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The new Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge combines some of Samsung's best technology from its leading flagship phones and adds some new wrinkles to deliver an exciting new Android smartphone that is already widely known as one of the slimmest handsets on the market.

It doesn't have a new chip, but the one it has, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, is the best you can possibly get for Android. It lacks a telephoto lens, but includes the equivalent of Samsung's best 200MP camera. It's a mostly uncompromising smartphone that promises virtually every feature you could find on the more expensive Galaxy S25 Ultra (save the S Pen).

But what you're paying $1,099.99 / £1,099 / AU$1,849 for is an incredibly svelte titanium frame, one that feels thin and, at just 163 grams, exceptionally light. Even though I know the specs - 5.8mm – I struggled to find a way to put that measurement in perspective.

That's why I brought a small collection of quarters to my first hands-on experience with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. I think a stack of quarters next to Samsung's newest Galaxy S phone helps contextualize these thickness claims.

Is it as thin as a stack of six quarters? What about five? And how does that compare to other phones, even classic thin handsets of a bygone era?

That's the thing about thinness. It seems to go in and out of fashion. Sometimes we prefer zaftig for, say, the battery benefits it offers, and other times, we grow weary of carrying all that extra weight and dream of paper-thin phones.

Thin phones, though, have their risks.

The arc of time bends

(Image credit: Getty Images)

When we think back to the icon of handset thinness, the iPhone 6 Plus, many of us also less than fondly remember bendgate. That was when Apple built a 6.9mm thick iPhone that could not stand up to a butt, or at least withstand being squeezed between a butt and a hard surface like a chair or concrete ledge.

A year later, Apple followed that up with the 7.1mm iPhone 6s and, after that, the iPhone 7, which featured a reinforced, higher-grade aluminum. That ended Bendgate and, for a time, our desire for ultra-thin phones.

Now, though, they're back. Apple is reportedly prepping an iPhone 17 Air that might surpass even the S25 Edge in thinness. Samsung, though, has the edge, working on thin phones even before the S25 Edge release.

Company execs told me that Samsung's work on its folding line has well prepared it for building this slim handset. Unfolded, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is just 5.6mm thick. Yes, even thinner than the S25 Edge.

If you're wondering why the S25 Edge is a couple of millimeters thicker than the Z Fold, remember that Samsung can split that device's 4,200 mAh battery between the two halves. Samsung had to fit the S25 Edge's 3,900 mAh battery into a single 5.8mm panel.

Could this little slice of technology heaven lead to another "bendgate"? I doubt it.

The flat titanium band surrounding the S25 Edge's body is far more rigid and less bendable than the all curved aluminum body of the iPhone 6 Plus. Also, Samsung is using the brand-new Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 on the display to further strengthen the phone.

It was with all this in mind that I pulled out my stack of quarters and got to work measuring true thinness based on a coin scale.

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• Classic iPhone 6s (7.1mm): 4 quarters
• iPhone 16 Pro Max (8.25mm): 5 quarters
• Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra (8,2mm) 5 quarters
• Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge (5.8mm): 3 quarters

While this isn't an exact science, the modern US quarter has reliably remained at 1.75mm thickness since at least the 1930s. Still, my results make sense when you compare the actual thickness of each phone in millimeters. The S25 Edge is the clear leader.

My tiny experiment proves that in the most physical sense, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is one of the thinnest phones on the market. Sure, it might not seem like much of a test. But, hey, what else was I going to do with this stack of quarters?

For now, I suggest you head to a Samsung retailer to at least touch the super-thin Galaxy S25 Edge for yourself. Quarters are optional.

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Robot mops are great in theory, but too many are just glorified Swiffers. Ecovacs' new Deebots can self-wash their brushes and deep clean your home.

• Most former WordPress users don’t regret switching to other CMS platforms
• Switchers report fewer plugin issues and no major increase in cost
• Migration was smoother than expected with most avoiding major disruptions

A new survey from Liquid Web suggests switching away from WordPress is paying off for the majority of users.

While much of the conversation around CMS migration focuses on risk, the new data shows that many businesses are seeing clear benefits after making the move.

Of the former WordPress users surveyed, 7 in 8 said they don’t regret switching to a different CMS. Nearly 70% reported no increase in costs after the transition, and 72% said they’re not considering a return to WordPress. Shopify was the most common destination among switchers at 42%, followed by Wix at 38% and Squarespace at 6%.

Plugin fatigue

Plugin fatigue is a common pain point on WordPress, and 78% saw improvements in this department after the switch. While 22% said fatigue worsened, the majority experienced relief from the updates, compatibility issues, and maintenance that often come with large plugin stacks.

The process of switching itself wasn’t as difficult as some were expecting either. Only 23% ran into trouble with content migration, meaning 77% were able to move their sites without major disruption.

The same percentage said they didn’t find the new CMS harder to learn, and only a relatively small group (21%) said they missed features they had before.

Tiffany Bridge, Product Manager, eCommerce Applications at Liquid Web, said CMS platforms can deliver better experiences when setup is done right. “Many users leave WordPress looking for simplicity and come back realizing it wasn’t the CMS, it was the setup. Hosting makes all the difference between fatigue and flow.”

While WordPress still appeals to many for its flexibility, the survey shows that switching isn’t always a downgrade. In fact, for many users, it’s a step toward a simpler, more manageable experience.

The numbers point to a growing group of businesses that have made the move, and aren’t looking back.

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The updated dress code prohibits nudity on the Red Carpet and in other areas of the festival. The new rules surprised one jury member, who had to make a last-minute outfit change.

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The beloved character, who starred in three seasons of her titular show on Netflix in the 2010s, will return to the new Daredevil Disney Plus series.

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President Trump's first major overseas trip of his second term is to the same place as his first term, the Middle East. Trump is visiting the Gulf States of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And he is scheduled to meet with Syria's new president for the first time. We'll hear about the significance of that meeting and the deals between the U.S. and Gulf countries being announced. We'll also hear about the personal relationships and family business deals Trump has with various Gulf Arab rulers.

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At times Monday evening, as few as three air traffic controllers per hour were lined up to monitor via radar the planes flying into and out of the airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

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Commentary: Be honest and show me Gemini's mistakes in real time.

• Saudi Arabia partners with Nvidia to build massive AI infrastructure by 2030
• New AI data centers will deploy hundreds of thousands of GB300 chips
• HUMAIN and Nvidia plan national AI training and simulation skill programs

Nvidia has signed a strategic agreement with HUMAIN, a new AI-focused subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, as part of an ambitious plan to establish the kingdom as a global leader in artificial intelligence by 2030.

The partnership includes large-scale infrastructure development, workforce training, and a massive hardware rollout featuring hundreds of thousands of Nvidia’s latest GB300 chips.

HUMAIN plans to deploy up to 500 megawatts of AI computing capacity, beginning with 18,000 GB300 Grace Blackwell superchips powered by Nvidia’s InfiniBand networking. These chips will be used in hyperscale data centers across Saudi Arabia, designed to train and operate sovereign AI models at scale.

Broader digital transformation goals

The move is intended to support the country’s broader digital transformation goals and economic diversification outlined in Vision 2030.

The partnership also includes the adoption of Nvidia’s Omniverse platform. According to HUMAIN, this will enable the development of physical AI and robotics applications across industries such as manufacturing, logistics, and energy.

By using digital twins and simulation tools, companies in the kingdom will be able to optimize physical environments for greater efficiency, safety, and sustainability.

Workforce development is a key component of the collaboration. HUMAIN and Nvidia plan to upskill thousands of Saudi citizens and developers in areas such as robotics, simulation, and digital twin technologies.

“AI, like electricity and internet, is essential infrastructure for every nation,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. “Together with HUMAIN, we are building AI infrastructure for the people and companies of Saudi Arabia to realize the bold vision of the Kingdom.”

His Excellency Eng. Abdullah Alswaha, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, added: “This lays the groundwork for a new industrial revolution, anchored in advanced infrastructure, talent and global ambition. This is how Saudi Arabia continues to lead as a partner of choice in shaping the future of AI.”

Our partnership with Nvidia is a bold step forward in realizing the Kingdom’s ambitions to lead in AI and advanced digital infrastructure,” said Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. “Together, we are building the capacity, capability and a new globally enabled community to shape a future powered by intelligent technology and empowered people.”

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• LegoGPT is a new AI model that turns text prompts into Lego designs you can actually build
• LegoGPT uses AI models and physics simulations to generate brick-by-brick instructions
• Carnegie Mellon researchers built LegoGPT as open-source and free to try

If you’ve ever stared at a pile of Lego bricks and despaired at making them match the vision in your head, you may be in luck thanks to a new, free AI tool that turns text prompts into real, buildable Lego designs. Describe what you want to build and the aptly named LegoGPT will produce a step-by-step plan using a limited palette of real Lego bricks, with a handy list of which bricks to use and how many you'll need..

To function in the real world, LegoGPT is notably cautious in its approach. While many AI image generators can comfortably spit out wild 3D shapes with zero regard for the laws of physics, LegoGPT runs every design through a literal physics simulator. It checks for weak points. It identifies problem bricks. And if it finds something unstable, it starts all over, reworks the layout, and tries again. It's like how most AI chatbots are a kind of auto-complete for words, hunting for the right one to add to a sentence. Except LegoGPT is predicting the next brick to auto-build a (digital) Lego model.

With LegoGPT's answers, you can learn how to turn that colorful plastic pile into brick art. You don’t need a PhD in structural engineering or a childhood spent mastering Technic sets, or even the Lego-building robot shown off in a video made by the Carnegie Mellon University researchers behind the new tool.

Brick AI

The magic behind LegoGPT comes from a very large dataset called StableText2Lego. The researchers made the dataset by building more than 47,000 stable Lego structures and pairing them with text captions describing their appearance. Rather than spend months or years on that tedious chore, the researchers roped in OpenAI’s GPT-4o AI model to analyze rendered images of the Lego structures from 24 different angles and come up with a detailed description they could use.

LegoGPT’s code, data, and demos are all publicly available on the researchers’ website and GitHub. There are some caveats. LegoGPT currently only builds with eight standard brick types, all rectangular, and operates inside a 20-brick cubed space. So you’re not getting intricate curved architecture or sprawling castles just yet. Think more early-70s Lego catalog than 4,000-piece Millennium Falcon. Still, the results are fun and very sturdy.

(Image credit: LegoGPT)

The broader implication for generating real-world objects with AI from casual language makes LegoGPT exciting beyond the novelty of making toy blueprints from text descriptions. It promises designs that aren’t just possible, but verified to be physically buildable. This could become a cornerstone of prototyping, architectural modeling, and, of course, a weekend activity for Lego hobbyists. But don't dwell too much on the details. You don’t need to understand the underlying math to enjoy it.

The limitations in size, scope, and brick variety ensure LegoGPT will not replace Lego’s in-house designers anytime soon, but it is a leap toward making design more accessible, playful, and connected to the real world. Also, right now, the system doesn’t care about color, unless you ask it to. The default focus is purely structural. However, the researchers have already added an optional appearance prompt feature that lets you layer on color schemes. So if you want your electric guitar built in metallic purple, go for it.

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Google put on an Android Show today to offer a glimpse at its upcoming interface changes with Android 16, in addition to a slew of Gemini news. It didn’t show off any new devices running the new look; instead, Google offered advice to developers and an explanation of its overall design philosophy. That philosophy seems very… purple.

The new Material 3 Expressive guidelines call for extensive use of color (especially shades of purple and pink), new shapes in a variety of sizes, new motion effects when you take action, and new visual cues that group and contain elements on screen.

A screengrab of examples from Google's Material 3 Expressive blog post (Image credit: Google)

Google says it has done more research on this design overhaul than any other design work it's done since it brought its Material Design philosophy to Android in 2014. It claims to have conducted 46 studies with more than 18,000 participants, but frankly, I’m not a UX designer, so I don’t know if that’s a lot.

Google's Material 3 Expressive is the new look of Android 16

After all of that work, Google has landed on this: Material 3 Expressive. The most notable features, once you get past the bright and – ahem – youthful colors, are the new motion effects.

For instance, when you swipe to dismiss a notification, the object you are swiping will be clear while other objects will blur slightly, making it easier to see. The other notifications nearby will move slightly as you swipe their neighbor. Basically, there will be a lot more organic-looking motion in the interface, especially on swipes and the control levers.

New shapes are coming to Android 16 with Material 3 Expressive (Image credit: Google)

There will be new type styles as well built into Android 16, with the ability to create variable or static fonts. Google is adding 35 more shapes to its interface library for developers to build with, along with an expanded range of default colors.

Google didn’t say that its new Material 3 Expressive design language was targeting iPhone fans, but the hints are there. The next version of Android won’t look cleaner and more organized, instead, Google wants to connect with users on an ‘emotional’ level. According to Google’s own research, the group that loves this new look the most are 18-24 year olds, ie, the iPhone’s most stalwart fan base.

Will this look win over the iPhone's biggest fans? We'll see in the months ahead (Image credit: Google)

In its official blog post, Google says, “It's time to move beyond 'clean' and 'boring' designs to create interfaces that connect with people on an emotional level.” That connection seems to be much stronger among young people. Google says that every age group preferred the new Material 3 Expressive look, but 18-24 year olds were 87% in favor of the new look.

Apple’s iPhone fanbase is strongest in this age group, if not the generation that’s even younger. It makes sense that Google is making big changes to Android. In fact, this refresh may be overdue. We haven’t seen many inspiring new features in smartphones since they started to fold, and foldable phones haven’t exactly caught on. I’m surprised Google waited this long to improve the software, since there wasn’t any huge hardware innovation in the pipeline (temperature sensors, anybody?).

Material 3 Expressive is coming to more than just Android phones

The new Material 3 Expressive look won’t be limited to Android 16. Google says Wear OS 6 will get a similar design refresh, with more colors, motion, and adaptable buttons that change shape depending on your watch display.

Wear OS watches will also be able to use dynamic color themes, just like Android phones. Start with an image or photo and Wear OS will create a matching color theme for your watch to complement what it sees.

Google demonstrated new buttons that grow as they fill more of the Wear OS display (Image credit: Google)

Even Google’s apps will start to look more Expressive. Google says apps like Google Photos and Maps will get an update in the months ahead that will make them look more like Android 16.

Google borrows a few iPhone features for Android 16, including a Lockdown Mode

Google also demonstrated Live Updates, a new feature that borrows from the iPhone to show you the progress of events like an Uber Eats delivery. The iPhone does this in the Dynamic Island, and Google is adding this feature to the top of the Android 16 display.

Security was a big focus of the Android Show, starting with new protections against calling and text message scams. Google is securing its phones against some common scammer tactics. For instance, scammers might call pretending to be from your bank and might ask you to sideload an app.

With Android 16, you won’t be able to disable Google’s Play Protect app-scanner or sideload any apps while you are on a phone call. You also won’t be able to grant permission to the Accessibility features, a common workaround to get backdoor access to a phone.

Google’s Messages app will also get smarter about text message scams. It will filter out scam messages that ask you to pay overdue toll road fees or try to sell you crypto.

The iPhone already has an extreme protection mode called Lockdown (Image credit: Future / Philip Berne)

Google is also enabling Advanced Protection, its own version of Apple’s Lockdown Mode, on Android 16. Advanced Protection is a super high-security mode that offers the highest level of protection against attacks, whether over wireless networks or physically through the USB port.

Basically, if you’re a journalist, an elected official, or some other public figure and you think a government is trying to hack your phone, Google’s Advanced Protection should completely lock your phone against outside threats.

(Image credit: Google)

If you don’t need that much security but you still want more peace of mind, Google is improving its old Find My Device feature. Android 16 will introduce the Find Hub, which will be a much more robust location to track all of your devices, including Android phones, wearables, and accessories that use ultra-wideband (UWB), similar to Apple AirTags.

Google is introducing new UWB capabilities to help find objects nearby, and those will roll out to Motorola’s Moto Tag first in the months ahead. The new Find Hub will also be able to use satellite connectivity to help locate devices and keep users informed. Plus, if you lose your luggage, Google is working directly with certain airlines like British Airways to let you share your tag information so they can go look for the bag they lost.

Gemini is coming to your car... and your TV... and your watch, and...

Today’s Android Show wasn’t all about Android. Google also made some big announcements about Google Gemini. Gemini is coming to a lot more devices. Gemini is coming to Wear OS watches. Gemini is coming to Android Auto and cars that run Google natively.

Gemini is coming to Google TV. Gemini is even coming to Google’s Android XR, a platform for XR glasses that don’t even exist yet (or at least you can’t buy them). For a brief moment in the Android Show, we caught a glimpse of Google's possible upcoming glasses.

Could these be Google's new XR glasses? Hopefully we'll find out at Google I/O (Image credit: Google)

You’ll be able to talk to Gemini Live and have a conversation in your car on the way to work. ‘Hey Gemini, I need advice on asking my boss for a promotion!’ or ‘Hey Gemini, why is my life so empty that I’m talking to a machine in my car when I could be listening to music or a true crime podcast?’

I may sound like an AI skeptic, but Google’s own suggestions are equally dystopian. Google says on the way to your Book Club, you might ask Gemini to summarize that book you read ages ago (and mostly forgot) and suggest discussion topics. That does not sound like a book club I want to join.

Google did not offer any specific timing for any of the features mentioned in the Android Show, and only said these concepts would appear in the months ahead. It’s unusual for Google to share so much news ahead of Google I/O, which takes place May 20-21 near its HQ in Mountain View, CA. I’ll be on the scene at Google I/O with our News Chief Jake Krol to gather up anything new.

With the Pixel 9a launch already passed, and now team Android spilling all the beans, I suspect Google I/O is going to be mostly about AI. Google is getting these tidbits out of the way so that I don’t waste time asking about new phones when it wants to talk more about Gemini and all the new AI developments. Or perhaps, even better, the Android XR news today was just a hint of what’s to come. Stay tuned, we’ll know more next week!

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