TechRadar News

Good morning! Let's play Connections, the NYT's clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need clues.

What should you do once you've finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I've also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc's Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Connections today (game #602) - today's words

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• SWISS
• SWALLOW
• SORRY
• STREET
• MUNSTER
• MART
• BLUE
• HAWK
• DUCK
• DOWN
• POP
• PARTRIDGE
• GRIFFIN
• GROUSE
• PICKLES
• HANGDOG

NYT Connections today (game #602) - hint #1 - group hints

What are some clues for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: Depressed 
• GREEN: Winged words 
• BLUE: A list missing the Simpsons 
• PURPLE: Think of a letter

Need more clues?

We're firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today's NYT Connections puzzles…

NYT Connections today (game #602) - hint #2 - group answers

What are the answers for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: DEJECTED BLUE, DOWN, HANGDOG, SORRY
• GREEN: BIRDS THAT ARE VERBS DUCK, GROUSE, HAWK, SWALLOW
• BLUE: TV COMEDY FAMILIES GRIFFIN, MUNSTER, PARTRIDGE, PICKLES
• PURPLE: WORDS AFTER "K" MART, POP, STREET, SWISS

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Connections today (game #602) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Connections, game #602, are…

• YELLOW: DEJECTED BLUE, DOWN, HANGDOG, SORRY
• GREEN: BIRDS THAT ARE VERBS DUCK, GROUSE, HAWK, SWALLOW
• BLUE: TV COMEDY FAMILIES GRIFFIN, MUNSTER, PARTRIDGE, PICKLES
• PURPLE: WORDS AFTER "K" MART, POP, STREET, SWISS

• My rating: Moderate
• My score: 2 mistakes

As the owner of a hangdog expression (especially when my team loses), gathering together a bunch of words that mean DEJECTED was a relatively easy task. Less so was the TV COMEDY FAMILIES, which took a mistake to find – my very obvious error being to include SWISS (as in Family Robinson). PICKLES was a guess that I would never have got otherwise, merely based on the fact that I’ve got a friend whose surname is Pickles and I enjoy calling him Mr Pickles.

BIRDS THAT ARE VERBS was my other mistake, as I initially included PARTRIDGE before realising the error of my random ways.

How did you do today? Let me know in the comments below.

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Saturday, 1 February, game #601)

• YELLOW: TINT HUE, SHADE, TINGE, TONE
• GREEN: COMPONENTS OF A MYSTERY ALIBI, CLUE, DETECTIVE, SUSPECT
• BLUE: TAKE ISSUE WITH CHALLENGE, CONTEST, DISPUTE, QUESTION
• PURPLE: STRIKE A __ CHORD, DEAL, MATCH, POSE

What is NYT Connections?

NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.

On the plus side, you don't technically need to solve the final one, as you'll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What's more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.

It's a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.

It's playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

• Mukesh Ambani's Reliance touches the lives of nearly everyone in India
• Reliance plans to build a 3GW data center in India, the largest in the world
• Ambani has pledged to use green and renewable energy to power this giga data center

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group, one of India's largest and most influential conglomerates, is developing a large-scale data center in Jamnagar - a small town in Gujarat that’s already home to Reliance’s major oil refining and petrochemical operations.

Reports from Bloomberg claim the data center, which could become the world’s largest, is expected to reach a total capacity of 3 gigawatts, significantly boosting India’s current data center capacity, which is estimated at under 1 gigawatt.

That will make it five times the size of Microsoft’s 600 megawatts facility in Boydton, Virginia.

Operational by 2027

Nvidia will provide Reliance Group with the AI chips it needs for the project, which comes at a time when tech firms are investing heavily in AI infrastructure. In the US, OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle recently announced Project Stargate, a $500 billion investment venture, and Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Facebook that his company was earmarking a $65 billion capital expenditure spend in 2025 and “building a 2GW+ data center so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan.”

Reliance reportedly plans to power the facility primarily with renewable energy, integrating it with its existing solar, wind, and green hydrogen projects. However, Bloomberg believes achieving a stable energy supply may require backup from fossil fuels or other sources.

Although a Reliance spokesperson declined to provide further details on the Jamnagar project they did point Bloomberg to previous remarks from Mukesh Ambani’s son Akash, CEO of Reliance Jio Infocomm, who claimed the company aims to complete the data center within 24 months.

Headquartered in Mumbai, Reliance was founded by Dhirubhai Ambani in 1966 as a small textile business. Over the decades, it expanded into petrochemicals, refining, and other industries, and following Dhirubhai’s death in 2002, Mukesh took control of the company and led its transformation into a global powerhouse.

Despite the conglomerate's success, it’s not clear how Reliance will fund the $20 billion to $30 billion the data center will reportedly cost. As Bloomberg notes, “Reliance Industries Ltd., the group’s primary listed entity, has the equivalent of about $26 billion on its balance sheet.”

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• OpenAI has pushed out o3-mini models to ChatGPT
• The launch has previously been teased
• OpenAI is facing increasing competition from China

As promised last week, OpenAI has now launched its latest o3-mini AI model to users on all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. The new model brings with it improved reasoning capabilities, especially in math, coding, and science.

The o3-mini release "advances the boundaries of what small models can achieve", OpenAI says, and it apparently responds 24% faster than the o1-mini model it's replacing. As per external testers, o3-mini answers are preferable to o1-mini answers 56% of the time, and include 39% fewer mistakes.

As with o1-mini, this reasoning AI model will show its workings above its responses – so you can check the 'thought' processes involved. You can also combine this reasoning with web searches if needed, though this integration is still in its early stages.

Of course, the release comes after a tumultuous week in AI, in which the models offered for free by China's DeepSeek have attracted millions of users with their speed and accuracy – and now OpenAI is trying to grab back some of the limelight (and traffic).

Try it yourself

OpenAI o3-mini is now available in ChatGPT and the API.Pro users will have unlimited access to o3-mini and Plus & Team users will have triple the rate limits (vs o1-mini).Free users can try o3-mini in ChatGPT by selecting the Reason button under the message composer.January 31, 2025

Free users can get at o3-mini by clicking the Reason button in the text input box. OpenAI hasn't specified what the limits on its use will be, but it's likely to be in line with current restrictions on GPT-4o use – so a handful of queries per hour.

For paying users, o3-mini can be selected from the model picker in the top left corner. If you're on a Plus or Team plan, you get 150 queries of o3-mini daily, and if you're on the Pro plan, access is unlimited – for a mere $200 (about £160 / AU$320) per month.

Paying ChatGPT users also get access to an o3-mini-high model that applies the same reasoning skills but takes longer to think and respond. It boosts performance even further, if you don't mind waiting a few extra seconds.

OpenAI has also highlighted the safety assessments that o3-mini has gone through before launched – it apparently "significantly surpasses" the GPT-4o model when it comes to assessing unsafe use and jailbreak attempts.

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Galaxy Unpacked has been and gone, but we’re still basking in the glow of the Samsung Galaxy S25 lineup – check out our hands-on Samsung Galaxy S25 review, hands-on Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus review, and full Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review for our first impressions of all three new devices.

There was, of course, a new addition to the three-phone lineup we’ve come to expect from Samsung – the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, which revives a moniker the company previously used for devices with edge-to-edge displays. Now, the 'Edge' designation is seemingly a reference to this new phone’s thinness.

And a thin phone it is. Though Samsung has yet to reveal any official specs about the Galaxy S25 Edge, the device is of such a svelte construction that its dual cameras have to rest on a raised protrusion – and then stick out further still – in order to fit onto the polished rear panel. The Galaxy S25 Edge is visibly slimmer than the already impressive S25 Plus, its closest sibling in the pre-existing lineup.

TechRadar’s Senior News Editor Mark Wilson isn't convinced about the new phone's design, writing in a recent feature that the Galaxy S25 Edge represents “the laziest interpretation of phone innovation." I, however, think the S25 Edge deserves a chance to prove itself – though I share some of my esteemed colleague’s hesitation.

Though we don't have official measurements, the S25 Edge is rumored to be just 6.4mm thick (Image credit: Future)

The S25 Edge will require some compromises. We simply cannot expect Samsung to fit the raw hardware power of its bulkier flagships into a phone that’s rumored to be just 6.4mm thick. All I’m really hoping for is that Samsung makes the right choices; that it focuses on efficiency so that the necessarily smaller battery isn’t too heavily taxed, ensures the durability holds up, and – this one’s a reach – opts for a telephoto camera for the second of the two rear-mounted snappers.

However, I’d be happy to see the S25 Edge make it to production with any combination of specs. The reason I’m already being so forgiving is that this new Galaxy phone reminds me of the very first Samsung Galaxy Fold in 2019, which launched the folding phone industry despite being visibly unpolished. I’m optimistically excited that Samsung might be about to launch another niche segment of the phone market with the S25 Edge.

Flashback, or full-on revival?

It might seem hard to believe in today’s world of bulky, heavy, powerful flagships like the S25 Ultra, iPhone 16 Pro Max, and OnePlus 13, but it wasn't long ago that thinness was a major priority for phone makers. The first smartphones were positively rotund by today’s standards, and in the first ten years of the industry’s lifespan, you’d find keynote speakers talking at length about the millimeters shaved with each subsequent release.

This wasn’t without its downsides, though – Apple famously overstepped with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, which shipped with flimsy designs that bent easily, a phenomenon termed “bendgate” by the frenzied media. These thin phones couldn’t hold very large batteries, either, and had limited options for cooling.

I think we’re looking at a full-on revival of thin, ergonomically-led smartphones that exist in their own lane.

It’s no surprise that we saw a reversal of the trend in the following years, which accelerated into the 2020s as phone hardware began taking some real leaps in the power, longevity, and multitasking departments. The current design language of flagship phones supports this – boxy shapes with plenty of room for cutting-edge internals.

The S25 Edge could be a one-off callback to these earlier times, but as I mentioned in my recent look at the hinted Samsung multi-fold phone, Samsung is a giant tech brand that doesn’t tend to introduce single-generation products. Unless the S25 Edge bombs hard, we’re likely to see an S26 Edge and S27 Edge in the years to come.

And if the sage sources of the rumor mill are to be believed, Apple is also working on a slimmed-down version of the iPhone 17, tentatively titled the iPhone 17 Air. I think we’re looking at a full-on revival of thin, ergonomically-led smartphones that exist in their own lane, in an offshoot of the mainstream phone market similar to folding phones.

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Thin phones are good, actually

(Image credit: Future/Lance Ulanoff)

At this point, you may be wondering why this is a good thing – I think it comes down to two main factors. Firstly, modern phones are, in general, large and somewhat heavy devices, so it’s no bad thing to have a phone entering the market that has a large display, presumably modern internals, and is also focused on a thin-and-light design. Though large handsets like the iPhone 16 Plus and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra are lighter compared to their predecessors, they’re still noticeably hefty – the S25 Edge could offer some relief.

We could soon see a split between ergonomics and performance, with major gains made in both categories as a result.

Of course, some of the weight of modern flagships is in service of better performance, which leads to my second point. By spinning off ergonomics-focused phones into their own category, phone makers will be freer to specialize their flagships for power and slim phones for portability. We saw a similar thing happen with folding phones and multitasking – most slab devices don’t focus on the ability to run multiple apps despite having plenty of screen space, as this is handled better by booklet-style foldables. We could soon see a split between ergonomics and performance, with major gains made in both categories as a result.

The reasons I’ve explained above might mean more to the user experience, but I also commend Samsung for simply doing something different. From a personal perspective, I just like it when phone makers get weird. We’re in a time of design hegemony; each phone is a rounded rectangle with a great display, cameras, battery – the works. The S25 Edge harkens back to the days of the original Oppo Find X, with its pop-out camera, the swivel-screened LG Wing, or even the colorful iPhone 5c, by just being a bit unusual.

So, there we have it. The S25 Edge might be a little rough around the, well, edges when it launches, but with enough consumer support, I think it could springboard new innovations for the smartphone market. I’m not giving Samsung carte blanche to put out a lackluster phone – I’d rather see the Edge gain a place on our list of the best Samsung phones – but I’m willing to forgive a misstep or two if it means witnessing the start of something genuinely new.

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• 19 self-paced courses are available, lasting up to eight hours are available free of charge
• You will need to join Nvidia's free developer program to access them
• My personal preference would be Prompt Engineering with Llama 2

Nvidia has announced it will be offering free access to 19 self-paced technical courses each worth up to $90.

The initiative is part of the Nvidia Developer Program, which aims to empower developers and tech enthusiasts with cutting-edge knowledge in artificial intelligence and data science.

The courses cover a wide range of topics in five categories including Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), Graphics and Simulation, Accelerated Computing, Data Science, and Deep Learning.

What's on offer?

Each course is designed to be self-paced and lasts between two to eight hours. For instance, the Generative AI and LLMs category includes the highly sought-after "Prompt Engineering with Llama 2" course, which teaches users how to interact with and optimize large language models effectively.

Meanwhile, the Deep Learning category offers eight courses, making it the most extensive section of the program.

To take advantage of this opportunity, you’ll need to join Nvidia’s free Developer Program. Once registered, you’ll gain access to the full catalog of courses, allowing you to learn at your own pace.

The announcement coincides with the rise of DeepSeek R1, a Chinese AI model making headlines for its impressive capabilities, low training costs, and its ability to be run locally with performance, rivalling OpenAI’s own ChatGPT.

DeepSeek recently caused turmoil in the stock market with Nvidia suffering a record-breaking $600 billion share price drop, the largest single-day drop by any company in U.S. history.

While DeepSeek R1 was reportedly trained by the company using Nvidia’s H800 GPU, it relies on Huawei’s Ascend 910C GPU for inference, reducing its dependence on American technology.

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Welcome to February! The arrival of a new month marks the beginning of a host of new movies and TV show releases, and Disney Plus is no exception.

Disney's primary streaming platform is set to deliver more episodes of Marvel's first series of the year Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, the debut of Pixar's inaugural TV show (it's called Win or Lose and, if it's any good, it might sneak onto our best Disney Plus shows list), and so much more. You're bound to find something worth watching on one of the world's best streaming services over the next 28 days. Go on, then, scroll on to see what you'll be enjoying throughout February 2025!

February 1

• Medalist episode 5 (UK only)

February 4

• Paradise episode 4 (UK and Australia)

February 5

• American Dad season 20 episode 6 (UK and Australia)
• Ishura season 2 episode 5 (UK and Australia)
• Kindergarten: The Musical season 1 episodes 1 to 5 (US only)
• Life Interrupted: Isabella Strahan’s Fight Against Cancer (US only)
• My Best Friend’s An Animal season 1 episodes 1 to 6 (US only)
• NCIS season 22 episode 5 (UK only)
• Unmasked episode 7 (UK and Australia)
• Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man season 1 episodes 3 to 5

February 6

• High Potential season 1 episode 4 (UK and Australia)
• The Kardashians season 5 episode 11 (UK and Australia)

February 7

• Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur season 2 episodes 1 to 10 (US only)
• The Lion King at the Hollywood Bowl

February 10

• Cheerleader Generation season 1 episodes 1 to 10 (US only)
• The Secret Lives of Cheerleaders (US only)

February 11

• Muslim Matchmakers episodes 1 to 8 (UK only)
• Paradise episode 5 (UK and Australia)

February 12

• American Dad season 20 episode 7 (UK and Australia)
• Bia and Victor: Love of My Life season 1 episodes 1 to 10 (UK only)
• Harlem Ice episodes 1 to 5
• Ishura season 2 episode 6 (UK and Australia)
• NCIS season 22 episode 6 (UK only)
• Pupstruction season 2 episodes 1 to 6 (US only)
• Umami (UK only)
• Unmasked episode 8 (UK and Australia)
• Will Trent season 3 episodes 1 to 6 (UK and Australia)
• Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man season 1 episodes 6 to 8

February 13

• High Potential season 1 episode 5 (UK and Australia)
• The Kardashians season 5 episode 12 (UK and Australia)
• Shuffle of Love: A Descendants Short Story
• SLY LIVES! aka The Burden of Black Genius (Us only; available until February 22)

February 17

• Adam Eats the '80s season 1 episodes 1 to 10 (US only)
• Magic of Disney Lookout Cay at Lighthouse Point (US only)

February 18

• Paradise episode 6 (UK and Australia)

February 19

• American Dad season 20 episode 8 (UK and Australia)
• How to Get Away With Murder seasons 1 to 6
• Ishura season 2 episode 7 (UK and Australia)
• Mickey Mouse Funhouse season 3 episodes 1 to 5 (US only)
• NCIS season 22 episode 7 (UK only)
• Unmasked episode 9 (UK and Australia)
• Will Trent season 3 episode 7 (UK and Australia)
• Win or Lose episodes 1 and 2
• Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man season 1 episodes 9 and 10

February 20

• High Potential season 1 episode 6 (UK and Australia)
• The Kardashians season 5 episode 13 (UK and Australia)

February 21

• A Thousand Blows (UK and Australia)
• Chris Distefano: It’s Just Unfortunate (UK only)
• Scamanda (UK only)
• Theme Song Takeover season 3 episodes 1 to 6 (US only)
• The Space Race (UK and Australia)

February 22

• Fur Babies season 2 episodes 1 to 4 (US only)

February 24

• Find My Country House season 1 episodes 1 to 10 (US only)
• Kim of Queens season 1 episodes 1 to 12 (US only)
• No Taste Like Home with Antoni Porowski season 1 episodes 1 to 6 (US only)
• Outrageous Love with Nene Leakes season 1 episodes 1 to 10 (US only)

February 25

• Paradise episode 7 (UK and Australia)

February 26

• Abbott Elementary season 4 episodes 1 to 8 (UK and Australia)
• American Dad season 20 episode 9 (UK and Australia)
• Ishura season 2 episode 8 (UK and Australia)
• NCIS season 22 episode 8 (UK only)
• Unmasked episode 10 (UK and Australia)
• Will Trent season 3 episode 8 (UK and Australia)
• Win or Lose episodes 3 and 4

February 27

• High Potential season 1 episode 7 (UK and Australia)
• The Kardashians season 5 episode 14 (UK and Australia)

February 28

• Chibi Tiny Tales: Shorts season 5 episodes 1 to 6 (US only)
• Wizards Beyond Waverly Place episodes 10 to 21

For more Disney Plus coverage, read our guides on the best Disney Plus movies, Daredevil: Born Again, Andor season 2, and X-Men 97 season 2.

• The Samsung tri-fold could be called the Galaxy G Fold
• Samsung teased the phone last month
• We're expecting a launch to happen sometime this year

As well as unveiling the Galaxy S25 phones last month, Samsung also teased a new tri-fold foldable phone (or multi-fold foldable, if you prefer). Now a new leak may have revealed the name Samsung is going to give this upcoming handset.

According to seasoned tipster Yeux1122 (via Android Authority), the new phone is going to be called the Samsung G Fold – which would fit in with the naming series Samsung currently uses for the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

What exactly the 'G' stands for here isn't clear, but it doesn't really matter. The letter 'Z' would actually be more appropriate for a foldable device with two hinges and three panels, but that moniker is of course already taken.

All this comes after we had the launch of the Huawei Mate XT last year. The talk is that Huawei is working on more foldables with this form factor, so it looks as though the tri-fold or multi-fold phone is here to stay.

The story so far

The Huawei Mate XT tri-fold (Image credit: Huawei)

While Samsung has now teased a tri-fold phone, we don't have any more official details – so we're relying on leaks and rumors to figure out what to expect when the Samsung G Fold (if that is its name) finally sees the light of day.

Most signs are pointing to a launch sometime during 2025, quite possibly alongside the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 and the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 in the middle of the year – in fact we might get as many as four foldables from Samsung in 2025.

Based on published Samsung patents, we know the tri-fold device might come with a foldable battery too, possibly extending the time between charges (and also perhaps adding some bulk to the overall form factor).

A screen size of around 9-10 inches has been predicted, and the Samsung phone could well fold inwards, unlike the Huawei Mate XT – so a second screen would be required on the back of the handset to be used when the handset was closed shut.

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• Research estimates global TV and video streaming industry accounts for 4% of total global emissions
• This is double the aviation industry, four times that of the data center industry
• Nearly 900 million 4K TVs, a big portion of which are large panels, are installed worldwide

The global TV and video streaming industry has become a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, surpassing aviation and data centers, according to a new report released by InterDigital in conjunction with market research firm Futuresource.

The report examines the industry’s carbon footprint from production to consumption, and found the streaming industry now emits twice the carbon emissions of the airline sector and four times that of the data center industry.

This impact is driven by increasing demand for entertainment, video communication services, and the widespread adoption of devices such as 4K TVs and smartphones.

Streaming events impact

TVs generated an estimated 54 million tonnes of CO2 in 2024, which the report says is comparable to the annual emissions of 11.7 million cars. There are now 2.2 billion TVs globally, including 858 million 4K TVs (up 18% since 2022), which consume 1.7 times the energy of standard HD models. Total energy consumption across video devices, including TVs, set-top boxes, and smartphones, reached 357TWh in 2024, although this represents a 7% decline from 2022. Smartphones, however, saw a 27% rise in energy consumption since 2020.

Major events have a huge impact. The 2024 Paris Olympics had an estimated media carbon footprint of 602.8 million tonnes, with 1.25 TWh of electricity consumed for streaming across TVs, mobile devices, and laptops.

Efforts to reduce emissions are advancing, with AI-based brightness adjustment technologies projected to lower TV energy consumption by 15% by 2028. Remote production methods for content creation have also shown promise, cutting emissions by up to six times compared to traditional on-site production.

The report calls for industry-wide collaboration to tackle these challenges, particularly in addressing indirect emissions from supply chains and media production. While energy-efficient devices and renewable energy adoption offer pathways to reduce emissions, further action is clearly needed.

“While everyone is aware of the contributions the airline industry makes to greenhouse gas emissions - accounting for 2% of all global greenhouse emissions per year - what isn’t common knowledge is the impact the TV and video streaming industry has. Which is in fact, double the emissions from the airline industry,” said Lionel Oisel, InterDigital’s Head of Video Labs.

“It is the responsibility of the entire industry to make changes that will improve the sustainability of the TV and video sector,” Oisel added. "While change is being made, more can and should be done. Technologies like PVR have the potential to make significant energy savings, even when applied to special events like the Olympics. If this was applied universally, the benefits could be huge, and a game changer for the industry.”

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I’ve never been a huge fan of ultra-wide cameras, even on some of the best camera phones. Too often, the cameras don’t have a high enough resolution to produce crisp photos when scrutinizing the detail, or there’s too much warping on the edges. I’ve always felt the physical limitation of the small sensors and lenses used in smartphone ultra-wide cameras hold them back from delivering the more impressive shots of main and telephoto cameras.

I’ve also never been a fan of how Samsung’s ultra-wide cameras in its Galaxy S-series, with photos that appear noisy and lacking sharpness, even occasionally looking a bit smudged when peering deeper into a shot.

However, with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, the South Korean tech giant appears to have turned a corner with its ultra-wide cameras. That’s because the S25 Ultra comes with a 50-megapixel rather than the 12MP ultra-wide camera of the Galaxy S24 Ultra.

It’s been a common idea that megapixels don’t mean a great deal when it comes to smartphone cameras, especially those on the best phones. But I’m starting to see a shift in the sands in that there’s only so much smart computational photography can do with 12MP sensors and images. In contrast, more detail sucked in by a higher megapixel sensor effectively means more data to process and, thus, more scope to get a better photo.

With the caveat that others on the TechRadar team and I are continuing to test the Galaxy S25 suite of smartphones, I quickly pitched the ultra-wide camera of the Galaxy S25 Ultra against the 12MP ultra-wide on my iPhone 16 Pro Max; my main phone.

In the photo samples below, you’ll see the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s ultra-wide camera in its default 12MP mode – an annoying default, but I understand it saves on file size – and 50MP shots, alongside 12MP iPhone 16 Pro Max snaps.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra vs iPhone 16 Pro Max ultra-wide photos Image 1 of 4

Galaxy S25 Ultra 50MP ultra-wide (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 4

iPhone 16 Pro Max 12MP ultra-wide (Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 4

Galaxy S25 Ultra 50MP ultra-wide (Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 4

(Image credit: Future)

At a quick glance, it’s not particularly easy to see huge differences between the shots other than different interpretations of colors; Samsung, as usual, favors punchier colors over the iPhone’s more muted take.

But look closer, and you’ll see finer details in the foreground of the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s 50MP ultra-wide shots vs the iPhone 16 Pro Max’s. Punch into a shot, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra resolves sharper details than its rival.

The same is broadly true when comparing the 12MP ultra-wide versus the 50MP shots on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. You have to go on the hunt for changes, as both shots use the same camera sensors; just the 12MP images are being produced with pixel-binning to make a 50MP snap smaller.

Still, from what I can tell, this process naturally loses some detail on a shot but also removes a degree of dynamic range; in the 12MP shots, shadows and highlights are more uniform, whereas in the 50MP photos, there’s more of a gradient from light to dark.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra 50MP vs 12MP ultra-wide photos Image 1 of 4

Galaxy S25 Ultra 50MP ultra-wide (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 4

Galaxy S25 Ultra 12MP ultra-wide (Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 4

Galaxy S25 Ultra 50MP ultra-wide (Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 4

Galaxy S25 Ultra 12MP ultra-wide (Image credit: Future)

I find this pertinent, as recent conversations about flagship phone cameras have focused on how they tend to produce somewhat flat photos by bringing up the shadows and pulling down bright parts. This can bring out more detail but results in a photo that doesn't look quite true to life and ends up lacking some contrast that can help make a photo pop.

So, my key takeaway for anyone planning to get a Galaxy S25 Ultra is to use the 50MP mode in the ultra-wide camera for the best results.

And I think this is a sign that Apple should look to follow the example set by the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the Google Pixel 9 Pro, as well as the Pixel 8 Pro, and adopt a larger pixel count with the ultra-wide camera on the iPhone 17 Pro.

Head to the comment and let me know which ultra-wide photos you prefer, and do check out our full Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review; also, keep TechRadar bookmarked as we’ll have more thoughts and experiences with the Galaxy S25 phones as we keep digging into them.

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• iPhone vs Galaxy video: which would you choose?
• Check out our hands-on Samsung Galaxy S25 review
• And read our hands-on Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus review

This week was wild. DeepSeek came and changed the AI landscape, but it seems like the full impact of its arrival is still yet to be fully understood. Meanwhile Garmin accidentally bricked many of its devices globally thanks to an errant update, and Android XR broke cover in our first hands-on look at the software.

Al that and more of the otehr big tech news stories you might have missed from the week are recapped below so you can catch up with everything then get on with your day.

If you're looking to catch up on the biggest entertainment of the moment too then chekc out our picks for the 7 new movies and TV shows to stream this weekend (January 31).

7. DeepSeek R1 conquered the AI world

(Image credit: Future)

It’s been a rollercoaster week for the AI industry with the DeepSeek app rocketing to the top of the Apple App Store and beating ChatGPT. DeepSeek is a Chinese startup who claim to have developed their deep reasoning model, R1, for a fraction of the price that US AI companies have invested in their technologies.

It also offers people access to it for free in its chatbot and at a much reduced price as an API compared to OpenAI. The news that a Chinese company can produce an equivalent technology for a fraction of the price caused a complete crash of the share value of US tech companies that are heavily invested in AI. Nvidia came off particularly badly with $600 billion being wiped off their stock value in just one day. Share prices have since recovered, but it doesn’t feel like the AI market will ever be the same again.

• Read more: DeepSeek live – all the latest news

6. But did it cheat to win?

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Questions are already being asked about how DeepSeek managed to produce its AI model so quickly, especially after OpenAI claimed it had evidence of distillation of some of its models. Distillation is a development technique where you piggyback off another model’s learning, but is against the OpenAI terms and conditions of use. To make matters worse for DeepSeek, it appears that when questioned about which AI model is best, DeepSeek will often refer to itself as ChatGPT, which some users think of as a bit of a smoking gun.

OpenAI released a statement on the matter, stating: “We know that groups in the PRC are actively working to use methods, including what’s known as distillation, to try to replicate advanced U.S. AI models. We are aware of and reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have inappropriately distilled our models, and will share information as we know more. We take aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology and will continue working closely with the U.S. government to protect the most capable models being built here.”

• Read more: DeepSeek just insisted it's ChatGPT, and I think that's all the proof I need

5. Garmin became the Sonos of wearables

Garmin's blue triangle of death (Image credit: Angela MacAusland)

A tough few months of software quirks boiled over into a massive Garmin outage this week that saw users in their thousands completely lose access to their devices. A rogue GPS file accidentally pushed to Garmins saw user devices plunged into a boot loop dubbed the 'Blue Triangle of Death.' Few customers found they could escape, and even those who did encountered further issues with connectivity and synchronisation.

The outage lasted well over 24 hours and we heard from hundreds of customers, owners of devices like the Forerunner and Epix range, as well as more niche devices like Garmin's dive computers, cycling computers, and Approach Golf Range.

Garmin has since fixed the underlying issue, but lots of customers remain stuck in boot loops and without a device. Plenty have even told us they regret their Garmin purchases or plan to depart for companies like Apple. Garmin has a PR disaster on its hands that has vastly overshadowed the launch of the Instinct 3. The company has lots of work to do, or it risks becoming the Sonos of wearables.

• Read more: Garmin outage FIXED: What to do if your device still isn't working

4. Nvidia’s new RTX 5090 came and went

Nvidia RTX 5090 (Image credit: Future)

Nvidia’s new graphics cards are here and… they’re already gone as stock sold out lightning fast across the internet for these highly sought after GPUs. Some will have been bought by legitimate gamers looking to upgrade their rig – and they’re in for a treat with our RTX 5090 review highlighting how it’s a seriously powerful upgrade that approaches complete overkill performance, and our RTX 5080 review telling us it boasts some solid gains too at a more modest (but still not inexpensive) price.

Unfortunately some Nvidia cards also seem to have been picked up by scalpers taking advantage of the limited availability to flip them for a profit on resale sites by listing the GPUs for several times their MSRP. Resale sites have also been flooded with listings that seem to be selling the new GPUs for prices closer to what they should cost, but when you take a closer look you’ll see they’re promising to send you a picture of the graphics card you desire rather than the real thing.

So our advice is to wait for another official drop so you don’t get tricked by a scammer or pay three or four times more for the GPU you’re after – and you can follow our coverage for updates on when and where these drops will happen.

• Read more: Where to buy Nvidia RTX 5090 GPUs in the US and UK

3. Nothing Phone 3 was teased

Nothing Phone 2 (Image credit: Future | Alex Walker-Todd)

Nothing shared a short video of its CEO Carl Pei this week. Normally that wouldn’t be super newsworthy, but as the camera zooms in on his glasses we see the words “Launch 4 March” reflected in the lens. A previous Nothing Phone 3 teaser suggested this would be the announcement date for its next smartphone, but now it’s all but certain.

What’s more interesting is a cut in the middle of the clip that seems to shift from a shot from a wide lens, to one from a telephoto lens – the latter of which is absent from all Nothing phones. We’re taking this as a hint that the Nothing Phone 3 could have a triple-lens camera – with a telephoto camera joining the wide and ultra-wide lens setup found on the Nothing Phone 2.

• Read more: Nothing hints that the Phone 3 could have the camera feature it needed

2. We got our first in-depth look at Android XR

Project Moohan (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)

Thanks to a hands-on video from Marques Brownlee on his YouTube channel, MKBHD, we got our first look at Android XR and the Project Moohan prototype this week. While many details including price, release, and some specs are still a mystery we did get to see aspects of the headset’s design and software.

It looks a lot like a combination of the Meta Quest Pro and Apple Vision Pro. There’s no over-the-head strap but instead a Meta Quest Pro-like adjustable strap round the back, and the Android XR headset borrows the Quest’s optional light blockers to change between a VR-optimized and MR-optimized design. It also uses an external battery pack like the Vision Pro to help save weight.

As for software, Brownlee’s video predominantly focused on Gemini’s integration – which looks impressive. Though many of the AI features look like they’d be much better suited to a pair of AR glasses – so while we expect Moohan will be impressive, we’re already waiting to see what XR hardware Samsung and Google will launch next.

• Read more: Android XR comes out swinging with our first look at Samsung Project Moohan

1. Our Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man swung in

Spider-Man from Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney Plus)

Our favorite wall-crawling superhero is finally back! The latest adaptation of Peter Parker to enter the fray is in Marvel’s new animated series Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

The show has a unique release schedule, though, as each week two episodes will be released instead of one – the first two of which debuted on Disney Plus this Wednesday (January 29).

TechRadar’s senior entertainment reporter Tom Power has already seen all 10 episodes and says the show’s “a spectacularly fun ride” in his Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man review.

Which is great news for Spidey fans, because two more seasons have been greenlit and the show’s creator already has “big ideas” for where it could go next.

• Read more: Every Marvel Easter egg and reference in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man episodes 1 and 2: Nico Minoru, Lonnie Lincoln, and more

• Nvidia's fastest GPU is unsurprisingly expensive and power hungry, just like its predecessor
• It is also extremely fast and leaves the RTX 4090 and AMD's fastest GPU, well behind
• Early benchmarks show there's far more potential once drivers and updates are rolled out

Nvidia’s latest flagship GPU, the GeForce RTX 5090, was announced at CES 2025 and has just gone on sale, although Nvidia has warned that it expects to sell out quickly. Built on the Blackwell architecture, the RTX 5090 is a successor to the RTX 4090, and features 32GB of VRAM, increased CUDA core counts, and improved memory bandwidth.

Puget Systems, which previously tested the GeForce RTX 4090, has just benchmarked the RTX 5090 across various creative applications, including Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and DaVinci Resolve and as you might expect, the results were impressive.

In Premiere Pro, Puget Systems found the RTX 5090 was slightly faster than the RTX 4090 by about 9% in terms of overall performance. In Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve Studio, the GPU had a 17% lead over the 4090 and 35% over the 3090 Ti. Puget noted however, that the “5090 was run on a slightly different version of Resolve than the rest of the cards - a review version designed to be fully compatible with the 50-series card and which we expect to be incorporated into the application in the near future.”

Obliterating AMD

(Image credit: Puget Systems)

Adobe After Effects also benefits from the increased power of the RTX 5090.

According to Puget Systems, the GPU recorded a "massive 35% gen-on-gen improvement over the RTX 4090" in 3D rendering tasks, making it a solid choice for motion graphics professionals. Elsewhere, Unreal Engine benchmarks suggest the RTX 5090 leads the RTX 4090 by 17% overall. In rendering applications such as Blender and V-Ray, "the RTX 5090 is a massive 38% faster than the 4090 and three times as fast as the 3090 Ti."

The RTX 5090 outperformed AMD’s fastest consumer GPU, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, across multiple tests, although AMD’s card faced some challenges. In Adobe After Effects, Puget Systems observed that the 7900 XTX "currently struggles with the 'Advanced 3D' renderer, with the 7900 XTX half as fast as even the 2080 Ti." It was a similar story in Unreal Engine where "AMD struggles with ray tracing, seeing a much larger performance drop than Nvidia when enabling the feature."

Despite the solid benchmarks, there are some early software compatibility issues. Puget Systems noted that "at present, the RTX 5090 is not supported in either Redshift (Cinebench) nor Octanebench" and has known performance problems in V-Ray’s CUDA rendering. Nvidia is expected to resolve these issues with future driver updates.

With a launch price of $2,000, the RTX 5090 is obviously positioned as a premium option for users who need the highest level of performance. As Puget Systems concludes, "if you need the most powerful consumer GPU ever made, this is it."

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• Similiarweb data claims DeepSeek’s usage doubled to 12 million people worldwide in the space of two days
• Release of DeepSeek’s R1 model has prompted panic in Western AI leaders worried about their bottom line
• ChatGPT continues to outperform DeepSeek in sheer page hits, but not in growth

In the space of two weeks, open source and MIT-licenced Chinese large language model (LLM) DeepSeek has taken the AI tool world by storm, sending Western AI-leader Nvidia stock plummeting and prompting OpenAI’s Sam Altman to accuse DeepSeek’s developers of using its models to train theirs.

Western AI figureheads are right to be on their toes, as new data shared exclusively with TechRadar Pro from Similarweb has shown DeepSeek’s centralised web and mobile app version (the nature of open source means that users can run various models locally on their own hardware, which Similarweb would not have data for) is seeing considerable growth.

ChatGPT versus DeepSeek

Let’s zero in on late January, as that’s when DeepSeek’s new, advanced ‘R1’ model was released. Between January 24 and January 26 2025, worldwide daily visits to DeepSeek doubled from 6.2 million to 12.4 million.

Blips in DeepSeek’s page traffic did come in the week before the model’s release, with a pronounced drop of 900,000 page views between January 15 and 18. Since January 19 (the day before the model’s release), however, the service saw steady, albeit inconsistent growth, culminating in that two-day surge; the latest data we have.

ChatGPT, meanwhile, has seen precipitous drops in page traffic before and during the release period for R1, indicating it may have already become old-hat in the eyes of many with their eye on the LLM space without DeepSeek entering the fray. The service lost 43.1 million views between January 15-18, while the biggest fall post-R1’s release came between January 23-25, with a loss of 41.3 million views.

It’s possible these are natural ebbs and flows, and that ChatGPT is bound to see bigger losses because it’s a larger operation that has been in the public consciousness for longer. It’s also important to note, although ChatGPT has seen these recent drops, the losses still amount to four times the amount of views that DeepSeek has amassed according to the latest SimilarWeb data. ChatGPT is hardly ‘dying’, either; it still managed a strong peak of 140.6 million views on January 23, three days after the release of DeepSeek R1.

The main worry, then, is growth; ChatGPT seems to have run out of it; amassing an average of 126.9 million page views in the week of DeepSeek’s latest model release, and only being able to achieve sporadic daily peaks of around 140 million views over non-consecutive days in that period. Both of these figures don’t represent growth over previous months according to the data. A glance at the available SimilarWeb figures tells me that ChatGPT was pulling in comparable numbers as late as December 2024 and as early as September.

DeepSeek may have only amassed a mean average of 7.45 million views in the same period, but that two-day doubling will concern interested competitors. The questions in play, that we just don’t know the answer to yet, are ‘how long will this rate of growth continue’ and ‘can DeepSeek become a meaningful long-term competitor in AI’? While anyone keen on competition in the space (specifically from a model able to be hosted locally) might be hopeful about the latter, the fact remains ChatGPT is a juggernaut, and it’ll be no easy feat.

What is DeepSeek?

In case you missed it, DeepSeek is a Chinese company that has managed to train R1, a model “on par with ChatGPT” and Copilot for $6 million (£4.8 million), a fraction of the cost of the $78 million] spent by OpenAI in training its latest GPT-4, all while the country endures an embargo of powerful high-end graphical processing units (GPUs) from the West.

DeepSeek began as a startup in May 2023, with founder Liang Wenfeng putting his stockpiling of Nvidia GPUs down to “curiosity” as opposed to business acumen in 2021 - before former US President Joe Biden introduced export sanctions on semiconductors to China in October 2022.

For SMBs, DeepSeek R1 is freely available on Github, and, being MIT-licensed, represents a significant opportunity for low-cost AI chatbot implementation. It’s a powerful model that, unlike ChatGPT or Copilot, can be run locally, and on modest hardware.

While rumbles of data leaks have emerged surrounding the web and Android app versions, it’s important to note that running the model yourself allows for sidestepping these concerns.

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• Squarespace teams up with Barry Keoghan for new Super Bowl ad campaign
• A comedy teaser video is available to watch
• The ad will air between the 1st and 2nd quarters at Super Bowl LIX

When I woke up this morning I didn’t think I’d be talking about bath water drinking actors, donkeys, and one of the world’s most watched sporting events - but here I am - thanks for making my day a little weirder Squarespace.

Earlier this month Squarespace, one of the best website builders, released a short teaser from the company's upcoming Super Bowl 2025 ad campaign. It offered few details beyond an unidentifiable man riding a donkey down a country track.

Yesterday, everything became a little clearer after I received a press release from Squarespace detailing some exciting new details about the ‘A Tale As Old As Websites’ Super Bowl ad campaign.

It is now revealed that the mystery man is Barry Keoghan, the Irish actor, perhaps best known for that scene in Saltburn. In this ad campaign Barry ditches his questionable methods of hydration in favor of a furry four legged friend.

Although the actual ad remains a closely guarded secret, the company has released a comedic short film titled Barry and Moseley to help build anticipation. The clip includes behind-the-scenes footage of Barry along with his co-star, discussing the donkey’s career prospects and creating a website using the Squarespace website builder.

Squarespace’s Super Bowl 2025 campaign

This is the 11th Super Bowl appearance from Squarespace. With costs for a 30-second spot reportedly sky rocketing from $7 million in 2024 to $8 million in 2025, it is clear that the company continues to see the value of this insanely expensive ad spot.

Squarespace will be hoping to continue a string of Super Bowl ad successes following its 2024 Super Bowl ad, directed by and starring legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese, which was seen by a share of a predicted audience of 210 million.

We heard from Nate Skinner, Senior Director of Brand and Creative Strategy at Squarespace:

"In today’s media landscape, the Super Bowl remains one of the rare opportunities to captivate millions at once. It’s more than a moment to advertise - it’s a chance to share a story that resonates with a massive and diverse audience. To capitalize, you have to entertain and find creative ways to stand out.” Nate shared “By teaming up with the incredibly talented Barry Keoghan and crafting a humorous tale set in a bygone era, we’ve created a campaign that’s designed to inspire entrepreneurs to dream big and take their ideas to the next level."

The new ad was directed by Steve Rogers and will be run between the 1st and 2nd quarters. It will be shown alongside ads from other big businesses including website building and hosting company GoDaddy, Budweiser, Hellmann’s, and Uber Eats.

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• What time is the super bowl? We have the answer
• Wix's new AI tool aims to take you from idea to profit in record time
• Running a small business? We have listed the best small business website builders

OpenAI showed off its first AI Agent, Operator, last week, but it already has a scrappy competitor offering an AI tool called Browser Use that can complete tasks online for you. This Computer-Using Agent (CUA) can write, search, click buttons, and copy information from websites without you needing to touch the mouse or keyboard and without the $200-a-month ChatGPT Pro subscription.

Browser Use is actually free, at least if you're willing and able to spend some time playing with API code. I'm not very code-literate, but I naively thought I knew enough of how GitHub works to use the API version. Hours of sifting through documentation, tweaking settings, and watching examples later, I decided this would need a deeper level of coding knowledge than I have, let alone the average person browsing the web.

Happily, for me, Browser Use just debuted a cloud version that employs OpenAI's own GPT-4o model. It cuts out a lot of the heavy technical lifting and streamlines things into a more familiar chat format without any extra work. It has its limitations and costs $30, but after my inept API mess, it felt like a bargain. And even in this (still obviously unfinished) form, you still need to put some effort into engineering prompts and negotiating how the AI functions. The most limiting aspect is that you can only issue one prompt before having to start a new interaction. Despite the text box, you can’t respond to what the AI does and refine your request.

Buying AI

(Image credit: Screenshots from Browser Use)

With everything set up, I put Browser Use through a few real-world tests. First up was a price comparison task. I entered the prompt: "Navigate to Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart and search for 'MacBook Air M2'. Extract the product name, price, and stock availability from the first five results on each site. Compare the prices and identify the lowest one. If discounts or coupons are present, record them. Provide a final summary with the best deal and where to buy it."

It did the job well, though it didn’t find any hidden discounts or coupons. Still, the fact that I could automate price tracking across multiple sites was pretty exciting. That said, a continuing issue for any agent like this comes when a website wants to check that you're human. Browser Use has a button that lets you take over whenever you want, but it will also alert you when there's a need. You can prove your humanity and then hit resume to let the AI take over again.

(Image credit: Screenshots from Browser Use) Fly AI

(Image credit: Screenshots from Browser Use)

Next came a travel planning task with the prompt: "Search for a round-trip flight from New York to London on Dec 15, 2025 on British Air. Select the cheapest option and extract details, including price, airline, and departure time."

Browser Use delivered, pulling up a British Airways flight at $750, complete with departure time and other relevant details. This could be incredibly useful for people who book a lot of travel, especially if you automate it to check for price drops regularly.

Fair weather AI friend

(Image credit: Screenshots from Browser Use)

Finally, I tested out weather prediction and planning with the prompt: “Check the 7-day weather forecast for New York City on weather.com and summarize temperature trends, rain chances, and any severe weather warnings and then suggest how to dress for it.”

Weather is one of the most popular uses for voice assistants, so I wanted to see how the AI handled a more complex request in that vein. It did very well, not only extracting the information from the forecast but suggesting which days to wear a light coat and which days I should “insulate with a warm coat and scarf, as it will be chilly with low rain chance.”

Power trip

The key difference between the two is accessibility. Browser Use is like a Swiss Army knife for developers. It has the flexibility to do almost anything within a browser, but you need to know how to use the tools. You can dig into the code, tweak it, and mold it to your exact needs. If a feature is missing, nothing’s stopping you from adding it. Browser Use, being open-source, also has an active developer community constantly refining it. That means if you run into issues, there are forums and GitHub discussions where you can likely find answers.

OpenAI’s Operator, on the other hand, is like hiring a butler. It does a lot for you but within certain constraints. Operator’s strength is its integration with OpenAI’s broader AI ecosystem, giving it access to proprietary models that can make more nuanced decisions. However, you’re locked into OpenAI’s pricing structure and limited customization options.

Browser Use isn’t perfect. Even its cloud version demands some patience. You need to craft your prompts carefully, brace yourself for troubleshooting, and occasionally start over. The cloud version may make up for some of this later, but for now, the limits of not being able to edit or respond within the conversation put hard limits on its otherwise flexible nature.

And the speed can be frustrating as well. Check out a video of my second test; this is four times the speed of the actual process.

Right now, Browser Use is best suited for people who enjoy tinkering, such as developers, researchers, and automation geeks who don’t mind getting their hands dirty. If you’re willing to put in the effort, you’ll get a powerful, flexible tool that costs way less than its competition.

But if you’d rather not spend your weekend wrestling with configuration files, Operator may be the more forgiving option. Either way, web automation is ready for a boom.

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Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,000 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today – or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1104) - hint #1 - Vowels How many different vowels are in Quordle today?

• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 4*.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1104) - hint #2 - repeated letters Do any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?

• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 2.

Quordle today (game #1104) - hint #3 - uncommon letters Do the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?

• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.

Quordle today (game #1104) - hint #4 - starting letters (1) Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?

• The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 3.

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1104) - hint #5 - starting letters (2) What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• F

• B

• F

• F

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1104) - the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1104, are…

• FACET
• BLISS
• FLUFF
• FRANK

Another very tricky set of words and very close to being an F for Fail.

In order to complete today’s Quordle I had to tune in to the setters' mindset and think about how they would make it difficult, so I went with FLUFF instead of the other options I had, and gambled that the final word would be a double-letter too. It worked.

Sadly, I didn’t employ the same intuition for the Sequence and failed to guess DIZZY. Kudos if you got that.

How did you do today? Let me know in the comments below.

Daily Sequence today (game #1104) - the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1104, are…

• TWINE
• BLUSH
• LEAVE
• DIZZY

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1103, Friday 31 January: PARER, SYNOD, BRAWN, BANJO
• Quordle #1102, Thursday 30 January: WEEDY, CHIRP, STALE, SUGAR
• Quordle #1101, Wednesday 29 January: CROWN, SCENE, AGILE, CRANK
• Quordle #1100, Tuesday 28 January: TOKEN, DAISY, INANE, PLIED
• Quordle #1099, Monday 27 January: ANGEL, GLOBE, MAYOR, BRAVE
• Quordle #1098, Sunday 26 January: WATER, ORBIT, BRIDE, TOUCH
• Quordle #1097, Saturday 25 January: GIVER, GROOM, GUSTO, MAKER
• Quordle #1096, Friday 24 January: GRIND, STOCK, SERVE, TOUCH
• Quordle #1095, Thursday 23 January: RUGBY, SASSY, WORRY, BANAL
• Quordle #1094, Wednesday 22 January: SLANT, TRUNK, WOOZY, EATEN
• Quordle #1093, Tuesday 21 January: CHART, VIGOR, PRINT, SPAWN
• Quordle #1092, Monday 20 January: SIXTY, THONG, TATTY, ROBIN
• Quordle #1091, Sunday 19 January: WREST, RINSE, SCOUR, CANNY
• Quordle #1090, Saturday 18 January: BLARE, ITCHY, BICEP, PIPER
• Quordle #1089, Friday 17 January: CATCH, WEARY, SWOON, LATHE
• Quordle #1088, Thursday 16 January: PARTY, BLUNT, TWEED, PLANT
• Quordle #1087, Wednesday 15 January: RISEN, PLATE, RURAL, ENVOY
• Quordle #1086, Tuesday 14 January: SWARM, SCRAP, ONION, BELCH
• Quordle #1085, Monday 13 January: EYING, GIDDY, CHEAP, PETAL
• Quordle #1084, Sunday 12 January: BRIEF, PETAL, WOMAN, FELON

Good morning! Let's play Connections, the NYT's clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need clues.

What should you do once you've finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I've also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc's Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Connections today (game #601) - today's words

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• MATCH
• SHADE
• CHALLENGE
• CLUE
• CONTEST
• SUSPECT
• CHORD
• TONE
• DEAL
• HUE
• DETECTIVE
• QUESTION
• POSE
• ALIBI
• DISPUTE
• TINGE

NYT Connections today (game #601) - hint #1 - group hints

What are some clues for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: Colorful words
• GREEN: Whodunnit? 
• BLUE: “.. and another thing”
• PURPLE: Begin with two words that rhyme with biker

Need more clues?

We're firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today's NYT Connections puzzles…

NYT Connections today (game #601) - hint #2 - group answers

What are the answers for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: TINT 
• GREEN: COMPONENTS OF A MYSTERY 
• BLUE: TAKE ISSUE WITH 
• PURPLE: STRIKE A __ 

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Connections today (game #601) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Connections, game #601, are…

• YELLOW: TINT HUE, SHADE, TINGE, TONE
• GREEN: COMPONENTS OF A MYSTERY ALIBI, CLUE, DETECTIVE, SUSPECT
• BLUE: TAKE ISSUE WITH CHALLENGE, CONTEST, DISPUTE, QUESTION
• PURPLE: STRIKE A __ CHORD, DEAL, MATCH, POSE

• My rating: Moderate
• My score: 2 mistakes

There were a couple of words today that crossed over and I struggled to narrow down TAKE ISSUE WITH, wasting two mistakes as I was including SUSPECT and POSE. Getting “One away” once is OK, but twice is annoying.

All this meant that I completed today’s Connections with a feeling that I’d been defeated – especially as I failed to spot the very gettable STRIKE A __ group.

That dust will have to stay on my shoulders until tomorrow.

How did you do today? Let me know in the comments below.

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Friday, 31 January, game #600)

• YELLOW: STORAGE CONTAINERS CASE, CHEST, CRATE, TRUNK
• GREEN: SCHNOZZ BEAK, HONKER, SNOOT, SNOUT
• BLUE: ONES WITH DISCERNING TASTES CONNOISSEUR, CRITIC, EXPERT, SNOB
• PURPLE: STARTS OF SWIMMING STROKES BACK, BREAST, BUTTER, FREE

What is NYT Connections?

NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.

On the plus side, you don't technically need to solve the final one, as you'll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What's more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.

It's a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.

It's playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #335) - hint #1 - today's theme What is the theme of today's NYT Strands?

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… Hunt and peck

NYT Strands today (game #335) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• PROP
• NATURE
• ROLE
• TOLD
• COLD
• POST

NYT Strands today (game #335) - hint #3 - spangram What is a hint for today's spangram?

• Birds of prey

NYT Strands today (game #335) - hint #4 - spangram position What are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

First side: left, 2nd row

Last side: right, 8th row

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #335) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #335, are…

• KESTREL
• EAGLE
• HAWK
• CONDOR
• FALCON
• OSPREY
• VULTURE
• SPANGRAM: RAPTORS

• My rating: Easy
• My score: 1 hint

You know an animal is fierce and not to be messed with when a sports team is named after it and in the bird world that means the RAPTORS that make up today’s puzzle.

There are hundreds of teams around the world nicknamed EAGLEs, FALCONs and HAWKs, just as there are Bears, Lions and Tigers – and not so many prepared to be called “the cats” or “house flies”.

It’s all very macho. But perhaps I’m only saying this because the football/soccer team I support – Brighton & Hove Albion – are nicknamed the Seagulls, a type of bird that’s not so much known for sweeping majestically from the sky to hunt its prey as it is for stealing fries and pooping on shoulders.

How did you do today? Let me know in the comments below.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Friday, 31 January, game #334)

• MAMA
• DADA
• KITTY
• MINE
• BOTTLE
• YUCKY
• BYE BYE
• MORE
• SPANGRAM: FIRST WORDS

What is NYT Strands?

Strands is the NYT's new word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now out of beta so is a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable and can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.

• The Teamgroup 2TB Pro+ sells for just over $170, but you can make an offer at a lower price
• The device has a lifetime warranty and comes with a card reader
• We reviewed a different version of this card and gave it a highly recommended badge

The Teamgroup 2TB Pro+ microSDXC UHS-I/U3 is a high-capacity and performance memory card bundled with a USB Type-C Ultra CR I card reader, and Newegg currently has an offer which could lower the price, currently listed for $172.99, even further

This microSD card delivers a read speed of up to 160MB/s. Rated A2, U3, UHS-I, and V30, it's optimized for 4K video recording and continuous shooting.

Performance and Speed

The Teamgroup 2TB Pro+ includes a lifetime warranty, making it ideal for long-term reliability.

SD cards certainly have their issues that make such a warranty worthwhile; their small size and physical fragility make them easy to break, and putting one in constant use (as the boot drive for an operating system on a device like the Raspberry Pi 5, for instance) can shorten their lifespan.

In a previous review, we tested TeamGroup’s EXPERT S.M.A.R.T microSDXC card with drones, action cameras, and a Sony A7 IV and found that it demonstrated consistent performance and handled professional tasks effectively.

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• Lego has set up Botanical Gardens in NYC, Atlanta, and Nashville this weekend.
• It's your chance to see the latest flower sets being added to the Lego Botanical theme.
• The Mini Orchid, Lucky Bamboo, and Flower Arrangement stole the show.

Alongside impressive ships from Star Wars and a highly-detailed replica of the Endurance ship, some of the most popular sets in recent history from The Lego Group have been from the Botanical theme, specifically flower offerings.

And alongside the latest sets in the line, like a Mini Orchid and a Flower Arrangement, Lego is celebrating its latest drop – not with a drone show, like it did for its space theme – but with pop-up Botanical Gardens in New York City, Atlanta, and Nashville. These are free to the public for this weekend, and you can score some freebies if you’re a Lego Insider – a free reward program – and check out the latest sets in real life.

I got the chance to head over to the New York City location to get a feel for the pop-up and to see the latest and greatest from the Lego Botanical lineup. Now I’m sharing my three favorites from the collection and where you can get them cause we all deserve a little treat as the first month of 2025 comes to a close. And with gift-giving moments on the horizon already, the Lego flower sets are some of the most-wanted.

(Image credit: Future/Jacob Krol)

Standing over 11 inches tall after you build the 325 pieces, Lucky Bamboo has to be my favorite addition to the Botanical lineup. It not only looks great but is ready to be displayed as you’ll build the small pot and stand complete with little Lego pebbles. You’ll end up with three bamboo stems at various heights in what will likely be a relaxing build.

The Lego Lucky Bamboo set is available now from Lego or Amazon for $29.99.

Also available at Amazon here.View Deal

(Image credit: Future/Jacob Krol)

So new that it’s still up for preorder only is the Flower Arrangement, which is a set that goes a bit further than some of the previous bouquets that have been released. With this, you’ll build a range of flowers, including ranunculus, lilies, hydrangea, and peonies, among many others of varying sizes, but also a white vase that you’ll construct out of Lego bricks. This one could easily sit on a kitchen counter, a dining table, a nightstand, or even on a shelf.

Depending on which route in the building manual you choose, you can create one of two designs and add other Lego flowers to the vase. This is pretty neat and infinitely customizable. This set, which includes 1,161 pieces, is available for preorder at Lego for $109.99.

While the Flower Arrangement isn't available for preorder at Amazon yet, you can score the Flower Bouquet set, which you can add to this set at a rare discount for $47.99 from $59.99. View Deal

(Image credit: Future)

The full-sized Lego Orchid set is one of the originals and most popular – it’s actually been purchased over 10,000 times on Amazon this month – and now there is a miniature version that strikes its own chord. At just 274 pieces, it stands at over 10 inches with plenty of pedals, and like all other Lego flower sets, it never needs to be watered.

More precisely, you’ll build five Orchid flowers, a few leaves, and the pot on a faux-wooden plinth. This would likely make a great gift and an epic desk or living space addition.

The Mini Orchid is available now from Lego or Amazon for $29.99. The full-size Lego Orchid is also discounted on Amazon to just $39.99 from $49.99.

Also available at Amazon here.View Deal

(Image credit: Future/Jacob Krol)

While these three are my current favorites in the Botanicals lineup from Lego, a few other sets are also on display, including some of the original flower themes.

Additionally, another standout was seeing the forthcoming, up for pre-order now, Lego take on Van Gogh's classic Sunflowers painting. Constructed out of 2,615 pieces, the Lego Vincent van Gogh – Sunflowers adds another dimension to the classic painting as you'll build the flowers so that they protrude from the art itself. It's stunning in person and looks well worth the $199.99 price.

If you're sold, Lego is taking preorders now, and the set will ship from March 1, 2025.

@jakekrol

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• Infineon's OC1230 is less than 4mm^2, smaller than a grain of rice
• You can fit nearly 40 of them in one nano SIM, the smallest physical SIM card on the market
• Infineon says it could fit in wearables like smart glasses or rings

Infineon Technologies has unveiled the world’s smallest GSMA-compliant eSIM solution - with dimensions of just 1.8 x 1.6 x 0.4 mm, the OPTIGA Connect Consumer OC1230 is smaller than a grain of rice and reduces printed circuit board (PCB) space requirements.

For scale, it's also 37 times smaller than the industry standard Nano SIM and 130 times smaller than a standard SIM.

The OC1230 supports remote SIM provisioning (RSP) and multiple-enabled profiles (MEP), allowing users to store and manage multiple network operator profiles remotely.

Ultra-compact eSIM technology

The company claims its eSIM is built on Infineon’s Integrity Guard 32 architecture and Arm v8 technology, delivering a 25% gain in power/performance ratio compared to existing eSIMs.

In addition to 5G connectivity, this ultra-compact chip could fit in wearables like smart watches, glasses or even rings, reduce energy consumption by up to 50%, and sustain the health of a device's lithium battery over time.

If you're yet to get in on the eSIM craze as a business smartphone user, I'd recommend it if you need to switch providers seamlessly on the move.

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