The Galaxy Ring is a surprise hit!

Introduction

Introduction

Hey, happy Friday! This week, the Galaxy Ring became much more popular than we thought. Multiple credible rumors are saying that a foldable iPhone is actually coming soon, and open-source AI got two big new shots in the arm. Welcome to the Friday check.

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Galaxy Ring: A Pleasant Surprise

For my first story of the week, here's something that neither I nor, apparently, Samsung expected – the Galaxy Ring is a pretty big hit. According to DLX, Samsung has found that Galaxy Ring demand is so high that it's now making a million units this year, which is 600,000 more than the initially expected quantity of 400,000 units, or about 2.5 times as much as originally planned. DLX says that this was due to the positive reception of the device during the pre-order phase, as the device only just hit shelves this week, so significantly more sales are still expected later. The original ring maker, Oura, says they have sold 2.5 million smart rings so far, so Samsung could potentially lead the entire existing industry pretty quickly with their numbers.

Very early Galaxy Ring reviews have ranged from insanely positive (4.9 out of five stars) to mostly negative takes. So, we can't conclusively say how good it is just yet, but excitement is here. One major selling point seems to be that, at least for now, there is no subscription. This means that despite the fairly high $ 399 price tag, you would still be cheaper off than with an Oura Ring after 17 months, which costs $ 299 plus a $ 6/month subscription. That said, Michal Rahman found in the fine print of the presentation that no subscription fees only apply to currently available Samsung Galaxy features, while for future health features, different terms may apply. Whether that actually means anything yet, we just don’t know.

Either way, the Oura Ring 4 has just leaked via certification photos recently too, so clearly, the Finnish company is gearing up to fight Samsung. It looks like smart rings could become a pretty big product category, and I'd be surprised if other smartphone makers didn’t jump on this bandwagon soon too.

Foldable iPhone Coming Soon

For my second story of the week, some of the most convincing reports so far claim that Apple is pushing for a foldable iPhone by 2026. The Information reports that Apple has settled on a design with an internal nickname "V68,” which indicates that the idea has moved beyond prototyping and is now in proper development. DigiTimes Korea specified that Apple is working with Samsung Display on the device. We’ve also learned that it’s supposed to be a clamshell foldable similar to Samsung’s Flip line. This makes the most sense because a regular flip phone, when opened up, can have the same aspect ratio as a regular iPhone, so all the apps will scale perfectly, which would not be the case with a fold phone where all the apps would have to be a little bit janky at least on day one.

The Korean report also says that due to challenges encountered in the Chinese smartphone market, Apple has reportedly adjusted its plans and may introduce the iPhone Flip as its first foldable product. My reading of this is that China is an extremely important market to Apple. Apple is currently losing market share in China heavily, a country that really likes its foldables. So, Apple probably decided that especially for this market, they really need a foldable competitor.

That said, I think an iPhone Flip will primarily benefit us in the West most because it will force Samsung to finally compete once again. Even as an Android user, I can’t wait for this to happen. If you're wondering, the 15 Plus is the worst-performing new iPhone this year by far, according to Counterpoint, so if Apple chooses to replace any model with a Flip, I bet it would be this one.

Open Source AI Advancements

For my third story of the week, open source might be winning the war for AI with Meta and Mistral both firing really big shots this week. First, Meta unleashed Llama 3.1, an LLM that is apparently as good as other GPT-4 class models but is also open-source. This is based on 15 trillion tokens, has 405 billion parameters, and was trained on more than 16,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. Because it is open-source, you can actually download it and run it on your hardware, unlike all the other competitors that want you to pay for access to an API.

I've just made a video over on TechAltar explaining what running AI models on your machine actually looks like and whether you need an M1 Pro, for example, so you can watch that next if you care. But suffice to say, you’d need way more powerful hardware for running any of the big models than what you’d get in any laptop. What’s really interesting is that on top of just the models, Meta also put out a really long statement about how open source AI is the future, how all the developers are going to adopt it, and how this will dominate the industry going forward. They explained that developers, organizations, and governments prefer open source because they can fine-tune their models to their own use with confidence and also because it lets them avoid being locked into a closed ecosystem. Meta also thinks that open-source will win because it leads to more collaboration and faster development.

That said, Meta is giving away these models for free even though they spent tens of billions of dollars developing them, so I’m still waiting for some second shoe to drop. How are they going to monetize any of this? What is the evil mastermind plan behind all this? Something still has to happen, in my opinion. Also, Mark Zuckerberg has clearly styled himself to appear cool, so this is definitely part of a charm offensive.

Meanwhile, the big original AI competitor to Meta, the French company called Mistral, has also released their new high-end model called Mistral 2 this week, but they actually changed their tune. Mistral 2 is now only licensed as open for non-commercial research users, and for businesses, they now need to obtain a separate license and usage agreement from Mistral, meaning businesses need to pay up. That’s the least I would expect from Meta going forward too.

Release Monitor Update

For the Release Monitor, unfortunately, there were zero interesting new products released this week, so we're moving on right away to the brief.

Other Stories

1. Search GPT: OpenAI has officially semi-launched its search engine, which looks a lot like a text box that will then try to give mostly full answers with small links rather than classic search results. This is a prototype like seemingly every new tech product lately. My account didn’t pass the waiting list, so I can’t try it myself yet, but I bet that every internet publisher and Google absolutely hate this.

2. Apple Maps on the Web: Apple Maps is now available on the web in beta, finally moving off just iOS. You can now theoretically use Apple Maps on Windows if you really wanted to.

3. Google Cancels Cookie Block Plans: Google has canceled its long-standing plans to block third-party cookies in Chrome. This is a massive turnaround considering Firefox and Safari block third-party cookies by default. Google had spent years trying to hype up alternatives to cookies, but none were well received, so Chrome users are stuck with cookies for now.

4. X AI Cluster: Elon and company have turned on 100,000 liquid-cooled H100 GPUs in a cluster for AI, which will be used to train the Groq 3 LLM. This is an absurdly large piece of infrastructure, and for context, the gigantic Llama 3.1 model we talked about was trained on 16,000 GPUs, so this is more than six times that.

5. Intel CPU Issues: Intel has said that it will finally fix the issues plaguing their 13th and 14th gen CPUs with all kinds of crashes. They found the issue and will deliver a microcode patch in mid-August.

6. LEGO's Fortnite Sets: LEGO’s first Fortnite sets are here and consist of a 954-piece Battle Bus kit for $ 100 and a 691-piece Supply Llama for $ 40.

7. Swiss Open-Source Law: The Swiss government announced a new law where all code that the government pays to develop should become open source. Military projects may be exempt, but it's pretty cool.

8. Cybersecurity Vouchers: CrowdStrike, which managed to grind half the world to a halt, sent $ 10 Uber Eats vouchers to its partners to apologize. This act is so stupid since the company’s CEO was called to testify to Congress earlier this week over the company's failings.

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Keywords

• Galaxy Ring
• Samsung
• Oura Ring
• No subscription fees
• Foldable iPhone
• Apple
• Open-source AI
• Meta Llama 3.1
• Mistral 2
• Search GPT
• Apple Maps on the Web
• Google Cookies
• X AI Cluster
• Intel CPU Issues
• LEGO Fortnite Sets
• Swiss Open-Source Law
• CrowdStrike Uber Eats vouchers

FAQs

Q1: What is the price of the Galaxy Ring?

• The Galaxy Ring is priced at $ 399.

Q2: How many units of Galaxy Ring is Samsung planning to make this year?

• Samsung is planning to make one million units this year.

Q3: When can we expect the foldable iPhone to be released?

• The foldable iPhone is expected to be released by 2026.

Q4: Who is Apple collaborating with for the foldable iPhone display?

• Apple is collaborating with Samsung Display for the foldable iPhone.

Q5: What are the new advancements in open-source AI?

• Meta has released Llama 3.1, and Mistral has released Mistral 2.

Q6: What is Search GPT?

• Search GPT is a new search engine by OpenAI that provides full answers with links instead of classic search results.

Q7: What recent change did Apple Maps undergo?

• Apple Maps is now available on the web in beta and can be used on Windows.

Q8: What decision did Google make regarding third-party cookies in Chrome?

• Google decided to cancel its plans to block third-party cookies in Chrome.

Q9: What infrastructure has Elon turned on for AI?

• Elon and his team have turned on a cluster of 100,000 liquid-cooled H100 GPUs for training the Groq 3 LLM.

Q10: What are the new LEGO Fortnite sets?

• The new LEGO Fortnite sets include a 954-piece Battle Bus kit and a 691-piece Supply Llama.