Engadget review recap: Samsung Z Flip 7, Oakley Meta glasses, DJI Osmo 360 and more
The Z Flip 7 has decent battery life, bigger screens and more AI smarts. However, the cameras are dated and Samsung isn't offering enough utility on this foldable's second screen. $1,091 at Amazon Explore More Buying Options $1,100 at Best Buy$1,090 at Walmart
Alongside the Z Fold 7, Samsung debuted an updated version of its more compact foldable, the Z Flip 7. UK bureau chief Mat Smith noted that the company managed to provide a substantial overhaul, but there are some areas that were left untouched. "Certain aspects of the Flip 7 are lacking, most notably the cameras, which haven't been changed since last year," he said. "Samsung also needs to put more work into its Flex Window."
There are some solid upgrades that will appeal to serious athletes and power users, but they don't quite justify the higher price. $399 at Meta
Meta's first non-Ray-Ban smart glasses have arrived. While we wait for a more affordable version to get here, senior editor Karissa Bell put the white and gold option through its paces. "While I don't love the style of the Oakley Meta HSTN frames, Meta has shown that it's been consistently able to improve its glasses," she wrote. "The upgrades that come with the new Oakley frames aren't major leaps, but they deliver improvements to core features."
DJI's Osmo 360 is a worthy rival to Insta360's X5, thanks to the innovative sensor and 8K 50 fps video. However, the editing app still needs some work. $530 at DJI
Reporter Steve Dent argued that DJI is finally giving Insta360 some competition in the 360-degree action cam space. The design and performance of the Osmo 360 are great, but the problem comes when it's time to edit. "The all-new DJI Studio app also needs some work," he explained. "For a first effort, though, the Osmo 360 is a surprisingly solid rival to Insta360's X5."
The Nothing Phone 3 might be the company's first 'true flagship,' but several specs don't match that flagship moniker. The bigger screen, battery and new Glyph Matrix make it a major step up from Phone 2, but camera performance is erratic and you'd expect a more powerful processor at this price. $799 at Nothing
Nothing's first "true flagship" phone has arrived, ready to take on the likes of the Pixel 9 and Galaxy S25. Despite the company's lofty chatter, Mat argued the Nothing Phone 3 is hampered by a lower-power chip and disappointing cameras. "While I want Nothing to continue experimenting with its phones, it should probably prioritize shoring up the camera performance first," he said.
The redesigned Galaxy Watch 8 has a longer battery life and much more comfortable fit. The Gemini integration is actually helpful and the new health metrics and fitness guidance are useful. $350 at Amazon
Samsung debuted a big update to its Galaxy Watch line when it unveiled the Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7. Senior buying advice reporter Amy Skorheim spent two weeks testing the new wearable, which impressed her so much she declared it was "Samsung's best smartwatch in years." You can read her in-depth review here.
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"What's happening now is that Ethereum is getting plumbed into this infrastructure," Brody continued, noting that until recently, crypto operated on entirely separate rails from traditional finance. Now, he said, Ethereum is being wired directly into core transaction systems, setting the stage for massive financial flows — from investors to everyday savers — to migrate away from older mechanisms toward Ethereum-based platforms that can move money faster, at lower cost, and with more advanced functionality than legacy systems allow. Stablecoins — digital dollars that live on Ethereum — power trillions in payments, tokenized assets and funds are moving on-chain, and Robinhood recently rolled out tokenized U.S. equities via Arbitrum, an Ethereum-based layer two. Circle's USDC — the second-largest stablecoin — still settles around 65% of its volume on Ethereum's rails. 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As part of its quarterly earnings release, Coinbase said this week it's launching tokenized stocks and prediction markets for U.S. users in the coming months, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro. Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets. BlackRock's tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, launched on Ethereum last year, offering qualified investors on-chain access to yield with real-time redemptions settled in USDC. Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum has proven its staying power as the trusted network for global finance. Buterin told CNBC in Cannes that there's a misconception about what institutions actually want. "A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it's stable and dependable, because it doesn't go down," he said. He added that firms frequently ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, "really value." Different institutions are choosing different layer twos for different needs — Robinhood uses Arbitrum, Deutsche Bank zkSync, Coinbase and Kraken Optimism — but they all ultimately settle on Ethereum's base layer. "The value proposition of Ethereum is its global reach, its huge capital flows, its incredible programmability," Brody said. He added that the fact it isn't the fastest blockchain or the one with the quickest settlement times "is secondary to the fact that it's overall the most widely adopted and flexible system." Brody also believes history points toward consolidation. He said that in most technology standards wars, one platform ultimately dominates. In his view, Ethereum is likely to become that dominant programmability layer, while Bitcoin plays a complementary role as a risk-off, scarcity-driven asset. Engineers, he said, "love to work on a standard… to scale on a standard," and Ethereum has become precisely that. Tomasz Stańczak, the newly appointed co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, sees the same pattern from inside the ecosystem. "Institutions chose Ethereum over and over again for its values," Stańczak said. "Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance." When institutions send an order to the market, they want to be sure that it's treated fairly, that nobody has preference, and that the transaction is executed at the time when it's delivered. "That's what Ethereum guarantees," added Stańczak. Those assurances have become more valuable as traditional finance moves on-chain. Ethereum's path hasn't been smooth. The network has weathered spectacular booms and busts, rivals promising faster speeds, and criticism that it's too slow or expensive for mass adoption. Yet it has outlasted nearly all early competitors. In 2022, Ethereum replaced its old transaction validation method, proof-of-work — where armies of computers competed to solve puzzles — with proof-of-stake, where users lock up their ether as collateral to help secure the network. The shift cut Ethereum's energy use by more than 99% and set the stage for upgrades aimed at making apps faster and cheaper to run on its base layer. The next decade will test whether Ethereum can scale without compromise. Buterin said the first priority is getting Ethereum to "the finish line" in terms of its technical goals. That means improving scalability and speed without sacrificing its core principles of decentralization and security — and ideally making those properties even stronger. Zero-knowledge proofs, for example, could dramatically increase transaction capacity while making it possible to verify that the chain is following the rules of the protocol on something as small as a smartwatch. There are also algorithmic changes the team already knows are needed to protect Ethereum against large-scale computing attacks. Implementing those, Buterin said, is part of the path to making Ethereum "a really valuable part of global infrastructure that helps make the internet and the economy a more free and open place." Buterin believes the real change won't come with fireworks. He said it may already be unfolding years before most people recognize it. "This type of disruption doesn't feel like overturning the existing system," he said. "It feels like building a new thing that just keeps growing and growing until eventually more and more people realize you don't even have to look at the old thing if you didn't want to." Brody can already see hints of that future. Wire transfers are moving on-chain, assets like stocks and real estate are being tokenized, and eventually, he said, businesses will run entire contracts — the money, the products, the terms and conditions — automatically on a single, shared infrastructure. That shift, Brody added, won't simply copy old financial systems onto new technology. "One of the lessons from technology adoption is that it's not that we replace like for like," he said. "When new things come along, we tend to build on a new technology infrastructure. My key hypothesis is that as we build new financial products, it will be attractive to build them on blockchain rails — and we'll try to do things on blockchain rails that we can't do today." If Brody and Buterin are right, the real disruption won't make headlines. It'll simply become the way money moves, unseen and unstoppable.
