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Samsung Launches New, More Expensive Foldable Smartphones

The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the technology company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the technology company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
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Samsung Launches New, More Expensive Foldable Smartphones

The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the technology company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the technology company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)

South Korean technology giant Samsung unveiled new, sleeker smartphone models Wednesday priced more than previous models as artificial intelligence raises component costs.

One of the models resembles a miniature tablet when unfolded.

Samsung, which launched the high-end products in London, aims to reaffirm its dominance in the foldable smartphone market, where it has operated since 2019, ahead of a potential move by US rival Apple this year.

"By setting a new standard for foldables, we are once again advancing the premium mobile experience," said TM Roh, head of Samsung's mobile division.

The most innovative device unveiled Wednesday is the Galaxy Z Fold8. Measuring 4.5 millimeters thick when unfolded, it features a 7.6-inch, 4:3 aspect ratio screen optimized for video viewing.

Its starting price is set at $1,900.

"Galaxy Z Fold8 is the clear star of the show," said Paolo Pescatore, a technology analyst for PP Foresight.

"It underscores Samsung's dominance of the foldable category and its determination to expand the market with a device for almost every type of user."

"Attention now turns to Apple's September event and whether it will finally unveil its long-anticipated move into foldables.

Samsung's new top-of-the-range model is the Z Fold8 Ultra -- successor to the Z Fold7 -- whose retail price starts at $2,100. It measures just 4.1 millimeters in thickness and weighs 215 grammes.

The Z Flip8 -- a pocket-sized model geared more toward social media use -- is the cheapest new model, with a starting price of $1,200.

The higher prices are caused by soaring costs of memory chips, which are in growing demand owing to their strategic role in powering artificial intelligence.

Apple last month cited this reason when raising the prices of its Macs and iPads.

"Apple is about to do for foldables what it has done for every category it has entered, which is legitimize it for the mainstream," said Francisco Jeronimo at telecommunications analyst group IDC.

"Samsung has to defend the category it created, and that's why it cannot play it safe," he added.

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Technology

OpenAI Acknowledges ‘Wiki Incident’ and Need for More Transparency Around Unintended AI Behavior

The OpenAI logo is seen in this illustration created on June 11, 2026. (Reuters)
The OpenAI logo is seen in this illustration created on June 11, 2026. (Reuters)
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OpenAI Acknowledges ‘Wiki Incident’ and Need for More Transparency Around Unintended AI Behavior

The OpenAI logo is seen in this illustration created on June 11, 2026. (Reuters)
The OpenAI logo is seen in this illustration created on June 11, 2026. (Reuters)

OpenAI said on Saturday that its agents had appropriated wiki sites as impromptu message boards, adding that more transparency was needed around such incidents.

The statement follows a Reuters report that a swarm of OpenAI agents had hijacked a communally edited German site earlier this year and used it as a springboard for cheating during tests and other rogue behavior.

The disclosure comes ‌as AI safety ‌concerns intensify following a July incident ‌in ⁠which OpenAI agents ⁠escaped a testing environment and breached the systems of AI platform Hugging Face, prompting calls from lawmakers and researchers for stricter oversight of autonomous AI systems.

OpenAI officials learned of the German incident weeks ago but kept it under ⁠wraps as executives grappled with ‌the fallout from the breach ‌at Hugging Face, Reuters has previously reported.

OpenAI did not ‌immediately return a message seeking further details ‌on what the company knew about what it described as the "wiki incident", or why it waited until after the Reuters story to discuss it ‌publicly.

In a statement posted to the social media site X, OpenAI said ⁠that it, ⁠and others, needed to be more transparent about incidents of unintended behavior by AI — typically referred to in the industry as "misalignment."

"Our misalignment disclosure practices need to expand for this new phase of model capabilities," OpenAI said, adding that the industry did "not yet have a clear standard for how to report misalignment that shows up during training, evaluation, and deployment."

OpenAI said that it was "working with dozens of government regulatory agencies worldwide on these issues."

Technology

Foxconn Says Third Quarter to Outperform Market Expectations on AI Strength

Signage at Foxconn booth at the International Automobile & Motorcycle Parts & Accessories Show (AMPA) trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, April 14, 2026. (Reuters)
Signage at Foxconn booth at the International Automobile & Motorcycle Parts & Accessories Show (AMPA) trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, April 14, 2026. (Reuters)
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Foxconn Says Third Quarter to Outperform Market Expectations on AI Strength

Signage at Foxconn booth at the International Automobile & Motorcycle Parts & Accessories Show (AMPA) trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, April 14, 2026. (Reuters)
Signage at Foxconn booth at the International Automobile & Motorcycle Parts & Accessories Show (AMPA) trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, April 14, 2026. (Reuters)

Foxconn's ‌third-quarter performance is expected to outperform market expectations given strong AI-related demand, the Taiwanese contract electronics maker said on Saturday, though it offered caution about "volatile" global politics.

Foxconn, Nvidia's biggest server maker and a major Apple supplier, has been a big beneficiary of the trend towards AI, reporting last month a 35% rise in ‌second-quarter profit that ‌beat analyst forecasts.

"In the ‌third ⁠quarter, as AI ⁠demand continues to grow, and ICT products also enter the peak season of the second half of the year, operations are expected to gradually gain momentum," it said in a statement, referring ⁠to information and communication technology.

"Currently, the ‌company's visibility ‌for the third quarter has improved compared to ‌the previous month, with overall performance expected ‌to outperform market expectations," it added, without giving details.

However, Foxconn said it remained necessary to "monitor the impact of the volatile global ‌political and economic situation". It likewise did not elaborate.

Foxconn, formally called ⁠Hon ⁠Hai Precision Industry, does not provide numerical forecasts.

It said revenue last month rose 51.98% from a year earlier to T$921.8 billion ($29.15 billion), the highest amount ever for August and the second month in a row it has exceeded T$900 billion.

Foxconn's shares closed up 3.4% on Friday, before the revenue data was released, outperforming the broader market's 1.5% gain.

Technology

OpenAI Begins Rollout of New Powerful AI Model GPT-6 Astra

The OpenAI logo in this illustration taken June 11, 2026. (Reuters)
The OpenAI logo in this illustration taken June 11, 2026. (Reuters)
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OpenAI Begins Rollout of New Powerful AI Model GPT-6 Astra

The OpenAI logo in this illustration taken June 11, 2026. (Reuters)
The OpenAI logo in this illustration taken June 11, 2026. (Reuters)

ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Thursday it would begin rolling out its newest and most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) model to select customers, saying it had built in safeguards to mitigate security risks.

"At this level of capability, safety has to become our top priority," OpenAI President Greg Brockman told reporters on a call about the release of GPT-6, also known as Astra.

Just over a year has passed since OpenAI launched the previous version of its flagship model, GPT-5, said AFP.

Concerns about the capabilities of advanced models have grown since then, following incidents involving systems built by OpenAI and rival developer Anthropic.

OpenAI paused some model development for two weeks this summer after two models it was testing were involved in a security breach at AI platform Hugging Face.

The San Francisco-based company said Astra was developed with stronger safeguards after that incident, though Astra itself was not involved in the hack.

Some cybersecurity customers will get access to the new model Thursday, the company said, with a wider rollout to other paying customers to follow. Users on the free tier or the cheapest paid plan will not get access.

"We are working towards getting Astra in everyone's hands as quickly as we can; I know it is frustrating and I appreciate the patience. It should be quick," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on social media Thursday afternoon.

In a blog post, OpenAI said Astra can autonomously handle a wide range of "tedious" computer tasks, including website creation, scientific analysis, game development, cybersecurity and coding.

To illustrate the time savings of building autonomous AI agents with Astra, the company said the model could cut apartment hunting from six hours to under 10 minutes.

"It's not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era," Brockman said on the call, referring to artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical stage at which AI systems match human intelligence across most tasks.

OpenAI previously had an agreement with Microsoft, one of its earliest and largest investors, under which an exclusivity clause would end once OpenAI reached AGI. Those terms were scrapped in April.

- 'Limited window' -

OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki acknowledged there was still uncertainty about how a new model behaves once released.

"A model can become very good at achieving a goal, and it can still act in ways that go against what the person intended," Pachocki said on the same call.

"We also have to be willing to slow down or withhold further scaling when our confidence in safety is not sufficient," he added.

Altman explained in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday afternoon why the company decided to release a new model with this level of uncertainty and risk.

"The world is very close to a complete change in the landscape of cyber attacks, and the only way that we see for society to collectively defend itself... is to use tools like Astra to rapidly defend against these new cyber threats," Altman said.

In July OpenAI confirmed that it had reached one billion active users across all of its products, including both free and paid users.

OpenAI, Anthropic and more than 100 other organizations signed an open letter last week calling for a coordinated global response to AI-related cybersecurity risks, warning that the window to strengthen cyber defenses was limited.

Anthropic went further on Monday, calling for industry-wide coordination on safety and on the pace of developing increasingly capable models.

"I believe that shared safety standards and international coordination on further AI development need to be prioritized now," OpenIA's Pachocki said on Thursday.

The US state of Alabama opened an investigation into OpenAI last week over the Hugging Face breach, his office citing what it called the company's complete lack of oversight and adequate safeguards.

It also comes as OpenAI and rival Anthropic are both racing towards becoming public companies over the next several months, though OpenAI might not hold its IPO till sometime in 2027, according to reports.