on in a couple of years, the same way that we look at Google Glass now?

Jane

When they first appeared, I thought it was a fad. I'm surprised that they've stuck around as long as they have. But I am not convinced that there is a sustainable market for them. I think that if you and I were to revisit this in, say, five years time being generous, I don't think that this is a vertical that would continue to exist. And what about you, do you think you will still be reviewing these phones will they will I be eating my words in five years time? It wouldn't be the first time.

Adam

I think that they are going to stick around. But I think that they're going to stick around in a very specialised capacity, they're definitely not going to replace traditional smartphones in any kind of capacity. What I think they are going to end up settling into is they're going to end up settling into a nice cosy niche in the same way that giant fabulous have done previously. So the big kind of 6.9, 7 inch devices for people that want a really big screen and you know, stylus support, and all of that kind of stuff, because there is still a market for those big devices that sit on that dividing line between phone and a larger kind of tablet style device will still do want those kinds of things. And being able to have that but also to you know, make it slightly more portable and slightly more. One hand friendly, as it were. I think is a Useful proposition, let's say, but in terms of mainstream appeal, I'm not convinced.

Jane

Well, unfortunately, that's all we have time for this week. You can find links to everything we've spoken about today and even more in the show notes and on our website itpro.co.uk.

Adam

You can also follow us on Twitter at @itpro as well as on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

Jane

We'll be back next week with more analysis from the world of it but until then, goodbye.

Adam

Bye.

The average smartphone tends to look fairly unassuming, but recently, foldable phones have injected a bit of diversity into the market. These eye-catching new devices include foldable screens, and are aimed at businesspeople and power users.

But do foldable phones represent a genuine step forward for mobile technology, or are they simply a passing trend that will be swiftly forgotten? In this week’s episode, we dig into what makes foldable phones so unique, and look at whether or not they deserve a place in our pockets.

Highlights

“One of the big things for modern foldables is that for most of the time, they can just act as a normal, standard form factor smartphone with the standard 16:9 screen, and you can use all of your apps and whatnot in the way that you normally would. But when you need a little bit more real estate, if you're, for example, watching a video or taking notes, or whatever it is that you need a little bit more elbow room for, you can fold it out, and bang, you've got more space to work with straight off the bat, rather than having to hop between devices.”

“It does seem to me that these devices are bringing a bit more to the table than the previous PDAs; whereas they were tiny laptops, with these ones, it's not just, here's something that you can write an email on, and maybe make some calls. For example, I've seen with the Surface Duo, when it's in portrait orientation, that you could have a reference text on one side and a note taking app on the other screen. So that's quite useful, almost like the split screen function that you have on desktops and laptops, which I am a frequent user of.”

Read the full transcript here.

Footnotes

• Samsung aims for the mainstream with sub £1,000 foldable phones
• Is the world ready for foldable phones?
• Forget foldable phones - where's my foldable tablet?
• Will folding screens ever make it to the mass market?
• Samsung Galaxy Z Flip review: Flipping impressive
• No new Galaxy Note this year, Samsung exec confirms
• Microsoft Surface Duo review: Progress is a double-edged sword
• The Surface Neo is a tantalising glimpse of what might have been
• Cosmo Communicator review: For the few, not the many

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Samsung aims to make foldable smartphones a mainstream success with the release of third-generation models of its Galaxy Z Fold and the Galaxy Z Flip at the expense of its Note range.

Both devices will go on sale later in August, a date normally reserved for the more business-focused Note, which has not had an update since last year's Note 20 and will not be getting one this year.

Instead, the South Korean giant has added more functions to its Galaxy Z Fold, which now includes higher refresh rates and support for the Note's famous S-Pen. The company has also changed the pricing for its new Galaxy Flip, taking it under £1,000 for the first time.

Galaxy Z Fold 3

The first iteration of the Galaxy Fold had some teething problems with its display and the hinge technology, as well as an off-putting price tag. Samsung has included a new hinge design with both models, which it calls 'Armor Aluminium', but while the technical faults seem to be improving, the price of the third-generation fold is still quite excessive, starting at £1,599.

For that price, you have a slim handset that folds out into a massive 7.6in display with a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, HDR10+ and an 88.8% screen-to-body ratio. Of the two foldable devices launched, the Fold seems the most likely replacement for the Note range with its massive screen offering more business-orientated uses. The device will also support Samsung's S-Pen stylus, similar to the S21 Ultra, further suggesting that the Note range may have been retired for good.

The rear of the device and the cover screen are protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass Victus, but the internal display is not - coated instead with a special protective film. This same setup is also used by the new Flip.

Galaxy Z Flip 3

The third generation of Galaxy Z Flip will be the first foldable-display smartphone to be launched with a price that's under £1,000. However, it is only just below that fee, with the 128GB version costing £949 and the 256GB model priced at £999.

The Flip is the more compact device, with a clamshell form factor that folds out to a more standard 22:9 aspect ratio with a 6.7in display. The cover display has also been enlarged from the previous model, and it now supports a wider variety of widgets for greater flexibility.

The new devices have been upgraded with features that made both the Galaxy S and Note ranges extremely popular; there's a 120Hz refresh rate, support for HDR10+, a 5nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset (which 5G enabled) and fast and wireless charging capabilities. Both also benefit from IPX8 water resistance for the first time, although there's no protection rating for dust ingress.

Both the Flip 3 and the Fold 3 are also missing some more 'premium' features normally associated with flagship Samsung devices. Neither has the top camera specs found on other Samsung handsets, with the Flip just sporting two 12MP lenses and a 10MP selfie camera. For comparison, last year's Galaxy Note 20 had a triple camera set up that included a 108MP lens.

Samsung’s Device Solutions division is now responsible for almost half of the tech giant’s total revenue.

This is according to new details revealed during yesterday’s earnings call regarding the company’s Q2 financial results.

Earlier this month, it was announced that Samsung’s memory chip segment helped exceed financial analysts’ expectations by 1.2 trillion won (£763 million), with a 53.4% rise from the same period last year.

The segment is part of Samsung’s Device Solutions division, which also includes the tech giant’s own display panels business. Together, the division managed to bring in 46% of Samsung’s total revenue for Q2.

CCS Insight senior analyst Fiona Vanier told IT Pro that this makes the Device Solutions division “the largest contributor in the quarter”.

“Overall, Samsung reported a good quarter increasing its total revenue, operating profit and net profit in local currency," she said. "This was mainly due to Samsung’s Device Solutions division, which includes display panels and semiconductors business. Samsung has been able to take full advantage of the increased demand for components coupled with some price increases which boosted its margins."

According to Vanier, although Samsung has so far “managed to minimise the effects of component shortages”, the global chip shortage “is an on-going risk for the business, as is the unpredictability of COVID-19 in major markets like India”.

“That being said, the demand for display panels, memory, and semiconductors looks set to remain strong for the rest of the year,” she told IT Pro.

Moreover, since the initial results were reported in early July, Samsung has had to grapple with the effects of a COVID-19 outbreak in one of its main factories near Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Vanier said that the subsequent factory closure “dented its performance in the second quarter”.

It was also a “key factor” in the tech giant’s mobile division recording a 22% fall in revenue since Q1. Handset shipments recorded a 5% jump year-on-year, which Vanier described as “expected”.

“However, the company remains cautious about the business outlook, stressing its continuing concerns about the effects of the pandemic,” she added.

Like many other manufacturers, Samsung has struggled with factory closures since the start of the pandemic. In February, the tech giant was also forced to shut down two of its factories in Austin, Texas, due to extreme weather conditions ravaging parts of the US.

The future of Samsung's Galaxy Note appears to be in doubt after the company revealed it would be pushing most of the range's features onto other devices for this year's release cycle.

Confirmation came from Samsung’s president and head of Mobile Communications Business, TM Roh, speaking ahead of August's Unpacked event, which typically showcases the company's latest hardware.

The virtual event, which will be held on 11 August on Samsung’s website, will likely showcase the highly-anticipated Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3, images of which were leaked in June.

However, the Galaxy Note smartphone has been notably absent from leaks and conversations ahead of the event, leading some to speculate that the brand may be pushed aside in favour of folding hardware.

Roh has now published a statement clarifying the situation:

“Instead of unveiling a new Galaxy Note this time around, we will further broaden beloved Note features to more Samsung Galaxy devices,” he said, referring to the “first-ever S Pen designed specifically for foldable phones”.

The S Pen has been a long-time staple of the Galaxy Note smartphone range since the launch of its first iteration in 2011, allowing users to jot down details of a business meeting or to-do list by turning the device’s touchscreen into a notepad.

The useful feature is now being expanded to Samsung’s foldable smartphone range, with leaked photos of the Z Fold 3 visibly including a stylus pen stored at the back of its book-like spine.

On Wednesday, Roh said that “the upcoming Galaxy Z Fold combines the very best that smartphones and tablets offer and delivers completely new ways of working, connecting and creating, while the upcoming Z Flip exhibits an even more refined style, armed with more durable, stronger materials”.

“I firmly believe these devices will answer the call for the versatile mobile technology we need as we navigate the open road ahead,” he added.

Samsung’s decision to skip the Galaxy Note in favour of its new foldable phones has been long-rumoured, with sources telling Reuters late last year that the tech giant didn’t have plans to develop a 2021 iteration of the range.

At a shareholder meeting in March, Samsung co-CEO Koh Dong-jin warned of a “serious imbalance in supply and demand of chips in the IT sector globally”, adding that although the “Note series is positioned as a high-end model in [Samsung’s] business portfolio (...) it might be difficult to release [a] Note model in 2H [of 2021]”.

“It could be a burden to unveil two flagship models in a year,” he said, referring to January’s launch of the Galaxy S21. However, the company didn’t rule out that the Note could make a return in 2022.

Samsung’s operating income shot up by almost half in the first quarter of 2021, and looking at its latest flagship, it’s easy to see why. The Galaxy S21 is geared towards a 5G-ready audience and comes equipped with the tech giant’s signature stunning AMOLED display, as well as seamless scrolling and superb HDR10+ capability.

However, following a difficult 2020 for Samsung, during which demand for its premium smartphone offering considerably weakened, the tech giant might be trying to remind its customers why they should be willing to pay over £600 for a mobile device. In fact, the Galaxy S21 might be considered an antithesis to the “democratised” Galaxy A range unveiled earlier this year.

Nevertheless, after the pandemic-induced belt-tightening, the Galaxy S21 is proof that consumer tech is rebounding to its usual extravagance, with all of its opulent gimmicks and gadgets. But does it have what it takes to become our favourite Galaxy device?

Samsung Galaxy S21 5G review: Design

Much like the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 5G model we reviewed at the start of 2020, the S21 model we received is a fun, pleasant shade of baby pink. Although for some reason Samsung named the colour “Phantom Pink”, there’s nothing scary nor ghostly about it; while the Note 20 was clad in a rose gold colour reminiscent of the iPhone 7, while the S21 ventures into more pastel territory.

The matte plastic back visually compliments the pink hue, as well as providing the device with some friction against the user’s hand, making an accidental contact with the ground less likely. The colour is further accentuated by the aluminium frame which encompasses the entire device (as well as its three camera lenses), adding a bit of extra shine. For those seeking a smartphone which is less Barbie, the Galaxy S21 5G also comes in “Phantom Grey”, “Phantom White”, and “Phantom Violet”.

The latter is one of the most popular phone colours at the moment, being eerily similar to the purple iPhone 12 unveiled last month. In fact, the two phones are very similar in weight and dimensions, with only 6g between the iPhone 12’s weight of 164g and the Samsung’s 170g weight. The S21’s 7.9mm thickness is also less than half a millimeter more than the iPhone.

Samsung Galaxy S21 5G review: Display

The Galaxy S21 5G’s display is a definite high point of the device, but this isn’t exactly surprising when it comes to Samsung smartphones. The tech giant has been consistently delivering some of the most gorgeous displays on the market, whether it’s last year’s Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G or the Galaxy S21’s Ultra iteration.

The Galaxy S21 5G is equipped with a 6.2in 1,080 x 2,400 Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen, which is protected from scratches and cracks by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus. It’s smaller than the Galaxy Note 20 by half an inch, making it a slightly more compact option. The difference in sizing might be due to slightly different purposes of the devices: the Note is more business-like and its screen is better suited for taking notes with a stylus pen, which the S21 lacks.

When it came to brightness, our tests revealed a maximum of 406cd/m², which was better than the 340cd/m² offered by the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 5G. The coverage of the sRGB colour gamut was very similar: at 99.6% compared to the 100% achieved by the Note 20 5G. However, HDR10+ capability is where the Galaxy S21 excelled, with a maximum brightness of 562 cd/m² while playing HDR content.

Lastly, the Motion Smoothness feature is another winner, allowing users to choose between smoother animations with a 120Hz refresh rate, or the standard 60Hz, which comes in useful when trying to conserve battery life.

All in all, the Galaxy S21’s display is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship which makes it seem like you’re not just scrolling through your phone, but fully submerging yourself in it. However, as mentioned above, we wouldn’t expect anything less from Samsung.

Samsung Galaxy S21 5G review: Camera

Like many other leading smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy S21 5G comes equipped with a triple camera consisting of a 64 MP telephoto lens, a 12 MP wide-angle lens, and a 12 MP ultrawide lens.

The Galaxy S21’s camera app comes with the usual options of photo, video, and single-take, which lets the user to film a short video of the subject, based on which different photos are generated, allowing the user to pick the one with the most suitable angle. Apart from these three, the camera tool also includes 12 different modes including panorama, portrait, and even food photography, as well as pro controls for adjusting things like ISO and shutter speed.

The device is perfect for filming perfectly steady videos thanks to a combination of AI-based image stabilisation, 60fps and HDR10+ supported video capture, as well as 8K and slow-mo recording capabilities. Its front camera isn’t bad either: at 10 MP, it’s perfect for joining a video conference from wherever you might have journeyed to on your lunch break.

One of the most impressive features is the Director’s View, which allows you to film while also monitoring the feeds from all four of the device’s lenses (including front or back cameras) and switch between them. Although it might seem overwhelming at first glance, once you get used to it, it unlocks a whole new experience of filmmaking which will let anyone feel like the next Scorsese.

On the other end of the useful photography tools spectrum is the Air Doodle tool which, as the name suggests, allows you to make notes or illustrations on a photo before it’s even taken. Although quite entertaining to play with, it probably won’t be top of the priority list of most people over the age of 12. Overall, the pictures taken using the Samsung Galaxy S21 were high-quality and vibrant, making amateur photography an exciting experience.

Samsung Galaxy S21 5G review: Specs and hardware

Performance is equally impressive. Geekbench 5 tests revealed cracking results of 1,090 for single-core tasks and 3,500 for multi-core, compared to the 905 and 1,995 offered by the Note 20 5G. In fact, it was only slightly lower than the iPhone 12’s 1,591 and 4,053. Thanks to 8GB of RAM and the new 5nm Exynos 2100 processor, the Galaxy S21 5G is quick on its feet and was a pleasure to use, but this impacted heavily on its battery life.

In our tests, the smartphone lasted a disappointing 16hrs 39min – almost a quarter shorter than the Note 20 5G, but comparable to the 16hrs 12mins offered by the iPhone 12. That being said, it’s still not bad: with moderate usage, the phone can easily last you from morning to bedtime, but you might want to pack a charger if you’re headed for a business trip.

What is notable is that the Samsung Galaxy S21 5G’s battery charges at almost lightning speed when plugged into a charger – if you have one, that is, as the smartphone comes equipped only with a double-ended USB Type-C 3.2 cable. Although this might be an environmental choice on behalf of Samsung, which in 2019 pledged to cut down on its plastic use, it could also be a coordinated effort to get us all to switch to its 15W wireless charging.

In fact, Samsung’s dedication to cutting down on potential waste doesn’t end here: the Galaxy S21 5G also comes without any headphones and lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack, which means that either you have to order USB Type-C headphones, or invest in a pair of Bluetooth ones.

Samsung Galaxy S21 5G review: Features

The Galaxy S21 5G is heavy on security features, offering two types of biometrics: facial recognition and fingerprint scanning, both of which work well. The smartphone also comes equipped with intelligent battery features, which optimise the device’s power consumption by learning your app usage style. Other attributes include IP68 waterproofing, allowing the device to recover from being submerged in a body of water up to 1.5m deep for up to 30 mins, as well as dual-band Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 and 5G support. Arguably a must among the latest smartphones, it’s nevertheless important to note that the 5G connectivity won’t be seamless in all parts of the UK.

A feature worth mentioning is the Wireless PowerShare which, as the name suggests, allows users to charge any Qi-compatible device, by using the Galaxy S21 as a 4.5W wireless charger. This way, you can ensure that neither your gadgets, nor your coworkers’ phones will ever run out of battery.

Samsung Galaxy S21 5G review: Verdict

Although the battery life could have been lengthier - especially considering the price point - the Samsung Galaxy S21 5G is still one of the best phones we’ve seen so far this year. The Exynos 2100 processor and 6.2in Dynamic AMOLED display make the phone an absolute pleasure to use, while additional features such as the Director’s View or wireless charging capabilities make it a truly universal phone which can be enjoyed by everyone.

Of course, there is room for improvement: the device could definitely benefit from a stylus pen for scribbling down reminders or annotations – especially if you’re more used to the Galaxy Note family which is rumoured to be shelved due to the ongoing semiconductor crisis.

Asking customers to spend £700 on a new Galaxy flagship during this time could have been a risk, yet after reviewing the device, it seems to have paid off. In fact, the Galaxy S21 5G couldn’t have come at a better time: with many sectors rebounding after a difficult 16 months and consumers finally allowed to enjoy themselves, investing in a new premium smartphone is a tempting way to start the post-lockdown era. There might be plenty of similar options available, starting with the more budget-conscious Galaxy A52 5G at £399, but if you’re looking for a treat, the Galaxy S21 5G might just be it. Now bring on the Roaring Twenties.

The Samsung Galaxy S21 5G is available for £43 per month with an upfront cost of £29 on the Vodafone network

Samsung Galaxy S21 5G specifications

The enterprise editions of Samsung’s most popular smartphone models will benefit from five years of guaranteed Android operating system updates.

Samsung Galaxy Enterprise Edition devices will receive five years of firmware updates, either monthly or quarterly, to ensure an organisation’s fleet is safeguarded against the latest threats and updated with the latest tools, the company has announced.

This extended support duration applies from the launch dates of the Galaxy S20 and S21 series, Note 20 series and XCover 5 smartphones, as well as the Tab Active 3 tablet models.

This comes alongside three years of enhanced support, with the firm’s Business Services Centre providing technical support and advice when required. Should devices need replacement, Samsung will also operate a next business day replacement service.

For all other models sold under the Enterprise Edition banner, security and maintenance will be available, but for only four years.

The update programme is aimed at business clients seeking a sense of longevity from the mobile phones purchased for use in the workplace, with extended support aiming to protect users against malware and phishing threats.

The programme would also allow IT administrators to control how frequently devices are patched, with certain Android updates even held back if necessary, should certain widely-used apps face compatibility issues, for example.

Many Android devices tend to benefit from a maximum of three years of Android support, such as the Google Pixel 4a which benefits from at least three years of updates. Brands like OnePlus also offer three years of updates in its smartphones, while Samsung, until recently, offered two years of support for its flagship devices.

Apple’s iPhone handsets, by contrast, enjoy massively prolonged support through iOS and security updates in both consumer and enterprise-oriented variants. Phones as old as the iPhone 6s, released six years ago, will benefit from the forthcoming release of iOS 15, for example.

Samsung has become the latest big name company to pull out of this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC) following a decision to host the show as an in-person event.

The world's number one smartphone manufacturer announced on Tuesday that it won't be attending the Barcelona trade show, which is due to take place between 28 June and 1 July, and will instead showcase its new products and technologies virtually.

"The health and safety of our employees, partners and customers is our number one priority, so we have made the decision to withdraw from exhibiting in-person at this year's MWC," the company said in a statement.

"We look forward to participating virtually and continuing to work with GSMA and industry partners to advance new mobile experiences."

Samsung's confirmation is yet another blow for MWC 2021, which has already seen a number of high-profile companies withdraw from this year's in-person show.

Ericsson was the first company to bow out, and Sony confirmed shortly after that it also wouldn't be attending due to the "continuing impacts from COVID-19 and our primary consideration towards our people, their health and well-being".

GSMA is planning to host the event in June with 50,000 attendees in person and has said that everyone who visits the Fira Gran Via in Barcelona will have to show a negative test result and also repeat the test every 72 hours.

However, since that announcement, Nokia, Oracle, and Google have all joined the growing list of large exhibitors that have been seemingly unconvinced by the GSMA's safety measures.

Despite a number of setbacks, the industry body seems to be confident that this year's show will go ahead due to the number of vaccines being rolled out across Europe and the fact it was able to successfully hold the Shanghai version of the event at the end of February. Organisers confirmed that around 25,000 people from 114 countries were in attendance, along with 220 exhibitors, including Huawei.

Intel and Samsung will establish a joint engineering team to collaborate on components to be fitted into future Samsung hardware, including a new form of microarchitecture reliant on different kinds of "XPU cores".

This co-engineering partnership is an extension of the existing collaboration between the two firms and will foster the development of unique PC designs that fall under the Samsung Galaxy branding. This comes as Samsung has launched two new enterprise-grade devices, including the Samsung Galaxy Pro and Samsung Galaxy Pro 360.

The team will work on “more personalised computing” by integrating artificial intelligence (AI) technology, as well as building a better capacity for users to work and share content across all kinds of devices.

Intel also plans to build a microarchitecture that makes use of “multiple types of XPU cores”. Although specific details are scarce, we do know the microarchitecture will fall under Intel's previously established XPU strategy, meaning the new component would likely manifest as a combination of various other core units, including CPUs and GPUs, as well as FPGAs, bundled into a single architecture.

“The level of engineering vision needed to convert such ideas into actual products is only possible through collaboration,” said Gregory M Bryant, Intel's executive vice president and general manager of the client computing group.

“Intel’s ability to scale and create with innovative partners like Samsung is what excites our teams. Match that excitement with the wave of digitization we’re all experiencing, and I cannot wait to see how we make computing even more purposeful.”

The references to working across multiple devices also raise the prospect of Intel developing chipsets for future Samsung Galaxy smartphones. Samsung currently uses custom Arm-based Exynos chips for devices such as the high-end Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, as well as mid-level Samsung Galaxy A90.

The partnership is certainly a win for Intel following news that Alienware is launching AMD-powered gaming laptops for the first time in over a decade. While Intel chips are still embedded across the broader Dell portfolio, for the most part, it’s still a bruising blow for the industry giant. Apple, too, distanced itself from Intel last year after committing to manufacturing iMacs fitted with its own custom Arm-based CPUs.

Intel, for years, retained an effective monopoly over the CPUs fitted into mainstream devices. After years of this near-exclusivity with a number of device manufacturing partners, however, viable alternatives are emerging and many are looking elsewhere, whether this comes in the form of components made by its competitor, AMD, or in-house designs.

This extended collaboration with Samsung will be seen as a win for Intel's new CEO Pat Gelsinger, as the firm tries to turn around what has been a rocky 2020. Beyond a significant delay to its 7nm CPU and departure of its chief engineering officer, Dr Murthy Renduchintala, Nvidia overtook the firm as the most valuable US chipmaker last year.

The engineering collaboration, however, represents an opportunity for Intel to stay relevant and stake its claim once again to be the go-to manufacturer for core computing components. This is true especially in light of the launch of its ‘IDM 2.0’ strategy, which is now underway as Gelsinger attempts to revitalise the business.

Samsung has launched the "industry's first" 24G SAS SSD which it claims can support twice the speed of its previous 12G SAS SSD.

The Samsung PM1653 SSD is, according to the company, the first 24G SAS SSD made with sixth-generation V-NAND chips, enabling storage capacities from 800GB to 30.72TB for advanced enterprise server systems.

The PM1653 has also been optimised for high-performance enterprise servers, reportedly offering the industry’s highest random read speed of up to 800K IOPS. Its sequential read speed can reach 4,300MB/s, which is the maximum available speed for the 24G SAS interface and twice the speed of the previous generation.

Thanks to its dual-port system, Samsung stated that the new SSD will give enterprise server OEMs the flexibility of using one or both ports depending on their system environment. If one port was to experience a failure during operation, the data can be transferred and accessed through the other port, said the company. Also, the PM1653 is able to support 24G and the legacy 12G SAS-3 platform as well.

Samsung is planning to begin mass production of this SSD in the second half of this year and has already begun sampling it with select customers.

“Like we have done with the PM1653, Samsung will continue to collaborate with our customers to accommodate the ever-growing demand of the enterprise server market for the most uncompromising offerings available,” said Kwangil Park, senior vice president of the Memory Product Planning Team at Samsung.

Last May, the company released a new external USB-C solid-state hard drive called the T7 SSD. It could hold up to 500GB, 1TB or 2TB or data. It was shock resistant and came in three colours, red, grey or blue, and was able to withstand falls of up to two metres. It also could reportedly achieve a read speed of 1050MB/s and a write speed of 1000MB/s, making it almost twice as fast as its predecessor, the T5.

Samsung's Galaxy S21 Ultra is its third attempt at an 'Ultra-sized' device, following on from last year's S20 Ultra and Note 20 Ultra, and this giant handset now looks like a mainstay of its flagship range. It completely dwarfs the standard and 'plus' models in both size and quality. Simply put, if you want the best processor, display and camera technology Samsung has to offer, you need to go Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Design

Samsung is a master of creating subtle designs that still stand out. Our S21 Ultra review unit is black with a matte finish; the whole thing is rather understated, particularly when you consider how shiny other handsets are, like the Huawei Mate 40, or even the iPhone 12. But the S21 Ultra doesn't need two-tone colours: it's a stunning vision under any lighting.

The camera module is particularly elegant as it wraps around the top corner of the device and blends seamlessly into its aluminium chassis. Unlike the glass panel that housed the S20's lenses, there's more detail around each individual lens. It's a far more arresting sight and arguably the most pleasing camera design currently available. The design may also be a bit tougher than previous models as it's made with Corning's Gorilla Glass Victus, which is said to be the company's toughest version yet. This includes scratch resistance and the capability to withstand drops of up to 2 metres.

As its name suggests, the Ultra is a big slab-like phone that stretches the pocket, which might put people off. The S20 Ultra had a width of 76mm, while the Note Ultra was bigger still at 77.2mm. Thankfully, the S21 Ultra is actually slimmer at just 75.6mm, but it's still quite a cumbersome handset weighing in at 227g.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Display

One of the main reasons to get a big old phablet is that they have such massive screens and very few can match what is on the S21 Ultra. It has a 6.8in WQHD+ AMOLED display with 1,440 x 3,200 resolution, 515-pixel density and a silky smooth 120Hz refresh rate. It is possibly the best screen available, edging ahead of the iPhone 12 thanks to its higher refresh rate.

Excluding the slight dip in form with the Note 20 Ultra, Samsung has a history of pulling out superb display scores. In our calibrator tests, under the 'Vivid' display setting, the S21 Ultra hit a near-perfect 99.2% for sRGB colour coverage. Its brightness also peaked at 866.2 cd/m2 under the same settings. However, that went up to a blinding 1,478cd/m2 on HDR video playback.

The only phone that can compete here is the largest model of iPhone 12 (the Pro Max). The standard iPhone 12 can proudly boast similar brightness levels, but for sheer size and quality, the S21 Ultra has the best display currently available. Once you start using it, you'll notice a stark difference in quality with every other screen you have around the house, be it TV, laptop or tablet.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Specs and performance

Behind that super display is the almighty Exynos 2100 processor. Like Huawei's Kirin 9000 and Apple's A14 Bionic, this has been developed using a 5nm process, which now appears to be the market standard. US versions of the S21 Ultra will have Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888, but there's an argument here that UK users might get the better deal. For years, Samsung's US customers have had faster Qualcomm processors, compared to their British counterparts. However, Samsung has beaten the chip giant to the 5nm process and that has led many to believe the balance has swung in the UK's favour.

In our GeekBench 5 tests, the UK Ultra really impressed with its multithreaded performance notching 3,549. That's 24% faster than the S20 Ultra, but still a little off the iPhone 12. We have to say that you shouldn't pick one over the other simply based on the power scores though, as both are a little bit ridiculous in that regard. It's like arguing over whether to get Superman or the Hulk to help you move a couch; both are going to be more than strong enough to get the job done.

There's also an option to expand from 12GB of RAM to 16GB, which is a little obscene. 12GB is excessive to begin with - most laptops offer a mere 8GB and all iPhone 12 models have a puny 6GB. We couldn't put the S21 Ultra under enough pressure to truly stress its capabilities, so the idea of bumping it up to 16GB is frankly laughable.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Battery

While there's a significant performance boost with the S21 Ultra, its battery life is not much different compared to its predecessor. This is because it has the exact same 5,000mAh battery. The S20 Ultra scored well in our looped video test, lasting 22hrs 12 mins and the S21 Ultra bested that by just 12 minutes.

Constant use of the 120Hz display setting still takes a toll on the battery, though; we found it just about makes it to the end of the day. Dropping down to the 60Hz gets you into a second day of use. Whatever setting you do use, you'll find the S21 Ultra has more staying power than most. Only Samsung's budget M31 and its monster 30-hour battery life can beat it, but that phone hasn't got anywhere near the right credentials to be a decent comparison in other respects.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Features

Samsung has filled its biggest phone with a lot of features, many of which come as part of its Android skin. Multiple apps can be used in split-screen mode - they can even be converted into little floating windows - and you can also turn on a sidebar to access the calendar.

The usual features are all here too; security such as facial recognition, an in-screen fingerprint sensor and Samsung Knox. For connectivity, it's 5G enabled, with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 support. There's also IP68 water resistance, as well as a battery of charging features including 25W fast-charging, 15W wireless charging and reverse power-sharing.

Thankfully the dedicated Bixby button has not returned, but the eponymous assistant is still the default here and pops up if you hold the 'home' button for too long. The major "new" feature is that the S21 Ultra has, for the first time, been given S-Pen compatibility. It doesn't come with one in the box - like the Note range - but you can get one for as little as £34.

When a phone is this big, you need an intuitive 'single-handed' mode. Like last year, the Ultra has a pretty good one. It simply reduces the display to a smaller box so your thumb can do more. The only issue this year is that it seems to be harder to get into with the 'gesture' setting. While holding the device in one hand, you need to swipe down the bottom of the screen to pull it into the single-handed mode. We found this tricky to get right with such a big handset. You can, of course, simply double-tap the square icon, but we would have preferred a quick and easy gesture.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Camera(s)

The S21 Ultra is shamelessly excessive in all areas, none more so than its camera setup. Unlike the triple camera array on the S21 and the S21+, the Ultra comes with four main lenses; a 12MP ultra-wide camera, a 108MP wide snapper and two 10MP telephoto lenses. There's also a beefed-up 40MP selfie cam on the front.

With the telephoto lens set to its 10x maximum zoom, you can capture detailed images from far away. This is mainly thanks to its 'Zoom Lock' software which is represented as a little yellow box in the corner of the display. It uses AI to focus the lens for you and can capture some very impressive images. They're still a little noisy at maximum zoom, though - our shot of the moon wasn't completely clear. It's also only available in the standard settings; you can't shoot with the maximum zoom in Pro Mode, for instance.

Whatever lens you shoot with, the S21 Ultra comes back with colourful and crisp images. The portrait mode is particularly good and the whole system is very simple. Switching lenses, modes and magnification is so easy peasy, it really does enable amateur photographers to take pictures like professionals.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Verdict

If you like big phones, the only issue you'll have with the Samsung S21 Ultra is the price. It costs £1,199 outright - or £64 per month on a Vodafone contract - and that might be difficult to justify in the current market. It really depends on what you want in a smartphone, because Xiaomi's Redmi Note 10 Pro has a few of the same specs - like a 108MP camera and 120Hz refresh rate - but for around £800 less.

However, if you have the cash and want the biggest and best smartphone technology, the S21 Ultra is where it's at. The iPhone 12 doesn't have 120Hz, Huawei phones don't have Android, and Google is content with its mid-market Pixel 5. Simply put, the Samsung S21 Ultra is unparalleled.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra specifications

Samsung has announced its Galaxy Upcycling at Home, a new initiative centered on its Galaxy Upcycling program.

Designed to limit electronic waste, Galaxy Upcycling at Home enables users to recycle their old Galaxy devices into smart home gadgets via a simple software update available through the SmartThings Labs app.

“Smart home devices are a fast-growing trend for consumer electronics, and we believe that Galaxy devices currently not in use can play an important role in turning every home into a smart home,” said Jaeyeon Jung, VP and head of the SmartThings, mobile communications business at Samsung Electronics.

“The program transforms Galaxy devices into SmartThings devices and demonstrates the power of our intelligent IoT platform to broaden the possibilities of what users can do with their old phones.”

Through the Galaxy Upcycling at Home program, users can repurpose old Galaxy phones’ built-in sensors to alter sound and light-control features. Furthermore, the SmartThings ecosystem allows users to explore broader features and updates without purchasing a new device.

For instance, owners can customize a Galaxy device’s sound sensor to distinguish sounds in everyday surroundings and trigger an alert when a baby cries, a dog barks, a cat meows, or someone knocks on the door. Additionally, SmartThings users can program their devices to switch on the TV or lights automatically if the room becomes too dark.

What’s more, Samsung's Galaxy Upcycling at Home program includes battery optimization solutions to reach the highest battery life possible. “Devices will also be able to connect effortlessly to SmartThings, allowing them to interact with countless other IoT devices in the SmartThings ecosystem,” added Samsung.

“We created Galaxy Upcycling at Home to enable more people to repurpose their old devices into useful tools, allowing both Samsung and our users to be mindful of the impact we have on the environment,” said Sung-Koo Kim, VP of the sustainability management office, mobile communications business at Samsung Electronics.

“We are rethinking how we use existing resources, and we believe the key to upcycling is to enable solutions that transform old technology into something new by adding value. We are committed to integrating sustainable practices into our day-to-day lives, and through Galaxy Upcycling at Home, users can join our journey toward a more sustainable future.”

Samsung and Marvell have co-developed a new system on a chip (SoC) to augment cellular radios’ performance.

Prepped to support 4G and 5G basebands simultaneously, the new SoC increases cellular radios’ capacity and coverage while decreasing power consumption and size. Additionally, the chip can save up to 70% in chipset power consumption compared to previous models.

“We are excited to extend our collaboration with Marvell to unveil a new SoC that will combine both companies’ strengths in innovation to advance 5G network solutions,” said Junehee Lee, executive vice president and head of R&D of networks business at Samsung Electronics.

“Samsung prioritizes the development of high-impact 5G solutions that offer a competitive edge to our operators. We look forward to introducing this latest solution to the market shortly.”

Samsung and Marvell previously collaborated on innovative radio unit architectures to address the rising compute power requirements caused by massive multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) deployments.

The companies also engineered multiple generations of leading baseband and transport processing solutions for base stations employing Marvell’s OCTEON and OCTEON Fusion processors.

“Marvell and Samsung are leading the way in helping mobile operators deploy 5G with greater speed and efficiency,” said Daniel Newman, founding partner at Futurum Research.

“This latest collaboration advances what’s possible through SoC technology, giving operators and enterprises a distinct 5G advantage through optimized performance and power savings in network deployments.”

According to reports, the jointly developed SoC is earmarked for Samsung’s massive MIMO and other advanced radios.

“Our collaboration with Samsung spans multiple generations of radio network products and demonstrates Samsung’s strong technology leadership. The joint effort includes 4G and 5G basebands and radios,” said Raj Singh, executive vice president of Marvell’s processors business group.

“We are again honored to work with Samsung for the next generation Massive MIMO radios which significantly raise the bar in terms of capacity, performance and power efficiency.”