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Gizmodo
6 hours ago
- Business
- Gizmodo
It's Not Free Yet, But the Galaxy S25 Ultra Is at a New Record Low That Will Skyrocket Its Sales
Samsung's Galaxy S25 Ultra is the best of the best of their non-foldable phones and is a true rival for the iPhone 16 Pro. Even newly released in January, Amazon just slashed the price of the 256GB model to an all-time low of $1,024, which is a steal given that it officially retails for $1,299. If you've been thinking about upgrading to a high-end Android phone, this early Back to School offer is definitely worth a look. See at Amazon Under the hood, the Galaxy S25 Ultra runs on the powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Elite processor (from Qualcomm) which means everything from gaming to multitasking runs super smoothly. 256GB of storage provides you with well over enough space to hold all your photos and videos without ever lacking a little space anywhere down the line. The massive 5000mAh battery lasts a hectic day with ease. And with fast charging, you can get up to speed in a hurry so that you don't miss a beat keeping on the go without an extended break. And let's talk of the camera configuration — this phone carries some serious firepower: There's a gigantic 200MP main sensor that captures ultra-high-res and highly detailed images. Along with that, there's a 12MP ultra-wide sensor to capture wide landscapes and group shots and two 10MP telephoto sensors that provide up to 10x optical zoom. With AI-powered night mode, your night photographs come out bright and clear, adjusting settings for you so you have to do nothing. The included S Pen is a game changer that lets you sketch or edit your images with precision right on your phone. It's bringing so much creativity and productivity along with it, particularly if you like the finer control without constantly needing to switch gears. Samsung's One UI operating system (on top of the Android OS) further boosts the smooth experience with plenty of customization and smooth navigation. The phone features 5G connectivity, where you can make the most out of fast internet speeds where networks exist which is perfect if you are in search of a phone that will keep up for several years. Made to last and appear great, the S25 Ultra features a smart titanium black color and premium finish. The rich AMOLED display brings life-like colors and deep blacks with the silky smooth 120Hz refresh rate for scrolling and gaming. And with the IP68 rating, it resists dust and water well so you can forget about spills or harsh environments. At this new record low price, it's a no-brainer if you're looking for a premium Android phone. See at Amazon
Tom's Guide
a day ago
- Tom's Guide
Tom's Guide Awards 2025: Our favorite phones of the year
Whether you want a phone with a massive screen, one that takes beautiful photos or one you can quickly fold up, this has been an amazing year for smartphones, and we've tested the best ones out there. From flagship phones with top of the line specs, camera phones with high-resolution sensors, flip or tablet-style foldables to budget phones that punch above their weight, you have loads of options when it comes to choosing the right smartphone for you. Our team of experts has tested and reviewed all of the latest smartphones for the Tom's Guide Awards 2025. Below, we highlight our favorite phones from the last 12 months whose design, features and pricing impressed us the most and we believe have earned a spot in your pocket. Samsung came back hard with the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which set the tone for all flagship releases this year. This year's Ultra made a big leap thanks to its mighty Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset that powers many of its new Galaxy AI features. Specifically, it introduced cross app actions with Gemini that allows users to perform complex actions all with voice commands — it's like having a personal assistant that can manage your day-to-day duties. The Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy is a powerhouse unlike anything out there, proving it's a gaming champ with its incredible performance. But what makes it even better is how it's much more power efficient, resulting in a boost in battery life over its predecessor. At the same time, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is a productivity powerhouse thanks to its support for Samsung DeX and the S Pen. With the latter, it offers users a desktop PC-like experience when it's connected to an external display. We've tested out this feature and it makes for a decent laptop replacement. Meanwhile, the S Pen gives it that paper meets pen experience that some people prefer. And finally, the Galaxy S25 Ultra offers an astounding camera experience thanks to the four cameras on the back of the phone. This is a versatile camera system that lets you capture subjects near and far, but it also has a robust set of AI tools that can enhance your photos and videos after the fact — like Audio Eraser and LOG video recording. No other phone can match its performance and features, making it the best phone you can buy for the money. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. While Apple equipped its standard iPhone with plenty of new features and enhancements last fall, the Pro lineup continues to receive the lion's share of the company's attention. And that makes the iPhone 16 Pro — the more affordable of Apple's two Pro iPhones — the top model right now. Everything the iPhone 16 Pro Max can do, the iPhone 16 Pro can do as well, from showing off the power of Apple's A19 Pro chipset to supporting the new Apple Intelligence features Apple has been rolling out to its phones over the past nine months. And if you've ever looked at the Pro Max model's bigger screen with envy, the iPhone 16 Pro addresses that, thanks to a larger 6.3-inch display than its predecessors. The cameras on the iPhone 16 Pro get a nice upgrade, too, — one that really stands out when we shot photos with Apple's phone. This version picks up the 5x optical zoom feature introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro Max, while improvements to both the ultrawide and main cameras help the iPhone 16 Pro produce vivid, detailed images. A new Camera Control button — an addition to every iPhone 16 mode — puts a Visual Intelligence feature that turns the camera into a search tool right at your fingertips. And we appreciate how the new Audio Mix feature can seamlessly remove background noise from the video you've captured. In short, the best features of the iPhone are very much on display in the iPhone 16 Pro. And while that $999 starting price isn't cheap, it's within reach for anyone who wants the best that Apple has to offer in a phone. Despite debuting almost a year ago in August 2024, the Pixel 9 Pro has clung onto its status as our favorite Android phone. More powerful and capable devices have appeared since, but the overall value offered by the Pixel 9 Pro is still hard to beat. Encased in a compact 6.3-inch body that's smaller than almost all other devices in the category, you'll find an incredibly bright Super "Actua" display. But despite the brightness, the Pixel 9 Pro has decent battery life, at least compared to other smaller flagship phones. The three cameras embedded in the distinctive rear horizontal bar are capable of brilliant photos, and you might have more time to use them thanks to the included free year of Gemini AI Pro (worth $20 a month) with your purchase opening up a huge range of AI features. Abilities like Pixel Screenshots and Gemini Live can prove to be especially useful to keen chatbot fans. Perfection eludes the Pixel 9 Pro due to its lower-powered Tensor G4 chipset, and the fact it's effectively a price increase over previous pro Pixels, giving you less phone for the same money. But those quibbles aside, it's a deserving recipient of this award. Hope you've got space on your mantlepiece, Google. Being the best camera phone takes more than just having pixel crunching specs, it needs to have a versatile camera software as well to meet the demands of power users. No other phone meets the criteria that we look for than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra — and with good reason. First of all, its quadruple camera setup means it has all the range covered. Whether you're shooting something far off in the distance, or a super closeup of something, it has you covered. Its 200MP main camera might seem overkill, but the sensor pulled out bright shots under low light conditions, which is evident in our 200 photo shootout with the Galaxy S25 Ultra vs Pixel 9 Pro XL. Meanwhile, we put its 10MP telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and 50MP telephoto with 5x optical zoom against the iPhone 16 Pro Max in a zoom shootout — and Samsung wins the zoom conversation. We've also used its camera to capture professional looking portrait photos that almost look like they're captured by a mirrorless the performance, the S25 Ultra is the best camera phone due to the amount of modes and features it offers with its camera app. From dedicated manual modes for photos and videos, to its ability to support external audio recording sources, it has the most robust native camera app around. We don't just think that Google has the best AI features of any phone maker — we know it, after putting the Pixel through a series of tests with the latest iPhones and Galaxy flagships to find out which one excelled at the most tasks. In our AI phone face-off, the latest Google devices came out on top in four of our six tests, and they gave the Galaxy S25 series all that it could handle in the image generation and photo editing tasks, too. That's about as definitive a win as you can get. All of Google's Pixel 9 phones support the same AI capabilities, meaning the standard Pixel 9 is every bit as capable as the premium Pixel 9 Pro XL when it comes to make the most of Google's AI-friendly Tensor chipset. And since the $799 Pixel 9 costs several hundred dollars less than the Pro XL, it's the phone to turn to when you want the best AI features without breaking the bank. The Pixel 9 has plenty going for it besides AI, from top-performing cameras to a compact design. But if you're looking for a phone that can translate text into other languages on the fly, summarize recordings and notes and tap into the power of Gemini for performing everyday tasks, the Pixel 9 is just about impossible to beat. Samsung looked too complacent the last couple of years, as its foldable phones saw heated competition — but it came roaring back with the Galaxy Z Flip 7. This flip-style phone sees bigger upgrades than previous years, including a much larger Flex Window display, longer battery life, multimodal AI features, and the introduction of Samsung DeX. What also helps is that despite having a larger 4.1-inch Flex Window display and 6.9-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2x main display, Samsung keeps the same compact form factor and thin construction as before. The new Armor FlexHinge design is stronger and smoother than before, ensuring that it closes and opens with that satisfying snap. Over on the productivity side, the new multimodal experience of Gemini Live paired with its camera and Flex Window display lets you ask questions about what you're seeing. For example, you can ask it to translate a sign you see in front of you — all by just using voice commands. The Z Flip 7 also gets Samsung DeX support, which is a first for the series and brings that desktop-PC like experience to the phone. It wouldn't be the best foldable phone either if it couldn't take good photos. While the camera hardware remains unchanged, its new ProVisual Engine does enhance photos to draw out more detail. Meanwhile, its various Flex Modes allow creators to use the camera hands-free — making it the perfect phone for vlogging and selfies. There are a lot of practical benefits to foldable phones, like the fact you basically have a more portable version of a tablet. The problem is they felt too much like tablets, and lugging around what is effectively two screens in one was kind of a chore. But that's changed, and the ingenious design of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is to thank. The Z Fold 7 is much thinner and lighter than its predecessor, weighing just 7.5 ounces and measuring a mere 4.2mm (unfolded). To the point where you might actually forget you're holding a foldable at times. It's like Samsung took a bunch of lessons from the Galaxy S25 Edge, and used them to solve some of the issues it's had with past foldables. Plus it's all been done without sacrificing durability, thanks to stronger display glass, a newly reinforced hinge and a titanium lattice. So this is a phone that looks as good as it gives. There's an argument that there are a lot of factors to look into when it comes to gauging battery life on a phone. However, when it's all said and done, the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro simply outlasts all the competition. Asus has always delivered when it comes to battery life, and the latest addition takes that to the next level. When we tested the phone, it achieved a time of 20 hours and 34 minutes on TG's custom battery test while the phone's display was set to an adaptive refresh rate. This impressive battery life is achieved thanks to the massive 5,800 mAh battery alongside the stellar power management afforded by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip. The ROG Phone 9 Pro doesn't just have a great battery life, it also recharges quickly thanks to 65W charging support. In our tests, we managed to get the phone back to 74% charge from 0% after only thirty minutes. If we take all of this combined, then it's easy to see why the ROG Phone 9 Pro takes the battery life prize. With phone prices climbing ever upward, it's refreshing to see Google's A Series of Pixel phones bringing a little pricing stability to the market. But even though the Pixel 9a retains the $499 starting price of its predecessor while other phones go up in cost — looking at you, iPhone 16e — Google ushered plenty of other changes with this new model. It starts with the Tensor G4 chip inside the Pixel 9a, allowing this midrange phone to offer many of the same AI features that makes the Pixel 9 lineup stand out from other devices. (A couple features, like Pixel Screenshots, require a more powerful version of Gemini Nano than the Pixel 9a has.) You're able to tap into Gemini Live, generate images using text prompts and access a full array of smart photo editing tools on a device that costs a fraction of what you'd pay for pricier flagships. As always, the reason for bargain hunters to turn to the Pixel A device is camera performance. And while the Pixel 9a doesn't feature big camera changes from its predecessor, it still turned in better photos than the iPhone 16e in our camera face-off. The Pixel 9a's support for astrophotography impresses, too. Google has long proven that a low price on a phone doesn't have to mean big sacrifices on features. The Pixel 9a drives that point home once again. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News to get our up-to-date news, how-tos, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
Time of India
a day ago
- Time of India
Samsung may drop S Pen support from future devices: Report
Samsung recently unveiled its latest range of foldable smartphones – Galaxy Z Fold 7 , Galaxy Z Flip 7 and all-new Galaxy Z Flip7 FE. One of the key changes that the new Fold 7 phone comes with is the missing S Pen stylus. Once a key selling point for Samsung's flagship devices—particularly the Galaxy Note series—the S Pen appears to be getting less priority in recent launches, including the latest foldables and tablets. Is Samsung gradually phasing out its long-running S Pen stylus across its smartphone and tablet lineup? A report by 9to5Google says 'things aren't quite as positive as they seem. Over the past seven months, Samsung has pretty clearly deprioritized the S Pen in its lineup, removing features deemed unpopular before'. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 launched without S Pen support As mentioned before, one of the most notable changes that comes with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Samsung's latest foldable smartphone, is the absence of the S Pen. For the first time, the device lacks the internal hardware needed for S Pen input. According to the report, Samsung removed the digitizer from both sides of the Fold 7's display to achieve a slimmer design. This move saved about 0.6mm in thickness but at the cost of full stylus support. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Paras Sector 59 Gurgaon | Luxury Awaits at Paras Floret Paras The Florett Book Now Undo 'Right now, that appears to be a focus on thinner, lighter devices that simply don't mesh with the size constraints needed for a stylus,' the report states. While earlier Fold models like the Z Fold 3 and Z Fold 4 supported the S Pen, even if only with an external accessory, the Z Fold 7 offers no such compatibility. However, the report suggests that Samsung has not ruled out bringing back stylus support in future foldables, but that would require both a technical redesign and significant user demand. Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra's S Pen loses key features In another shift, the Galaxy S25 Ultra still includes a built-in S Pen, but it no longer supports Bluetooth features. This means users can no longer access remote-control functions like Air Command or camera shutter control. Samsung has said less than 1% of users used those functions, which led to the removal. Although some rumors hinted at a separate, Bluetooth-enabled S Pen being sold as an optional accessory, the final device shipped with a more basic version. The report notes that while the S Pen is lighter without a battery, its functionality is now limited. Samsung's tablet lineup may also follow suit Leaked images of the upcoming Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra suggest further changes in Samsung's stylus strategy. The renders reportedly show no back-mounted magnetic charging area for the S Pen, which could indicate the removal of Bluetooth support from the tablet stylus as well. It remains unclear whether the S Pen will attach magnetically elsewhere on the device or if it will be sold separately. Samsung Galaxy Watch8: AI on Your Wrist AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Gizmodo
6 days ago
- Gizmodo
Forget the iPad This Semester, Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite Hits All-Time Low in Back-to-School Tablet Deal
A good tablet is a huge help in just about any situation. While it's nice to be able to do pretty much everything on your phone, a tablet offers a larger screen, and often more power, which is a big deal. If you're doing creative tasks, it gives you more screen to work with, and if you're being productive, it can make it a lot easier to show plans or spreadsheets. If you're looking for a tablet that's not going to break the bank, then going with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite is a good choice generally, but an even better choice at the moment because it's down by 36%. That means that instead of the normal price of $330, it's currently just $210, which is great value for money. See at Amazon There's a lot to love about this tablet, and the fact is that if you're already in the Samsung ecosystem, then it's going to integrate really easily. It just makes it much simpler to share apps, photos, and basically everything else between your devices, which is great if you're someone who likes to switch things up. The screen is 10.4 inches and has an amazing resolution of 2000 x 1200, which makes basically everything look incredible on it, whether you're making art or just watching TV shows. It can even be used for gaming thanks to the powerful processor, and the Dolby Atmos Surround Sound means it'll all sound just as good, which is an impressive feat for a tablet in this price range. Plus, this actually comes with an S Pen, which is Samsung's smart pen that allows you to more accurately use the tablet. It's perfect for artists, note takers, writers, and pretty much everyone else. It just means you've got even more ways to use this incredible device. It also comes in three different colors, and while that's not the biggest deal, it's always nice to be able to choose your preferred style. You can even expand on the 64GB built-in storage if you feel like you need more, making this a device you can invest a bit more into. It's easy to see why this tablet is already good value at $330, so being able to save 36% on it at the moment makes it incredible value. Just keep in mind that it's a limited-time deal on Amazon, which means you'll want to get it before it runs out. See at Amazon
India Today
22-07-2025
- India Today
Samsung tipped to use carbon fibre in Galaxy Z Fold 8, could bring back S-Pen support
Samsung seems to be reconsidering some of the materials it uses for its upcoming foldable phones — particularly the Galaxy Z Fold 8, expected to launch next year. According to a report from TheElec, the company is currently testing both titanium and carbon fibre-reinforced plastic (CFRP) for the phone's internal backplate. That may sound like a small technical change, but it could have a big impact on durability, thickness, and even the return of the much-requested S Pen support. And this time, Samsung's decision might not just be about design — it could come down to global material supply issues, especially around recent years, Samsung has used different materials for its Galaxy Z Fold lineup, depending on the model and whether the phone included S Pen support. Devices like the Galaxy Z Fold 3 to Z Fold 6 used CFRP, mainly because of the need to accommodate the digitiser — a component that allows for S Pen input. On the other hand, the newer Galaxy Z Fold 7, which didn't support the S Pen, used titanium for its backplate. Titanium is light, strong, and helps reduce overall thickness. But with trade tensions between the US and China potentially affecting the titanium supply chain, Samsung is now keeping its options CFRP does make a comeback in the Galaxy Z Fold 8, that could be a sign that Samsung is planning to reintroduce S Pen support. There's already talk that Samsung is developing a thinner digitiser for the Fold series, which could allow for S Pen compatibility without adding too much thickness. And given how much Galaxy Note and S Ultra users still love their stylus, that could be a welcome return — especially if Samsung finds a way to make the Fold more practical for productivity users. Interestingly, Samsung is also said to be exploring new stylus input tech. While the Fold series previously relied on EMR (Electro Magnetic Resonance) for S Pen support, there's now the possibility of switching to AES (Active Electrostatic Solution) — the same tech used by Apple's Pencil. That change could allow for S Pen-like functionality without a built-in digitiser, possibly helping Samsung keep the phone slim while still offering stylus Display is also looking at alternate backplate materials, including glass. Glass is lighter and cheaper, but it remains to be seen whether it can provide the kind of structural support needed in a foldable device.- Ends
