Samsung's foldables have always come with an asterisk: the crease. Run your thumb across the display, and there it is, a soft valley right down the middle. The company thinks it has an answer. A new hinge design called Flex Titanium is meant to push that fold line out of your eyeline for good, letting the screen read as one flat surface rather than two panels meeting in the middle.
The fix matters because the crease has followed foldables since the first generation. It's the detail skeptics point to when they argue the form factor still feels like a compromise. Titanium in the hinge changes how the panel folds and how the material sits when the phone opens back up, and Samsung is betting that's enough to make the seam recede into the background.
Fortnite pulled a different kind of surprise this week. The Hot Bat Summer skins dropped with a reveal that blindsided even players who track every leak and patch note. That's a group that rarely gets caught off guard. The set landed anyway, and the reaction across the community says the surprise worked.
Then there's the news out of the US military. Officials confirmed the first combat deployment of explosive drone boats. Unmanned vessels, packed with explosives, are sent into a real operation rather than a test range. It's a marker for how warfare keeps drifting toward autonomous systems, and this one moves that shift from concept into the field.
Three stories, three corners of tech. The foldable crease may finally lose its argument. Fortnite still knows how to spring a reveal. And drone warfare took another step past the water's edge.
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Top Stories
Samsung's flex tech hopes to fix foldable phones' crease, thickness, and durability woes
Samsung has pulled back the curtain on Flex Titanium, a new display technology destined for its next generation of Galaxy foldables that takes direct aim at the three complaints that have followed folding phones since their debut: a distracting crease down the middle of the screen, a display that feels fragile, and a device too thick to comfortably pocket. The system pairs a titanium alloy film placed directly beneath the OLED panel, offering 20 times the stiffness of the polymer film Samsung previously used, with a titanium plate underneath the display module for added structural support. A new hole processing technique eliminates air gaps between the plate and the display, giving the screen firmer, more consistent backing when unfolded.
Pulling off this engineering feat required Samsung to work around titanium's natural rigidity, which makes it poorly suited to a display that needs to fold thousands of times. The company uses a precision rolling process to reduce the metal to roughly a third the width of a human hair, thin enough to flex without cracking. Samsung also noted improvements to the display's resolution and power efficiency through new organic materials and a refined panel architecture, meaning the next foldable should look sharper and last longer on a charge.
Flex Titanium is set to make its commercial debut with Samsung's next Galaxy foldable lineup, with a full reveal expected at the company's next Galaxy Unpacked event.
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DC's Batman and villains get beachside Fortnite skins, and fans are divided
Epic Games and DC are bringing Gotham City's finest to the beach this summer, and the reveal is turning heads. Artwork teasing the upcoming Hot Bat Summer collaboration shows Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn in bikinis, while Batman gives chase wearing only his cowl, swim trunks, and flip-flops, with Ace the Bat-Hound along for the ride. For a game rated T for Teen that has historically kept its cosmetics notably tame, covering up characters like Mortal Kombat's Kitana and Street Fighter's Cammy in leggings and bike shorts, the new skins represent a striking shift in direction.
Fan reaction has been predictably split. Critics on X and the Fortnite subreddit have called out the move as inappropriate for a younger audience, with some expressing outright shock at the level of exposure on display. Meanwhile, others are celebrating the departure from what they see as years of unnecessary prudishness, pointing to competitors like Marvel Rivals and Overwatch as evidence that swimwear skins are hardly new territory. Some fans are even crediting last year's Kim Kardashian skins as the moment Epic first cracked the door open. For what it's worth, the DC comics world has its own long tradition of swimsuit variant covers, including a Batman and Catwoman beach scene that appears to have directly inspired the new Fortnite artwork.
The timing has not gone unnoticed. Epic recently raised prices on V-Bucks, the game's premium currency, and some players are reading the racier skins as a calculated move to drive sales. Whether the controversy fades quickly or lingers, Epic appears ready to test just how far it can push Fortnite's famously conservative aesthetic.
The United States military has used explosive-laden drone boats in combat for the first time, striking an Iranian midget submarine and ship maintenance facility at Iran's Bandar Abbas Naval Base on the night of July 12. US Central Command confirmed the attack in a social media post, releasing video of three "one-way attack surface drones" approaching and then detonating against their targets. One of those targets was identified as an Iranian Ghadir-class midget submarine suspended from a gantry out of the water, while the other was a ship maintenance facility at the base.
The drone boats used in the strike were Saronic Corsair autonomous surface vessels built by Austin, Texas-based Saronic Technologies. At 24 feet in length, the Corsair is capable of carrying up to 1,000 pounds of payload over 1,000 nautical miles at speeds exceeding 34 knots. The vessels are designed to operate autonomously without direct human control, handling long-range navigation, patrol missions, and power management on their own, though they were almost certainly fitted with explosives specifically for this strike. According to USNI News, the drone boats were able to make a low-speed, uncontested approach to their targets before detonating.
This combat debut comes nearly a decade after Iranian and Houthi forces first demonstrated similar kamikaze sea drone capabilities, and it marks the second significant use of the Corsair platform in the current conflict, which began when the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, 2026. The Navy had previously deployed a Corsair drone in a search-and-rescue role to recover two US Army helicopter pilots downed off the coast of Oman in June, suggesting the platform will play an expanding and increasingly varied role in operations going forward.
Putting your overheating phone in the fridge seems like a quick fix, but experts warn the condensation it causes can lead to internal damage far more costly than the heat itself.
Every summer, social media rediscovers the same “life hack”: if your phone gets too hot, stick it in the fridge for a few minutes. It sounds logical. Refrigerators are cold. Phones are hot. Problem solved. Except it isn’t. Repair technicians, smartphone manufacturers, and safety experts all agree this is one of the worst things you can do to an overheating phone. While the trick might cool the exterior temporarily, it can quietly create a much bigger problem inside the device – one that could permanently damage components or shorten the life of its battery.
According to a new BBC report, the latest warning comes from a UK phone repair shop, but it’s one experts have been repeating for years. Jamie Farnell, who runs Shropshire Phone Repairs in Wem, says his shop has been inundated with devices suffering heat-related issues during the recent heatwave. Many customers admitted they had tried cooling their phones by putting them inside a fridge or freezer after seeing the advice circulate on social media.
This isn’t simply one repair technician’s opinion. Apple says iPhones are designed to protect themselves when they become too hot by dimming the display, slowing charging, reducing performance, or temporarily disabling certain features until temperatures return to normal. Samsung offers similar guidance for Galaxy devices. If a phone displays a “Device cooling down” warning, users should stop using it, unplug it from charging, remove any protective case, close background apps, and simply let it cool on its own.
Quick Hits
Computing
Type what you want, and Canva builds it. (More)
Starlink's new V5 dish is more compact and lighter than the V4 model, though SpaceX isn't promising any speed improvements alongside the reduced power consumption. (More)
Samsung's new 990 Pro SSD is somehow both slower and more expensive than the original model it's meant to update. (More)
Intel's Starfire SoC combines an 18A CPU, Intel 3 GPU, and NPU into a single chip built for space-grade computing. (More)
Mobile
Opera's browser is quietly gaining serious market share in the US and UK, suggesting users are more than willing to ditch their defaults when given a real choice. (More)
iPadOS 27 doesn't reinvent the iPad experience, but a notably improved Siri makes it worth testing in beta or waiting for the fall release. (More)
Gaming
Pokémon Winds & Waves has leaked details suggesting the upcoming Switch 2 title will put a fresh spin on the series' evolution mechanics, with the professor apparently at the center of it all. (More)
Magic: The Gathering is beaming up to the final frontier. (More)
L.A. Noire almost starred Jon Hamm before budget concerns led the team to cast his Mad Men co-star Aaron Staton instead. (More)
A U.S. university is offering up to $15,000 in scholarships based on your gaming skills, treating esports talent the same way it would athletic ability. (More)
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Entertainment
The Conjuring prequel movie has cast its young Ed and Lorraine Warren and is set for a 2027 release. (More)
Little House on the Prairie pulled in 6.4 million views in its first four days on Netflix, proving the classic frontier drama still has serious pulling power. (More)
Behemoth! stars Pedro Pascal as a cellist alongside Olivia Wilde and Will Arnett, giving Pascal a chance to show off some unexpected musical skills on screen. (More)
AI
Smart Home
Smart home gadgets worth buying actually exist, and after years of testing, ZDNET has narrowed the list down to five solid picks. (More)
Cars / EV
A Tesla found on Highway 152 contained the body of a Hollister man in its trunk, according to local reports. (More)
Wearables
Forget the smartwatch strapped to your wrist. Researchers at Penn State have built a health sensor you paint directly onto your skin, and it can read your heart, brain, and muscle activity. (More)
Final Bits
PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct returns September 20
PS5 emulation now loads GTA 5
Hollow Knight Lego set moves closer to reality
George Lucas says AI is inevitable, like cars over horses
Bank of America sees Nvidia's next $20B business
Tyler Kirkham joins the Final Boss video game adaptation
Opera is gaining iPhone users in the US and UK
Apple faces iPhone delays amid a memory-chip shortage


