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• One Reddit user accidentally activated Emergency SOS and shared a naked video of themself with their emergency contacts
• This embarrassing (and amusing) story has made some consider turning Emergency SOS off on their Android phone
• You could instead change your SOS settings to make it harder to activate, or set it to not share video and audio

Emergency SOS features on our phones have been cited as being life-saving, but accidental activations could be life-ruining if you have an experience like that of one unlucky Reddit user, who accidentally sent their 12 emergency contacts a naked video of themself. Thankfully, you don’t need to switch the setting off to help you avoid the same embarrassment.

The ordeal occurred over the weekend when, in an effort to switch off their morning phone alarm, user AssistancePretend668 says they accidentally activated Emergency SOS – they suspect by pressing their phone’s power button five times. The alarm became a whirring siren and their phone screen alerted them that it was calling 911 and sending out information to their emergency contacts.

They scrambled to cancel Emergency SOS, but in doing so picked up their phone without knowing the feature starts capturing a video which it then sends to all of their emergency contacts. Combine this with the fact that the user says they sleep without any clothes on, and the result is their contacts were sent a video of their friend completely naked.

If you want a good laugh, the full post on Reddit and the replies in the thread are worth a read – especially knowing that after the situation was explained everyone involved also found it hilarious – but you might well be wondering what you can do to avoid finding yourself in a similar situation.

How to change your Emergency SOS settings

(Image credit: Samsung)

Some obvious, but not overly useful, suggestions would be to switch off Emergency SOS, use a different device as your alarm, or to always sleep with clothes on, but there are some Emergency SOS settings you can change instead to help you avoid disaster.

One is setting your phone to require a secondary action after pressing your power button five times before it goes into emergency mode, instead of this being automatic. On Pixel this requires you to touch and hold an icon on your phone screen for a couple of seconds, while on Samsung this requires you to swipe up on the phone symbol onscreen, as when answering a call.

A second option is to change which details emergency contacts receive. If you’d prefer, you can set it so that your device won’t send audio recordings, pictures, or video of your emergency to contacts. The disadvantage of turning this off is that these auto recordings make it easy to show and explain your situation without needing to type out a bespoke message – so keep that in mind if you are thinking of turning it off.

A third option is changing who's on your emergency contacts list so you limit who receives your details and videos. All three of these settings can be tweaked in your Settings app – search for Emergency SOS and then alter the settings in the Emergency SOS and Emergency Sharing sub-menus.

A final suggestion is to turn on your phone’s ability to switch off an alarm simply by telling it “Stop”. This runs the risk of your still half-asleep self cutting your alarm off early, but because it’s a hands-free approach you won’t run the risk of accidentally inputting your Emergency SOS . Though it can be temperamental, and if “Stop” doesn’t work you will still need to take a more hands-on approach to switching off your alarm.

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• Meta confirms Project Waterworth subsea cable plans
• The cable will span 50,000km and reach around the entire world
• It will be the longest cable in the world – previous record holder was… Meta

Facebook parent company Meta has lifted the wraps off its plans to build an extensive 50,000km subsea cable that will connect five continents and span the entire globe.

The news comes just a few months after we first learned the company had plans to build a subsea cable network at the cost of $10 billion.

Project Waterworth, which Meta says is a multibillion-dollar, multi-year investment, will center around a cable that’s longer than the earth is round.

Meta will build a subsea cable to span the globe

VP for Network Engineering Gaya Nagarajan and Global Head of Network Investments Alex-Handrah Aimé shared in an announcement the cable will become the world’s longest and that it would feature the “highest-capacity technology available.”

Project Waterworth aims to connect the US, India, Brazil, South Africa and “other key regions,” and has been described as an “investment to strengthen the scale and reliability of the world’s digital highways by opening three new oceanic corridors with the abundant, high-speed connectivity needed to drive AI innovation around the world.”

It might be Meta’s biggest, but it’s certainly not its first. The company has developed 20 other cables over the years, including an extended version of its ‘2Africa’ network which was the previous record holder, at 45,000km.

The cable network, which will loop south of Africa and cut through the center of Asia and Australasia, will be laid at depths of up to 7,000m.

Besides giving Meta greater control over its network infrastructure, Nagarajan and Aimé stated that improved connectivity will help provide opportunities for technological development in countries like India, where significant growth and investment in digital infrastructure have already played out.

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• Google Freeplay is axing some TV channels, and bringing back others
• Out TV Proud and Shades of Black both return after a few weeks away
• Freeplay's channel list has still shrunk overall

Google TV users may notice a few changes to the platform’s Freeplay service this month, with a number of free TV channels leaving and arriving in quick succession.

We’re saying goodbye to some seasonal Christmas channels, including Xumo Holiday Movie Channel, Xumo Holiday Classics, and Xumo Christian Christmas – all of which arrived in time for the Christmas season and are unlikely to see much traction for the coming nine months (via 9to5Google). Although, honestly, we all know people who would happily watch those Hallmark holiday movies all year round, don't we…

But for anyone sad about losing some free channels, there is some good news here too. A pair of channels that were removed from Freeplay earlier in February are now returning to the service to make up for it. After a brief absence, Shades of Black – the "Black culture, entertainment and lifestyle" channel formerly known as Fuse Beat – is now back on Freeplay, alongside the LGBTQ+ network Out TV Proud.

These channels were part of a major cull to Google TV’s Freeplay, alongside The Hill TV, Dog Whisperer with Cesar Milan, the Dove Channel, Comedy Dynamics, the Bob Ross Channel, Dazn Ringside, and Dazn Women’s Football. However, it seems like their absence only lasted a couple of weeks, even if the remaining seven channels are still nowhere to be seen. (We’ll miss you, Bob Ross).

Google Freeplay now has around 160 free channels after a major cull earlier in 2025. (Image credit: Google / 9to5google) What's the issue?

Google TV Freeplay is a big perk for US customers using Google’s smart TV operating system, packing in over 160 free channels that cover everything from documentary channels and sports to Bollywood movies and true crime.

2024 saw a steady increase in the number of channels available, eventually peaking around 170, though it seems Google is starting to curate that list a little more intentionally in the new year.

Freeplay is just one of the major players in FAST (Free Ad-supported Streaming Television) these days. TV viewers can now watch oodles of free TV shows and films on the likes of Samsung TV Plus, Pluto TV, Tubi, and The Roku Channel.

As Netflix raises its subscription prices once again, and it becomes even harder to juggle all the best TV shows across a splintered streaming market, many people are embracing free, ad-supported TV that doesn’t put a big monthly dent in their spending budget.

And as long as your favorite channels don’t suddenly disappear, there should still be plenty of Google TV Freeplay for you to enjoy throughout 2025. Let’s just hope Google’s AI news summaries don’t end up replacing them.

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Flagship smartphones are becoming more homogenous with every passing year, but Honor’s latest special edition device, the Porsche Design Honor Magic 7 RSR, stands out like a neon-colored sports car in a public library parking lot.

The third collaboration between Honor and the German design studio after last year’s Magic 6 RSR and the foldable Magic V2 RSR, the Magic 7 RSR is essentially a souped-up version of the Honor Magic 7 Pro, which we described in our review as “an outstanding phone that impresses in almost every area.”

Not content to rest on its laurels, Honor has worked with Porsche Design to sportify the design of the Magic 7 Pro, but it’s also thrown in some important spec upgrades to justify the RSR’s £1,549 (around $1,950 / AU$3,050) price tag – one of which blows the iPhone 16 Pro Max, Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, and more of the best phones out of the water.

On the aesthetic front, the Magic 7 RSR features a sleek design that’s inspired, of course, by Porsche cars, specifically the Taycan Turbo S. The phone’s distinctive hexagonal camera module resembles Porsche’s iconic headlight design, and a streamlined Peak Line makes the RSR look like it’s been built for a wind tunnel.

As for colors, the Magic 7 RSR is available in Agate Grey and Provence, and we were sent the second of those two shades for the unboxing video above.

Away from the phone’s design, the Honor Magic 7 RSR improves on the standard Magic 7 Pro by offering a massive 24GB of RAM (yes, 24GB of RAM) and 1TB of storage. For context, that’s double the amount of RAM you’ll find in the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and equal to the max storage capacities available for both the Ultra and the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

In fact, if you were to combine the respective RAM capacities of the Galaxy S25 Ultra (12GB) and iPhone 16 Pro Max (8GB), the Magic 7 RSR would still offer 4GB more. Admittedly, there are almost no smartphone tasks that require 24GB of RAM (here’s an explanation of what RAM is used for in smartphones), but kudos to Honor for future-proofing the Magic 7 RSR to such an absurd degree.

The Honor Magic 7 RSR in Agate Grey (left) and Provence (right) (Image credit: Honor)

The Chinese mobile maker has boosted the Magic 7 RSR’s camera system, too. Compared to its standard sibling, the new phone gets a larger telephoto aperture – which Honor says is the largest in the whole smartphone industry – and an upgraded LiDAR Matrix Autofocus System for improved focusing accuracy and tracking range.

The brand also says the RSR features “additional dual electromagnetic focus actuators for precision,” which sounds like something out of a James Bond movie.

All told, then, the Porsche Design Honor Magic 7 RSR is an absolute beast of a smartphone. Sure, it’s expensive, but no more so than the 1TB version of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and it’s actually cheaper than the 1TB version of the iPhone 16 Pro Max, despite offering significantly more RAM. Heck, by that metric, it’s basically a bargain!

The Honor Magic 7 RSR is available now in the UK and Europe.

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• Users are reporting charging issues with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and S25 Plus
• The problem seems to stem from using a 5A USB-C cable with a 45W charger
• Samsung claims to be working on a fix, but in the meantime, there are several possible temporary solutions

If you’re the lucky owner of a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra or Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus, you may have encountered an issue that's left you feeling not so lucky. Users are reporting that these devices are charging far slower than the advertised 45W speed, or in some cases, not charging at all.

There are reports of this problem on Reddit and Samsung’s own community forums (as spotted by Android Police), but both the culprit and a temporary solution seem to have been identified.

Most of the charging issues seem to be encountered by people using Samsung’s 45W charger in tandem with the 5A USB-C cable that comes included with the Galaxy S25. However, in a post on X, Samsung Italia has suggested that using the included 3A cable, instead, should solve the problem.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future) A software solution

It’s not clear whether this solution is working for everyone or not, but hopefully a more permanent fix will arrive soon; in the same post, Samsung Italia said that the issue would be fixed with a future software update.

Since that post, the first software update has started rolling out to the Samsung Galaxy S25 series, and it mentions improvements to charging, though doesn’t say whether this bug, in particular, has been squashed.

So, if you’ve encountered this issue, be sure to download this update – in fact, you should do that anyway, as it includes other bug fixes and security patches too.

If that doesn’t work, see if switching to a 3A cable helps. Some posts suggest you could also try using a slower charging brick or turning off the super-fast charging feature on your Galaxy S25 device, and if all else fails, you could always switch to using wireless charging until there’s a proper fix.

But if you have a Samsung Galaxy S25, specifcially – rather than an S25 Plus or Ultra – you shouldn’t have to do anything, as the base model appears unaffected – presumably because its charging speed tops out at 25W rather than 45W.

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