Samsung’s flagship phone, the Galaxy S26 Ultra, is having a few issues. According to reports from users and Samsung themselves, the phone is displaying a reddish tint on the screen. However, unlike the infamous Samsung green line issue, this is a software bug, and an update is on the way according to Samsung. Still, Samsung hasn’t had the best track record with updates as of late, with some users reporting slower charging speeds and worse battery life following the major One UI 8.5 update on their S24 series devices.
This comes as One UI 9 (based on Android 17) could start rolling out in beta on the S25 series of devices after launching on the Z Fold 8 and Z Flip 8 series. One UI 9 is leaning heavily into AI features, such as adding natural language controls to Photo Assist. This upgrades built-in photo editing by enabling you to simply describe the specific edits or transformations you want to see and compare the side-by-side original and generated images in real time. It also allows you to crop and track people in wide-angle footage (imagine taking a wide-angle video of a track meet, but cropping it to a 9:16 video focusing solely on your kid for a social-ready post). Hopefully, Samsung can get these issues smoothed out for a seamless rollout, as this bug is overshadowing the positive news that they rolled out security patches faster than Google did this month.
I have always wondered how news outlets search through archival footage. Imagine needing to find a specific clip from 2003. I have about 200 episodes of Pulse: The Heart Beat of America archived, and searching through them is a pain—so imagine being Fox News with 16 hours of daily broadcast video spanning 30 years. Searching for something specific that isn’t indexed online would be a nightmare. A technology called Scene Search from VIDA aims to solve exactly this, and I am excited to see it in action. Unfortunately, it isn’t out yet and I don’t have personal access to it—so this is NOT a review—but according to TVNewsCheck, Scene Search supports natural-language queries and returns results at the specific moment level rather than just the file level. VIDA noted that Scene Search is designed for massive collections where manual logging is impractical, and it is available now as part of VIDA Content OS. Organizations can request a demo, and the company will exhibit at IBC 2026 in Amsterdam (Sept. 11–14, Stand 5.856).
This means archivists will be able to search for specific actions or scenes using conversational words and phrases rather than relying on manual metadata tagging and logging. This is an area where I think AI will be extremely practical, especially as AI becomes more of an integrated corporate tool in business software suites to help offset the cost of AI for everyday tech.
Meanwhile, a recent report is surfacing regarding the S27 Ultra series, and I am NOT a fan. If true, this will add to a 7-year trend of Samsung removing key features from their flagship devices—starting with the headphone jack in 2020, the microSD card slot in 2021, and the MST technology that allowed phones to emulate magnetic stripe cards for mobile payments (removed starting with the S21 series). Now, the defining features that make the Ultra an “Ultra”—the boxy design, the S Pen, and the versatile zoom camera system—could be compromised. Reports suggest the 3x optical camera might be removed from the S27 Ultra, leaving the phone with 1x–5x digital zoom alongside a single 5x optical telephoto lens. I have criticized Apple before, stating that digital zoom is not real zoom, and I hope Samsung doesn’t resort to that level. When fans pay upward of a thousand dollars, we expect the best hardware available. God bless and Tech Talk To You Later!!
Leave a Reply