GoKawiil
Tech News
Amazon has cut the price of Samsung's newly released Galaxy Z Fold 8 by $250, bringing it down from $1,899.99 to $1,649.99, a 13% reduction. It's the first time the retailer has discounted the foldable since launch.
Samsung has quietly added local time-zone detection to its Call Brief feature in One UI 9, which now automatically displays the other person's local time when you dial an international number. The capability, first exclusive to the Galaxy Z Fold 8 series, has been extended to the Galaxy S26 lineup through the seventh One UI 9 beta update. Users on X first noticed the addition alongside other Fold 8 features like My FanCam and custom Now Brief cards.
Several Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 buyers say the corners of the phone's inner folding screen flex noticeably more than the rest of the panel when pressed, suggesting the corners lack proper structural support. Android Authority tested a loan unit and confirmed some give in one corner, though less severe than clips circulating online, and noted a teardown showing pads under the corners that appear to be magnets rather than adhesive. Samsung has not yet confirmed whether this is a defect or a normal design trait.
Samsung has started rolling out the One UI 9 Watch beta, based on Wear OS 7, to the 2023 Galaxy Watch 6 and Watch 6 Classic models in South Korea. The update follows earlier beta releases for the Galaxy Watch 8, Watch 7, and Watch Ultra, though a full changelog has not yet been published.
Samsung includes a built-in feature called Edge Panel on all Galaxy devices, offering a customizable shortcut bar accessible by swiping from the screen's edge. It provides seven panel types—Apps, People, Tasks, Weather, Tools, Clipboard, and Reminder—that users can enable and arrange from the Display settings menu. Despite being standard on every Galaxy phone, many owners are unaware of it or have stopped using it.
A hands-on writer for Android Authority shared a personal roundup of ten lesser-known Samsung Reminder features that make the built-in One UI app more useful day to day. Highlights include location-triggered reminders for shopping and errands, recurring alerts, widgets, calendar syncing, and Gemini integration.
A shopper known as @whateversunnyfinds bought a $30 Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen 4 expansion card at Kuwait City's Souq-al-Juma flea market and discovered three 2TB Samsung 980 Pro SSDs concealed beneath its heatsink. Each drive currently retails for roughly $400-$500, meaning the find could be worth $1,300-$1,500 despite one of the card's four M.2 slots being empty.
Phone manufacturers including Apple and Samsung recommend a simple two-minute cleaning routine using a lint-free microfiber cloth, slightly dampened for a deeper clean, to remove both visible smudges and invisible bacteria from device screens. Users should power off and unplug phones before cleaning, remove cases, and avoid letting moisture or soap enter any openings even on water-resistant models.
Samsung has updated changelogs for its AR Doodle and Quick Measure apps on the Galaxy App Store, confirming both will be discontinued on December 31, 2026. The company says future versions of One UI won't support the apps, and they're already missing on newer devices like the Galaxy Z Fold 8.
Samsung Electronics showed mockups of two new 3D memory designs, zHBM and zNAND-O, at the FMS 2026 conference in California. zHBM vertically stacks high-bandwidth memory directly on top of AI accelerator chips along the z-axis, cutting the distance data travels between memory and processor compared to today's side-by-side layouts.
Amazon is selling Samsung's new 990 PCIe 4.0 SSD in 2TB capacity for $339.99, a $190 cut from its $529.99 list price. The drive is a QLC variant of the 990 EVO Plus, built with Samsung's PiccoloQ controller and V9 QLC flash, offering full Gen 4 bandwidth. A 1TB version is also discounted, though the deal is time-limited.
Samsung's Galaxy S26 series arrived with higher prices and only incremental hardware upgrades, keeping the same 5,000mAh battery used since 2020 even as Chinese rivals like HONOR ship phones with far larger silicon-carbon batteries. New sales figures show Samsung's flagship and foldable lines are still selling well despite these limited improvements, suggesting the company has little financial incentive to push harder on hardware.