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• An official Samsung blog post seemingly confirms that a Bluetooth-enabled S Pen for the S25 Ultra is on the way
• The new S Pen is not yet listed on any Samsung storefronts
• The stylus will be sold separately to the S25 Ultra itself

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked has been and gone, but we’re still basking in the excitement of having the long-rumored Samsung Galaxy S25, Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus, Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra officially revealed.

However, amid news of new upgrades and refreshed designs, we noticed a downgrade for the S25 Ultra that will leave some fans of Samsung’s highest-end flagship feeling puzzled – the loss of Bluetooth support for the S Pen stylus.

But fear not, S Pen fans: a new announcement suggests that Samsung could release a Bluetooth-enabled S Pen for the S25 Ultra after all – but it’ll cost you extra.

A footnote affixed to a recent post on Samsung’s Business Insights blog states “Bluetooth-enabled S Pens sold separately”, which suggests Samsung will soon offer the peripheral at an additional cost.

It’s not yet known whether the new Bluetooth-enabled S Pen will offer any new features, or simply give users access to the remote control and gesture features offered by the S24 Ultra's S Pen.

The S24 Ultra came with a Bluetooth-enabled S Pen that allowed users to make use of various gestures to control the phone remotely; for instance, you could trigger the camera, open apps, and navigate the phone’s UI.

The S Pen in the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (Image credit: Future / Philip Berne)

The specs sheets released following Samsung Galaxy Unpacked confirmed that Samsung has axed Bluetooth compatibility from the S Pen included with the S25 Ultra, relegating the stylus to its original purpose as a drawing and writing tool.

Android Authority notes that the remote gestures enabled by the S Pen weren’t very popular, which would have impacted the decision to remove them. It's also possible that Samsung sought to allocate resources towards more marketable features, like an upgraded ultra-wide camera or enlarged display.

Still, some users will surely feel a tinge of disappointment at having to cough up more money to counter this downgrade, especially considering the S25 Ultra’s starting price of $1,299 / £1,249 / $2,149.

We’ve been otherwise impressed with Samsung's newest flagship so far – be sure to check out our hands-on Galaxy S25 Ultra review, as well as our hands-on Galaxy S25 review and hands-on Galaxy S25 Plus review for our first impressions of all three new devices.

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• The alleged customer information of 19 million TalkTalk customers has been discovered online
• However the authenticity of the breach has come into question
• TalkTalk says it is investigating the claims

British broadband and TV giant TalkTalk is investigating a possible data breach after alleged customer information was found for sale on a cybercrime forum.

Reports from The Register have confirmed this breach is suspected to have originated through a third-party vendor, and could affect up to 19 million former and current customers of TalkTalk.

The hacker who posted the data using the handle ‘b0nd’, claims the data contains personally identifiable information (PII), here’s what we know so far.

Another Telco target

The data is said to include PII such as email addresses, full names, IP addresses, phone numbers, and subscriber PINs.

"As part of our regular security monitoring, given our ongoing focus on protecting customers' personal data, we were made aware of unexpected access to, and misuse of, one of our third-party supplier's systems, however, no billing or financial information was stored on this system,” TalkTalk told The Register.

"Our security incident response team is continuing to work with the supplier regarding this matter and protective containment steps were taken immediately.”

However the authenticity of the breach has already been called into question, largely due to the size of the dataset, which contains 18.9 million individual’s data, significantly larger than the firm’s current customer base.

Calculations from The Register estimated that since its inception in 2003, TalkTalk has never amassed as many customers as the dataset claims to contain.

"Our investigations are ongoing, however, we can confirm that the number of potential customers referred to in certain online posts is wholly inaccurate and very significantly overstated," TalkTalk added.

TalkTalk is unfortunately no stranger to data breaches, as it suffered a ‘significant’ cyberattack back in 2015, which led to up to 150,000 of its UK based customers’ data exposed - landing the firm a £400,000 GDPR fine for failing to implement “the most basic cyber security measures,” which allowed hackers to “penetrate its systems with ease.”

It's not the only major telecommunications firm to run into difficulty lately, with up to 9 firms breached by Chinese state actors in a 'major incident' late in 2024.

What to do after a breach

If you think your data may have been compromised in this or any other data breach, there are a few ways you can protect yourself and mitigate any damage.

If your information has been exposed, this leaves you at risk of attackers using your data to commit identity theft, so closely monitoring your bank accounts and credit reports is crucial. Alternatively, checking out our list of best identity theft protections can simplify the process for you.

Without identity theft protection services, if you do notice any suspicious activity on your accounts, you’ll need to call your bank immediately, freeze your credit, change your passwords, and likely file police reports - which can be a rather gruelling process.

Also a concern, are social engineering attacks, most often in the form of sophisticated phishing scams. Once attackers have access to your PII, they can construct scams specifically for you, posing as family members or services that you use regularly.

To protect yourself from these, the key is being vigilant. Ensure to double check the credentials of any emails, texts, or calls you receive - especially ones which are unexpected and require action.

If you’re being offered a deal which is too good to be true or being hit with an emotional plea - be extra cautious in verifying the identity of the sender, and don’t hand your information over to someone you don’t know.

Be extremely careful when clicking links on emails, as this can lead to viruses or malware installed on your device, and can result in further information being taken.

Data breaches are an unfortunate inevitability for anyone with an online presence, so to proactively take steps to protect yourself, making sure you have a strong password is a great way to stay secure. Especially important is making sure you don’t repeat passwords for multiple sites, since this means if one password is exposed in a breach, it's contained to just that one site, protecting the rest of your data.

For security, a great tool is a multi-factor authentication app, which provides an extra layer of safety for any sensitive information. Yes, they can be a bit of a hassle when you’re scrambling for your phone to access the right code, but they're a whole lot more convenient than having your bank details stolen.

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• Marvel Snap is back in the US
• Affected players will be able to receive compensation package
• Everyone else will also receive bonus rewards

Mobile superhero card game Marvel Snap was one of the unexpected casualties of the brief US TikTok ban, becoming inaccessible to users in the US between January 19 and 25. This was due to the fact that its publisher, Nuverse, is a subsidiary of TikTok owner ByteDance.

Thankfully, the game is now back online in the region and the developer Second Dinner has outlined a generous compensation package not only for those affected by the outage but also for all Marvel Snap players.

As explained in a recent X / Twitter post, the studio wants to thank fans for their “dedication, patience, and support” and make good with those who missed out on time-based content.

This is on top of a separate package to “welcome back players, new and old, with some extra goodies”. These will be delivered to in-game inboxes sometime this week.

If you are a US player over collection level 500, you can expect to receive the following:

• 2 Spotlight Keys
• 5000 Season Pass XP
• 4150 Credits
• 6200 Collector’s Tokens
• 1000 Gold
• 5 Gold Conquest Ticket
• 3 Infinite Conquest Ticket
• 4000 Conquest Medals
• 1 Mystery Variant
• 6 Premium Mystery Variants
• 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare)
• 3 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare)
• 155 x5 Random Boosters

If you are a US player under collection level 500, you will get:

• 6 Mystery Series 3 Cards
• 5000 Season Pass XP
• 7150 Credits
• 1000 Gold
• 1 Mystery Variant
• 6 Premium Mystery Variant
• 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare)
• 3 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare)
• 155 x5 Random Boosters

The offering for non-US players is similar, though slightly less generous. Those over collection level 500 will receive:

• 2 Spotlight Key
• 3000 Collector’s Tokens
• 1500 Credits
• 1 Mystery Variant
• 1 Premium Mystery Variant
• 1 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare)
• 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare)
• 155 x3 Random Boosters

If you’re outside the US and under collection level 500, then expect:

• 6 Mystery Series 3 Cards
• 3000 Credits
• 1 Mystery Variant
• 1 Premium Mystery Variant
• 1 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare)
• 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare)
• 155 x3 Random Boosters

These are, frankly, incredibly lavish offerings that will provide a massive boost to players who get them. That said, there are some eligibility requirements to bear in mind here.

To qualify for the US rewards, you will need to have an account that was created in the US or recorded account activity in the US 30 days prior to the outage. If you are a US player who used a VPN to play during the downtime, you will still be able to receive the US rewards.

To be eligible for the rest, you simply need to have an account that was created before Jan 20, 2025, and not qualify for the US offering. It is not possible to receive more than one compensation package.

Interestingly, the message also says that the developer intends to partner with a new publisher and “bring more services in-house” to try and avoid similar issues in the future.

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• Britain lags behind Germany when it comes to "digital health", report claims
• Smaller businesses tend to rank less favorably, Zoho finds
• Those who focus on AI are considered ‘healthier’

Although an increase of nine percentage points has been observed compared with the previous year, still only 28% of UK businesses reported good "digital health" in 2024, new research has claimed.

Moreover, more than one in three reported average digital health (36%), and another third had poor digital health (36%), a report from Zoho found, claiming larger businesses seemed more prepared than smaller businesses.

Zoho revealed 40% of large businesses had good digital health, compared with 27% of medium businesses and just 18% of small businesses. However, while Britain was outpaced by Germany, with an average score of 33%, other European countries like Spain (27%), France (20%) and the Netherlands (19%) lagged way behind.

Small European businesses don’t have great digital health

The report explored the correlation between good digital health and attitudes – it found that businesses with good digital health were more likely to see artificial intelligence as critical (46%) compared with average (24%) and poor (65%) health businesses.

More than half (54%) of the British businesses analyzed plans to invest heavily in artificial intelligence.

However, Britain’s digital transformation is still underway, with one in three operating at least half of their operations digitally and a further one in four running the majority of their operations digitally.

Customer experience, efficiency, and improved employee experience were all highlighted as key focus areas for digitization in the year ahead.

“Good digital health is a critical foundation in order to realize ROI from investment in digital tools and technology," noted Zoho UK Managing Director Sachin Agrawal.

Agrawal added vendors should, “take a long-term view in their relationship with customers” to help them deploy tools, educate users, and drive adoption more effectively, thus increasing their ROI.

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• Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man's creator has defended the show's animation style
• Some Marvel fans have criticized how the series looks from a movement viewpoint
• Jeff Tramell says viewers should judge it after watching the whole season, rather than a two-minute trailer

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man's showrunner has defended its animation style in the wake of fierce fan criticism.

Speaking to TechRadar ahead of the Marvel show's premiere on January 29, Jeff Tramell implored viewers to "give it a chance" after some fans reacted negatively to how it looks. Tramell, who also acts as the series' head writer and one of its executive producers, wants people to watch all 10 episodes before they comment on the animation techniques that have been used.

Ever since the Disney Plus animated series was first shown exclusively to D23 Expo 2024 members last August, fans have had plenty to say about the choice of animation. In the aftermath of said footage leaking online, threads on r/MarvelStudios, r/SpiderMan, r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers and other Reddit pages were full of comments labeling character movements as "weird", "off-putting", "awful", "rough", and "lazy".

Fans haven't held back over what they think about the show's animation style (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney Plus)

The negativity grew exponentially once the animated show's first trailer – one of six big entertainment stories you might have missed over the 2024 holiday season – was released, too. Once the teaser was revealed in late December 2024, new threads on r/SpiderMan, r/MarvelStudios, r/MarvelStudioSpoilers, and other Reddit pages were similarly packed with people's opinions on its animation. Indeed, from those saying Marvel was "trying too hard" and that the backgrounds look "empty", to even harsher critiques suggesting it looked "ugly" and "dogs**t", fans didn't hold back as they passed judgment on the series' animation style.

For what it's worth, some observers who don't believe the animation is as bad as it looks. Additionally, large swathes of Marvel's global fanbase have reacted positively to the show's art style, which honors the artistry of iconic Spider-Man comic book illustrators Steve Dikto and John Romita Jr. Even so, it seems the majority of viewers have already made up their minds about the Marvel Phase 5 TV show's animation.

See you in class!Stream the two-episode premiere of Marvel Animation’s #YourFriendlyNeighborhoodSpiderMan January 29 only on @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/LbC5yH7w1dJanuary 24, 2025

Tramell, though, isn't giving up hope that those dissenters may change their minds once Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man launches on Disney Plus. Indeed, he believes that, once audiences see how the show looks and feels from a full episode standpoint, rather than the trailer's cut-together format, some fans may admit they too quickly and harshly judge its aesthetic.

"We wanted to set the show apart [from other Spider-Man animated shows]," Tramell told me. "Regardless of how you feel about the show, you have to there's nothing that looks like it. There's no Spider-Man that looks like our Spider Man. I think it's important to have one that's ours, and that feels unique [and] very much of its own thing. So, we really wanted to find something that set us apart from everything else, and kind of drives audiences towards us. So if you see our Spider-Man in a line-up, you're like 'that's Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man'.

"I think our style grows on you," he continued. "So, I would say 'give it a chance'. I know there were a lot of initial thoughts about how it looked in the two minute teaser, but I'll also say that teaser is super cut up. Once the show comes out, you'll see those scenes don't play in the way that they play in that trailer. So, just give it a shot, watch it, and let it grow on you. If it doesn't, that's fine, too. I love our look and I think everyone else who gives it a shot will do as well."

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• Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has committed to supporting the Nintendo Switch 2
• He also revealed that he congratulated Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa on the console’s reveal
• This likely means more Xbox franchises coming to Nintendo platforms

Good news multi-platform gamers, it looks like Xbox will go all in on supporting the Nintendo Switch 2. This comes from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who recently spoke on the Gamertag Radio podcast.

Spencer said that he has a “game-first not platform-first” mindset, though quickly clarified that Xbox hardware is still "fundamental to what Xbox is” and here to stay. He added that he isn’t a fan of “trying to gatekeep the games” from other platforms.

He also revealed that he had messaged Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa around the console’s reveal, giving him a “big congrats”. He said that he is a fan of Nintendo’s innovation and will “always applaud the moves that they make” and that he is “really looking forward to supporting them with the games that we have.”

These words shouldn’t come as much surprise, as they coincide with a wider multi-platform push by Xbox. The original Nintendo Switch is already home to a number of Microsoft games, including Minecraft, Ori and the Blind Forest, and its sequel Ori and the Will of the Wisps. These were joined by Pentiment and Grounded, after an announcement by Phil Spencer in February 2024 that more games would be coming to other platforms.

As for which games could be coming to Nintendo Switch 2, it’s still up in the air. We know that at least one Call of Duty title is highly likely, as Microsoft committed to bringing the franchise to Nintendo platforms in a legally binding ten-year agreement back in February 2023. Major Xbox franchises such as Halo, Gears of War, and Forza Horizon also seem like obvious choices to make the leap, but we’ll just have to wait and see what Microsoft has in store.

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• Rumor has it that Nvidia is leaving its graphics card making partners thin on margins with RTX 5000 boards
• This could mean that pricing comes in above the MSRP for those third-party boards more often than not
• A previous rumor also suggested this, and while this remains speculation, hearing the notion again isn’t particularly comforting

The launch of next-gen GPUs has been beset by rumors of possible pitfalls for both Team Green and Team Red – and we’ve just heard another gloomy piece of speculation regarding Nvidia’s RTX 5000 graphics cards.

The contention from Wjm47196 on Chiphell (the Chinese forum isn’t always the most reliable source, but this particular leaker has been right in the past) is that Nvidia’s putting the squeeze on its third-party graphics card making partners, potentially pushing up pricing of their RTX 5000 boards.

Wjm47196 believes that Nvidia has left those partners with very slim margins in terms of the cost of the components for the Blackwell graphics cards, which is evidently coming uncomfortably close to the MSRPs set by Team Green (leaving little room for profit).

Now, with their higher-end products, graphics card manufacturers always lump a hefty premium on top of the MSRP, which is the price you pay for higher clock speeds (thanks to better cooling, and build quality) and an overall faster GPU.

But the problem is that with the entry-level models sporting baseline specs, these card makers are going to struggle to produce anything that’s at, or close to, the MSRP. So, prices could be jacked up more than with the baseline RTX 4000 models, if this rumor is right.

Potentially adding insult to injury is that as Wccftech (which spotted this) points out, Nvidia’s own Founders Edition graphics cards – models which are guaranteed to be at the MSRP – could be very low on stock too. In short, options might be very hard to find at the MSRP level, which would be disappointing.

(Image credit: Nvidia) Analysis: Stock and pricing woes adding up to a real headache?

Obviously, this is not what PC gamers on the lookout for a next-gen GPU want to hear. We’re told that part of the reason for margins being so slim for board makers is the price of GDDR7 video RAM, which has significantly upped the overall cost associated with the components for Blackwell graphics cards (known as the BoM or Bill of Materials). That cost is, of course, inevitably passed on to the consumer.

So, we have a couple of worries with the RTX 5000 series now. Firstly, there have been persistent rumors about how stock is going to be thin on the ground at launch, and the volume of the chatter around this is definitely concerning.

But now, on top of that, is the idea that third-party RTX 5000 graphics cards will be priced somewhat above the MSRP level in the main, a notion which is backed up by recently spilled purported prices from a Finnish retailer (which listed Gigabyte’s RTX 5080 models, with only one at the recommended price).

While all of this remains gossip, essentially, all the separate pieces add up to a worry that the $999 MSRP (in the US) that Nvidia pinned on the RTX 5080 – which was the most pleasantly surprising revelation on the price front, given the rumor mill was claiming it’d be 20% more than that, at least – will pretty much be a pipe dream. As the Founders Edition could sell out very quickly, as might any third-party RTX 5080s at the MSRP level, which may not be many, by all accounts.

Add plenty of salt, naturally, but the more I hear about the upcoming Blackwell GPU launch, the more I’m getting concerned that buying one of these graphics cards is going to be a much more difficult – and pricier – proposition than it should be. Particularly if we do end up in a scenario where stock is lean, MSRPs are jacked up in the first place, and price gougers are coming in on top of that.

There is, of course, always AMD’s RDNA 4 rivals, at least for those who don’t need a high-end GPU, but that launch has been an odd one full of unpredictable twists and turns of its own.

AMD’s RX 9070 models won’t arrive until March now, but perhaps the reason Team Red is taking its time to get things right is not only because this is a good idea – and maybe a new philosophy at the firm – but also because AMD has time, given how Nvidia’s RTX 5000 launch is shaping up.

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You have the power to take charge of your data. This is the theme of this year's Data Privacy Week, an annual event that aims to raise awareness about online privacy.

Data Privacy Week 2025, which takes place between January 27 and 31, is all about helping you take control of your data—whether that data is the websites you visit, the apps you use, or any other identifier information you may willingly (or not) share when using the internet.

Here at TechRadar, we proudly advocate online privacy and want to help you regain agency over your online data. Over the week, we'll be giving you everything you need to support your journey. This page will be home to all of our latest advice, experiences, and privacy tool recommendations. Check back regularly for more from Data Privacy Week 2025 on TechRadar.

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