Technologies
Everything Announced at Samsung Unpacked: S24 Phones, Galaxy AI and One Surprise Reveal
Today’s Galaxy Unpacked event showed off Samsung’s premium new phones for the first time… as well as an unexpected new wearable.
Samsung kicked off its year with the first big phone event of 2024. The debut of Samsung’s newest smartphones — the Galaxy S24 series, which bring on-device generative AI along with upgrades to specs and cameras — was the main focus of today’s Galaxy Unpacked event. But Samsung had an unexpected product reveal at the end of Unpacked — the health-tracking Galaxy Ring, a new Samsung device with no official launch date yet.
As is usual for Samsung’s earliest event of the year, its S24 flagship phones took center stage. The company’s S-series phones rival Apple’s iPhones and are often the first to debut new mobile technology featured in other premium Android handsets that come out later in the year.
Galaxy S24 brings AI, brighter screens and more
In 2024, that new technology is generative AI, which made a splash on the global stage when ChatGPT arrived in late 2022 and tech companies have rushed to integrate in their own products and services. Late last year, Qualcomm revealed that its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip would come with on-device generative AI capabilities, and the Galaxy S24 series are some of the first phones to launch with that silicon.
The S24 series uses a combination of on-device and cloud-based generative AI, called Galaxy AI, to pull off new tricks. Some we’ve seen before, like live translation, suggesting different tones for text messages and expanding photos beyond their original backgrounds. Others are new, like turning a regular-speed video into a slow-motion one by generating frames in between what’s been recorded.

The S24 series also has more conventional upgrades on its predecessors, especially its top-tier model. The Galaxy S24 Ultra is more premium, trading its aluminum frame for a titanium body and swapping a 10-megapixel, 10x optical zoom camera for a 50-megapixel 5x optical camera to shoot sharper distance photos. It also only comes with 12GB of RAM (no 8GB option). For these improvements, the base price is $1,300 (ÂŁ1,249, AU$2,199), up by $100 from last year’s S23 Ultra.
Read more:Â Best Galaxy 24 Preorder Deals
The standard S24 and S24 Plus haven’t received many upgrades, though the screens are 0.1 inches larger than last year’s (6.1 inches and 6.7 inches, respectively). The S24 Plus now has a Quad HD Plus resolution display (the same as the S24 Ultra) for a sharper picture than the HD Plus screen on its predecessor. Batteries are slightly bigger, with the S24 having a 4,000 mAh battery (up 100 mAh) and the S24 Plus a 4,900 mAh capacity (up 200 mAh).Â
Samsung has expanded its sustainability efforts, adding more recycled materials like cobalt in batteries and rare earth elements in speakers. Moreover, the Galaxy S24 phones will have seven years of Android and security updates, enabling owners to hold on to their phones into 2031.
Pricing
The Samsung Galaxy S24 starts at $800 (ÂŁ799, AU$1,399), while the S24 Plus starts at $1,000 (ÂŁ999, AU$1,699), which are the same prices as last year’s phones. The S24 Ultra starts at $1,300, which is up from last year’s S23 Ultra at $1,200 — a $100 price bump likely resulting from the switch in materials for more durability.
And in turn, Samsung has dropped the prices for its older phones, with last year’s Galaxy S23 now $700 and the Galaxy S23 FE down to $600.

And one more thing…
And to end the event, Samsung revealed a few new features coming to Samsung Health to improve sleep tracking and other health measuring — but the big tease at the end was a reveal of the Galaxy Ring, which presumably will be packed with sensors to monitor your health through the day.Â
Samsung didn’t share much about the gadget, including price or release date, so we don’t know much about how it compares to rivals like the Oura Ring, but we expect to hear more about the Galaxy Ring before long.
What happened at Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event?
Samsung unveiled its next-gen Galaxy S24 phones on Jan. 17. The media invitation said to expect Samsung’s “most intelligent mobile experience yet” in a nod to the forthcoming AI-powered features. The in-person event happened in San Jose, California, and streamed on Samsung’s YouTube channel. Â
CNET had on-the-ground coverage of the event as well as our own watch party for reactions and analysis of the reveals and any surprises.
Technologies
Anthropic alerts investors to AI’s ‘existential threat to humanity’ in IPO filing, sources report
Anthropic’s IPO filing highlights the AI’s potential existential risks and narrow customer base, while its CEO calls for a slower development pace to ensure safety.
Anthropic plans to warn speculative investors in its IPO prospectus that its AI models pose a “catastrophic or existential risk to humanity,” several reports said on Tuesday.
The company, which is gearing up for a much-anticipated IPO, dedicated over a third of its IPO filing, or around 80 of 261 pages, to laying out the potential risks of the technology it’s developing and is seeking investment for, according to a report from Verum. It only used 48 pages to discuss its actual business.
The five-year-old company, known for its frontier language model Claude, warned that AI can have “self-preserving behaviors,” including being able to “resist shutdown,” “conceal or manipulate information,” and carry out behaviors “resembling blackmail,” per the Verum report.
The company is pursuing a $2 trillion valuation when it goes public and reported in the filing that it made a net loss of $42 billion in 2025. It’s planning to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing, and other infrastructure in the coming year, according to Verum.
Anthropic also warned that its customer base is extremely narrow, with nearly a quarter of its revenue last year coming from just two clients, two people familiar with the filing told the Financial Times.
AI safety guardrails
Anthropic’s co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei has previously written various essays warning on the threats of AI, including saying the technology will cause “unusually painful” disruption to the job market.
In another recent essay, the CEO urged the AI industry to slow the pace of AI model development, with a three-step plan to reduce how quickly models get better without “sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States’ lead in AI.”
Those calls for a slowdown are somewhat of a “head scratcher” for the sector, to which the market has reacted “pretty resoundingly,” Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives told CNBC earlier today.
“You need guardrails from a safety perspective, but the fact for Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down, if they slowed down, China would just accelerate and win, and I think that’s part of this quagmire that you’re seeing is that there’s some regulatory capture going on. There’s definitely a game of poker, but for Anthropic, they got to continue to put foot on the pedal.”
Ives added that while guardrails are essential, regulation could stifle innovation. That continues to be the “biggest concern within the U.S., which is why we’re in an F1 race,” he said.
Technologies
U.S. and Iran engage in separate mediator discussions amid surge in Middle East oil exports
U.S. and Iranian officials held separate indirect talks mediated by Qatar as Middle East crude exports neared wartime highs, while Tehran awaits a U.S. response to its cease‑fire and sanctions‑relief proposal.
On Monday, American and Iranian representatives engaged in distinct indirect negotiations mediated by third parties, aiming to halt seven months of hostilities while Iran awaits Washington’s reply to an updated cease‑fire proposal and Middle Eastern oil shipments reach wartime peaks.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with Qatari mediators in New York, staying on after the UN General Assembly, and indicated he anticipates a U.S. response by Tuesday. “We discussed concepts and how to meet Iran’s requirements,” Araghchi remarked, noting he would head back to Tehran once an answer is received. “When the Qataris have a reply, they know how to deliver it to us.”
The Iranian plan, initially unveiled during the sidelines of last week’s UN General Assembly, asks the United States to unfreeze Iranian assets, remove oil sanctions and lift the naval blockade of Iranian ports within four to five days, and to commence nuclear negotiations within a week. Tehran links any resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to the fulfillment of those conditions.
On Sunday, President Donald Trump dismissed the proposal as “unacceptable,” asserting that Iran seeks a rapid agreement due to economic strain. Speaking at the White House on Monday, Trump noted that U.S. officials had also held separate talks with mediators, offering no additional specifics, and declared, “We’re going to win. It’s going to happen fast.”
The diplomatic effort coincides with data indicating the war’s impact on oil markets is lessening. Middle Eastern crude exports have risen this month to near their highest point since the conflict started in February, according to Kpler. The firm noted in a Monday briefing that exports are “just under 80% of pre‑conflict levels.”
The Strait of Hormuz remains far from usual activity. Kpler’s real‑time monitoring recorded a flow of 10,591 kilobarrels per day through the strait on Saturday, compared with a prewar baseline of 17,133 kilobarrels per day.
The ongoing impasse is influencing U.S. fuel markets, where retail diesel prices linger close to a record $6.53 per gallon. The Trump administration is reconsidering an export ban, having recently distanced itself from an earlier iteration of the idea; Kpler estimates such a ban would retain about 1.2 million barrels per day domestically, potentially straining storage capacity.
Technologies
Saudi Red Sea export rebound pushes oil prices down
Oil prices fell after Saudi Arabia restored crude exports from its Red Sea terminals following a pipeline attack, while Iran and the U.S. continue talks over the Strait of Hormuz.
Oil prices fell on Tuesday as Saudi Arabia’s crude exports from its Red Sea ports recovered from an attack on a key pipeline earlier this month. The decline reflects renewed flow from major loading points.
Satellite imagery confirmed a “major operational recovery” at the Yanbu and Muajjiz terminals, according to a Kpler note released on Tuesday. The data shows that 12.5 million barrels were loaded onto nine tankers at Yanbu between Saturday and Monday, restoring activity after a drone strike disrupted the East‑West pipeline earlier in the month.
Riyadh has brought the pipeline’s throughput back to roughly 3.5 million barrels per day, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News on Monday. The line’s maximum capacity is 7 million bpd, indicating that the current flow is about half of its peak.
Meanwhile, U.S. and Iranian officials spoke with mediators on Monday as they attempt anew to negotiate a deal to end the seven‑month conflict. Iran offered last week to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if the United States accepts the terms of the failed June memorandum of understanding, but President Donald Trump rejected Tehran’s proposal on Saturday as exports through the waterway recover.
Oil flows through Hormuz have averaged 13.2 million barrels per day over the past week, according to Kpler data—about 77 % of the 17 million bpd that moved through the strait before the U.S.–Iran war. The U.S. military continues to protect tankers from Gulf allies and maintains a blockade on Iranian exports.
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