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Samsung brings back the Classic version for the Watch8 series | TechCrunch

Samsung brings back the Classic version for the Watch8 series | TechCrunch

Samsung launched the Galaxy Watch8 smartwatch today at its Unpacked July 2025 event, along with the Galaxy Watch8 Classic version with a rotating bezel, which made a comeback after a year’s gap. Both watches have undergone a design overhaul and now resemble the Galaxy Watch Ultra, launched last year, which had a squarish case around a circular bezel.

The Galaxy Watch8 gets a screen upgrade with a brighter display that can have a peak brightness of 3,000 nits as compared to 2,000 nits on the Watch7. This allows you to use the smartwatch better in brighter conditions.

The Watch retains to Exynos W1000 chip and a BioActive Sensor, which measures heart rate, EKGs, and body composition analysis.

The smartwatch comes with other features Samsung rolled out last month, including Bedtime Guidance, which gives you suggestions for the best time for you to sleep based on previous sleep-tracking data; Vascular Load, which measures stress on your vascular system while you are sleeping and gives you lifestyle tweak suggestions; a Running Coach, which lays out the optimum pace for your runs; and Antioxidant index, which measures carotenoids — a type of antioxidents found in vegetable or fruits. Most of these features assume a lot of factors about a user’s health and use calculations to provide a score and suggestions, which might not be very useful in real life.

Both the watches run One UI 8 Watch based on Wear OS 6. With this software release, Google is making Gemini available on watches, so you can ask questions without typing. Gemini is integrated with Samsung Health, Calendar, Reminder, and Clock apps.

While Samsung is not making any changes to the Galaxy Watch Ultra, it is releasing a new Titanium Blue colorway at $650.

The Galaxy Watch8 starts at $350, $50 more than the previous gen watch, for the Bluetooth model, and at $400 for the LTE model. The new Watch comes in 40mm and 44mm sizes in graphite and silver colors. The Galaxy Watch8 Classic is priced at $500 for the Bluetooth version and $550 for the LTE version, and it comes in a 46mm size.

Pre-orders for all the watches start today, and the devices will become generally available in the U.S. on July 25.

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William Gibson once famously said that “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” It appears that the same goes for frontier AI models.

According to The Information, the White House told OpenAI it wants the company to release its next model in a limited fashion, to a select group of close partners.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly told staff that the company’s newest model, GPT 5.6, will be launched very differently than previous ones, with the government approving access “customer by customer.”

Following this limited release period, the company should be able to launch the model more broadly a “couple of weeks” later, says the report.

OpenAI competitor Anthropic recently had to pull its most powerful model, Fable 5, after Trump’s administration intervened to keep the model out of foreign hands. The company previously launched Mythos, an even more powerful model, as a limited release open only to a small set of pre-approved customers.

As for OpenAI’s GPT 5.6, the model is reportedly a “meaningful improvement” over GPT 5.5, both in terms of context window size and efficiency.

In a memo sent to employees, Altman reportedly said that GPT 5.6 is not the company’s preferred long term model, and that OpenAI will work with the government and others in the industry “to achieve a more sustainable approach for future releases.”

Want more tech news straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable’s Top Stories newsletter.

#White #House #OpenAI #limit #launch #model">White House wants OpenAI to limit the launch of its next model
                                                            William Gibson once famously said that “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” It appears that the same goes for frontier AI models. According to The Information, the White House told OpenAI it wants the company to release its next model in a limited fashion, to a select group of close partners. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly told staff that the company’s newest model, GPT 5.6, will be launched very differently than previous ones, with the government approving access “customer by customer.” 
Following this limited release period, the company should be able to launch the model more broadly a “couple of weeks” later, says the report.
        
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            Claude Fable 5 vs GPT 5.5: Is this why the Trump admin banned one and not the other?
            
        
    
OpenAI competitor Anthropic recently had to pull its most powerful model, Fable 5, after Trump’s administration intervened to keep the model out of foreign hands. The company previously launched Mythos, an even more powerful model, as a limited release open only to a small set of pre-approved customers.As for OpenAI’s GPT 5.6, the model is reportedly a “meaningful improvement” over GPT 5.5, both in terms of context window size and efficiency.  
In a memo sent to employees, Altman reportedly said that GPT 5.6 is not the company’s preferred long term model, and that OpenAI will work with the government and others in the industry “to achieve a more sustainable approach for future releases.”Want more tech news straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable’s Top Stories newsletter.

                    
                                            
                            
                        
                                    #White #House #OpenAI #limit #launch #model

AI models.

According to The Information, the White House told OpenAI it wants the company to release its next model in a limited fashion, to a select group of close partners.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly told staff that the company’s newest model, GPT 5.6, will be launched very differently than previous ones, with the government approving access “customer by customer.”

Following this limited release period, the company should be able to launch the model more broadly a “couple of weeks” later, says the report.

OpenAI competitor Anthropic recently had to pull its most powerful model, Fable 5, after Trump’s administration intervened to keep the model out of foreign hands. The company previously launched Mythos, an even more powerful model, as a limited release open only to a small set of pre-approved customers.

As for OpenAI’s GPT 5.6, the model is reportedly a “meaningful improvement” over GPT 5.5, both in terms of context window size and efficiency.

In a memo sent to employees, Altman reportedly said that GPT 5.6 is not the company’s preferred long term model, and that OpenAI will work with the government and others in the industry “to achieve a more sustainable approach for future releases.”

Want more tech news straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable’s Top Stories newsletter.

#White #House #OpenAI #limit #launch #model">White House wants OpenAI to limit the launch of its next model

William Gibson once famously said that “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” It appears that the same goes for frontier AI models.

According to The Information, the White House told OpenAI it wants the company to release its next model in a limited fashion, to a select group of close partners.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly told staff that the company’s newest model, GPT 5.6, will be launched very differently than previous ones, with the government approving access “customer by customer.”

Following this limited release period, the company should be able to launch the model more broadly a “couple of weeks” later, says the report.

OpenAI competitor Anthropic recently had to pull its most powerful model, Fable 5, after Trump’s administration intervened to keep the model out of foreign hands. The company previously launched Mythos, an even more powerful model, as a limited release open only to a small set of pre-approved customers.

As for OpenAI’s GPT 5.6, the model is reportedly a “meaningful improvement” over GPT 5.5, both in terms of context window size and efficiency.

In a memo sent to employees, Altman reportedly said that GPT 5.6 is not the company’s preferred long term model, and that OpenAI will work with the government and others in the industry “to achieve a more sustainable approach for future releases.”

Want more tech news straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable’s Top Stories newsletter.

#White #House #OpenAI #limit #launch #model

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