“Project Infinity” is made up of several task forces that make sure the billions of Galaxy smartphone users around the world are safe from the ever-increasing threat of cybercrime.

A Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) taskforce and three separate teams—Red, Blue, and Purple—are at the centre of Project Infinity. These organisations work in secret to stop and lessen cyberattacks, operating throughout the world in nations like Brazil, Poland, and Vietnam.

From proactive threat detection to developing and implementing defensive measures, each team has a distinct role. The public is largely unaware of their work; it only becomes apparent when the user’s device receives a security patch.

By spotting possible cyber threats, the CTI task force makes sure that hackers can’t take advantage of weaknesses in Galaxy devices. In search of evidence of illegal activity, such as malware or stolen data, the team searches the Deep Web and Dark Web.

The team can detect and eliminate threats while working with other departments to implement security updates by examining system behaviours, such as odd data requests or suspicious network traffic.

“Occasionally, we engage in security research by simulating real-world transactions. We closely monitor forums and marketplaces for mentions of zero-day or N-day exploits targeting Galaxy devices, as well as any leaked intelligence that could potentially serve as an entry point for system infiltration,” Justin Choi, Vice President and Head of the Security Team, Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics said, as reported by TechRadar.

The Red and Blue teams at Samsung’s security operation mimic attacks and defences, respectively, to emulate military-style strategies. Through techniques like “fuzzing,” which involves throwing random data at software, these professionals can find hidden vulnerabilities that might otherwise go unnoticed. The Blue team, on the other hand, works tirelessly to develop and implement patches that protect against these vulnerabilities.

The Purple team combines the expertise of both Red and Blue teams, focusing on critical areas of Galaxy’s security infrastructure. They also work with external security researchers to ensure no potential weak spot goes unnoticed.

The post Project Infinity: All you need to know about Samsung’s classified security operation appeared first on International Finance.

According to a statement from Samsung SDI, the two businesses will invest roughly USD 3.55 billion to construct a battery cell manufacturing facility with an initial production capacity of 27 gigawatt hours (GWh).

Shares of Samsung SDI rose as much as 3.2% in morning trade, versus benchmark KOSPI’s 0.3% fall.

GM and Samsung SDI first revealed the plan in April 2023, announcing that the joint venture would require over USD 3 billion, have a 30 GWh production capacity, and start operations in 2026.

The joint plant is expected to reach mass production in 2027, and expansion plans could potentially increase annual capacity to 36 GWh, according to the South Korean battery manufacturer.

The CEO of Samsung SDI and Kurt Kelty, the General Motors vice president of battery cell and pack, said they had met to complete the battery joint venture.

Kelty said the plant will have the “capability to expand up to 36 GWh, building prismatic cells, which will be added to our battery technology portfolio, helping us to continue to increase performance and lower costs in the future.”

GM stated last year that production lines for both cylindrical and prismatic cells rich in nickel were anticipated at the Indiana facility.

As the automaker relies on demand from its gasoline-powered models, GM lowered its annual forecast for EV production in June. GM revised down its earlier estimate of 300,000 units to 250,000 units as the upper end of its 2024 electric vehicle production.

Meanwhile, in an effort to stave off competition from Chinese competitors, Samsung claims that it will offer seven years’ worth of Tizen operating system updates for its more recent AI-powered TVs.

The post Samsung finalises deal with General Motors to build joint battery factory in US appeared first on International Finance.

The funds will be used to expand the start-up’s business in Saudi Arabia, along with accelerating its plans for AI chip development. Rebellions also aims to establish a subsidiary in the Gulf nation, apart from launching new business operations in the region.

Founded in 2020, Rebellions specialises in AI inference accelerators that offer energy efficiency and low-latency performance. Within three years of its formation, the company has introduced two AI chips, with its third ready to be rolled out in the second half of 2024.

Rebellions completed its USD 124 million Series B funding this January, and with this extension, has now secured over USD 225 million in total funding since inception.

In today’s episode of the “Start-up of the Week,” International Finance will talk in detail about the venture.

Knowing Rebellions

The tech start-up is driven by generative AI and situated at the heart of the “Korean Silicon Ecosystem.” In 2023, the start-up made a thunderous entry into the AI chip market, by unveiling its maiden product, which was powered by a cutting-edge 5nm technology. Since then, the venture has made its presence felt, from Seoul to New York, San Jose, Tokyo, Singapore, and beyond, as it expanded its footprint on a war footing.

As per Park Sung-hyun, co-founder and CEO of Rebellions, what the start-up brings on table is its focus on developing more energy-efficient chips solely dedicated to AI services. And investors have been receptive towards the idea, as reflected in the successful funding rounds since the venture’s inception.

Rebellions was founded by a group of chip experts who worked at global tech companies like Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Intel and IBM. Park himself built his career at Intel Labs, Samsung Research America, SpaceX and Morgan Stanley.

The start-up drew immediate attention from the nation’s fabless industry when it released its first chip for AI-based stock trading, called ION, in November 2021. The chip is now widely adopted by several Wall Street investment firms, including Soft Bank-backed Qraft Technologies.

Another breakthrough came in 2023 as Rebellions launched another AI chip for data centres, named ATOM, to compete against American chip giant Nvidia, the dominant market leader with an almost 90% market share. It is also the first Korea-made large language model chip.

The company’s competitive edge has been its focus on developing a neural processing unit, a more power-efficient machine learning accelerator, than a graphic processing unit that is more widely produced by its bigger rivals, including Nvidia.

In June 2022, the South Korean government unveiled its plans to foster a domestic industry, investing 1.2 trillion won over the next five years for research and development in a bid to increase the market share of local AI chips in domestic data centres to 80% by 2030. Rebellions now look to take centre stage of this transformation effort.

In October 2023, Rebellions announced a strategic partnership with Samsung Electronics to co-develop their next-generation AI chip, Rebel. The chip will be produced using Samsung’s cutting-edge 4-nanometre fabrication process and will feature Samsung Electronics’ HBM3E memory technology.

Entering The Rebellions Ecosystem

Rebellions’ small yet powerful chips have the potential to be the game-changers across diverse fields, from finance to hyperscale data centres, as AI dawns further. Talking about Rebellions’ next-generation AI chip REBEL, will be a chiplet-based AI accelerator, specially engineered to enhance Large Language Models (LLMs) and Multi-Modal Models (MMMs).

Samsung and Rebellions aim to complete the development of Rebel by the 2024 end and start mass production in 2025, with the next-generation AI chip targeting the generative AI market running large language models (LLMs) and hyperscalers.

Since Samsung, South Korea’s largest memory chip maker, has been working on its own generative AI model, Samsung Gauss, the partnership with Rebellions and the development of REBEL will be equally helpful for the tech giant’s market prospects.

Next, we have ATOM, which is an inference AI accelerator for data centres. ATOM is basically a fast and power-efficient System-on-Chip for AI inference with remarkably low latency, conceived for deployment in data centres or cloud service providers.

The product is a versatile yet energy-efficient AI system-on-chip, delivering top performances across various types of AI tasks like computer vision, natural language processing and recommendation models. Utilising the silicon-proven neural core ION as the compute granule that scales up with perfect linearity, ATOM has become the optimal chip for large-scale inference required in edge computing and data centres.

ATOM is poised to be a pivotal enabler for server-level AI services, optimising the AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS) stack. As a multi-core System-on-Chip (SoC), the chip has been built upon dataflow architecture to deliver superior inference performance.

Using Samsung’s advanced EUV process node, ATOM has been delivering improved performance, reduced power consumption and enhanced energy efficiency. Geared with PCIe Gen5, GDDR6 and high-speed I/O, ATOM has transformed itself as the optimal AI accelerator to serve different markets, spanning from edge computers to data centres.

In fact, ATOM has shown impressive results across both vision and language models, outperforming Qualcomm and NVIDIA, respectively. The chip is built on the small yet powerful silicon-proven AI core ION, which, with its Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Architecture (CGRA), is flexible, programmable, and scalable. This design allows ATOM to handle networks with varying depths and complexities, from small applications to hyperscale services, all while maximising energy efficiency.

The product is a multi-core “System-on-Chip,” consolidating all essential components onto a unified substrate. The communication overhead within the chip is masterfully handled via on-chip data dependency handling. It can also accelerate different types of neural networks, including Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and transformers-based models.

ATOM can be partitioned to support up to 16 separate jobs simultaneously, with each job isolated at both the hardware and software levels. The chip’s “Multi-Instance Feature” allows higher resource usage and flexibility, optimising utilisation and performance.

Meet Rebellions’ ION

The chip we are going to talk about now, in the start-up’s words, will revolutionise the high-frequency trading market.

Being a “Scalable AI Compute Core” product, ION is a “Compute Granule with Maximum Flexibility and Efficiency.” It provides flexible inference capabilities with low power consumption, a small footprint, and high performance for edge computing systems.

Featuring a customised instruction set architecture (ISA) designed for over 1,000 multiply-and-accumulate (MAC) units, ION delivers inference acceleration with an exceptionally high utilisation rate compared to other AI accelerators. ION’s versatility, compact size, and low power requirements make it the optimal choice for edge deployments.

Powered by ION’s hardware and software full-stack implementation, LightTrader, the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) integrating multiple chips, has been deployed in high-frequency trading (HFT) solutions at Wall Street-based investment banks. LightTrader achieves up to 60x AI-enabled HFT performance, instantly upgrading any HFT solution to a more intelligent trading system.

ION achieves up to 10x more performance-per-watt figure even in comparison against the state-of-the-art mobile Neural Processing Units (NPUs). This makes the product ideal for various applications including mobile companion chips, smart cities, robots and retail.

When it comes to its practical applications in the financial market, ION brings its game-changing “Innovative Trading Solution Architecture” into the play.

“The first-generation Compute Core ION supports FP16-based accurate stock prediction, utilising the single batch inference and predictive execution pipelines. ION also supports BFloat16 and low precision integer operations such as INT8/4/2,” Rebellions noted.

Promising Future Ahead

Apart from Samsung, Rebellions has also been in a partnership with Synopsys, another global tech venture. Synopsys, which is dedicated to empowering its customers with cutting-edge tools and technologies that drive innovation and excellence, has found a worthy customer in the form of a South Korean start-up.

The collaboration centres on Synopsys’ ZeBu emulation, Virtualizer, and VCS solutions, vital tools in the chip design and software development process. ZeBu together with Virtualizer enables Rebellions to emulate and verify the functionality of its AI accelerators executing AI workloads in a virtual environment, significantly speeding up the validation process.

Rebellions is facing a dual challenge: designing innovative AI accelerators and then validating their functionality and performance at scale. The ZeBu platform plays a pivotal role here by allowing Rebellions’ engineers to emulate complex workloads while fostering a mature full-stack software environment from the early stages. This approach not only reduces time-to-market but also enhances the reliability of the final product.

Rebellions, which is targeting expansion into key international markets such as Japan, the United States, and the Middle East, has been participating in global AI summits and conferences, in order to establish a global footprint and foster new partnerships. Through the partnership with Synopsys, Rebellions is enhancing the performance and reliability of its AI accelerators, apart from accelerating their path to market readiness. Rebellions partnerships with Samsung and Synopsys will not only help the start-up to navigate the complexities of AI chip design and meet the evolving demands of global IT markets, but the venture may also become a tech sector disruptor in the coming days.

The post Start-up of the Week: Rebellions is here to ‘Reimagine AI Compute’ appeared first on International Finance.

Apple increased by 0.2% while Microsoft gained 1%. According to LSEG data, Microsoft’s market capitalisation reached its highest point ever at USD 2.887 trillion at that point. Apple’s market value, as determined by statistics in a filing on January 11, was USD 2.875 trillion.

Apple’s stock has dropped 3% in 2024 due to concerns about smartphone demand, despite a 48% increase in value in 2023. After soaring 57% in 2023, thanks in part to its leadership in generative artificial intelligence through an investment in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, Microsoft is up roughly 3% year to date.

As per LSEG, on December 14, 2023, Apple’s market capitalisation reached its highest point of USD 3.081 trillion.

Microsoft’s adoption of OpenAI’s technology throughout its productivity software line contributed to a growth in the company’s cloud computing division during the July–September 2023 quarter. It’s the artificial intelligence (AI) leadership that has also made it possible to counter Google’s hegemony in online search.

Apple, on the other hand, has been battling weak demand, particularly for its cash cow, the iPhone. As the economy of China, a significant market slowly recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic and a resurgent Huawei eats away at its market position, demand in that country has fallen.

Starting on February 2 in the United States, Apple’s Vision Pro mixed-reality headset will be available for purchase. This is the company’s largest product launch since the 2007 release of the iPhone. However, according to a forecast released this week by UBS, Vision Pro sales in 2024 would only have a “relatively immaterial” impact on Apple’s earnings per share.

Several times since 2018, Microsoft has momentarily surpassed Apple to become the world’s most valuable corporation. The most recent instance occurred in 2021 when the stock price of the iPhone manufacturer was negatively impacted by worries about supply chain bottlenecks brought on by the COVID-19 epidemic.

When comparing the prices of these tech stocks to their predicted earnings—a popular metric used to value publicly traded companies—they appear to be rather pricey. LSEG data shows that Apple is trading at a forward PE of 28, significantly higher than its average of 19 over the previous ten years. Microsoft is trading above its 10-year average of 24 times forward earnings, at about 32 times.

Due to the poor demand for iPads and wearable, Apple’s holiday quarter sales estimate for the quarter ended in November 2023 fell short of Wall Street’s forecasts in the company’s most recent quarterly report.

LSEG reports that analysts expect Apple to report revenue for the December quarter of USD 117.9 billion, up 0.7% on average. Its first sales growth year over year in four quarters would occur at that point. Apple releases its earnings on February 1.

When Microsoft reports in the upcoming weeks, analysts anticipate it will post revenue up 16% to USD 61.1 billion, driven by the company’s continuing rise in the cloud business.

Not All Is Over For Apple

Although Microsoft now holds the title of largest American public business again, Apple has reclaimed the distinction for the first time, an honour that no one can snatch away from the Tim Cook-led venture.

Based on shipments, the consumer electronics giant was the biggest supplier of smartphones in 2023, as per recent statistics from market research firm IDC. During the year, Apple shipped 234.6 million smartphones, more than Samsung, which shipped 226.6 million.

IDC data indicates that Apple has never before occupied the top position. Furthermore, 2023 was the first time since 2010 that a business other than Samsung held the role.

Apple’s rise occurred amid a difficult year for the smartphone market as a whole, with industry shipments falling 3.2%. Of the top four phone manufacturers, Apple was the only one to record higher shipments, with a 3.7% year-over-year improvement.

On January 16, reports emerged about Apple being the number one smartphone brand in the world, overtaking Samsung for the first time in twelve years.

According to data released by the International Data Corporation (IDC), Apple sold more smartphones than any other brand in 2023 commanding a hefty 20.1% cumulative market share globally. Samsung’s market share during the same period was 19.4%.

With 80.5 million units, the corporation easily led the market and witnessed an increase in shipments of 11.6% in the fourth quarter of the calendar year, according to IDC. With 53 million shipments throughout the quarter, Samsung came in second, down 10.9%.

Two Chinese firms, Xiaomi and Transsion, ranked third and fourth respectively, with 40.7 million shipments (up 22.7%) and 28.2 million shipments (up 68.6).

When Apple releases its earnings after the markets close on February 1, it will provide its perspective on the December quarter.

Despite certain investor concerns regarding Apple’s positioning, the business maintains a strong position in IDC’s tables. Concerns about Huawei and other Chinese manufacturers resurfacing have been voiced by some on Wall Street, and Apple has scheduled an exceptional sale in China for the Lunar New Year vacation.

Apple’s stock fell 1.2% on 16th January and has lost 4.6% so far in 2024. After falling below Microsoft MSFT, +0.46%, which concluded the trading day with a USD 2.9 trillion valuation, the company now has a USD 2.84 trillion market worth.

IDC did point out that Apple continues to hold a commanding lead in the smartphone industry.

“The growing trend of premium devices, which now account for over 20% of the market and are driven by aggressive trade-in offers and interest-free financing plans, is in large part responsible for Apple’s continued success and resilience,” Popal said.

Conclusion

Microsoft is on top for now despite Apple’s absolute conquest of the smartphone segment. However, watchdogs in the European Union may look into Microsoft’s USD 13 billion investments in OpenAI, though.

Recent disclosures of extensive ties between Microsoft and OpenAI have prompted the European Commission to assess whether the relationship merits more examination under merger regulations. If found to be impeding fair competition, this evaluation could result in a formal enquiry and termination.

The post IF Insights: Making sense of Microsoft beating Apple to become most-valued company appeared first on International Finance.

Samsung will produce the Tesla Hardware 5 (HW 5.0) chip, but the South Korean tech giant won’t be the only manufacturer to have access to this market.

According to industry insiders cited by KED Global, fully autonomous EVs will ideally be powered by Tesla’s HW 5.0 chip in three to four years. And the American automaker apparently consented to include Samsung in the initiative.

Samsung will use its 4nm node to produce Tesla’s HW 5.0 chips. Though, the big Korean tech company won’t be operating alone. In 2022, Tesla reportedly agreed to a deal with TSMC to manufacture HW 5.0 chips. But officials say ‘splitting next-generation chip production between the two is more likely.’

Analysing the development, experts said that having two vendors rather than relying on a single chipmaker is logistically advantageous. They also believe that Samsung boss Lee Jae-yong’s encounter with his Tesla counterpart in May 2023 played a role in this latest development.

Tesla previously received processors from Samsung for the electric Model 3, Model 5, X and Y vehicles. Lee Jae-yong’s visit in May would have succeeded, with the goal of enhancing the relationship between the two businesses. Elon Musk was reportedly given a favourable offer for the HW 5.0 contract pricing from Lee Jae-yong ‘that he could not refuse.’

Within the next three to four years, Tesla will likely implement HW 5.0 chips in its EVs to enable Level-5 full automation. The highest level of automation is Level 5, where no human involvement or attention is needed for a vehicle to do all driving responsibilities automatically in any situation.

Meanwhile, Samsung’s R&D team at SAIT (Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology) completed a Level-4 autonomous test that was ‘driver-free’ in May.

Elon Musk also said that Tesla was planning to licence its Full Self-Driving (FSD) driver-assist technology to another “major automaker”.

“We’re not trying to keep this to ourselves. We’re more than happy to licence it to others,” Elon Musk reportedly stated.

Tesla has also started production of the Dojo supercomputer to train its fleet of autonomous vehicles.

“We are developing each of these pillars in-house. This month, we are taking a step towards faster and cheaper neural net training with the start of production of our Dojo training computer,” the company remarked.

Dojo training computers will process massive amounts of data, including videos from Tesla cars, for developing self-driving car software.

The electric vehicle maker already has a large Nvidia GPU-based supercomputer, but the new Dojo custom-built computer will be using Tesla-designed chips.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is now prioritizing sales over profits in hopes that Tesla’s elusive full self-driving software would eventually burnish margins, a plan that could deepen an already fierce price war in the electric-vehicle industry, reported Reuters.

“The short-term variances in gross margin and profitability really are minor relative to the long-term picture. Autonomy will make all of these numbers look silly,” the Tesla chief said.

The post Level-5 EVs with autonomous driving principles: Tesla gears up for the future appeared first on International Finance.

OpenAI has launched a bug bounty programme for ChatGPT and other products, saying the initial priority rating for most findings will use the ‘Bugcrowd Vulnerability Rating Taxonomy’.

“Our rewards range from $200 for low-severity findings to up to USD 20,000 for exceptional discoveries. However, vulnerability priority and reward may be modified based on likelihood or impact at OpenAI’s sole discretion. In cases of downgraded issues, researchers will receive a detailed explanation,” the AI research company said.

The security researchers, however, are not reportedly authorised to conduct security testing on plugins created by other people.

OpenAI is also asking ethical hackers to safeguard its confidential corporate information that may be exposed through third parties.

Some examples in this category include Google Workspace, Asana, Trello, Jira, Monday.com, Zendesk, Salesforce and Stripe.

“You are not authorised to perform additional security testing against these companies. Testing is limited to looking for confidential OpenAI information while following all laws and applicable terms of service. These companies are examples, and OpenAI does not necessarily do business with them,” informed the company.

In March 2023, OpenAI admitted that some users’ payment information may have been exposed when it took ChatGPT offline owing to a bug.

According to the company, it took ChatGPT offline due to a bug in an open-source library which allowed some users to see titles from another active user’s chat history.

OpenAI discovered that the same bug may have caused the unintentional visibility of “payment-related information of 1.2% of the ChatGPT Plus subscribers who were active during a specific nine-hour window”.

It found a Redis client open-source library bug behind the ChatGPT outage and data leak, where users saw other users’ personal information and chat queries.

ChatGPT displays a history of historical queries the users made in the sidebar, allowing the latter to click on one and regenerate a response from the chatbot.

During the last week of March 2023, numerous ChatGPT users reportedly saw other people’s chat queries listed in their history.

“The bug was discovered in the Redis client open-source library, redis-py. As soon as we identified the bug, we reached out to the Redis maintainers with a patch to resolve the issue,” the company said after carrying out an analysis of the whole fiasco.

This exposed information included subscribers’ names, email addresses, payment addresses, and the last four digits of their credit card numbers and expiration dates.

“Upon deeper investigation, we also discovered that the same bug may have caused the unintentional visibility of payment-related information of 1.2% of the ChatGPT Plus subscribers who were active during a specific nine-hour window,” OpenAI report stated.

“In the hours before we took ChatGPT offline on Monday (March 20), it was possible for some users to see another active user’s first and last name, email address, payment address, the last four digits (only) of a credit card number, and credit card expiration date. Full credit card numbers were not exposed at any time,” The company remarked further.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman too apologized for the leaks.

“We had a significant issue in ChatGPT due to a bug in an open-source library, for which a fix has now been released and we have just finished validating. a small percentage of users were able to see the titles of other users’ conversation history,” he stated in a tweet.

Then in another incident, Samsung employees got into trouble after they reportedly leaked sensitive confidential company information to ChatGPT on at least three occasions.

As per Korean media reports, a Samsung employee copied the source code from a faulty semiconductor database into ChatGPT and asked it to help them find a fix. Then in another incident, another staffer shared confidential code to try and find a fix for defective equipment, followed by another individual reportedly submitting an entire meeting to the chatbot and asking it to create meeting minutes.

Following these incidents, Samsung put in place an “emergency measure” limiting each employee’s prompt to ChatGPT to 1024 bytes. All these leaks happened three weeks after Samsung lifted a previous ban on its employees using ChatGPT. The incidents have forced the tech giant now to develop its own in-house AI.

The post Find coding flaws, earn cash: ChatGPT’s new offer for cybersecurity researchers appeared first on International Finance.

Due to a drop in capacity, the 1TB and 2TB SSDs would no longer be fully functional. Several users have already reported this without necessarily filling the whole disc.

While the M.2 solid-state drives are reporting rapid degradation, some users have been sending their 990 Pros back to Samsung. And for the older 980 Pro, Samsung is reportedly recommending owners update to the latest firmware.

“Stands behind the quality of its SSDs, including the new NVMe M.2 SSD 990 PRO,” the company said in a statement. However, it admitted that it was aware of some examples of health decline and pledged to look into them.

The issue was first reported by Neowin writer Robbie Khan, whose recently released 990 Pro 2TB module dropped to 94% health status at just over 4TB of written data. Robbie Khan also posted the findings on Reddit, which was met with owners voicing similar issues.

As per the reports from ‘The Verge’, Robbie Khan decided to file a ticket with Samsung to get this resolved. Details sent to the company included the health and read/write values of the drive using CrystalDiskInfo (a program that can read the SMART data embedded in most hard disks). The drive was sent to Samsung RMA but was subsequently returned by the company which also claimed about finding no defects.

After the Neowin article came out, Samsung RMA offered to replace and test the SSD, but it was already returned to the store. Other owners are experiencing similar cases, including ExtremeTech writer Ryan Whitwam, whose 1TB Samsung 990 Pro dropped to 93% health at just over 2TB of written data.

A Twitter user claimed that the individual’s 2TB 990 Pro is down to only 64% health with just over 2TB of written data.

One moderator on Samsung’s community page did, however, hint that a fix is coming soon. But, unfortunately, the company hasn’t made an official statement or released any further information about the 990-Pro problem.

AlwinS responded to a user who claimed their health had declined over two months, “The development department coworkers have already noticed the behaviour. We are looking into the suspicious activity and will let you know if we find anything. We’re sorry if using the Samsung 990 PRO causes you any discomfort.”

DavidB, another forum administrator, says that a possible problem has been found because Samsung’s experts made the error happen “under certain conditions of use.”

DavidB added, “Samsung is anticipated to release a software upgrade in February to address the issue.”

Even though many people are disappointed that such a well-known brand let them down, the turnaround time for this specific issue is expected to be around a month from notification to patch.

News of SSD failure comes at a time when Samsung witnesses an almost 69 drop in quarterly operating profits as its memory chip business took a hit due to falling prices stemming from oversupply and falling demand.

The post Amid drop in profits, now Samsung faces SSD embarrassment appeared first on International Finance.

You want to spend less money on purchasing a smartphone but at the same time, you want the best of the lot. For that, check out the following to know how to purchase a good smartphone without having to burn a hole in your pocket.

Buy a smartphone directly from the manufacturer
The best way to purchase a smartphone for less cost is to buy directly buy from the manufacturer.

When purchased from their official websites, an iPhone or an HTC One X is normally sold SIM-free. Although buying a smartphone directly from the manufacturer may seem pricey at first, there are additional benefits such as having twice the storage, getting easy support, a guarantee of returns, and the brand’s reliability.

Purchase from online websites
Some of the most popular online websites for buying a smartphone are Amazon, Flipkart, Play, John Lewis, Clove, Expansys, etc.

A great approach to saving money is to purchase a smartphone online, especially if you have access to online coupons, vouchers, or discount codes. Comparing pricing is possible, and online vendors typically provide mobile phones at lower costs than other suppliers.

Buy from a mobile operator
If you want a SIM-free handset, you may only purchase it straight from the manufacturer or via an internet store. However, you can just buy a smartphone from a mobile provider if you wish to buy the device and pay for a plan. The majority of carriers include free phones with their plans, but the drawback is that you might have to sign a binding two-year contract. The ‘Big Four’ carriers in the United States include AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile.

Pick the right OS for your smartphone
When purchasing a smartphone, your primary concern should be your needs as a mobile phone user, not simply cost-effectiveness. The proper operating system is among the most crucial factors to take into account in this. Your top three choices for operating systems are Android, iOS, or Windows Phone.

Have an eye for the best smartphone deals
In September, new smartphones are typically unveiled by Apple, Samsung, Motorola, and Sony. Keep in mind that carriers typically push you to sign two-year contracts in order to receive the most recent smartphone model from a certain manufacturer. You may probably find the most recent Samsung mobile phone at a reduced price if you wait three or six months after it is released on the market.

Go for an installment
When purchasing a smartphone, inquire with your carrier about any installment plans to save money. The majority of them provide options where you sign a two-year contract and pay for the cost of your new equipment in monthly installments. Ensure there are no activation or upgrade fees.

Don’t opt for features that you don’t use
Skip on that amazing phone with the 20-megapixel camera if you don’t even have an Instagram account or take a lot of selfies. Skip the things that you might not utilise but will cost more in the long run to save money.

Never buy a phone with low battery life
There’s no logic behind having a phone that has tons of GB of data in your mobile browsing plan if your smartphone’s battery won’t even last long. Check the power that your smartphone will deliver after just one charge to get the most for your money. A smartphone with a 3,000 mAh battery life is a fantastic standard to aim for as it will provide you with more than 13 hours of power.

Having old smartphones: Recycle them
Think about recycling your old smartphone. Use websites like Glyde, Gazelle, NextWorth, or even Amazon.com to trade in your old phone if you simply want to update it and it’s in decent condition. Gift cards are another option for manufacturers like Apple and stores like Best Buy, Walmart, and Target when trading in outdated gadgets like smartphones.

Check for what you need: Don’t overpay on smartphone plans
If you want to text instead of call, get a mobile plan that offers unlimited SMS. Look for a plan with ample phone minutes for your monthly consumption if you frequently call your contacts. You don’t have to pay more for unlimited data if you don’t use mobile browsing that much. Remember that you only need to pay for the things you regularly use and actually need to have a cheap smartphone plan; otherwise, you won’t save any money.

The post Top 10 ways to buy a smartphone with less money appeared first on International Finance.

After being accepted by the Unicode Consortium, the new emojis that Emojipedia has released will start appearing on Android and iPhone smartphones, as well as in social media apps like WhatsApp. Let’s take a look at the upcoming emojis.

New emoji in 2022

Last year, a total of 114 new emojis with the Emoji 14.0, and this year the number is 31 with the Emoji 15.0. The highest number of emojis were published in Emoji 13.1 with the addition of 217 emojis. Further, this year’s list will not include any emojis. The report from Emojipedia reveals that in Emoji 14.0, there were 18 emojis, and the highest number of emojis were introduced with Emoji 13.1.

These emojis are — Shaking Face, Light Blue Heart, Grey Heart, Pink Heart, Rightwards Pushing Hand (with five skin tones), Leftwards Pushing Hand (with five skin tones), Moose, Donkey, Wing, Goose, Jellyfish, Ginger, Hyacinth, Pea Pod, Folding Hand Fan, Hair Pick, Maracas, Flute, Khanda, Wireless, and Black Bird.

However, before the final edition of these emojis is available somewhere in September of this year, the Unicode Consortium needs to approve this document before it can be implemented by companies like Google, Apple, Samsung, Meta, and Microsoft on their platforms.

Image Credit: Emojipedia

The post New emojis for iOS, Android users appeared first on International Finance.

Recently, the South Korean tech giant, anticipated an increase in operating profit of 11.4% from the same period last year.

Revenue growth over the previous year is anticipated to be 20.9% for the months of April through June.

Government stimulus programs and adjustments from the epidemic era helped Samsung, which saw a substantial increase in demand for its memory chips, cellphones, and televisions.

However, when consumers cut back on spending as the price of basic necessities rises, demand across the tech sector is starting to decline from such furious levels.

Samsung reported its highest-ever quarterly sales of 77.8 trillion won in the first few months of 2022 while operating profits increased by 50%.

The value of the company’s shares has decreased by about 28% from the year’s beginning.

Samsung will provide its full results in a later month. For the quarter that concluded on June 30, it anticipates an operating profit of 14 trillion South Korean won, or about USD 10.7 billion.

This is in contrast to the 12.6 trillion won for the same quarter last year. According to the corporation, revenue will increase to 77 trillion won from 63.7 trillion won in the previous year.

S&P Global Market Intelligence’s survey of analysts found that they anticipated 14.6 trillion won in operating profit and 76.9 trillion earned in total sales.

Due to its dual role as a producer of electronics and a supplier of parts to competitors like Apple Inc., Samsung, the world’s top manufacturer of semiconductors and smartphones, is regarded as a bellwether for the tech sector.

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