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Samsung turns to China to boost its ailing semiconductor division

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Samsung has turned to Chinese technology groups to prop up its ailing semiconductor division, as it struggles to secure big US customers despite investing tens of billions of dollars in its American manufacturing facilities.

The South Korean electronics group revealed last month that the value of its exports to China jumped 54 percent between 2023 and 2024, as Chinese companies rush to secure stockpiles of advanced artificial intelligence chips in the face of increasingly restrictive US export controls.

In one previously unreported deal, Samsung last year sold more than three years’ supply of logic dies—a key component in manufacturing AI chips—to Kunlun, the semiconductor design subsidiary of Chinese tech group Baidu, according to people familiar with the matter.

But the increasing importance of its China sales to Samsung comes as it navigates growing trade tensions between Washington and Beijing over the development of sensitive technologies.

The South Korean tech giant announced last year that it was making a $40 billion investment in expanding its advanced chip manufacturing and packaging facilities in Texas, boosted by up to $6.4 billion in federal subsidies.

But Samsung’s contract chipmaking business has struggled to secure big US customers, bleeding market share to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, which is investing “at least” $100 billion in chip fabrication plants in Arizona.

“Samsung and China need each other,” said CW Chung, joint head of Apac equity research at Nomura. “Chinese customers have become more important for Samsung, but it won’t be easy to do business together.

Samsung has also fallen behind local rival SK Hynix in the booming market for “high bandwidth memory,” another crucial component in AI chips. As the leading supplier of HBMs for use by Nvidia, SK Hynix’s quarterly operating profit last year surpassed that of Samsung for the first time in the two companies’ history.

“Chinese companies don’t even have a chance to buy SK Hynix’s HBM because the supply is all bought out by the leading AI chip producers like Nvidia, AMD, Intel and Broadcom,” said Jimmy Goodrich, senior adviser for technology analysis to the Rand Corporation research institute.

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Overblown quantum dot conspiracy theories make important points about QLED TVs

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Lawsuits and allegations are creating doubt around quantum dot TVs’ use of QDs.

QLED TV manufacturers have dug themselves into a hole.

After years of companies promising that their quantum dot light-emitting diode TVs use quantum dots (QDs) to boost color, some industry watchers and consumers have recently started questioning whether QLED TVs use QDs at all. Lawsuits have been filed, accusing companies like TCL of using misleading language about whether their QLED TVs actually use QDs.

In this article, we’ll break down why new conspiracy theories about QLED TVs are probably overblown. We’ll also explore why misleading marketing from TV brands is responsible for customer doubt and how it all sets a bad precedent for the future of high-end displays, including OLED TVs and monitors.

What QLED TVs are supposed to do

TVs that use QDs are supposed to offer wider color gamuts and improved brightness over their QD-less LCD-LED counterparts. Just ask Samsung, which says that QLED displays deliver “a wider range of colors,” “better color coverage,” and “a brighter picture.” TCL will tell you that its QLED TVs use “billions of Quantum Dot nanocrystals” and deliver “industry-leading color palette and brightness.”

To be clear, properly manufactured QD TVs that use a sufficient quantity of QDs are legit. Excellent examples, which command higher prices than QD-free rivals, successfully deliver bright pictures with wide color gamuts and impressive color volume (the number of colors a TV displays at various levels of brightness). A TV with strong color volume can depict many light and dark shades of green, for example.

Technology reviews site RTINGS, which is known for its in-depth display testing, explains that a TV with good color volume makes “content look more realistic,” while “TVs with poor color volume don’t show as many details.” This is QLED’s big selling point. A proper QLED TV can be brighter than an OLED TV and have markedly better color volume than some high-end, non-QD LCD-LED displays.

Let’s take a look at some quality QLED TVs for an idea of where the color performance bar should be.

The 2024 Sony Bravia 9, for example, is a $2,500 Mini LED TV with QDs. That’s expensive for a non-OLED TV, but the Bravia 9 covers an impressive 92.35 percent of the DCI-P3 color space, per RTINGS’ testing. RTINGS tests color volume by comparing a screen’s Rec. 2020 coverage to a TV with a peak brightness of 10,000 nits. A “good value,” the publication says, is over 30 percent. The Bravia 9 scored 54.4 percent.

Another well-performing QLED TV is the 2024 Hisense U8. The Mini LED TV has 96.27 percent DCI-P3 coverage and 51.9 percent color volume, according to RTINGS.

Even older QLED TVs can impress. The Vizio M Series Quantum from 2020, for example, has 99.18 percent DCI-P3 coverage and 34 percent color volume, per RTINGS’ standards.

These days, TV marketing most frequently mentions QDs to suggest enhanced color, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that some TVs marketed as using QDs aren’t as colorful as their QLED labels might suggest.

“QLED generally implies superior colors, but some QLED models have been reported to cover less than 90 percent of the DCI-P3 gamut,” Guillaume Chansin, associate director of displays and XR at Counterpoint Research, told Ars Technica.

QD TVs accused of not having QDs

Recently, Samsung shared with Ars testing results from three TVs that TCL markets as QLEDs in the US: the 65Q651G, 65Q681G, and 75Q651G. The TVs have respective MSRPs of $370, $480, and $550 as of this writing.

Again, TCL defines QLED TVs as a “type of LED/LCD that uses quantum dots to create its display.”

“These quantum dots are nano-sized molecules that emit a distinct colored light of their own when exposed to a light source,” TCL says. But the test results shared by Samsung suggest that the TVs in question don’t use cadmium or indium, two types of chemicals employed in QD TVs. (You don’t need both cadmium and indium for a set to be considered a QD TV, and some QD TVs use a combination of cadmium and indium.)

However, per the testing provided by Samsung and conducted by Intertek, a London-headquartered testing and certification company, none of the tested TVs had enough cadmium to be detected at a minimum detection standard of 0.5 mg/kg. They also reportedly lacked sufficient indium for detection at a minimum standard of 2 mg/kg. Intertek is said to have tested each TV set’s optical sheet, diffuser plate, and LED modules, with testing occurring in the US.

When reached for comment about these results, a TCL spokesperson said TCL “cannot comment on specifics due to current litigation” but that it “stands behind [its] high-performance lineup, which provides uncompromised color accuracy.” TCL is facing a class-action complaint about its QLED TVs’ performance and use of QDs.

TCL’s spokesperson added:

TCL has definitive substantiation for the claims made regarding its QLED televisions and will respond to the litigation in due course. We remain committed to our customers and believe in the premium quality and superior value of our products. In the context of the ongoing litigation, TCL will validate that our industry-leading technologies meet or exceed the high bar that TV viewers have come to expect from us.

“This is not good for the industry”

A manufacturer not telling the truth about QDs in its TVs could be ruinous to its reputation. But a scheme requiring the creation of fake, QD-less films would be expensive—almost as costly as making real QD films, Eric Virey, principal displays analyst at Yole Intelligence, previously told Ars.

What’s most likely happening is that the TVs in question do use QDs for color—but they employ cheaper phosphors to do a lot of the heavy lifting, too. However, even that explanation raises questions around the ethics of classifying these TVs as QLED.

Counterpoint’s Chansin said that the TCL TV test results that Samsung shared with Ars point to the three TVs using phosphors for color conversion “instead of quantum dots.”

He added:

While products that have trace amounts could be said to “contain” quantum dots, it would be misleading to state that these TVs are enhanced by quantum dot technology. The use of the term “QLED” is somewhat more flexible, as it is a marketing term with no clear definition. In fact, it is not uncommon for a QLED TV to use a combination of quantum dots and phosphors.

Analysts that I spoke with agreed that QD TVs that combine QDs and phosphors are more common among lower-priced TVs with low margins.

“Manufacturers have been trying to lower the concentration of quantum dots to cut costs, but we have now reached undetectable levels of quantum dots,” Chansin said. “This is not good for the industry as a whole, and it will undermine consumers’ confidence in the products.”

Phosphors fostering confusion

TCL TVs’ use of phosphors in conjunction with QDs has been documented before. In a 2024 video, Pete Palomaki, owner and chief scientist at QD consultant Palomaki Consulting, pried open TCL’s 55S555, a budget QLED TV from 2022. Palomaki concluded that the TV had QDs incorporated within the diffuser rather than in the standalone optical film. He also determined that a red phosphor called KSF and a green phosphor known as beta sialon contributed to the TV’s color.

In his video, Palomaki said, “In the green spectrum, I get about less than 10 percent from the QD and the remaining 90-plus percent from the phosphor.” Palomaki said that about 75 percent of the TV’s red reproduction capabilities came from KSF, with the rest attributed to QDs. Palomaki emphasized, though, that his breakdowns don’t account for light recycling in the backlight unit, which would probably “boost up the contribution from the quantum dot.”

Palomaki didn’t clarify how much more QD contribution could be expected and declined to comment on this story.

Another video shows an example of a TCL QLED TV that Palomaki said has phosphors around its LEDs but still uses QDs for the majority of color conversion.

TCL isn’t the only TV brand that relies on phosphors to boost the color capabilities of its QLED TVs— and likely reduce manufacturing costs.

“There is an almost full continuum of TV designs, ranging from using only phosphors to using only QDs, with any type of mix in between,” Virey told Ars.

Even Samsung, the company crying foul over TCL’s lack of detectable QDs, has reportedly used phosphors to handle some of the color work handled entirely by QDs in full QD TVs. In 2023, Palomaki pulled apart a 2019 Samsung QN75Q7DRAF. He reported that the TV’s color conversion leverages a “very cheap” phosphor known as yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG), which is “not very good for color gamut.”

A TV using QDs for color conversion should produce an optical spectrogram with narrow peak widths. As QD supplier Avantama explains, “narrower bandwidths translate to purer colors with higher levels of efficiency and vice versa.” In the QN75Q7DRAF’s optical spectrogram that Palomaki provided, you can see that the peaks are sharper and more narrow when measuring the full film stack with the phosphors versus the QD film alone. This helps illustrate the TV’s reliance on phosphors to boost color.

Samsung TV's optical spectrogram


Ars asked Samsung to comment on the use of phosphors in its QD TVs, but we didn’t receive a response.

TV brands have become accustomed to slapping a QLED label on their TVs and thinking that’s sufficient to increase prices. It also appears that TV manufacturers are getting away with cutting back on QDs in exchange for phosphors of various levels of quality and with varied performance implications.

It’s a disappointing situation for shoppers who have invested in and relied on QLED TVs for upper-mid-range performance. But it’s important to emphasize that the use of phosphors in QD TVs isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

According to Virey:

There are a lot of reasons why display engineers might want to use phosphors in conjunction with QDs. Having phosphors in a QD TV doesn’t necessarily imply low performance. It can provide a little boost in brightness, improve homogeneity, etc. Various types of phosphors can be used for different purpose. Phosphors are found in many high-performance—even flagship—displays.

Virey noted that in cases where QLED TVs appear to have no detectable QD content and sit at the lower end of a manufacturer’s QD TV offerings, “cost is clearly the driver” for using phosphors.

Better testing, please

So why don’t TCL and Samsung provide optical spectrograms of the TVs in question to prove whether or not color conversion is occurring as the manufacturer claims? In September, TCL did provide a spectrogram, which it claimed proved the presence of QDs in its TVs. But it’s unclear which model was tested, and the results don’t seem to address red or green. You can view TCL’s spectrogram here.

The company declined to comment on why it hasn’t provided more testing results, including for its QLED TVs’ color gamut and accuracy. Samsung didn’t respond to Ars’ request for comment regarding additional testing.

Providing more informative test results would help shoppers better understand what they can expect from a “QLED TV.” But that level of detail is absent from recent accusations against—and defenses of—QLED TVs. The type of test results that have been shared, meanwhile, have succeeded in delivering greater shock value.

In the interest of understanding the actual performance of one of the TVs in question, let’s take another look at the TCL 65Q651G that Samsung had Intertek test. The $370 65Q651G is named in litigation accusing TCL of lying about its QLED TVs.

RTINGS measured the TV’s DCI-P3 coverage at 88.3 percent and its color volume at 26.3 percent (again, RTINGS considers anything above 30 percent on the latter “good”). Both numbers are steps down from the 99.2 percent DCI-P3 coverage and 34 percent color volume that RTINGS recorded for the 2020 Vizio M Series Quantum. It’s also less impressive than TCL’s QM8, a Mini LED QLED TV currently going for $900. That TV covers 94.59 percent of DCI-P3 and has a color volume of 49.2 percent, per RTINGS’ testing.

Growing suspicion

Perhaps somewhat due to the minimal availability of credible testing results, consumers are increasingly suspicious about their QLED TVs and are taking their concerns to court.

Samsung, seemingly looking to add fuel to the fire surrounding rivals like TCL, told Ars that it used Intertek to test TCL TVs because Intertek has been a “credible resource for quality assurance and testing services for the industry for more than a century.” But another likely reason is the fact that Intertek previously tested three other TCL TVs and concluded that they lacked materials required of QD TVs.

We covered those test results in September. Hansol Chemical, a Seoul-headquartered chemical manufacturer and distributor and Samsung supplier, commissioned the testing of three TCL TVs sold outside of the US: the C755, C655, and C655 Pro. Additionally, Hansol hired Geneva-headquartered testing and certification company SGS. SGS also failed to detect indium, even with a higher minimum detection standard of 5 mg/kg and cadmium in the sets.

It’s important to understand the potential here for bias. Considering its relationship with Samsung and its status as a chaebol, Hansol stands to benefit from discrediting TCL QD TVs. Further, the South Korean government has reportedly shown interest in the global TV market and pushed two other chaebols, Samsung and LG, to collaborate in order to maintain market leadership over increasingly competitive Chinese brands like TCL. Considering Hansol’s ties to Samsung, Samsung’s rivalry with TCL, and the unlikely notion of a company going through the effort of making fake QD films for TVs, it’s sensible to be skeptical about the Hansol-commissioned results, as well as the new ones that Samsung supplied.

Still, a lawsuit (PDF) filed on February 11 seeking class-action certification accuses TCL of “marketing its Q651G, Q672G, and A300W televisions as having quantum dot technology when testing of the foregoing models showed that either: (i) the televisions do not have QLED technology, or (ii) that if QLED technology is present, it is not meaningfully contributing to the performance or display of the televisions, meaning that they should not be advertised as QLED televisions.” The complaint is based on the Intertek and SGS testing results provided in September.

Similarly, Hisense is facing a lawsuit accusing it of marketing QD-less TVs as QLED (PDF). “These models include, but are not necessarily limited to, the QD5 series, the QD6 series, QD65 series, the QD7 series, the U7 series, and the U7N series,” the lawsuit, which is also seeking class-action certification, says.

Interestingly, the U7N named in the lawsuit is one of the most frequently recommended QLED TVs from reviews websites, including RTINGS, Digital Trends, Tom’s Guide, and Ars sister site Wired. Per RTINGS’ testing, the TV covers 94.14 percent of DCI-P3 and has a color volume of 37 percent. That’s good enough performance for it to be feasible that the U7N uses some QDs, but without further testing, we can’t know how much of its color capabilities are reliant on the technology.

Both of the lawsuits named above lack evidence to prove that the companies are lying about using QDs. But the litigation illustrates growing customer concern about getting duped by QD TV manufacturers. The complaints also bring to light important questions about what sort of performance a product should deliver before it can reasonably wear the QLED label.

A marketing-made mess

While some Arsians may relish digging into the different components and chemicals driving display performance, the average customer doesn’t really care about what’s inside their TV. What actually impacts TV viewers’ lives is image quality and whether or not the TV does what it claims.

LG gives us a good example of QD-related TV marketing that is likely to confuse shoppers and could lead them to buy a TV that doesn’t align with their needs. For years, LG has been promoting TVs that use QNED, which the company says stands for “quantum nano-emitting diode.” In marketing materials viewable online, LG says QNED TVs use “tiny particles called quantum dots to enhance colors and brightness on screens.”

It’s easy to see the potential for confusion as customers try to digest the TV industry’s alphabet soup, which includes deciphering the difference between the QNED and QLED marketing terms for QD TVs.

But LG made things even more confusing in January when it announced TVs that it calls QNED but which don’t use QDs. Per LG’s announcement of its 2025 QNED Evo lineup, the new TVs use a “new proprietary wide color gamut technology, Dynamic QNED Color Solution, which replaces quantum dots.”

LG claims its Dynamic QNED Color Solution “enables light from the backlight to be expressed in pure colors that are as realistic as they appear to the eye in general life” and that the TVs are “100 percent certified by global testing and certification organization Intertek for Color Volume, measuring a screen’s ability to display the rich colors of original images without distortion.”

But without benchmark results for individual TV models or a full understanding of what a “Dynamic QNED Color Solution” is, LG’s QNED marketing isn’t sufficient for setting realistic expectations for the TV’s performance. And with QNED representing LG’s QD TVs for years, it’s likely that someone will buy a 2025 QNED TV and think that it has QDs.

Performance matters most

What should really matter to a TV viewer is not how many quantum dots a TV has but how strong its image quality is in comparison to the manufacturer’s claims, the TV’s price, and the available alternatives. But the industry’s overuse of acronyms using the letter “Q” and terms like “quantum” has made it difficult to tell the performance potential of so-called QD TVs.

The problem has implications beyond the upper-mid range price point of QLED TVs. QDs have become a major selling point in OLED TVs and monitors. QDs are also at the center of one of the most anticipated premium display technologies, QDEL, or quantum dot electroluminescent displays. Confusion around the application and benefits of QDs could detract from high-end displays that truly leverage QDs for impressive results. Worse, the current approach to QD TV marketing could set a precedent for manufacturers to mislead customers while exploiting the growing popularity of QDs in premium displays.

Companies don’t necessarily need to start telling us exactly how many QDs are in their QLED TVs.  But it shouldn’t be too much to ask to get some clarity on the real-life performance we can expect from these devices. And now that the industry has muddied the definition of QLED, some are calling for a cohesive agreement on what a QD TV really is.

“Ultimately, if the industry wants to maintain some credibility behind that label, it will need to agree on some sort of standard and do some serious self-policing,” Yole’s Virey said.

For now, a reckoning could be coming for TV brands that are found to manipulate the truth about their TVs’ components and composition. The current lawsuits still need to play out in the courts, but the cases have brought attention to the need for TV brands to be honest about the capabilities of their QD TVs.

Things have escalated to the point where TV brands accuse one another of lying. The TV industry is responsible for creating uncertainty around QDs, and it’s starting to face the consequences.

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Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

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China aims to recruit top US scientists as Trump tries to kill the CHIPS Act

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Tech innovation in US likely to stall if Trump ends the CHIPS Act.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump finally made it clear to Congress that he wants to kill the CHIPS and Science Act—a $280 billion bipartisan law Joe Biden signed in 2022 to bring more semiconductor manufacturing into the US and put the country at the forefront of research and innovation.

Trump has long expressed frustration with the high cost of the CHIPS Act, telling Congress on Tuesday that it’s a “horrible, horrible thing” to “give hundreds of billions of dollars” in subsidies to companies that he claimed “take our money” and “don’t spend it,” Reuters reported.

“You should get rid of the CHIPS Act, and whatever is left over, Mr. Speaker, you should use it to reduce debt,” Trump said.

Instead, Trump potentially plans to shift the US from incentivizing chips manufacturing to punishing firms dependent on imports, threatening a 25 percent tariff on all semiconductor imports that could kick in as soon as April 2, CNBC reported.

The CHIPS Act was supposed to be Biden’s legacy, and because he made it a priority, much of the $52.7 billion in subsidies that Trump is criticizing has already been finalized. In 2022, Biden approved $39 billion in subsidies for semiconductor firms, and in his last weeks in office, he finalized more than $33 billion in awards, Reuters noted.

Among the awardees are leading semiconductor firms, including the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Micron, Intel, Nvidia, and Samsung Electronics. Although Trump claims the CHIPS Act is one-sided and only serves to benefit firms, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, the law sparked $450 billion in private investments increasing semiconductor production across 28 states by mid-2024.

With the CHIPS Act officially in Trump’s crosshairs, innovation appears likely to stall the longer that lawmakers remain unsettled on whether the law stays or goes. Some officials worried that Trump might interfere with Biden’s binding agreements with leading firms already holding up their end of the bargain, Reuters reported. For example, Micron plans to invest $100 billion in New York, and TSMC just committed to spending the same over the next four years to expand construction of US chips fabs, which is already well underway.

So far, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has only indicated that he will review the finalized awards, noting that the US wouldn’t be giving TSMC any new awards, Reuters reported.

But the CHIPS Act does much more than provide subsidies to lure leading semiconductor companies into the US. For the first time in decades, the law created a new arm of the National Science Foundation (NSF)—the Directorate of Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP)—which functions unlike any other part of NSF and now appears existentially threatened.

Designed to take the country’s boldest ideas from basic research to real-world applications as fast as possible to make the US as competitive as possible, TIP helps advance all NSF research and was supposed to ensure US leadership in breakthrough technologies, including AI, 6G communications, biotech, quantum computing, and advanced manufacturing.

Biden allocated $20 billion to launch TIP through the CHIPS Act to accelerate technology development not just at top firms but also in small research settings across the US. But as soon as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) started making cuts at NSF this year, TIP got hit the hardest. Seemingly TIP was targeted not because DOGE deemed it the least consequential but simply because it was the youngest directorate at NSF with the most workers in transition when Trump took office and DOGE abruptly announced it was terminating all “probationary” federal workers.

It took years to get TIP ready to flip the switch to accelerate tech innovation in the US. Without it, Trump risks setting the US back at a time when competitors like China are racing ahead and wooing US scientists who suddenly may not know if or when their funding is coming, NSF workers and industry groups told Ars.

Without TIP, NSF slows down

Last month, DOGE absolutely scrambled the NSF by forcing arbitrary cuts of so-called probationary employees—mostly young scientists, some of whom were in transition due to promotions. All those cuts were deemed illegal and finally reversed Monday by court order after weeks of internal chaos reportedly stalling or threatening to delay some of the highest-priority research in the US.

“The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever under any statute in the history of the universe to hire and fire employees at another agency,” US District Judge William Alsup said, calling probationary employees the “life blood” of government agencies.

Ars granted NSF workers anonymity to discuss how cuts were impacting research. At TIP, a federal worker told Ars that one of the probationary cuts in particular threatened to do the most damage.

Because TIP is so new, only one worker was trained to code automated tracking forms that helped decision-makers balance budgets and approve funding for projects across NSF in real time. Ars’ source likened it to holding the only key to the vault of NSF funding. And because TIP is so different from other NSF branches—hiring experts never pulled into NSF before and requiring customized resources to coordinate projects across all NSF fields of research—the insider suggested another government worker couldn’t easily be substituted. It could take possibly two years to hire and train a replacement on TIP’s unique tracking system, the source said, while TIP’s (and possibly all of NSF’s) efficiency is likely strained.

TIP has never been fully functional, the TIP insider confirmed, and could be choked off right as it starts helping to move the needle on US innovation. “Imagine where we are in two years and where China is in two years in quantum computing, semiconductors, or AI,” the TIP insider warned, pointing to China’s surprisingly advanced AI model, DeepSeek, as an indicator of how quickly tech leadership in global markets can change.

On Monday, NSF emailed all workers to confirm that all probationary workers would be reinstated “right away.” But the damage may already be done as it’s unclear how many workers plan to return. When TIP lost the coder—who was seemingly fired for a technicality while transitioning to a different payscale—NSF workers rushed to recommend the coder on LinkedIn, hoping to help the coder quickly secure another opportunity in industry or academia.

Ars could not reach the coder to confirm whether a return to TIP is in the cards. But Ars’ source at TIP and another NSF worker granted anonymity said that probationary workers may be hesitant to return because they are likely to be hit in any official reductions in force (RIFs) in the future.

“RIFs done the legal way are likely coming down the pipe, so these staff are not coming back to a place of security,” the NSF worker said. “The trust is broken. Even for those that choose to return, they’d be wise to be seeking other opportunities.”

And even losing the TIP coder for a couple of weeks likely slows NSF down at a time when the US seemingly can’t afford to lose a single day.

“We’re going to get murdered” if China sets the standard on 6G or AI, the TIP worker fears.

Rivals and allies wooing top US scientists

On Monday, six research and scientific associations, which described themselves as “leading organizations representing more than 305,000 people in computing, information technology, and technical innovation across US industry, academia, and government,” wrote to Congress demanding protections for the US research enterprise.

The groups warned that funding freezes and worker cuts at NSF—and other agencies, including the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Standards & Technology, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Institutes of Health—”have caused disruption and uncertainty” and threaten “long-lasting negative consequences for our competitiveness, national security, and economic prosperity.”

Deeming America’s technology leadership at risk, the groups pointed out that “in computing alone, a federal investment in research of just over $10 billion annually across 24 agencies and offices underpins a technology sector that contributes more than $2 trillion to the US GDP each year.” Cutting US investment “would be a costly mistake, far outweighing any short-term savings,” the groups warned.

In a separate statement, the Computing Research Association (CRA) called NSF cuts, in particular, a “deeply troubling, self-inflicted setback to US leadership in computing research” that appeared “penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

“NSF is one of the most efficient federal agencies, operating with less than 9 percent overhead costs,” CRA said. “These arbitrary terminations are not justified by performance metrics or efficiency concerns; rather, they represent a drastic and unnecessary weakening of the US research enterprise.”

Many NSF workers are afraid to speak up, the TIP worker told Ars, and industry seems similarly tight-lipped as confusion remains. Only one of the organizations urging Congress to intervene agreed to talk to Ars about the NSF cuts and the significance of TIP. Kathryn Kelley, the executive director of the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation, confirmed that while members are more aligned with NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering and the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, her group agrees that all NSF cuts are “deeply” concerning.

“We agree that the uncertainty and erosion of trust within the NSF workforce could have long-lasting effects on the agency’s ability to attract and retain top talent, particularly in such specialized areas,” Kelley told Ars. “This situation underscores the need for continued investment in a stable, well-supported workforce to maintain the US’s leadership in science and innovation.”

Other industry sources unwilling to go on the record told Ars that arbitrary cuts largely affecting the youngest scientists at NSF threatened to disrupt a generation of researchers who envisioned long careers advancing US tech. There’s now a danger that those researchers may be lured to other countries heavily investing in science and currently advertising to attract displaced US researchers, including not just rivals like China but also allies like Denmark.

Those sources questioned the wisdom of using the Elon Musk-like approach of breaking the NSF to rebuild it when it’s already one of the leanest organizations in government.

Ars confirmed that some PhD programs have been cancelled, as many academic researchers are already widely concerned about delayed or cancelled grants and generally freaked out about where to get dependable funding outside the NSF. And in industry, some CHIPS Act projects have already been delayed, as companies like Intel try to manage timelines without knowing what’s happening with CHIPS funding, AP News reported.

“Obviously chip manufacturing companies will slow spending on programs they previously thought they were getting CHIPS Act funding for if not cancel those projects outright,” the Semiconductor Advisors, an industry group, forecasted in a statement last month.

The TIP insider told Ars that the CHIPS Act subsidies for large companies that Trump despises mostly fuel manufacturing in the US, while funding for smaller research facilities is what actually advances technology. Reducing efficiency at TIP would likely disrupt those researchers the most, the TIP worker suggested, proclaiming that’s why TIP must be saved at all costs.

Photo of Ashley Belanger

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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Samsung’s Galaxy S25 event was an AI presentation with occasional phone hardware

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Samsung announced the Galaxy S25, S25+, and S25 Ultra at its Unpacked event today. What is different from last year’s models? With the phones themselves, not much, other than a new chipset and a wide camera. But pure AI optimism? Samsung managed to pack a whole lot more of that into its launch event and promotional materials.

The corners on the S25 Ultra are a bit more rounded, the edges are flatter, and the bezels seem to be slightly thinner. The S25 and S25+ models have the same screen size as the S24 models, at 6.2 and 6.7 inches, respectively, while the Ultra notches up slightly from 6.8 to 6.9 inches.

Samsung’s S25 Ultra, in titanium builds colored silver blue, black, gray, and white silver.

Credit: Samsung

Samsung’s S25 Ultra, in titanium builds colored silver blue, black, gray, and white silver. Credit: Samsung

The S25 Ultra, starting at $1,300, touts a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, a new 50-megapixel ultra-wide lens, and what Samsung claims is improved detail in software-derived zoom images. It comes with the S Pen, a vestige of the departed Note line, but as The Verge notes, there is no Bluetooth included, so you can’t pull off hand gestures with the pen off the screen or use it as a quirky remote camera trigger.

Samsung’s S25 Plus phones, in silver blue, navy, and icy blue.

Credit: Samsung

Samsung’s S25 Plus phones, in silver blue, navy, and icy blue. Credit: Samsung

It’s much the same with the S25 and S25 Plus, starting at $800. The base models got an upgrade to a default of 12GB of RAM. The displays, cameras, and general shape and build are the same. All the Galaxy devices released in 2025 have Qi2 wireless charging support—but not by default. You’ll need a “Qi2 Ready” magnetic case to get a sturdy attachment and the 15 W top charging speed.

One thing that hasn’t changed, for the better, is Samsung’s recent bump up in longevity. Each Galaxy S25 model gets seven years of security updates and seven of OS upgrades, which matches Google’s Pixel line in number of years.

Side view of the Galaxy S25 Edge, which is looking rather thin. Samsung

At the very end of Samsung’s event, for less than 30 seconds, a “Galaxy S25 Edge” was teased. In a mostly black field with some shiny metal components, Samsung seemed to be teasing the notably slimmer variant of the S25 that had been rumored. The same kinds of leaks about an “iPhone Air” have been circulating. No details were provided beyond its name, and a brief video suggesting its svelte nature.

Samsung’s Galaxy S25 event was an AI presentation with occasional phone hardware Read More »

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The 8 most interesting PC monitors from CES 2025

CES, CES 2025, corsair, dell, Features, lg, Monitors, samsung, Tech / /

Monitors worth monitoring

Here are upcoming computer screens with features that weren’t around last year.

Yes, that’s two monitors in a suitcase.

Yes, that’s two monitors in a suitcase.

Plenty of computer monitors made debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this year, but many of the updates at this year’s event were pretty minor. Many could have easily been a part of 2024’s show.

But some brought new and interesting features to the table for 2025—in this article, we’ll tell you all about them.

LG’s 6K monitor

Pixel addicts are always right at home at CES, and the most interesting high-resolution computer monitor to come out of this year’s show is the LG UltraFine 6K Monitor (model 32U990A).

People seeking more than 3840×2160 resolution have limited options, and they’re all rather expensive (looking at you, Apple Pro Display XDR). LG’s 6K monitor means there’s another option for professionals needing extra pixels for things like developing, engineering, and creative work. And LG’s 6144×3456, 32-inch display has extra oomph thanks to something no other 6K monitor has: Thunderbolt 5.

This is the only image LG provided for the monitor. Credit: LG

LG hasn’t confirmed the refresh rate of its 6K monitor, so we don’t know how much bandwidth it needs. But it’s possible that pairing the UltraFine with a Thunderbolt 5 PC could trigger Bandwidth Boost, a Thunderbolt 5 feature that automatically increases bandwidth from 80Gbps to 120Gbps. For comparison, Thunderbolt 4 maxes out at 40Gbps. Thunderbolt 5 also requires 140 W power delivery and maxes out at 240 W. That’s a notable bump from Thunderbolt 4’s 100–140 W.

Considering that Apple’s only 6K monitor has Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 5 is a differentiator. With this capability, the LG UltraFine is ironically better equipped in this regard for use with the new MacBook Pros and Mac Mini (which all have Thunderbolt 5) compared to Apple’s own monitors. LG may be aware of this, as the 32U990A’s aesthetic could be considered very Apple-like.

Inside the 32U990A’s silver chassis is a Nano IPS panel. In recent years, LG has advertised its Nano IPS panels as having “nanometer-sized particles” applied to their LED backlight to absorb “excess, unnecessary light wavelengths” for “richer color expression.” LG’s 6K monitor claims to cover 98 percent of DCI-P3 and 99.5 percent of Adobe RGB. IPS Black monitors, meanwhile, have higher contrast ratios (up to 3,000:1) than standard IPS panels. However, LG has released Nano IPS monitors with 2,000:1 contrast, the same contrast ratio as Dell’s 6K, IPS Black monitor.

LG hasn’t shared other details, like price or a release date. But the monitor may cost more than Dell’s Thunderbolt 4-equipped monitor, which is currently $2,480.

Brelyon’s multi-depth monitor

Brelyon Ultra Reality Extend.

Someone from CNET using the Ultra Reality Extend. Credit: CNET/YouTube

Brelyon is headquartered in San Mateo, California, and was founded by scientists and executives from MIT, IMAX, UCF, and DARPA. It’s been selling display technology for commercial and defense applications since 2022. At CES, the company unveiled the Ultra Reality Extend, describing it as an “immersive display line that renders virtual images in multiple depths.”

“As the first commercial multi-focal monitor, the Extend model offers multi-depth programmability for information overlay, allowing users to see images from 0.7 m to as far as 2.5 m of depth virtually rendered behind the monitor; organizing various data streams at different depth layers, or triggering focal cues to induce an ultra immersive experience akin to looking out through a window,” Brelyon’s announcement said.

Brelyon says the monitor runs 4K at 60 Hz with 1 bit of monocular depth for an 8K effect. The monitor includes “OLED-based curved 2D virtual images, with the largest stretching to 122 inches and extending 2.5 meters deep, viewable through a 30-inch frame,” according to the firm’s announcement. The closer you sit, the greater the field of view you get.

The Extend leverages “new GPU capabilities to process light and video signals inside our display platforms,” Brelyon CEO Barmak Heshmat said in a statement this week. He added: “We are thinking beyond headsets and glasses, where we can leverage GPU capabilities to do real-time driving of higher-bandwidth display interfaces.”

Brelyon says this was captured from the Extend, with its camera lens focus changing from 70 cm to 2,500 cm. Credit: Brelyon

Advancements in AI-based video processing, as well as other software advancements and hardware improvements, purportedly enable the Extend to upscale lower-dimension streams to multiple, higher-dimension ones. Brelyon describes its product as a “generative display system” that uses AI computation and optics to assign different depth values to content in real time for rendering images and information overlays.

The idea of a virtual monitor that surpasses the field of view of typical desktop monitors while allowing users to see the real world isn’t new. Tech firms (including many at CES) usually try to accomplish this through AR glasses. But head-mounted displays still struggle with problems like heat, weight, computing resources, battery, and aesthetics.

Brelyon’s monitor seemingly demoed well at CES. Sam Rutherford, a senior writer at Engadget, watched a clip from the Marvel’s Spider-Man video game on the Extend and said that “trees and light poles whipping past in my face felt so real I started to flinch subconsciously.” He added that the monitor separated “different layers of the content to make snow in the foreground look blurry as it whipped across the screen, while characters in the distance” still looked sharp.

The monitor costs $5,000 to $8,000 depending on how you’ll use it and whether you have other business with Brelyon, per Engadget, and CES is one of the few places where people could actually see the display in action.

Samsung’s 3D monitor

Samsung Odyssey 3D

Samsung’s depiction of the 3D effect of its 3D PC monitor. Credit: Samsung

It’s 2025, and tech companies are still trying to convince people to bring a 3D display into their homes. This week, Samsung took its first swing since 2009 at 3D screens with the Odyssey 3D monitor.

In lieu of 3D glasses. the Odyssey 3D achieves its 3D effect with a lenticular lens “attached to the front of the panel and its front stereo camera,” Samsung says, as well eye tracking and view mapping. Differing from other recent 3D monitors, the Odyssey 3D claims to be able to make 2D content look three-dimensional even if that content doesn’t officially support 3D.

You can find more information in our initial coverage of Samsung’s Odyssey 3D, but don’t bet on finding 3D monitors in many people’s homes soon. The technology for quality 3D displays that work without glasses has been around for years but still has never taken off.

Dell’s OLED productivity monitor

With improvements in burn-in, availability, and brightness, finding OLED monitors today is much easier than it was two years ago. But a lot of the OLED monitors released recently target gamers with features like high refresh rates, ultrawide panels, and RGB. These features are unneeded or unwanted by non-gamers but contribute to OLED monitors’ already high pricing. Numerous smaller OLED monitors were announced at CES, with 27-inch, 4K models being a popular addition. Most of them are still high-refresh gaming monitors, though.

The Dell 32-inch QD-OLED, on the other hand, targets “play, school, and work,” Dell’s announcement says. And its naming (based on a new naming convention Dell announced this week that kills XPS and other longstanding branding) signals that this is a mid-tier monitor from Dell’s entry-level lineup.

Dell 32-inch QD-OLED,

OLED for normies. Credit: Dell

The monitor’s specs, which include a 120 Hz refresh rate, AMD FreeSync Premium, and USB-C power delivery at up to 90 W, make it a good fit for pairing with many mainstream laptops.

Dell also says this is the first QD-OLED with spatial audio, which uses head tracking to alter audio coming from the monitor’s five 5 W speakers. This is a feature we’ve seen before, but not on an OLED monitor.

For professionals and/or Mac users that prefer the sleek looks, reputation, higher power delivery and I/O hubs associated with Dell’s popular UltraSharp line, Dell made two more notable announcements at CES: an UltraSharp 32 4K Thunderbolt Hub Monitor (U3225QE) coming out in February 25 for $950 and an UltraSharp 27 4K Thunderbolt Hub Monitor (U2725QE) coming out that same day for $700.

The suitcase monitors

Before we get into the Base Case, please note that this product has no release date because its creators plan to go to market via crowdfunding. Base Case says it will launch its Indiegogo campaign next month, but even then, we don’t know if the project will be funded, if any final product will work as advertised, or if customers will receive orders in a timely fashion. Still, this is one of the most unusual monitors at CES, and it’s worth discussing.

The Base Case is shaped like a 24x14x16.5-inch rolling suitcase, but when you open it up, you’ll find two 24-inch monitors for connecting to a laptop. Each screen reportedly has a 1920×1080 resolution, a 75 Hz refresh rate, and a max brightness claim of 350 nits. Base Case is also advertising PC and Mac support (through DisplayLink), as well as HDMI, USB-C, USB-A, Thunderbolt, and Ethernet ports. Telescoping legs allow the case to rise 10 inches so the display can sit closer to eye level.

Ultimately, the Base Case would see owners lug around a 20-pound product for the ability to quickly create a dual-monitor setup equipped with a healthy amount of I/O. Tom’s Guide demoed a prototype at CES and reported that the monitors took “seconds to set up.”

In case you’re worried that the Base Case prioritizes displays over storage, note that its makers plan on adding a front pocket to the suitcase that can fit a laptop. The pocket wasn’t on the prototype Tom’s Guide saw, though.

Again, this is far from a finalized product, but Base Case has alluded to a $2,400 starting price. For comparison to other briefcase-locked displays—and yes, doing this is possible—LG’s StanbyME Go (27LX5QKNA) tablet in a briefcase currently has a $1,200 MSRP.

Corsair’s PC-mountable touchscreen

A promotional image of the touchscreen.

If the Base Case is on the heftier side of portable monitors, Corsair’s Xeneon Edge is certainly on the minute side. The 14.5-inch LCD touchscreen isn’t meant to be a primary display, though. Corsair built it as a secondary screen for providing quick information, like the song your computer is playing, the weather, the time, and calendar events. You could also use the 2560×720 pixels to display system information, like component usage and temperatures.

Corsair says its iCue software will be able to provide system information on the Xeneon, but because the Xeneon Edge works like a regular monitor, you could (and likely would prefer to) use your own methods. Still, the Xeneon Edge stands out from other small, touchscreen PC monitors with its clean UI that can succinctly communicate a lot of information on the tiny display at once.

Specs-wise, this is a 60 Hz IPS panel with 5-point capacitive touch. Corsair says the monitor can hit 350 nits of brightness.

You can connect the Xeneon Edge to a computer via USB-C (DisplayPort Alt mode) or HDMI. There are also screw holes, so PC builders could install it via a 360 mm radiator mounting point inside their PC case.

Alternatively, Corsair recommends attaching the touchscreen to the outside of a PC case through the monitor’s 14 integrated magnets. Corsair said in a blog post that the “magnets are underneath the plastic casing so the metal surface you stick it to won’t get scratched.” Or, in traditional portable monitor style, the Xeneon Edge could also just sit on a desk with its included stand.

Corsair Xeneon Edge

Corsair demos different ways the screen could attach to a case. Credit: TechPowerUp/YouTube

Corsair plans to release the Xeneon Edge in Q2. Expected pricing is “around $249,” Tom’s Hardware reported.

MSI’s side panel display panel

Why attach a monitor to your PC case when you can turn your PC case into a monitor instead?

MSI says that the touchscreen embedded into this year’s MEG Vision X AI 2nd gaming desktop’s side panel can work like a regular computer monitor. Similar to Corsair’s monitor, the MSI’s display has a corresponding app that can show system information and other customizations, which you can toggle with controls on the front of the case, PCMag reported.

MSI used an IPS panel with 1920×1080 resolution for the display, which also has an integrated mic and speaker. MSI says “electric vehicle control centers” inspired the design. We’ve seen similar PC cases, like iBuyPower’s more translucent side panel display and the touchscreen on Hyte’s pentagonal PC case, before. But MSI is bringing the design to a more mainstream form factor by including it in a prebuilt desktop, potentially opening the door for future touchscreen-equipped desktops.

Considering the various locations people place their desktops and the different angles at which they may try to look at this screen, I’m curious about the monitor’s viewing angles and brightness. IPS seems like a good choice since it tends to have strong image quality when viewed from different angles. A video PC Mag shot from the show floor shows images on the monitor appearing visible and lively:

Hands on with MSI’s MEG Vision X AI Desktop: Now, your PC tower’s a monitor, too.

World’s fastest monitor

There’s a competitive air at CES that lends to tech brands trying to one-up each other on spec sheets. Some of the most heated competition concerns monitor refresh rates; for years, we’ve been meeting the new world’s fastest monitor at CES. This year is no different.

The brand behind the monitor is Koorui, a three-year-old Chinese firm whose website currently lists monitors and keyboards. Koorui hasn’t confirmed when it will make its 750 Hz display available, where it will sell it, or what it will cost. That should bring some skepticism about this product actually arriving for purchase in the US. However, Koorui did bring the display to the CES show floor.

The speedy display had a refresh rate test running at CES, and according to several videos we’ve seen from attendees, the monitor appeared to consistently hit the 750 Hz mark.

World’s first 750Hz monitor???

For those keeping track, high-end gaming monitors—namely ones targeting professional gamers—hit 360 Hz in 2020. Koorui’s announcement means max monitor speeds have increased 108.3 percent in four years.

One CES attendee noticed, however, that the monitor wasn’t showing any gameplay. This could be due to the graphical and computing prowess needed to demonstrate the benefits of a 750 Hz monitor. A system capable of 750 frames per second would give people a chance to see if they could detect improved motion resolution but would also be very expensive. It’s also possible that the monitor Koorui had on display wasn’t ready for that level of scrutiny yet.

Like many eSports monitors, the Koorui is 24.5 inches, with a resolution of 1920×1080. Perhaps more interesting than Koorui taking the lead in the perennial race for higher refresh rates is the TN monitor’s claimed color capabilities. TN monitors aren’t as popular as they were years ago, but OEMs still employ them sometimes for speed.

They tend to be less colorful than IPS and VA monitors, though. Most offer sRGB color gamuts instead of covering the larger DCI-P3 color space. Asus’ 540 Hz ROG Swift Pro PG248QP, for example, is a TN monitor claiming 125 percent sRGB coverage. Koorui’s monitor claims to cover 95 percent of DCI-P3, due to the use of a quantum dot film. Again, there’s a lot that prospective shoppers should confirm about this monitor if it becomes available.

For those seeking the fastest monitors with more concrete release plans, several companies announced 600 Hz monitors coming out this year. Acer, for example, has a 600 Hz Nitro XV240 F6 (also a TN monitor) that it plans to release in North America this quarter at a starting price of $600.

Photo of Scharon Harding

Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

The 8 most interesting PC monitors from CES 2025 Read More »

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Why I’m disappointed with the TVs at CES 2025

AI, CES, CES 2025, generative ai, Google, lg, Microsoft Copilot, oled, samsung, Software, Tech, TVs / /

Won’t someone please think of the viewer?

Op-ed: TVs miss opportunity for real improvement by prioritizing corporate needs.

The TV industry is hitting users over the head with AI and other questionable gimmicks Credit: Getty

If you asked someone what they wanted from TVs released in 2025, I doubt they’d say “more software and AI.” Yet, if you look at what TV companies have planned for this year, which is being primarily promoted at the CES technology trade show in Las Vegas this week, software and AI are where much of the focus is.

The trend reveals the implications of TV brands increasingly viewing themselves as software rather than hardware companies, with their products being customer data rather than TV sets. This points to an alarming future for smart TVs, where even premium models sought after for top-end image quality and hardware capabilities are stuffed with unwanted gimmicks.

LG’s remote regression

LG has long made some of the best—and most expensive—TVs available. Its OLED lineup, in particular, has appealed to people who use their TVs to watch Blu-rays, enjoy HDR, and the like. However, some features that LG is introducing to high-end TVs this year seem to better serve LG’s business interests than those users’ needs.

Take the new remote. Formerly known as the Magic Remote, LG is calling the 2025 edition the AI Remote. That is already likely to dissuade people who are skeptical about AI marketing in products (research suggests there are many such people). But the more immediately frustrating part is that the new remote doesn’t have a dedicated button for switching input modes, as previous remotes from LG and countless other remotes do.

LG AI remote

LG’s AI Remote. Credit: Tom’s Guide/YouTube

To use the AI Remote to change the TV’s input—a common task for people using their sets to play video games, watch Blu-rays or DVDs, connect their PC, et cetera—you have to long-press the Home Hub button. Single-pressing that button brings up a dashboard of webOS (the operating system for LG TVs) apps. That functionality isn’t immediately apparent to someone picking up the remote for the first time and detracts from the remote’s convenience.

By overlooking other obviously helpful controls (play/pause, fast forward/rewind, and numbers) while including buttons dedicated to things like LG’s free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels and Amazon Alexa, LG missed an opportunity to update its remote in a way centered on how people frequently use TVs. That said, it feels like user convenience didn’t drive this change. Instead, LG seems more focused on getting people to use webOS apps. LG can monetize app usage through, i.e., getting a cut of streaming subscription sign-ups, selling ads on webOS, and selling and leveraging user data.

Moving from hardware provider to software platform

LG, like many other TV OEMs, has been growing its ads and data business. Deals with data analytics firms like Nielsen give it more incentive to acquire customer data. Declining TV margins and rock-bottom prices from budget brands (like Vizio and Roku, which sometimes lose money on TV hardware sales and make up for the losses through ad sales and data collection) are also pushing LG’s software focus. In the case of the AI Remote, software prioritization comes at the cost of an oft-used hardware capability.

Further demonstrating its motives, in September 2023, LG announced intentions to “become a media and entertainment platform company” by offering “services” and a “collection of curated content in products, including LG OLED and LG QNED TVs.” At the time, the South Korean firm said it would invest 1 trillion KRW (about $737.7 million) into its webOS business through 2028.

Low TV margins, improved TV durability, market saturation, and broader economic challenges are all serious challenges for an electronics company like LG and have pushed LG to explore alternative ways to make money off of TVs. However, after paying four figures for TV sets, LG customers shouldn’t be further burdened to help LG accrue revenue.

Google TVs gear up for subscription-based features

There are numerous TV manufacturers, including Sony, TCL, and Philips, relying on Google software to power their TV sets. Numerous TVs announced at CES 2025 will come with what Google calls Gemini Enhanced Google Assistant. The idea that this is something that people using Google TVs have requested is somewhat contradicted by Google Assistant interactions with TVs thus far being “somewhat limited,” per a Lowpass report.

Nevertheless, these TVs are adding far-field microphones so that they can hear commands directed at the voice assistant. For the first time, the voice assistant will include Google’s generative AI chatbot, Gemini, this year—another feature that TV users don’t typically ask for. Despite the lack of demand and the privacy concerns associated with microphones that can pick up audio from far away even when the TV is off, companies are still loading 2025 TVs with far-field mics to support Gemini. Notably, these TVs will likely allow the mics to be disabled, like you can with other TVs using far-field mics. But I still ponder about features/hardware that could have been implemented instead.

Google is also working toward having people pay a subscription fee to use Gemini on their TVs, PCWorld reported.

“For us, our biggest goal is to create enough value that yes, you would be willing to pay for [Gemini],” Google TV VP and GM Shalini Govil-Pai told the publication.

The executive pointed to future capabilities for the Gemini-driven Google Assistant on TVs, including asking it to “suggest a movie like Jurassic Park but suitable for young children” or to show “Bollywood movies that are similar to Mission: Impossible.”

She also pointed to future features like showing weather, top news stories, and upcoming calendar events when someone is near the TV, showing AI-generated news briefings, and the ability to respond to questions like “explain the solar system to a third-grader” with text, audio, and YouTube videos.

But when people have desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones in their homes already, how helpful are these features truly? Govil-Pai admitted to PCWorld that “people are not used to” using their TVs this way “so it will take some time for them to adapt to it.” With this in mind, it seems odd for TV companies to implement new, more powerful microphones to support features that Google acknowledges aren’t in demand. I’m not saying that tech companies shouldn’t get ahead of the curve and offer groundbreaking features that users hadn’t considered might benefit them. But already planning to monetize those capabilities—with a subscription, no less—suggests a prioritization of corporate needs.

Samsung is hungry for AI

People who want to use their TV for cooking inspiration often turn to cooking shows or online cooking videos. However, Samsung wants people to use its TV software to identify dishes they want to try making.

During CES, Samsung announced Samsung Food for TVs. The feature leverages Samsung TVs’ AI processors to identify food displayed on the screen and recommend relevant recipes. Samsung introduced the capability in 2023 as an iOS and Android app after buying the app Whisk in 2019. As noted by TechCrunch, though, other AI tools for providing recipes based on food images are flawed.

So why bother with such a feature? You can get a taste of Samsung’s motivation from its CES-announced deal with Instacart that lets people order off Instacart from Samsung smart fridges that support the capability. Samsung Food on TVs can show users the progress of food orders placed via the Samsung Food mobile app on their TVs. Samsung Food can also create a shopping list for recipe ingredients based on what it knows (using cameras and AI) is in your (supporting) Samsung fridge. The feature also requires a Samsung account, which allows the company to gather more information on users.

Other software-centric features loaded into Samsung TVs this year include a dedicated AI button on the new TVs’ remotes, the ability to use gestures to control the TV but only if you’re wearing a Samsung Galaxy Watch, and AI Karaoke, which lets people sing karaoke using their TVs by stripping vocals from music playing and using their phone as a mic.

Like LG, Samsung has shown growing interest in ads and data collection. In May, for example, it expanded its automatic content recognition tech to track ad exposure on streaming services viewed on its TVs. It also has an ads analytics partnership with Experian.

Large language models on TVs

TVs are mainstream technology in most US homes. Generative AI chatbots, on the other hand, are emerging technology that many people have yet to try. Despite these disparities, LG and Samsung are incorporating Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot into 2025 TVs.

LG claims that Copilot will help its TVs “understand conversational context and uncover subtle user intentions,” adding: “Access to Microsoft Copilot further streamlines the process, allowing users to efficiently find and organize complex information using contextual cues. For an even smoother and more engaging experience, the AI chatbot proactively identifies potential user challenges and offers timely, effective solutions.”

Similarly, Samsung, which is also adding Copilot to some of its smart monitors, said in its announcement that Copilot will help with “personalized content recommendations.” Samsung has also said that Copilot will help its TVs understand strings of commands, like increasing the volume and changing the channel, CNET noted. Samsung said it intends to work with additional AI partners, namely Google, but it’s unclear why it needs multiple AI partners, especially when it hasn’t yet seen how people use large language models on their TVs.

TV-as-a-platform

To be clear, this isn’t a condemnation against new, unexpected TV features. This also isn’t a censure against new TV apps or the usage of AI in TVs.

AI marketing hype is real and misleading regarding the demand, benefits, and possibilities of AI in consumer gadgets. However, there are some cases when innovative software, including AI, can improve things that TV users not only care about but actually want or need. For example, some TVs use AI for things like trying to optimize sound, color, and/or brightness, including based on current environmental conditions or upscaling. This week, Samsung announced AI Live Translate for TVs. The feature is supposed to be able to translate foreign language closed captions in real time, providing a way for people to watch more international content. It’s a feature I didn’t ask for but can see being useful and changing how I use my TV.

But a lot of this week’s TV announcements underscore an alarming TV-as-a-platform trend where TV sets are sold as a way to infiltrate people’s homes so that apps, AI, and ads can be pushed onto viewers. Even high-end TVs are moving in this direction and amplifying features with questionable usefulness, effectiveness, and privacy considerations. Again, I can’t help but wonder what better innovations could have come out this year if more R&D was directed toward hardware and other improvements that are more immediately rewarding for users than karaoke with AI.

The TV industry is facing economic challenges, and, understandably, TV brands are seeking creative solutions for making money. But for consumers, that means paying for features that you’re likely to ignore. Ultimately, many people just want a TV with amazing image and sound quality. Finding that without having to sift through a bunch of fluff is getting harder.

Photo of Scharon Harding

Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

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Samsung is the next company to try to popularize 3D displays (again)

Monitors, samsung, Tech / /

Interestingly, Samsung’s announcement today only mentioned the release of a 27-inch, 4K resolution 3D monitor, despite Samsung teasing a 37-inch version in August. It’s possible that the larger version didn’t work as well and/or that demand for the larger size would be too small, considering the high price and limited demand implications of a glasses-free 3D monitor aimed at gamers.

Another swing at 3D

Currently, Samsung hasn’t shared further details about its 3D display, likely saving finer details and demos for CES 2025, which officially starts on January 7.

Samsung’s 3D monitor, as well as other consumer monitors it will show at CES (including ones with 500 Hz refresh rates and consumer OLED screens in smaller, 27-inch sizes), give us an idea of what we can expect from the show this year in terms of displays: the fine-tuning of features that some have wanted for years and may finally be ready for prime time. In the case of 3D displays, Ars’ Kyle Orland got his eyes on a quality, glasses-free 3D TV in 2016 (the company behind that tech is no longer active). As he mentioned at the time, that was six years after the industry tried to convince us that 3D TVs were poised to be the next big thing.

Come 2025, it appears that the industry will take another swing at making 3D consumer displays. By targeting PC gamers instead of creative professionals, like Acer and other tech brands, such as Lenovo, recently have, Samsung is attempting to inch the technology toward a more consumer-friendly audience.

After all this time, it still doesn’t feel like 2025 will be the year of 3D consumer displays. But we’ll be keeping an eye on CES and other display announcements this year for notable developments.

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us-blocks-china-from-foreign-exports-with-even-a-single-us-made-chip

US blocks China from foreign exports with even a single US-made chip

AI chips, applied materials, Chips Act, kla, lam research, Policy, samsung, semiconductor, us-china trade war / /

But while Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said that these new curbs would help prevent “China from advancing its domestic semiconductor manufacturing system” to modernize its military, analysts and “several US officials” told The Post that they pack “far less punch” than the prior two rounds of export controls.

Analysts told The Wall Street Journal that the US took too long to launch the controls, which were composed around June. As industry insiders weighed in on the restrictions, word got out about the US plans to expand controls. In the months since, analysts said, China had plenty of time to stockpile the now-restricted tech. Applied Materials, for example, saw an eye-popping 86 percent spike in net revenue from products shipped to China “in the nine months ending July 28,” the WSJ reported.

Because of this and other alleged flaws, it’s unclear how effectively Biden’s final attempts to block China from accessing the latest US technologies will work.

Beyond concerns that China had time to stockpile tech it anticipated would be restricted, Gregory Allen, the director at the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the WSJ that these latest controls “left loopholes that Huawei and Chinese companies could exploit.”

Loopholes include failing to blacklist companies that Huawei regularly uses—with allies and American companies allegedly lobbying to exempt factories or fabs they like, such as ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc., “one of China’s largest memory chipmakers,” The Post noted. They also include failing to restrict older versions of the HBM chips and various chipmaking equipment that China may still be able to easily access, Allen said.

“These controls are weaker than what the United States should have done,” Allen told The Post. “You can make a halfway logical argument that says, ‘Sell everything to China.’ Then you can make a reasonable argument, ‘Sell very little to China.’ But the worst thing you can do is to dramatically signal your intention to cut off China’s access to tech but then have so many loopholes and such bungled implementation that you incur almost all of the costs of the policy with only a fraction of the benefits.”

US blocks China from foreign exports with even a single US-made chip Read More »

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Samsung quits updating Galaxy Z Fold 2 that came out in 2020 for $2,000

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In February 2022, Samsung started promising up to four generations of Android OS and One UI upgrades to “select” Galaxy devices, as well as “up to five years of security updates.” And in January, it announced moving to seven years of security and OS updates, matching a move from Google. However, the Fold 2 wasn’t included in Samsung’s list of “select” Galaxy devices.

Thus, one could have estimated that the Fold 2 might stop receiving OS and security updates by 2024, four years after its debut. But it’s still hard to reconcile with paying four figures for a phone that became a security risk after four years, despite functioning properly otherwise. Apple, by comparison, now promises at least five years of security updates. Apple only started making that promise in 2023 with the iPhone 15 series. However, the current-generation iOS 18 is supported by iPhones released in 2020, like the second-generation iPhone SE, and even older ones, like the iPhone XR that came out in 2018. Arguably short-lived expensive devices like the Fold 2 are part of the reason some activists are pushing for the FTC to require that smart devices state on their packaging how long they’ll receive updates.

However, unlike iPhones, Samsung phones aren’t all powered by a proprietary chip, making promises of upgrades require commitments from third-party vendors, like Qualcomm. With Qualcomm known for being resistant to longer chip life cycles in the past, seven years of updates is progress for Samsung users—just not those who invested in the Z Fold 2.

Samsung quits updating Galaxy Z Fold 2 that came out in 2020 for $2,000 Read More »

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Faulty Samsung update leaves owners of bricked Galaxy phones with few options

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Samsung issued a software update on October 2 that bricked some older Galaxy smartphones. While Samsung has stopped the update from rolling out further, those with broken phones have received a harsh reminder of the importance of data backups.

On Wednesday, numerous people online started complaining about their Samsung phones being stuck in a bootloop (you can see examples here, here, and in newer comments here).

A Samsung spokesperson confirmed to Ars Technica that an update to Samsung’s SmartThings Framework app for managing smart devices caused the problems:

We are aware that a limited number of Galaxy smartphones running on Android 12 are rebooting continuously during an update to the latest version of the SmartThings app.

Samsung “immediately suspended the update” after learning of the problem and is “working to resolve the issues,” the company’s spokesperson said. According to user reports online, Samsung has issued a new update that people can download without their phones breaking.

However, owners of older affected phones, namely the Galaxy S10 series, Galaxy Note 10 series, Galaxy M51, and Galaxy A90, have been unable to power their devices on to roll back the update. Many users who already manually or automatically installed the update are still dealing with bricked devices.

A harsh reminder

Users with bricked Galaxy phones were initially met with a difficult choice: Go without their phone or perform a data-erasing factory reset.

Samsung’s statement to Ars advised customers to “contact the Samsung Contact Center” for support, but it’s unclear if a fix can be employed that doesn’t wipe the phone.

Faulty Samsung update leaves owners of bricked Galaxy phones with few options Read More »

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Unicode 16.0 release with new emoji brings character count to 154,998

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right there with you, bags-under-eyes emoji —

New designs will roll out to phones, tablets, and PCs over the next few months.

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Emojipedia sample images of the new Unicode 16.0 emoji.

Enlarge / Emojipedia sample images of the new Unicode 16.0 emoji.

The Unicode Consortium has finalized and released version 16.0 of the Unicode standard, the elaborate character set that ensures that our phones, tablets, PCs, and other devices can all communicate and interoperate with each other. The update adds 5,185 new characters to the standard, bringing the total up to a whopping 154,998.

Of those 5,185 characters, the ones that will get the most attention are the eight new emoji characters, including a shovel, a fingerprint, a leafless tree, a radish (formally classified as “root vegetable”), a harp, a purple splat that evokes the ’90s Nickelodeon logo, and a flag for the island of Sark. The standout, of course, is “face with bags under eyes,” whose long-suffering thousand-yard stare perfectly encapsulates the era it has been born into. Per usual, Emojipedia has sample images that give you some idea of what these will look like when they’re implemented by various operating systems, apps, and services.

Unicode 16.0 also adds support for seven new modern and historical scripts: the West African Garay alphabet; the Gurung Khema, Kirat Rai, Ol Onal, and Sunuwar scripts from Northeast India and Nepal; and historical Todhri and Tulu-Tigalari scripts from Albania and Southwest India, respectively.

We last got new emoji in 2023’s Unicode 15.1 update, though all of these designs were technically modifications of existing emoji rather than new characters—many emoji, most notably for skin and hair color variants, use a base emoji plus a modifier emoji, combined together with a “zero-width joiner” (ZWJ) character that makes them display as one character instead. The lime emoji in Unicode 15.1 was actually a lemon emoji combined with the color green; the phoenix was a regular bird joined to the fire emoji. This was likely because 15.1 was only intended as a minor update to 2022’s Unicode 15.0 standard.

Most of the Unicode 16.0 emoji, by contrast, are their own unique characters. The one exception is the Sark flag emoji; flag sequences are created by placing two “regional indicator letters” directly next to each other and don’t require a ZWJ character between them.

Incorporation into the Unicode standard is only the first step that new emoji and other characters take on their journey from someone’s mind to your phone or computer; software makers like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and others need to design iterations that fit with their existing spin on the emoji characters, they need to release software updates that use the new characters, and people need to download and install them.

We’ve seen a few people share on social media that the Unicode 16.0 release includes a “greenwashing” emoji designed by Shepard Fairey, an artist best known for the 2008 Barack Obama “Hope” poster. This emoji, and an attempt to gin up controversy around it, is all an elaborate hoax: there’s a fake Unicode website announcing it, a fake lawsuit threat that purports to be from a real natural gas industry group, and a fake Cory Doctorow article about the entire “controversy” published in a fake version of Wired. These were all published to websites with convincing-looking but fake domains, all registered within a couple of weeks of each other in August 2024. The face-with-bags-under-eyes emoji feels like an appropriate response.

Unicode 16.0 release with new emoji brings character count to 154,998 Read More »

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Samsung TVs will get 7 years of updates, starting with 2023 models

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Tizen OS —

Some Rokus and Apple TVs receive longer update windows, though.

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A Samsung representative demonstrating Tizen OS in February.

Enlarge / A Samsung representative demonstrating Tizen OS in February.

Samsung

Samsung will provide operating system updates for its newer TVs for at least seven years, the company announced last week. The updates will first apply to some TVs released in 2023 and TVs released in March 2024.

According to Business Korea, Samsung made the announcement regarding the Tizen OS at the Digital Research Lab of Samsung Electronics’ Suwon Campus in Gyeonggi Province. As spotted by FlatPanelsHD, the announcement follows previously announced plans from Samsung to provide seven years of software updates for the Galaxy S24 smartphone series.

Per Korea Economic Daily, speaking at last week’s event, Samsung Electronics’ president of the Visual Display Business Division, Yoon Seok-Yoon, said: “With the seven-year free upgrade of Tizen applied to AI TVs, we will widen the gap in market share with Chinese companies.”

Samsung is the biggest smart TV seller in the world, but rival companies from China are close behind. According to numbers from Omdia, Samsung’s TV market share (based on units shipped) declined from 20.3 percent in Q1 2023 to 18.8 percent in Q1 2024. Market share for Chinese brand TCL, meanwhile, increased from 9.8 percent to 11.6 percent (LG’s market share was about flat at 11.8 percent in Q1 2024).

Market competition has gotten so fierce that the South Korean government reportedly pushed rivals Samsung and LG to cooperate so that they could stay competitive. This has resulted in Samsung selling TVs that use OLED panels made by LG Display.

Samsung hasn’t provided a specific list of each model guaranteed to receive seven years of updates. However, the company’s announcement suggests the news will apply to TVs with AI-based features that came out in the aforementioned release window. (Samsung has been pushing the term “AI TVs” lately and also says building AI features is also a way for it to compete against Chinese brands.)

A step in the right direction

Samsung’s upgrades commitment comes amid growing concern about e-waste and expensive products suddenly no longer getting software updates, resulting in bricked, slowly operating, or buggy experiences.

Research suggests that the average TV lasts about seven years. However, as UK consumer advocacy group Which? has found, the average TV brand offers software updates for less than seven years. With Samsung being the world’s biggest TV brand, offering longer-term software support could encourage more in the industry to do the same. It could also help users keep their devices for longer. Samsung’s seven-year commitment is longer than what LG recently announced it would offer, which is four OS updates over five years (you can see LG’s webOS update plan here).

However, other TV hardware companies are doing better. Apple has provided updates for its first Apple TV since 2015, FlatPanelsHD pointed out, while Roku’s still providing OS updates to Roku OS-based TVs released in 2014. However, in general, TV OEMs and streaming device makers could make it easier for prospective buyers to know how long a device will continue getting software updates before they buy it.

Samsung TVs will get 7 years of updates, starting with 2023 models Read More »