Category: Technology

The Company’s MX business shares the progress on its commitment
to do more with less through Galaxy for the Planet

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announces today that it has made progress towards achieving the 2025 sustainability goals for the MX (Mobile eXperience) Business. Key initiatives include developing and incorporating recycled materials into products, designing more eco-conscious packaging, nd giving new life to older Samsung Galaxy devices to reduce e-waste.

Since announcing the Galaxy for the Planet vision at Unpacked in August 2021, Samsung has worked diligently to create new ways to recycle and repurpose resources that would otherwise become harmful waste, minimize its environmental footprint, and inspire innovation that helps preserve the planet. Today, Samsung is sharing the progress so far on its sustainability journey.

“Samsung is taking consistent and impactful actions that help protect people and the planet. We marry sustainability and innovation in everything we do,” said TM Roh, President and Head of Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. “I am proud of our progress to date. At the same time, it’s been a humbling experience that enables us to continue on our journey towards achieving our sustainability vision with even more conviction and rigor than before.”

Expanding the Use of Recycled Materials to the Galaxy Z Fold4 and Galaxy Z Flip4

Developing new, recycled materials is a key focus area for Galaxy for the Planet. The more Samsung recycles, the more resources it preserves. While repurposing materials into Galaxy devices presents many challenges, the benefits for the planet make it well worth the effort.

Samsung designed the new Galaxy Z series and Galaxy Buds2 Pro with repurposed fishing nets, or ghost nets, that could otherwise end up in the ocean.

First integrated into the Galaxy S22 series in February 2022, today there are eleven Galaxy devices that use repurposed fishing nets including the Galaxy Tab S8 series. By repurposing abandoned fishing nets into a high-performance material for Galaxy technology, Samsung helps to minimize the effects of plastic pollution – 640,000 tons of fishing nets are abandoned and pollute the world’s oceans every year.[1]

Repurposing discarded fishing nets is only one example of Samsung’s advancements in increasing its use of recycled materials in its products.

Samsung has incorporated eco-conscious materials including repurposed fishing nets, post-consumer materials (PCM) or bio-based resin into components of 90% of Galaxy devices launched in the past year.[2] For the Galaxy Buds2 Pro, more than 90% of the plastic components of this product is made with recycled materials.[3]

This process requires complex engineering and technical skills to ensure the overall quality, safety and reliability of all new materials for Samsung’s innovative technologies. Samsung plans to make further investments in research and development to source and transform other, new materials for use in Galaxy products and to increase the presence of recycled materials in each device.

Changing the Way Galaxy Products are Packaged

Samsung set a goal to eliminate all single-use plastics in mobile product packaging by 2025, and the company has already reduced a sizeable amount of single-use plastics in its current packaging for Galaxy smartphones including the new Galaxy foldables. Samsung will explore more ways to eliminate single-use plastics in packaging by assessing every aspect of its packaging designs, down to the smallest of details.

Starting with the launch of the Galaxy S22 series, Samsung now uses 100% recycled paper for flagship product packaging.

By doing so, Samsung will be able to save the equivalent of nearly 51,000 trees[4] with the Galaxy S22 series and the new Galaxy Z series this year.

Samsung has also reduced the volume of packaging for Galaxy Z Flip4 by 52.8% and for Galaxy Z Fold4 by 58.2% respectively compared to the first-generation Galaxy foldables. By reducing each device package’s volume, Samsung ultimately reduces its environmental footprint in transporting these units using trucks, planes and ships. The company estimates that this reduction in packaging volume equates to a reduction in carbon emissions from transportation of approximately 10,000 tons by the end of 2022.[5] In addition to continually evolving packaging for flagship smartphones, Samsung will expand eco-conscious packaging to other product categories.

Scaling Solutions that Reduce E-waste

More than ever, reducing e-waste is crucial to advancing a circular economy that preserves and repurposes the planet’s finite resources. According to the World Economic Forum, 57 million tons of e-waste was generated in 2021 and it is expected to grow by 2 million tons per year.[6]

To address this, Samsung has been expanding the Galaxy Upcycling program, which gives new life to older Galaxy smartphones. Through Galaxy Upcycling at Home[7]Samsung repurposes smartphones with a simple software update that turns them into smart home devices that support everyday needs, such as childcare and pet care.

An important part of Galaxy Upcycling is ensuring that these sustainable practices not only support the environment but also improve people’s lives. The company also upcycles secondhand Galaxy devices into medical diagnostic equipment called EYELIKE™ fundus cameras that provide necessary eye care services in underserved communities. This program has already upcycled hundreds of Galaxy devices and provided basic eye care for over 13,000 patients in Vietnam, Morocco, India, and Papua New Guinea.

The Path Forward

Samsung has set clear sustainability goals by scaling solutions across its business. Whether it is repurposing discarded fishing nets for Galaxy devices, striving to achieve plastic-free packaging or moving us forward to achieve zero waste to landfill and zero standby power of smartphone chargers, Samsung is realizing its Galaxy for the Planet vision one step at a time .

There will be more challenges along the way, but Samsung will hold itself accountable and continue to report progress on its mission to effect positive change and inspire others to protect the planet for generations to come.

[1] FAO and UNEP

[2] By number of models. This includes Galaxy smartphones, tablets, laptops and Samsung wearables launched globally from September 2021 to August 2022. There are 37 models launched globally during this period and 34 models include at least one component that is made of recycled materials or bio-based resin.

[3] More than 90% of all the plastic components of Galaxy Buds2 Pro, in weight, are made of recycled materials. 29 grams of plastics are used in the Galaxy Buds2 Pro in total, and it includes more than 27 grams recycled materials. Each of these components contains at least 20% of either discarded fishing nets (ocean-bound plastic) or post-consumer materials. Recycled fishing nets are used in three internal components of the cradle case in its bracket deco front, bracket battery holder and bracket-PCB. Post-consumer recycled materials are used in eight exterior components. Four components in both Ear Buds in its case front left/right, case rear left/right. And four components in the cradle case in its deco front, case-upper, case-upper inner, and case-lower.

[4] A 30-year-old pine tree can produce 59 kg of paper.

[5] This is calculated based on ISO 14040:2006 and 14044:2006 standard, using Ecoinvent 3.8 database for transportation of SM-F700F, SM-F721B, SM-F900F and SM-F936B models from Korea to Europe.

[6] World Economic Forum, “This year’s e-waste to outweigh Great Wall of China,” October 18, 2021. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/2021-years-e-waste-outweigh-great-wall-of-china/

[7] Galaxy Upcycling at Home is available in the US, the UK and Korea currently and availability may vary by carrier. This feature is available on all Galaxy S, Note, and Z series released since 2018 (Galaxy S9, Galaxy Note9 or later) running Android 9 and above. More devices will be supported in the future.

Didn’t get the character you wanted in Genshin Impact? Well no worries, because now you can recreate a version of that character in an entirely different game. (Amazing!) Now that it is launching worldwide, fans are starting to use the character creator in a similar game called Tower of Fantasy, to recreate popular characters from Genshin Impact.

Tower of Fantasy is a new free-to-play open world game that will launch globally August 11, with players in the United States able to play it on Wednesday evening. According to the developers, the game is an “anime-infused sci-fi adventure” set hundreds of the years in the future. The game allows you to customize your main character with various traits like clothes, hair color, and height, among other options. And fans are using this customization feature to make characters from Genshin Impact like Keqing, Bennett, Zhongli, and others. Here’s Kokomi, except with a futuristic outfit.

Someone made a tall version of Bennett and a character who looks like Zhongli. (As well as some Naruto characters like Sasuke and Nagato.)

A fan also recreated Keqing, so she can be busy and stressed in this life too.

A TikTok shows a character that looks like the pole-arm user, Hu Tao from Genshin.

Here is a character that looks like Shikanoin Heizou, who is a new addition to Genshin.

One person recreated one of the protagonists of Genshin ImpactLumine in the creator.

The trend is a tad ironic because Tower of Fantasy is a potential competitor to Genshin Impact. Like Genshin, Tower of Fantasy is a free-to-play open world RPG with gacha mechanics. It’s definitely aimed at a similar audience, and the Genshin Impact community’s embrace of it certainly supports that idea.

If the game sounds interesting to you, I have good news: Tower of Fantasy launches Wednesday evening in the US and globally on August 11, and it’s playable on Windows PC and mobile devices, so you can try it out.

VALORANT’S French sentinel Chamber has been gutted with several nerfs in Patch 5.03, Riot Games announced today.

Since his introduction, Chamber has become one of the most popular agents in VALORANT, with professional players using his kit to dominate the competition. Many players have complained about his ability to teleport instantly and his impressive firepower from him.

Chamber’s ability to teleport using his Rendezvous (E) has allowed the agent to play from different angles and take fights most characters can’t afford to take. Riot has nerfed several aspects of his Rendezvous from him, with the range and cooldown set to be hit with nerfs.

Here are the specific nerfs coming to Chamber in Patch 5.03:

Rendezvous (E)

• Base cooldown increased from 20 to 30 seconds
• Recall cooldown increased from 20 to 30 seconds
• Cooldown set to 45 seconds whenever a Rendezvous anchor is destroyed
• The diameter size of the “ring” Chamber can stand that allows him to activate Rendezvous decreased 21 from 15 units.

Chamber’s Trademark allows him to lock down an area and is the hallmark of his sentinel title. This ability was previously nerfed in VALORANT Patch 4.09, with two traps going down to just one. The ability will be nerfed once more with a decrease to the slow after enemies have triggered the Trademark.

Trademark (C)

• Slow duration decreased from 9.5 to six seconds

His ultimate ability, Tour De Force (X), brings out the big guns for Chamber. He has a pocket operator with a built-in slow after he gets a kill. The ability is being nerfed with the number of ultimate points required being increased and the slow duration being decreased.

Tour De Force (X)

• Ultimate points required increased from seven to eight
• Slow duration decreased from 9.5 seconds to six seconds
• Leg shot multiplier reduced from 1.0 to 0.85

Many professional players have coined the Headhunter (Q) as the “pocket guardian”—and for good reason. This cheap ability allows Chamber to pull out a pistol that takes down enemies with a few body shots and one shot to the head.

Headhunter (Q)

• Single bullet cost increased from 100 to 150

VALORANT Patch 5.03 is set to be released today, Tuesday, Aug. 9.

Motorola’s Galaxy Z Flip 4 rival, the Moto RAZR 2022, will launch a day after the Galaxy Unpacked 2022 event. Now, it seems like the Galaxy Z Fold 4 will get a rival in the form of the Xiaomi MIX Fold 2, and it will also launch on August 11.

Xiaomi confirmed on Weibo that it would launch the Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 alongside the Buds 4 Pro wireless earphones and the Xiaomi Pad 5 Pro 12.4-inch tablet at the same event. However, do note that the devices will be exclusive to China, and there is no clarity if these devices will make their way to other regions or not.

Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 appears to be a lot thinner than Galaxy Z Fold 4

Xiaomi MIX Fold2, the video is here, it’s time to surprise you, the thinnest folding phone ever, please pay attention to Type C, it is only a little thicker than Type C, it can’t be thinner. Only 5.x mm thick.😍😍😍 pic.twitter.com/FkX62zpVv3

— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) August 9, 2022

The Xiaomi MIX Fold 2 looks strikingly similar to the Galaxy Z Fold 4. A promo video also shows the device to be much thinner than the Samsung phone. Each half of the MIX Fold 2 appears to be only slightly thicker than the USB Type-C port.

It sports a centered punch-hole screen on the cover display and does not offer a punch-hole or notch on the inner screen. The 120Hz cover display is tipped to come with a 21:9 aspect ratio, compared to the 27:9 aspect ratio on the previous MIX Fold. The Xiaomi foldable will be powered by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, 12GB RAM, and 512GB/1TB storage.

Just like the Xiaomi MIX Fold 2, the Motorola RAZR 2022 will be launched in China initially. Also, there is no word on the global availability, just like the Xiaomi MIX Fold 2.

Yes, Netflix has some excellent games, but no one’s playing them. According to a recent report, less than 1 per cent of people who subscribe to the streaming service actually avail themselves of its free games. That stat surely isn’t helped by the process you’ve gotta go through to play, which, while not totally byzantine, is more complicated than it needs to be.

ReadMore: Netflix Has Some Great Games But Nobody’s Playing Them

Netflix signaled its foray into games early last year, when it kickstarted a talent hunt for execs from the gaming industry. By November, the streamer added five games to its mobile app, though the initial offerings were disappointing, to say the least. (Who really needs more phoned-in games based on stranger things?)

Now, the library — which is playable at no extra cost to subscribers — contains some true diamonds in the rough, like the tactical game Into the Breachthe physics platformer poinpyroguelike lite Moonlighterand the narrative gut-punch Before Your Eyes.

How do you play games on Netflix?

For now, you can’t play Netflix games on a smart TV or, ironically, a gaming console’s Netflix app. You’ll need either an Android device (updated to at least the Android 8.0 software) or an Apple mobile device (running iOS 15 or later). From there, follow these steps:

1. Open the Netflix app, then scroll down until you see the Games row. There’s no separate tab that collects all the games together.
2. Click on the game you want to play. That’ll take you to the storefront for your device — App Store for Apple phones and tablets, Google Play for Android ones — at which point you’ll be prompted to download the game onto your phone. It’ll show up as an unrelated app, though you’ll see the Netflix logo in the upper left hand corner of its icon.
3. When you boot up the game, it’ll ask you which Netflix account you’re using. (Once you sign into one game, it seems to keep you logged in for other games, too.)

Sure, it’d be nice to just…play these games inside the Netflix app — y’know, the same way you watch any of the service’s movies or TV shows. Still, the process isn’t terrible. This morning, I tried Into the Breach, which recently received an expansion so large it may as well be a sequel, and found it just as fun on mobile as it is anywhere else. I also messed around with poinpy and had to tear myself away after the tutorial or else it would’ve legitimately derailed my day. Man, what an instantly compelling little game…

There are some quirks, however: I couldn’t get the audio for either game to work unless I plugged in headphones. (Subway riders of the world should rejoice knowing that Netflix’s wave of free games won’t contribute to the cacophonous noise pollution that already plagues America’s transit systems.) And the service isn’t quite on the scale to compete with some of the biggest mobile -gaming subscription services, like, say, Xbox Game Pass or Apple Arcade. But as an avenue for a handful of easy-access games, I’m impressed.

What games does Netflix have?

Currently, Netflix supports the following games, though notes that not all games are available on all devices:

• Arcanium: Rise of Akhan
• Asphalt Xtreme
• Before Your Eyes
• bowling ballers
• Card Blast
• Domino’s Cafe
• dungeon dwarves
• Dragon Up
• Exploding Kittens
• Hextech Mayhem: A League of Legends Story
• Into the Breach
• Into the Dead 2: Unleashed
• knittens
• Krispee Street
• Mahjong Solitaire
• Moonlighter
• poinpy
• Relic Hunters: Rebels
• Shatter Remastered
• Shooting Hoops
• Stranger Things: 1984
• Stranger Things 3: The Game
• Teether (Up)
• This is a True Story
• Townsmen – A Kingdom Rebuilt
• Wonderputt Forever

Netflix plans to bring that number to 50 before April of next year, per Washington Post‘s reporting. That tally will eventually include games developed in-house, too. Last year, it acquired Night School, the studio behind hit adventure game Oxenfree. (Night School showcased the sequel, Oxenfree II: Lost Signalsat this year’s Tribeca Festival.)

It’s unclear if there are any plans to make games available natively within the primary Netflix app, or to spin off the game library into a supplemental application. When reached for comment, a Netflix spokesperson directed Kotaku to a company blog post published last November.

“We launched games on our service less than a year ago,” the spokesperson said. “It’s still early days and we recognize that we have much more work to do to deliver a great Netflix mobile games experience.”

the Super Mario Bros. speedrunning community is constantly looking for new ways to push the state of the art, and one player just achieved what was previously thought of as an impossible feat…at least for a human.

In 2018, speedrunner HappyLee used a computer assist to demonstrate a new method to shave a few frames off of Super Mario Bros. world 4-2. It involved using precise inputs to make Mario glitch (clip) through a row of blocks — the top row — near the start of the level, which pushed him rightward faster than ever before. Then it required a super-precise jump onto a warp pipe. The speedrunning community had assumed a full, perfect run of 4-2 using this “top clip” trick could never be performed by human means due to the sheer precision required, and luckily, it has since discovered alternate, easier methods for min-maxing 4-2. But on Monday, a speedrunner named Tole managed to perform the “top clip” 4-2 trick without computer assistance.

Here’s what’s happening: Through precise inputs, Tole made Luigi clip through the corner of the top block, touching the ground inside of the wall for one frame, and then jump out from inside of the wall. According to HappyLee’s original discovery, this maneuver should shave three frames from the run. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s particularly important in world 4-2 because of a Super Mario Bros. concept called frame rules.

Frame rules are a somewhat esoteric concept. In Super Mario Bros., the program only checks for level completion every 21 frames. Therefore, if you enter an end-of-level castle just after the most recent check, you’ll have to wait up to 20 frames for the next level to begin.

One speedrunner helpfully explains the frame rule using a bus analogy. Imagine that the castle at the end of each Super Mario Bros. level is a bus stop. The bus only arrives (the game records the player beating the level) once every 21 frames (about 0.35 seconds). So to set world records in some levels, you can’t just be faster by a tiny amount of time; you have to be fast enough to catch the previous “bus” that’s departing for the next world.

Catching the first possible bus in level 4-2, as was first demonstrated by computer-assisted runs, is sometimes called “Lightning 4-2.” That’s why HappyLee’s computer-aided trick, in which Mario saves a few frames by clipping through the top block in level 4-2, made waves: It was another way for runners to beat the frame rule and theoretically catch that first bus. Current Super Mario Bros. speedrunning champion Niftski used a similar trick in his new world-record run this past week. The difference was that he jumped underneath the block and ran inside the wall — a different method entirely, and much more practical for humans to use in real runs.

Kotaku reached out to Tole, but did not receive a comment by the time of publication.

Since there exist easier Lightning 4-2 methods, the “top clip” Lightning 4-2 Tole pulled off will probably just be for bragging rights. But speedrunners who understood the incredible difficulty at play here were suitably impressed by Tole’s feat. “Holy cow, I doubted this method’s viability for years and you pulled it off,” said one commenter. “THIS IS FUCKING INSANE,” wrote another, the emphasis theirs.