Illustration: The Verge One of the most important changes in Samsung’s new phones is a simple one: when you long-press the side button on your phone, instead of activating Samsung’s own Bixby assistant by default, you’ll get Google Gemini. This is probably a good thing. Bixby was never a very good virtual assistant — Samsung originally built it primarily as a way to more simply navigate device settings, not to get information from the internet. It has gotten better since and can now do standard assistant things like performing visual searches and setting timers, but it never managed to catch u ..read more

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Samsung just teased the Galaxy S25 Edge — the new ultra-slim entry into the Galaxy S25 lineup. The phone isn’t out yet, and Samsung hasn’t provided any details, but now we know it’s real. And we have pictures. Like pretty much every phone, it’s a thin silver slab. It’s got two cameras on the back, rather than the three cameras you’d get with other S25 phones. The Edge is rumored to measure just 6.4mm thick, but my colleagues Allison Johnson and Vjeran Pavic, who are on the ground at Galaxy Unpacked and took the below photos, weren’t able to actually hold or me ..read more

The Galaxy S25 Edge, deconstructed. | Screenshot: Samsung Samsung just teased the Galaxy S25 Edge at the end of its Unpacked event, where it announced its Galaxy S25 lineup. It didn’t offer any details beyond the quick naming of the phone. Below are some screenshots from Samsung’s presentation. It was brief, but it’s a phone, alright. The Galaxy S25 Edge will come to the US, according to Android Authority, which cited a Samsung South Africa representative. The outlet quotes the representative: So, we will have the Ultra, the Plus, the base model. That’ll be South Africa. There is a Slim mode ..read more

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge Google worked with the Israeli military in the immediate aftermath of its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, racing to beat out Amazon to provide AI services, according to company documents obtained by the Washington Post. In the weeks after Hamas’s October 7th attack on Israel, employees at Google’s cloud division worked directly with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — even as the company told both the public and its own employees that Google only worked with civilian government ministries, the documents reportedly show. Weeks after the war began, an employee w ..read more

Stylus still included. The Galaxy S25 Ultra, announced today, sheds more of its Note roots this year with rounded corners and flat edges that align it more with the rest of the S series. It comes with Qualcomm’s latest chipset, an upgraded ultrawide camera, and not much else, hardware-wise. With no price increase over last year’s model — starting at $1,299 — it’s a light refresh of Samsung’s biggest phone, with a major emphasis on One UI 7.0’s AI upgrades. Something about the shift from curved edges to flat sides makes the S25 Ultra look hefty in photos, like if the Cybertruck were a phone. Bu ..read more

Google has announced a variety of new AI features at Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event. | Image: Google Google’s AI assistant Gemini is now able to carry out tasks across multiple apps in a single interaction, in an update announced today alongside the launch of Samsung’s new Galaxy S25 series. Those phones are also Samsung’s first to feature Gemini as the default on-device assistant, relegating Bixby to the app drawer. Those changes are part of a raft of other updates from Google including improvements to the AI-powered Circle to Search. With today’s update, Gemini is able to carry out more com ..read more

Image: Google Google Fiber’s next big expansion is underway in Las Vegas, Nevada. After first announcing the expansion last year, Google has confirmed that it has started construction in Las Vegas and Clark County where its fiber internet service will be available “later this year.” GFiber, as it’s increasingly being branded, is currently available in select cities across 19 states, including California, North Carolina, Texas, Tennesee, and more. The company most recently lit up its services in Pocatello, Idaho; Logan, Utah; and Lakewood, Colorado, and it plans on bringing GFiber to Lawrence ..read more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge YouTube Premium users are getting a slew of new experiments to try out before anyone else alongside an option to reduce their membership cost when bundling subscriptions. Subscribers can now also sign up to test multiple experimental features all at once, instead of being limited to just one at a time. There are several new experiments that users can try out, including 256kbps bitrate audio quality on videos, and options for iOS users to view YouTube shorts in picture-in-picture mode and automatically download “recommended Shorts” for offline viewing. Th ..read more

The new Galaxy Watch for Kids mode is enabled in Wear OS via Google Family Link. | Image: Samsung, Google Samsung dropped some wearable news ahead of its Unpacked event: parents can now use the cellular Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 as a smartwatch for their kids. With a new Galaxy Watch for Kids mode, children can use the smartwatch to call and text trusted contacts, while parents can also track their kids’ locations via GPS. The option starts rolling out today and will work on Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T networks. The good news is parents won’t need a separate smartphone for this to work. Inste ..read more

I want to use this feature just to side-eye Gemini. | Image: Google Google is announcing a variety of classroom and accessibility-focused ChromeOS features today, and one of the standouts is being able to control your computer with your head and facial expressions. The feature — aimed at those with motor impairments — was first announced in early December, but it’s now rolling out to more users with compatible Chromebooks (Google recommends 8GB of RAM or more). This isn’t Google’s first foray into the face-as-a-cursor space. It previously made an open-source AI accessibility tool for Windows g ..read more