Review: The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 foldable is almost too much fun

Tech-news July 26, 2025

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip7 is a story of something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. The blue part is easy — my review sample, provided by Samsung, is the Blue Shadow colorway. The highlight of the phone is definitely the “something new.” Samsung massively updated its pocket-sized foldable phone with a huge cover screen. At 4.1 inches, it’s the largest external display on a flip-style phone to date.

“Something borrowed” comes in the form of the Exynos processor that lives inside the phone. Past versions of Galaxy Z Flips in international markets have been powered by Exynos silicon in the past, but U.S. phones have typically had Snapdragon hardware from Qualcomm, which we strongly prefer. The “borrowed label” is my hope that Samsung will go back to Snapdragon hardware in the future — more on that later.

Finally, “Something old” — one of my biggest frustrations with the phone, which is a little bit better this year (but honestly not that much better than the Galaxy Z Flip6). It has to do with the way apps appear on the external display (what Samsung calls the Cover Screen) and Samsung’s refusal to treat that beautiful canvas like a proper screen. It’s a little maddening, though it didn’t stop me from having fun with the phone.

Shortly after Samsung unveiled the Z Flip 7 (and its incredibly thin older sibling, the excellent Galaxy Z Fold 7) this July, I hit the road to sunny (and devastatingly hot) St. Louis, home of the Gateway Arch, Six Flags, and Meremec caverns. Over the course of five days, I put this “AI Flip Phone” through the ringer for my Galaxy Z Flip 7 review.

The Galaxy Z Flip 7 is the Flex you think it is

Before I dive into the hardware, I need to discuss the highlight. Samsung — finally — responded to market pressure in the U.S. (and abroad) by bringing a large Cover Screen display to its flip phone, and thank goodness. The previous two generations also had larger screens, but they had odd notches in them to accommodate the camera modules, while everyone else was just cutting the display around the cameras.

One of the first things you should do when you get this phone is enable apps to run on this display. The problem is, it takes 13 steps to do it, and unless you’re a geek (which, admittedly, if you’re reading this review, you might be), most people won’t bother. That’s fair, but you’ll be going into this fight with one hand tied behind your back.

The Z Flip 7 has a larger external display with ultra-thin bezels.
Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

The 4.1-inch AMOLED screen is large, gorgeous, and should absolutely be used to the fullest. Like the main display, it has 2,600 nits of peak brightness and a 120 Hz refresh rate. Not all apps can handle the Cover Screen (confusingly, Samsung also refers to this screen as the Flex display and/or FlexWindow), but many of them will. The good news: once you do those 13 steps, you’re done fiddling with settings. You can simply add the apps that you want. The bad news: Samsung doesn’t really want you to do it at all. You might be wondering what I mean by that.

A hobbled experience

If Samsung wanted you to run apps on your home screen, it wouldn’t require you to go into the Labs section of your settings and install a separate app from the Galaxy store to do it. It wouldn’t force you to use the Samsung keyboard on the Flex display, with its lack of voice typing, regardless of which keyboard is your default keyboard (Gboard FTW). Plus, if I had to see “open your phone to continue” one more time, I was ready to throw the phone out the window while riding in a car through central Illinois.

samsung z flip 7 displays message that reads 'open phone to continue'

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

Everything from adding apps to the launcher to setting up widgets, to reordering widgets, all has to be done with the phone open, for some reason. It makes me sad.

Once you work around those picadillos and get down to business, the cover screen itself is lovely. Most apps work well on there, including Gemini and Gemini Live, which is a fun way to work with Google’s AI. The display also goes right up to the edge of the phone.

The rest of the hardware

Samsung built a really solid phone here, and it’s great to use. The casing is armor aluminum, and the hinge has been redesigned this year, slimming down the phone just a bit. The hardware is more squared off than Motorola’s Razr, which can make one-handed opening a little harder. But it’s tight and functional. When you close the phone, you will do so with one of the most satisfying “Thwaps” you’ve ever heard. Speaking of which, it makes hanging up on people way more satisfying than it already was.

the samsung z Flip 7 in a hand at a six flags park

While using the phone, you won’t notice the hinge on the main display.
Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

The buttons on the side of the phone aren’t raised by much, which can make it hard to locate them without looking. I often missed the fingerprint sensor in the power button because I had trouble finding it. But the rest of the hardware is absolutely solid. The 6.9-inch AMOLED main screen is also larger than previous generations at 6.9 inches. The screen has the same teardrop shape closing that minimizes the crease, which you can see but won’t care about.

The phone is powered by a 4,300 mAh battery that’s just 100 mAh smaller than its larger sibling, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. As such, it can easily last all day, especially if you perform most tasks on the cover screen. I noticed the phone tended to run hot, but only when I was already outside baking in a water park or at the St. Louis Zoo, so I suspect the weather was just as likely at fault as the phone itself.

The software on the inside

Having talked about the software on the cover screen, the software when open is… basically the same as any other Samsung phone. OneUI 8.0 is built onto Android 16, making these phones the first to ship with Android’s latest operating system. That’s no surprise — Google and Samsung have been joined at the hip for a while now. OneUI 7 was a divisive operating system because a lot of Samsung users liked how their phones worked before it rolled out (my wife among them).

Personally, I loved OneUI 7.0 because it brought back the vertical scrolling app drawer and the Pill, which apes Apple’s Dynamic Island in a lot of great ways. OneUI 8 adds all those benefits and takes things a step further, bringing 90:10 multitasking to the phones. What that means is you can run two apps, one on top and one underneath, but you can move the separator so you only see 10 percent of one of the apps. Tap that 10 percent and the app pops up to become the 90 percent, and vice versa. It works better on the Galaxy Z Fold 7, but it’s also quite nice on the Flip 7.

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

When you half-fold the Flip, you activate Flex Mode, which lets you make the most of the foldable design. In Flex Mode, the app lives in the top half of the screen, and the bottom half becomes a sort of control panel in supported apps. In YouTube, for example, the bottom half gets a play bar and play controls, which is pretty neat.

I also love that Dex is available on the Flip7. Samsung Dex basically turns your phone into a CPU when you connect a monitor, mouse, and keyboard to it. It gives you a windows interface similar to Windows. I spent some time with Dex on my trip to St Louis, but most of the time I’m using Dex is on long-haul flights, getting some work done with a set of Xreal One glasses. Now that is a rollicking good time and I’m happy Samsung’s smaller foldable has that capability.

We have to talk about the AI

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

The Flip 7 has a lot of the same AI tricks as other Samsung phones, including camera tricks and AI photo editing, such as moving subjects around or using generative AI to fill in the background. Two notable improvements include Gemini on the Flex screen, including Gemini Live. That’s a nice bonus. Gemini Live also works with the external camera (when the phone is open, to be clear) to become multimodal. At the St. Louis Zoo, I could point the camera at an animal and ask what I was looking at, and in every case, it was correct, which was surprising, to be perfectly honest.

What was a little annoying was how chatty Gemini Live would get. “That’s an Asian Elephant! You can tell by the size of the ears. Would you like to know more about the Asian elephant? Do you have any questions about it? Please for the love of all things holy talk to me!” That’s not an exact quote, but you get the point.

The other AI features, like Samsung’s Now bar, also appear on the Flex screen, even if the Now Brief is still less than good. It still returns news stories that aren’t relevant to me. It kept me up to date with the weather even as I traveled, so that was nice, but I still don’t have much use for it.

Battery life and performance

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 comes with an Exynos 2500 processor built on a 3nm process, similar to flagship processors from Qualcomm and Mediatek. This is Samsung’s homegrown silicon. What’s odd this year is that all Flip 7s will be sporting the Exynos processor. In the past, Z Flip phones sold overseas had Exynos while the U.S. versions had Snapdragon processors. Because of this, we know that Snapdragon usually outperforms Exynos. This year, we can’t make that comparison, but it’s fair to say history is not on Samsung’s side.

Geekbench is a benchmark tool you can use to get an idea of how a processor performs. Geekbench returns scores of 2,354/7,340 single/multi-core scores on the Flip 7. For context, the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 returns a 2,430/8,823 score, so it doesn’t exactly blow it out of the water. Day to day, the only real stutters I noted were in the camera software occasionally, and sometimes when running multiple windows in Dex. They were minor hiccups, but still noteworthy.

running a geekbench performance test on a galaxy z flip 7

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

As for battery life, despite spending all day, most days out and about, away from Wi-Fi and in hot temperatures besides, the phone never died before bedtime. I wouldn’t call this a multi-day phone, but it’s very not bad, and you’ll get a lot more mileage out of it if you use the cover screen as often as possible.

Cameras are as good as your lighting

There are three cameras on this phone, but you’ll only really ever need to use two of them.

To be honest, I didn’t find much use for the 10MP selfie camera.

One of the key benefits to using a flip-style foldable phone is the ability to turn the Cover Screen into a preview window for taking selfies. The hinge is very rigid, so you can even use the phone as its own tripod and use gesture controls to take photos and videos. I took a bunch of fun selfies at the St. Louis Arch, Meremec caverns, and all points in between using that flex hinge, and I got some great shots. You can also hold the camera half open at a 90-degree angle for a camcorder grip if you’re nostalgic (a feature you’ll also find in the Motorola Razr Ultra).

author adam doud taking a selfie with z flip 7

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

The results you get will be highly dependent on your lighting conditions. For example, at Six Flags during the day, my shots were brilliant. Meremec Caverns and the St. Louis aquarium were both a bit hit or miss. I would recommend that if you’re in low-light conditions, take a lot of shots (to increase your odds of getting a good one) and make sure your subjects are as still as possible. Photos of stalactites are going to be very good. Photos of the people standing in front of them, not so much.

The camera software offers shots of up to 10x, but you will never want to go that high. In my experience, the 4x zoom is usable; at 10x you lose all depth and texture. The shots might be OK for social media, but in general, you’ll want to avoid those. As often as not, they’re not good.

Left:
Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

Right:
Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

Left:
Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

Right:
Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

I also saw a surprising amount of grain in a lot of my lower-light shots. Samsung is usually pretty good at cleaning those things up in low light, but even some of the daytime shots, particularly ultrawide and macroshots, ended up grainy in darker areas.

Shooting video is much the same, though less forgiving. Low-light video is not terrible with the main camera, but don’t move or walk while shooting. The judder gets pretty bad when you start walking. Good shots are possible in the dark, but that’s more the exception than the rule.

close-up portrait-mode photograph of an orchid flower

Credit: Adam Doud / Mashable

Overall, this is a pretty good camera setup that does very well in the day, and even when the sun is starting to go down. Find yourself in a cave — as one does — and your results will fall into the range of “mixed bag” down to “dumpster fire.”

So, is the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 worth it?

Flip phones are really fun. I love using them, especially when taking selfies with the main camera. You can do that with the Fold 7, but holding that phone open is awkward. Holding a tiny little pocket square in your hand is so much easier and a much better experience. For $1,099, I think you will like this phone, too. Plus, it’s cheaper than its primary competition, the Motorola Razr Ultra, which has a comparable camera and a higher price tag.

There are some corners cut here. The Exynos processor is not bad (Motorola’s flagship foldable has a Snapdragon processor), but not the best you can buy. I can’t hate on Samsung’s cover screen software too much because it’s a curated experience that Samsung wants you to have, and it really only makes me sad because I’m a nerd. The cameras are very good for this category, though it wouldn’t hurt Samsung to take some notes from overseas competitors.

So, should you buy the Z Flip 7? Again, if you’re a fan of the form factor, this is the most compelling foldable on offer here in the United States. If you’re already looking at something like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus, this one folds in half for only $100 more. I like what Samsung has finally done here, catching up to its contemporaries and restarting a competition war in which the consumer will ultimately win.

Where to buy the Galaxy Z Flip 7

You can buy the Z Flip 7 at Samsung, Amazon, and Best Buy (or just about any place that sells phones) for $1,099.99. The base version only comes with 256GB of storage, but if you pick up this phone at Amazon, you can get a $200 gift card at no extra cost, which is hard to argue with.

At Samsung Galaxy Unpacked, Samsung also debuted a mid-range version of the F Flip 7, following Motorola’s lead. The Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE offers most of the same features for $899.99.

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For $100, You Can Smell Like a Million Bucks

Hand holding Shark red light mask featuring blue and black setting on screen

#red #light #masks #tested #winners #avoid">

mwasimuddin125 0

How to choose a red light face mask: Look at wavelength first
There are some ways to tell that a red light face mask won’t be effective before you buy it and use it for a few months.
Wavelength is the first factor anyone will tell you to consider. You want to find products that emit light within the therapeutic window, or the range of wavelengths that can be effective when treating common skin conditions. There is now an abundance of evidence that specific wavelengths of red light can be effective for:
Reduction of fine lines, dark circles, and crow’s feet
Improving skin texture
Fighting wrinkles
Boosting collagen production
Reducing inflammation and redness
To be effective, the light coming from the mask must penetrate different layers of your skin. There are optimal wavelengths for each type of light a face mask emits, and any reputable brand will put their mask’s wavelengths front and center in the listing. These carefully chosen ranges are strong enough to penetrate your skin, but gentle enough to avoid over-activating delicate face skin.
Red light does its work in the middle layer (dermis) of your skin, requiring wavelengths between 630 and 633 nm to reach past the top layer. There, red light stimulates cells to produce rejuvenating proteins like collagen and elastin, evening out surface redness, and preventing scarring or post-pimple red spots.

The Shark CryoGlow’s Better Aging routine combines red and near-infrared light. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The Shark CryoGlow’s Skin Clearing routine uses a special sequence of red, near-infrared, and blue light. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Most red light masks also use near-infrared red light therapy, which requires longer wavelengths to travel further than regular red light. Near-infrared light between 830 and 850 nm reaches into tissue under the dermis to further stimulate cell turnover, firm skin, and heal deep-seated spots or stubborn dark circles.

What about blue light therapy?

Blue light is often used to target acne, and some of the best red light masks use a combination of blue and red light therapy.

Blue light operates on the top layer (epidermis) of your skin, so its ideal wavelength is shorter than either red light standard. Blue light at 415nm has an antimicrobial effect, ideally killing the bacteria that cause acne before a breakout starts. If hellbent bacterial acne makes it past the blue light phase — or if you’re also dealing with hormonal or cystic acne not caused by bacteria — red light swoops in to neutralize inflammation and speed up the healing process.

The thing is, most mainstream LED face masks hit those wavelength marks. So, how do you choose between masks if their wavelength numbers are all the same?

The importance of irradiance

Irradiance is another major element that determines whether or not a red light mask actually works. While wavelength refers to the length the light can travel, irradiance refers to the amount of light energy that’s actually reaching your skin per session (not just the intensity of light being generated at the bulb). If wavelength numbers are correct but irradiance is low, the mask will still be kind of a dud.

Bulb placement is one of the key factors we considered in our test. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Comfort is another key factor, as consistent use is key to results. Credit: Miller Kern / Mashable

Irradiance is officially expressed as milliwatts per square centimeter. The optimal irradiance range for a red light face mask is pretty wide (anywhere between 30 and 100 mW/cm²), though many brands don’t directly provide that number.

Most brands do note the length of each session, which is one way to quickly gauge irradiance without getting into calculations. Dr. Mamina Turegano sums it up best on her YouTube account: “Higher irradiance means more effective energy delivery per minute of use.” Longer sessions don’t automatically mean that results will be more powerful — a mask with sessions that last for less than 10 minutes has higher irradiance than a mask with sessions that last for 20 to 30 minutes. Since a mask with lower irradiance needs to sit on your face for longer, you might be less likely to keep up with wearing it.

Are bulb count and bulb placement a big deal?

The number of bulbs and the placement of bulbs inside the mask can also impact efficacy, especially if you’re expecting results on a specific area of your face. Masks with more bulbs packed evenly across the face will provide more even coverage across every inch of your face than masks with more sporadically-placed bulbs.

Some masks also provide more light sources overall by emitting both red and blue light simultaneously from every single bulb, like the Shark CryoGlow. This would be a better option for full-face acne prevention than masks with blue and red LEDs only concentrated in certain spots, like the Dr. Dennis Gross DRx SpectraLite.

What red light masks worked for us?

Of course, you probably didn’t come here for a science lesson. You want to find the best red light masks Mashable’s testers used and loved.

After trying out 11 different products, we ultimately found six that we can recommend. These masks delivered visible results for our product testers.

Remember: Consistency is essential for the best results (or any results)with LED face masks. You’ll need to wear your mask consistently for at least 1-2 months.

#red #light #masks #tested #winners #avoid">Best red light masks tested: 6 winners, 2 to avoid in 2026

How to choose a red light face mask: Look at wavelength first

There are some ways to tell that a red light face mask won’t be effective before you buy it and use it for a few months.

Wavelength is the first factor anyone will tell you to consider. You want to find products that emit light within the therapeutic window, or the range of wavelengths that can be effective when treating common skin conditions. There is now an abundance of evidence that specific wavelengths of red light can be effective for:

Reduction of fine lines, dark circles, and crow’s feet
Improving skin texture
Fighting wrinkles
Boosting collagen production
Reducing inflammation and redness

To be effective, the light coming from the mask must penetrate different layers of your skin. There are optimal wavelengths for each type of light a face mask emits, and any reputable brand will put their mask’s wavelengths front and center in the listing. These carefully chosen ranges are strong enough to penetrate your skin, but gentle enough to avoid over-activating delicate face skin.

Red light does its work in the middle layer (dermis) of your skin, requiring wavelengths between 630 and 633 nm to reach past the top layer. There, red light stimulates cells to produce rejuvenating proteins like collagen and elastin, evening out surface redness, and preventing scarring or post-pimple red spots.

The Shark CryoGlow’s Better Aging routine combines red and near-infrared light. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

The Shark CryoGlow’s Skin Clearing routine uses a special sequence of red, near-infrared, and blue light. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Most red light masks also use near-infrared red light therapy, which requires longer wavelengths to travel further than regular red light. Near-infrared light between 830 and 850 nm reaches into tissue under the dermis to further stimulate cell turnover, firm skin, and heal deep-seated spots or stubborn dark circles.

What about blue light therapy?

Blue light is often used to target acne, and some of the best red light masks use a combination of blue and red light therapy.

The thing is, most mainstream LED face masks hit those wavelength marks. So, how do you choose between masks if their wavelength numbers are all the same?

The importance of irradiance

Inside of Shark CryoGlow face mask lit up pink

Bulb placement is one of the key factors we considered in our test. Credit: Leah Stodart / Mashable

Comfort is another key factor, as consistent use is key to results. Credit: Miller Kern / Mashable

Are bulb count and bulb placement a big deal?

What red light masks worked for us?

Of course, you probably didn’t come here for a science lesson. You want to find the best red light masks Mashable’s testers used and loved.

After trying out 11 different products, we ultimately found six that we can recommend. These masks delivered visible results for our product testers.

Remember: Consistency is essential for the best results (or any results)with LED face masks. You’ll need to wear your mask consistently for at least 1-2 months.

#red #light #masks #tested #winners #avoid

Is an e-reader case as dangerous as a Glock 19?

Last month, Louisville, Kentucky-based creator Luke The Maker showed off a bizarre, 3D-printed, pistol-shaped case design for the popular minimalist Xteink X4 e-reader. The X4 lies vertically atop the plastic gun’s slide, with a cutout on the side to access its buttons. Though the frame was digitally modeled after a real gun, this “case” can’t shoot bullets. Squeezing the trigger does nothing at all. He calls his contraption the “Gundle.”

In a post showing off the wacky accessory, Luke (whose last name is Blackford) can be seen flipping through Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye before tossing the gun e-reader case in his car’s center console.

“The perfect e-reader for public reading,” text reads over the clip.

But even though this internet experiment is clearly intended as a joke or commentary, it’s possible future 3D printers won’t see it that way. Lawmakers in multiple states are pushing for laws mandating gun-blocking software on all new printers sold. This still-evolving technology would, in theory, scan every file before it’s physically printed and try to algorithmically determine whether it’s a firearm or firearm part. If the software decides that the thing being printed looks enough like a gun, it stops the printer from completing the job. That is, if it even works. Lawmakers in New York and California are leaving it up to a panel of industry experts to weigh whether the proposed vision is even technically feasible. Despite that cloud of uncertainty, legislation mandating this blocking tech has already become law in New York and passed California’s state assembly.

“I didn’t want it to be so publicly available. I just didn’t want tons of them out there.”

That may sound reasonable enough, but makers and industry experts previously told The Verge that the tech is underdeveloped and risks introducing false positives where non-guns that look gun-like get unnecessarily blocked. Blackford’s e-reader case falls directly in that detection gray area. Blackford says he didn’t explicitly make the Gundle to challenge the proposed laws, but he also didn’t shy away from expressing his opinion about them.

“I’m not for that kind of thing because I’m big into open software,” Blackford says. “It’s just a wild frontier right now, so I definitely don’t trust [gun blueprint scanning tech] now.”

“If people want to 3D print a gun, they’re going to do it,” he adds. “I don’t think it’s up to the people making the slicers to control that kind of thing.”

Those pushing for these mandates, meanwhile, wouldn’t say whether their proposed tech would stop Blackford from making a harmless case. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office didn’t respond to questions about Blackford’s device specifically, or the implications false positives could have for a maker’s ability to freely express themself.

“Governor Hochul is laser-focused on improving public safety and reducing gun violence in New York,” deputy communications director at the Office of Governor Kathy Hochul and spokesperson Jess D’Amelia tells The Verge. “This law relies on the expertise of leading subject matter experts to evaluate and harness emerging technologies while addressing the real and growing threat of ghost guns and illegally manufactured weapons of war. The Governor is confident these measures will make all New York communities safer.”

“The intent of the law is not to block prints like this, but I think this print is a really good example of why that’s hard.”

Cliff Braun, associate director of technology policy and research at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who has spoken critically of California’s proposal, says it’s unclear whether the proposed system would flag Blackford’s design. While the technology exists, Braun says it’s currently in a “limited form.” Critics say a more cautious detection system that relies on hashes to flag known firearms and parts from a database could be trivially easy to sidestep by simply making small changes to a file’s design. A more expansive approach using AI to analyze a file’s geometry and predict if it’s a gun, by contrast, may be more prone to mistakes. Things that look gun-ish but aren’t, in other words, might get swept up. Lawmakers in both states are leaving it to expert panels to iron out the details of implementation, but the final result, Braun says, will have to grapple with an unavoidable tradeoff between false positives and false negatives.

“The intent of the law is not to block prints like this, but I think this print is a really good example of why that’s hard,” Braun says.

Handguns like the one Blackford modeled his design on are particularly problematic. In 2022, the ATF updated its rules clarifying that the only parts of a firearm that legally require a serial number are those that provide the housing or structure for the weapon’s “primary fire control component.” In AR-15s and other long guns, that’s the receiver. Braun notes that the shapes of receivers are relatively unique and distinguishable, as are machine gun conversion devices. That’s not quite the same with a handgun. There, the part that requires a serial number is the frame. And unlike receivers, frames are visually far more ambiguous. Water hoses, toy guns, and power tools all share somewhat similar shapes.

Dartmouth College associate professor of engineering Solomon Diamond tells The Verge that whether Blackford’s e-reader case gets blocked really depends on the type of technology that particular printer deploys. A more conservative hashing approach would fall flat because Blackford’s device wouldn’t match one of the exact hashes on a database of prohibited files. A different system using computer vision and AI to evaluate where an object likely resembles a gun, however, could flag it by mistake.

“Basing blocking tech on visual resemblance is where the false positive concerns arise because a prop and a real functional firearm resemble one another,” Diamond told The Verge. “The technical challenge here is that depending on training data and algorithms used, setting decision thresholds that have acceptably low false positive rates might have unacceptably high false negative rates and vice versa.”

“Visual resemblance might be fooled by [the] gun-shaped e-reader case,” he added.

Diamond noted a third option, “geometric identification,” could potentially thread the needle. This approach, which is currently being deployed to guide quality control in manufacturing, can be fine-tuned for what Diamond refers to as “exact geometric match,” where a zero false-positive rate is at least theoretically possible. This approach is still relatively new when it comes to 3D print blocking tech.

“Geometric Identification would not be fooled by your gun-shaped e-reader case,” he said.

3D printer manufacturers and the experts setting the standards for how blocking software mandates will work are then left with a complex choice. Requiring systems that are both actually effective at detecting guns and technically feasible to introduce in the near future will necessarily mean some non-guns get caught in the crossfire. Pretty quickly, that starts limiting how makers, hobbyists, and artists can express themselves.

“If you’re going to try and block all of those wonderfully creative humans, you’re going to make it very hard to print props or make social commentary,” Braun said.

Blackford says making the Gundle was relatively straightforward. He first went online and did a simple search for “free gun model,” which turned up the blueprints for the gun shell part of the case. He then uploaded that to Fusion 360, his preferred modeling program, and added the e-reader on top and built the case around it. The Xteink X4 is one of the cheaper e-readers on the market, and though it has limited functionality, its devoted community regularly works to improve it. With the digital design finalized, Blackford sent it off to his Bambu Lab H2D printer. The entire process, from initial idea to printed product, took less than 24 hours.

Even though the device doesn’t shoot, Blackford says he still hasn’t taken it out in public. He’s since published the files on his website, where anyone with a 3D printer can download them and make their own. Blackford admits he did this with some hesitation. The case isn’t a gun, but it looks enough like one that someone brandishing it in the open, or revealing it during a confrontation with law enforcement, could find themselves in a seriously dangerous misunderstanding. He talked things over with his wife before publishing, and ultimately decided to avoid larger marketplaces like Thingiverse or Printables so it wouldn’t spread too widely. This way, he says, people can still find it if they are interested but won’t randomly stumble upon it.

“I didn’t want it to be so publicly available,” Blackford says. “I just didn’t want tons of them out there.”

“If you’re going to try and block all of those wonderfully creative humans, you’re going to make it very hard to print props or make social commentary.”

There’s also some question as to whether walking around with the case would violate already existing federal laws requiring toys or other “look-alike firearms” to have distinctive markings. These so-called “orange tip laws” are why fake guns and airsoft guns have blaze-orange plastic tips attached to their muzzles when they are manufactured and sold. But the e-reader case isn’t really a toy or a fake gun, but an art project.

Regardless, Blackford says if he ever did take it out in public, he’d print a version in a different color to make clear it isn’t imitating a real weapon. That’s not an overreaction. Walking around in public with something that resembles a gun, even if it is functionally useless, can make interactions with police and other gun owners dangerous, or even deadly. In 2014, Cleveland police shot and killed a 12-year-old boy named Tamir Rice after he reached for a toy gun. A 2016 Washington Post report estimated that over the span of two years, police shot and killed 86 people who were holding realistic-looking toy weapons and pellet and airsoft guns.

Supporters of blueprint scanning mandates say it’s necessary to close an enforcement gap that’s giving those with felony convictions and others access to guns when they shouldn’t have them. Various laws prohibiting the manufacture and sale of 3D-printed ghost guns (untraceable firearms without serial numbers) already exist across the country. But people print in the privacy of their own homes, making enforcing those laws nearly impossible. Hochul has called this dynamic the “plastic pipeline” and warns of criminals printing guns on their kitchen tables. Mandating scanning software would shift the responsibility onto printer manufacturers, stopping the illegal guns before they are ever made.

Whether the threat posed by 3D-printed guns actually justifies such a transformative change to how printers work remains up for debate. The guns are certainly getting better in terms of performance. There are also more of them. In 2024, the NYPD said it recovered 109 mostly 3D-printed guns from crime scenes. That’s up from just one recorded three years prior. A separate 2024 report from the gun control advocacy group Everytown found similar results in 20 other cities.

All of that is a drop in the bucket compared to conventional guns collected at crime scenes. In 2025 alone, then-Mayor Eric Adams claimed the NYPD seized more than 5,200 illegal guns. The total number of firearms in the country more broadly has been estimated to outnumber people.

But Blackford says he wasn’t convinced 3D-printed guns pose an especially immediate danger. In his view, they are still primarily made by tinkerers and gun enthusiasts with a passion for the process and plenty of time on their hands. In most cases, he’s convinced, getting a real gun is still much easier than printing one.

3D printing, Blackford says, “is too much of a pain in the ass.”

And if legislation like New York’s or California’s ever reaches Kentucky, Blackford says he’s ready to get creative, either by using VPNs or figuring out some other workaround. He’s likely not alone.

“Some companies are going to be putting those locks in place, but I think open-source software is always going to prevail,” Blackford says.

Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.

Mack DeGeurin

#ereader #case #gunTech">

Is this e-reader case a gun?Is an e-reader case as dangerous as a Glock 19?Last month, Louisville, Kentucky-based creator Luke The Maker showed off a bizarre, 3D-printed, pistol-shaped case design for the popular minimalist Xteink X4 e-reader. The X4 lies vertically atop the plastic gun’s slide, with a cutout on the side to access its buttons. Though the frame was digitally modeled after a real gun, this “case” can’t shoot bullets. Squeezing the trigger does nothing at all. He calls his contraption the “Gundle.”In a post showing off the wacky accessory, Luke (whose last name is Blackford) can be seen flipping through Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye before tossing the gun e-reader case in his car’s center console.“The perfect e-reader for public reading,” text reads over the clip.But even though this internet experiment is clearly intended as a joke or commentary, it’s possible future 3D printers won’t see it that way. Lawmakers in multiple states are pushing for laws mandating gun-blocking software on all new printers sold. This still-evolving technology would, in theory, scan every file before it’s physically printed and try to algorithmically determine whether it’s a firearm or firearm part. If the software decides that the thing being printed looks enough like a gun, it stops the printer from completing the job. That is, if it even works. Lawmakers in New York and California are leaving it up to a panel of industry experts to weigh whether the proposed vision is even technically feasible. Despite that cloud of uncertainty, legislation mandating this blocking tech has already become law in New York and passed California’s state assembly.“I didn’t want it to be so publicly available. I just didn’t want tons of them out there.” That may sound reasonable enough, but makers and industry experts previously told The Verge that the tech is underdeveloped and risks introducing false positives where non-guns that look gun-like get unnecessarily blocked. Blackford’s e-reader case falls directly in that detection gray area. Blackford says he didn’t explicitly make the Gundle to challenge the proposed laws, but he also didn’t shy away from expressing his opinion about them.“I’m not for that kind of thing because I’m big into open software,” Blackford says. “It’s just a wild frontier right now, so I definitely don’t trust [gun blueprint scanning tech] now.”“If people want to 3D print a gun, they’re going to do it,” he adds. “I don’t think it’s up to the people making the slicers to control that kind of thing.”Those pushing for these mandates, meanwhile, wouldn’t say whether their proposed tech would stop Blackford from making a harmless case. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office didn’t respond to questions about Blackford’s device specifically, or the implications false positives could have for a maker’s ability to freely express themself.“Governor Hochul is laser-focused on improving public safety and reducing gun violence in New York,” deputy communications director at the Office of Governor Kathy Hochul and spokesperson Jess D’Amelia tells The Verge. “This law relies on the expertise of leading subject matter experts to evaluate and harness emerging technologies while addressing the real and growing threat of ghost guns and illegally manufactured weapons of war. The Governor is confident these measures will make all New York communities safer.”“The intent of the law is not to block prints like this, but I think this print is a really good example of why that’s hard.”Cliff Braun, associate director of technology policy and research at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who has spoken critically of California’s proposal, says it’s unclear whether the proposed system would flag Blackford’s design. While the technology exists, Braun says it’s currently in a “limited form.” Critics say a more cautious detection system that relies on hashes to flag known firearms and parts from a database could be trivially easy to sidestep by simply making small changes to a file’s design. A more expansive approach using AI to analyze a file’s geometry and predict if it’s a gun, by contrast, may be more prone to mistakes. Things that look gun-ish but aren’t, in other words, might get swept up. Lawmakers in both states are leaving it to expert panels to iron out the details of implementation, but the final result, Braun says, will have to grapple with an unavoidable tradeoff between false positives and false negatives.“The intent of the law is not to block prints like this, but I think this print is a really good example of why that’s hard,” Braun says.Handguns like the one Blackford modeled his design on are particularly problematic. In 2022, the ATF updated its rules clarifying that the only parts of a firearm that legally require a serial number are those that provide the housing or structure for the weapon’s “primary fire control component.” In AR-15s and other long guns, that’s the receiver. Braun notes that the shapes of receivers are relatively unique and distinguishable, as are machine gun conversion devices. That’s not quite the same with a handgun. There, the part that requires a serial number is the frame. And unlike receivers, frames are visually far more ambiguous. Water hoses, toy guns, and power tools all share somewhat similar shapes.Dartmouth College associate professor of engineering Solomon Diamond tells The Verge that whether Blackford’s e-reader case gets blocked really depends on the type of technology that particular printer deploys. A more conservative hashing approach would fall flat because Blackford’s device wouldn’t match one of the exact hashes on a database of prohibited files. A different system using computer vision and AI to evaluate where an object likely resembles a gun, however, could flag it by mistake.“Basing blocking tech on visual resemblance is where the false positive concerns arise because a prop and a real functional firearm resemble one another,” Diamond told The Verge. “The technical challenge here is that depending on training data and algorithms used, setting decision thresholds that have acceptably low false positive rates might have unacceptably high false negative rates and vice versa.”“Visual resemblance might be fooled by [the] gun-shaped e-reader case,” he added.Diamond noted a third option, “geometric identification,” could potentially thread the needle. This approach, which is currently being deployed to guide quality control in manufacturing, can be fine-tuned for what Diamond refers to as “exact geometric match,” where a zero false-positive rate is at least theoretically possible. This approach is still relatively new when it comes to 3D print blocking tech.“Geometric Identification would not be fooled by your gun-shaped e-reader case,” he said.3D printer manufacturers and the experts setting the standards for how blocking software mandates will work are then left with a complex choice. Requiring systems that are both actually effective at detecting guns and technically feasible to introduce in the near future will necessarily mean some non-guns get caught in the crossfire. Pretty quickly, that starts limiting how makers, hobbyists, and artists can express themselves.“If you’re going to try and block all of those wonderfully creative humans, you’re going to make it very hard to print props or make social commentary,” Braun said.Blackford says making the Gundle was relatively straightforward. He first went online and did a simple search for “free gun model,” which turned up the blueprints for the gun shell part of the case. He then uploaded that to Fusion 360, his preferred modeling program, and added the e-reader on top and built the case around it. The Xteink X4 is one of the cheaper e-readers on the market, and though it has limited functionality, its devoted community regularly works to improve it. With the digital design finalized, Blackford sent it off to his Bambu Lab H2D printer. The entire process, from initial idea to printed product, took less than 24 hours.Even though the device doesn’t shoot, Blackford says he still hasn’t taken it out in public. He’s since published the files on his website, where anyone with a 3D printer can download them and make their own. Blackford admits he did this with some hesitation. The case isn’t a gun, but it looks enough like one that someone brandishing it in the open, or revealing it during a confrontation with law enforcement, could find themselves in a seriously dangerous misunderstanding. He talked things over with his wife before publishing, and ultimately decided to avoid larger marketplaces like Thingiverse or Printables so it wouldn’t spread too widely. This way, he says, people can still find it if they are interested but won’t randomly stumble upon it.“I didn’t want it to be so publicly available,” Blackford says. “I just didn’t want tons of them out there.”“If you’re going to try and block all of those wonderfully creative humans, you’re going to make it very hard to print props or make social commentary.”There’s also some question as to whether walking around with the case would violate already existing federal laws requiring toys or other “look-alike firearms” to have distinctive markings. These so-called “orange tip laws” are why fake guns and airsoft guns have blaze-orange plastic tips attached to their muzzles when they are manufactured and sold. But the e-reader case isn’t really a toy or a fake gun, but an art project.Regardless, Blackford says if he ever did take it out in public, he’d print a version in a different color to make clear it isn’t imitating a real weapon. That’s not an overreaction. Walking around in public with something that resembles a gun, even if it is functionally useless, can make interactions with police and other gun owners dangerous, or even deadly. In 2014, Cleveland police shot and killed a 12-year-old boy named Tamir Rice after he reached for a toy gun. A 2016 Washington Post report estimated that over the span of two years, police shot and killed 86 people who were holding realistic-looking toy weapons and pellet and airsoft guns.Supporters of blueprint scanning mandates say it’s necessary to close an enforcement gap that’s giving those with felony convictions and others access to guns when they shouldn’t have them. Various laws prohibiting the manufacture and sale of 3D-printed ghost guns (untraceable firearms without serial numbers) already exist across the country. But people print in the privacy of their own homes, making enforcing those laws nearly impossible. Hochul has called this dynamic the “plastic pipeline” and warns of criminals printing guns on their kitchen tables. Mandating scanning software would shift the responsibility onto printer manufacturers, stopping the illegal guns before they are ever made.Whether the threat posed by 3D-printed guns actually justifies such a transformative change to how printers work remains up for debate. The guns are certainly getting better in terms of performance. There are also more of them. In 2024, the NYPD said it recovered 109 mostly 3D-printed guns from crime scenes. That’s up from just one recorded three years prior. A separate 2024 report from the gun control advocacy group Everytown found similar results in 20 other cities.All of that is a drop in the bucket compared to conventional guns collected at crime scenes. In 2025 alone, then-Mayor Eric Adams claimed the NYPD seized more than 5,200 illegal guns. The total number of firearms in the country more broadly has been estimated to outnumber people.But Blackford says he wasn’t convinced 3D-printed guns pose an especially immediate danger. In his view, they are still primarily made by tinkerers and gun enthusiasts with a passion for the process and plenty of time on their hands. In most cases, he’s convinced, getting a real gun is still much easier than printing one.3D printing, Blackford says, “is too much of a pain in the ass.”And if legislation like New York’s or California’s ever reaches Kentucky, Blackford says he’s ready to get creative, either by using VPNs or figuring out some other workaround. He’s likely not alone.“Some companies are going to be putting those locks in place, but I think open-source software is always going to prevail,” Blackford says.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.Mack DeGeurinCloseMack DeGeurinPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Mack DeGeurinTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Tech#ereader #case #gunTech

mwasimuddin125 0

Is an e-reader case as dangerous as a Glock 19?
Last month, Louisville, Kentucky-based creator Luke The Maker showed off a bizarre, 3D-printed, pistol-shaped case design for the popular minimalist Xteink X4 e-reader. The X4 lies vertically atop the plastic gun’s slide, with a cutout on the side to access its buttons. Though the frame was digitally modeled after a real gun, this “case” can’t shoot bullets. Squeezing the trigger does nothing at all. He calls his contraption the “Gundle.”
In a post showing off the wacky accessory, Luke (whose last name is Blackford) can be seen flipping through Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye before tossing the gun e-reader case in his car’s center console.
“The perfect e-reader for public reading,” text reads over the clip.
But even though this internet experiment is clearly intended as a joke or commentary, it’s possible future 3D printers won’t see it that way. Lawmakers in multiple states are pushing for laws mandating gun-blocking software on all new printers sold. This still-evolving technology would, in theory, scan every file before it’s physically printed and try to algorithmically determine whether it’s a firearm or firearm part. If the software decides that the thing being printed looks enough like a gun, it stops the printer from completing the job. That is, if it even works. Lawmakers in New York and California are leaving it up to a panel of industry experts to weigh whether the proposed vision is even technically feasible. Despite that cloud of uncertainty, legislation mandating this blocking tech has already become law in New York and passed California’s state assembly.
“I didn’t want it to be so publicly available. I just didn’t want tons of them out there.”
That may sound reasonable enough, but makers and industry experts previously told The Verge that the tech is underdeveloped and risks introducing false positives where non-guns that look gun-like get unnecessarily blocked. Blackford’s e-reader case falls directly in that detection gray area. Blackford says he didn’t explicitly make the Gundle to challenge the proposed laws, but he also didn’t shy away from expressing his opinion about them.
“I’m not for that kind of thing because I’m big into open software,” Blackford says. “It’s just a wild frontier right now, so I definitely don’t trust [gun blueprint scanning tech] now.”
“If people want to 3D print a gun, they’re going to do it,” he adds. “I don’t think it’s up to the people making the slicers to control that kind of thing.”
Those pushing for these mandates, meanwhile, wouldn’t say whether their proposed tech would stop Blackford from making a harmless case. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office didn’t respond to questions about Blackford’s device specifically, or the implications false positives could have for a maker’s ability to freely express themself.
“Governor Hochul is laser-focused on improving public safety and reducing gun violence in New York,” deputy communications director at the Office of Governor Kathy Hochul and spokesperson Jess D’Amelia tells The Verge. “This law relies on the expertise of leading subject matter experts to evaluate and harness emerging technologies while addressing the real and growing threat of ghost guns and illegally manufactured weapons of war. The Governor is confident these measures will make all New York communities safer.”
“The intent of the law is not to block prints like this, but I think this print is a really good example of why that’s hard.”
Cliff Braun, associate director of technology policy and research at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who has spoken critically of California’s proposal, says it’s unclear whether the proposed system would flag Blackford’s design. While the technology exists, Braun says it’s currently in a “limited form.” Critics say a more cautious detection system that relies on hashes to flag known firearms and parts from a database could be trivially easy to sidestep by simply making small changes to a file’s design. A more expansive approach using AI to analyze a file’s geometry and predict if it’s a gun, by contrast, may be more prone to mistakes. Things that look gun-ish but aren’t, in other words, might get swept up. Lawmakers in both states are leaving it to expert panels to iron out the details of implementation, but the final result, Braun says, will have to grapple with an unavoidable tradeoff between false positives and false negatives.
“The intent of the law is not to block prints like this, but I think this print is a really good example of why that’s hard,” Braun says.
Handguns like the one Blackford modeled his design on are particularly problematic. In 2022, the ATF updated its rules clarifying that the only parts of a firearm that legally require a serial number are those that provide the housing or structure for the weapon’s “primary fire control component.” In AR-15s and other long guns, that’s the receiver. Braun notes that the shapes of receivers are relatively unique and distinguishable, as are machine gun conversion devices. That’s not quite the same with a handgun. There, the part that requires a serial number is the frame. And unlike receivers, frames are visually far more ambiguous. Water hoses, toy guns, and power tools all share somewhat similar shapes.
Dartmouth College associate professor of engineering Solomon Diamond tells The Verge that whether Blackford’s e-reader case gets blocked really depends on the type of technology that particular printer deploys. A more conservative hashing approach would fall flat because Blackford’s device wouldn’t match one of the exact hashes on a database of prohibited files. A different system using computer vision and AI to evaluate where an object likely resembles a gun, however, could flag it by mistake.
“Basing blocking tech on visual resemblance is where the false positive concerns arise because a prop and a real functional firearm resemble one another,” Diamond told The Verge. “The technical challenge here is that depending on training data and algorithms used, setting decision thresholds that have acceptably low false positive rates might have unacceptably high false negative rates and vice versa.”
“Visual resemblance might be fooled by [the] gun-shaped e-reader case,” he added.
Diamond noted a third option, “geometric identification,” could potentially thread the needle. This approach, which is currently being deployed to guide quality control in manufacturing, can be fine-tuned for what Diamond refers to as “exact geometric match,” where a zero false-positive rate is at least theoretically possible. This approach is still relatively new when it comes to 3D print blocking tech.
“Geometric Identification would not be fooled by your gun-shaped e-reader case,” he said.
3D printer manufacturers and the experts setting the standards for how blocking software mandates will work are then left with a complex choice. Requiring systems that are both actually effective at detecting guns and technically feasible to introduce in the near future will necessarily mean some non-guns get caught in the crossfire. Pretty quickly, that starts limiting how makers, hobbyists, and artists can express themselves.
“If you’re going to try and block all of those wonderfully creative humans, you’re going to make it very hard to print props or make social commentary,” Braun said.
Blackford says making the Gundle was relatively straightforward. He first went online and did a simple search for “free gun model,” which turned up the blueprints for the gun shell part of the case. He then uploaded that to Fusion 360, his preferred modeling program, and added the e-reader on top and built the case around it. The Xteink X4 is one of the cheaper e-readers on the market, and though it has limited functionality, its devoted community regularly works to improve it. With the digital design finalized, Blackford sent it off to his Bambu Lab H2D printer. The entire process, from initial idea to printed product, took less than 24 hours.
Even though the device doesn’t shoot, Blackford says he still hasn’t taken it out in public. He’s since published the files on his website, where anyone with a 3D printer can download them and make their own. Blackford admits he did this with some hesitation. The case isn’t a gun, but it looks enough like one that someone brandishing it in the open, or revealing it during a confrontation with law enforcement, could find themselves in a seriously dangerous misunderstanding. He talked things over with his wife before publishing, and ultimately decided to avoid larger marketplaces like Thingiverse or Printables so it wouldn’t spread too widely. This way, he says, people can still find it if they are interested but won’t randomly stumble upon it.
“I didn’t want it to be so publicly available,” Blackford says. “I just didn’t want tons of them out there.”
“If you’re going to try and block all of those wonderfully creative humans, you’re going to make it very hard to print props or make social commentary.”
There’s also some question as to whether walking around with the case would violate already existing federal laws requiring toys or other “look-alike firearms” to have distinctive markings. These so-called “orange tip laws” are why fake guns and airsoft guns have blaze-orange plastic tips attached to their muzzles when they are manufactured and sold. But the e-reader case isn’t really a toy or a fake gun, but an art project.
Regardless, Blackford says if he ever did take it out in public, he’d print a version in a different color to make clear it isn’t imitating a real weapon. That’s not an overreaction. Walking around in public with something that resembles a gun, even if it is functionally useless, can make interactions with police and other gun owners dangerous, or even deadly. In 2014, Cleveland police shot and killed a 12-year-old boy named Tamir Rice after he reached for a toy gun. A 2016 Washington Post report estimated that over the span of two years, police shot and killed 86 people who were holding realistic-looking toy weapons and pellet and airsoft guns.
Supporters of blueprint scanning mandates say it’s necessary to close an enforcement gap that’s giving those with felony convictions and others access to guns when they shouldn’t have them. Various laws prohibiting the manufacture and sale of 3D-printed ghost guns (untraceable firearms without serial numbers) already exist across the country. But people print in the privacy of their own homes, making enforcing those laws nearly impossible. Hochul has called this dynamic the “plastic pipeline” and warns of criminals printing guns on their kitchen tables. Mandating scanning software would shift the responsibility onto printer manufacturers, stopping the illegal guns before they are ever made.
Whether the threat posed by 3D-printed guns actually justifies such a transformative change to how printers work remains up for debate. The guns are certainly getting better in terms of performance. There are also more of them. In 2024, the NYPD said it recovered 109 mostly 3D-printed guns from crime scenes. That’s up from just one recorded three years prior. A separate 2024 report from the gun control advocacy group Everytown found similar results in 20 other cities.
All of that is a drop in the bucket compared to conventional guns collected at crime scenes. In 2025 alone, then-Mayor Eric Adams claimed the NYPD seized more than 5,200 illegal guns. The total number of firearms in the country more broadly has been estimated to outnumber people.
But Blackford says he wasn’t convinced 3D-printed guns pose an especially immediate danger. In his view, they are still primarily made by tinkerers and gun enthusiasts with a passion for the process and plenty of time on their hands. In most cases, he’s convinced, getting a real gun is still much easier than printing one.
3D printing, Blackford says, “is too much of a pain in the ass.”
And if legislation like New York’s or California’s ever reaches Kentucky, Blackford says he’s ready to get creative, either by using VPNs or figuring out some other workaround. He’s likely not alone.
“Some companies are going to be putting those locks in place, but I think open-source software is always going to prevail,” Blackford says.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
Mack DeGeurin

#ereader #case #gunTech">Is this e-reader case a gun?