Hello and welcome to another edition of TheTechBoy Take 5.
A rumor has come out saying that Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 8 might be the last flip. Per SamMobile, a tipster @fireuniverse8 reported, “The Galaxy Z Flip 8 will be the last Galaxy Z Flip device. According to the tipster, the brand plans to discontinue the Galaxy Z Flip lineup to focus more on the Galaxy Z Fold series. If that turns out to be true, the Galaxy Z Flip would become the second major smartphone lineup the company has discontinued after the Galaxy Note series.” On one hand, I think this is great. Let’s be honest here: if the Z Flip were a slab phone, it would only be a flagship in Apple’s department, not in Samsung’s. No telephoto, worse battery life (as having a split battery is worse than one full battery), not to mention the limited durability compared to a slab phone. Aside from the folding screen and the innovations that come with those limitations — such as software and folding screen tech (including the hinge) — there isn’t much happening on that phone.
No new camera tech has been developed for the Z Flip, no popup cameras, no ‘folding’ cameras like the Nokia N90 phone or, in the more modern era, the VTech Kiddi Buzz phones or tablets. The chip on the phone, the Exynos 2500 versus the S25’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, which is 23% faster and scores nearly 30% higher on the Geekbench 6 test. This is kind of interesting from the Z Flip’s perspective, because it seems like the phone that is a ‘basic’ phone used by people that just call, text, and do simple web browsing, and then it breaks a little bit and you can have the aura of flipping the phone open and closed.
Z Flip 7 sales figures are not out yet, so I will compare the S24 and the Z Flip 6 sales. Samsung’s base Galaxy S24 alone moved about 13 million units in 2024, compared with under 3 million for the Z Flip 6. For Samsung, it makes sense that for a pretty experimental but not groundbreaking phone, they would cut sales. But it does have a dedicated fan base among people — particularly, in my experience, elderly people. I want Samsung to have an experimental phone line to make smartphones cool again. It was devastating when Samsung merged the J and A series, making the A series its budget phones instead of its experimental phones. No longer do we see phones like the Galaxy A80, the popup flip camera phone, or the A9, the first quad camera phone. Yes, they were bad phones, but at least Samsung was trying to innovate and build something cool or new — as MrMobile says, “when phones were fun.”
Meta Does WHAT
What on earth is Meta doing? Meta’s glasses include a feature called Conversation Focus that essentially makes it easier to hear when people are talking to you, which could be a good feature in a loud environment… and they are adding it to a subscription. This would be fine if it used Meta servers to process the conversations, but no, it happens on-device. So Meta is making you pay money to use a feature that’s already on the device. Yes, I get it — you get 3 hours a month, and 15 hours a month if you pay — which is just utter lunacy. It’s not going to a server. Yes, I get that the glasses are most likely loss leaders to sell Meta AI, but I mean, imagine if a phone charged you for how many pics you took a month or how many times you used the flash. I know this feature will still not be used as much, but I mean, come on, it’s the principle of the thing.
In gaming news, Sony has stopped physical disc production, meaning that in 2028 all games will have to be in the PlayStation Store. The world reacted as expected, with big companies and Domino’s claiming they will have ‘digital pizzas’ instead of physical ones. This makes PlayStation the only place to buy games, which will limit competition. Here is a screenshot of the PS6 subreddit showing the price discrepancies between Amazon and PlayStation, Best Buy, and Walmart.
And in two related headlines revolving around Claude, Anthropic is working to make sure China cannot access its models, while Alibaba is banning Claude code over an alleged backdoor risk. The stakes are clear: it’s a race between the US and China for AI dominance, and they are already banning our models. The US must make sure we win this war. God bless and tech Talk To You Later!!!
Leave a Reply