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Live updates on Galaxy Z Fold 7, Z Flip 7 and Watch 8

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Welcome to Brooklyn, NY where Samsung is unveiling new foldable phones at its latest Galaxy Unpacked event. According to a massive leak yesterday, we’ll likely see the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Z Flip 7 and Z Flip 7 FE. That’s in line with the expectations of Samsung’s usual summer foldable releases that have happened for the past few years.

Adding weight to that report is the fact that Samsung even teased “the next chapter of Ultra” in early June, showing the silhouette of a foldable spinning around in an animation. You can read our whole article on what we expect to see at Unpacked today for the details, in case you can’t wait a few more hours.

Otherwise, buckle in to watch the livestream below and follow live commentary from our own Sam Rutherford on the scene.

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Live36 updates

  • From first impressions this does seem like a huge leap forward in design for the Z Fold. It’s the first time it actually looks like a regular phone when closed.

  • “Is it too slim?”. No such thing, my friend. The Z Fold 7 has been optimized to fit the battery… which is the same size as last year’s model. I suppose it’s thinner, which is impressive.

  • As a three-time Samsung foldable owner, yes, that’s us Mat.

  • Samsung is saying this is the thinnest Z Fold ever while including new adhesive and titanium layers for its flexible display.

  • This is so weird. Samsung is talking about taking on its users’ opinions and thoughts. And what an attractive bunch of typical users! Is this the everyperson buying Samsung foldables?

  • A flashy video showed off the Z Fold 7’s new very thin profile, which looks a lot the Galaxy S25 Edge, ending on the Z Fold 7 taking the place of New York’s famous Flatiron building.

  • Samsung is talking a big game about this thing. The company is promising “breakthroughs without compromise.”

  • There were some wild screams as Won-Joon Choi, the recently appointed COO of the mobile experience division, took the stage. I don’t know why.

  • The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is here.

    The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is here. (Sam Rutherford for Engadget)

  • Sorry ya’ll, getting a stable connection here is tough. But TM Roh is getting right into the action with the announcement of the Galaxy Z Fold 7.

  • “This is more than just a new Flip or Fold,” says mobile head TM Roh.

  • Samsung mobile president and “acting head of device experience division” TM Roh has stepped onstage, and is welcoming the audience and giving us a brief history of the company’s phones.

  • The Unpacked keynote has started, and after a quick flash of the usual legal disclaimers, Samsung is now showing us a video.

  • I feel like Fold and Flip owners have such different expectations. I mean a tri-fold sounds pretty rad but personally all I want is the option to pay a little more money for a Flip that has flagship cameras.

  • I agree with Sam. They also teased that next “Ultra” chapter. Will we see a Z Fold Ultra? It should be a trifold, in my opinion!

  • FWIW, this Unpacked event is at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, which is its own weird little corner of town that’s kind of hidden away and hard to get into.

    That said, there is a Wegman’s right down the street, so maybe Samsung was expecting people to stop there first? (I kid.)

  • The rumor I’m most interested in is the possible appearance of Samsung’s tri-fold phone. Info about it has swirling around for a while, but it’s been somewhat unclear if Samsung actually has plans to release it in the US.

    If we do see , I’m betting that it will be as a quick tease or a “one more thing” at the end of the presentation, similar to how they gave us a preview of the S25 Edge at the previous Unpacked event at the beginning of the year.

  • Do you all think maybe Samsung couldn’t find any good catering because everyone is so busy shopping Amazon’s Prime Day deals. Did you like how I casually referenced this massive shopping event in the middle of our liveblog? I just wanted to set the scene for those wondering what’s going on outside of the Samsung world today and this week. (The Engadget homepage is a good indicator of what else is happening in the consumer tech world.)

  • Important snack update

    A snippet of a screenshot of a Slack chat between Cherlynn Low and Mathew Smith at 9:34AM ET, with Low asking

    Screenshot (Slack)

  • Well hi there Sam! I too have a seat, but it’s at my desk, at 6:45AM, in sunny Arizona. Looking forward to throwing the Galaxy Z Flip 6 I’ve used daily for the past year or so into that sun shortly.



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Linda Yaccarino is out as CEO of Elon Musk’s X

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New York
CNN
 — 

Linda Yaccarino is stepping down as CEO of X after two years leading Elon Musk’s social media company.

Yaccarino’s departure comes one day after the company’s Grok chatbot began pushing antisemitic tropes in responses to users. It’s not clear that the events were connected.

Her exit also comes months after Musk sold X, his social media company, to xAI, his artificial intelligence company. The move formally combined the two entities that were already closely intertwined, but raised questions about Yaccarino’s role in the new company going forward.

Yaccarino announced her exit in a post on the platform, saying she is “immensely grateful” to Musk for “entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”

“Now, the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter with @xai,” she said in the post. “I’ll be cheering you all on as you continue to change the world.”

Musk replied to Yaccarino’s post with a terse response: “Thank you for your contributions.”

Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal marketing executive, took over from Musk as CEO of X — at the time, it was called Twitter — in June of 2023, about eight months after the billionaire bought the social media platform. She was brought on to help fix the platform’s flagging advertising business, after Musk alienated brands with his controversial comments and changes to the platform.

But her tenure has been marked by repeated public relations crises, including scrutiny over antisemitic and other hateful content spreading on the platform, viral false claims around international conflicts and ads that appeared alongside pro-Nazi content on the site. That led some brands to pull their spending, for which the Yaccarino-led X sued an advertising industry group — a lawsuit Yaccarino announced in a video message to all X users, in which she decried what she referred to as a conspiracy to boycott the X platform. (The industry group, Global Alliance for Responsible Media, shut down days after the lawsuit was filed.)

In the years since Musk took over X, the company has also had to contend with a rush of new competitors, including Bluesky and Meta’s Threads.

Yaccarino repeatedly touted the company’s “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” policy that aims to limit the reach of so-called lawful but awful content on the platform. Under her leadership, X also said it had rolled out additional brand safety controls for advertisers, including the ability to avoid having their ads show next to “targeted hate speech, sexual content, gratuitous gore, excessive profanity, obscenity, spam, drugs.”

But the company’s challenges escalated after X integrated xAI’s Grok chatbot into the platform, where users can ask the AI questions and bring it into conversation threads with other users. In May, Grok erroneously brought up a theory of “white genocide” in South Africa in response to unrelated questions. And on Tuesday — weeks after Musk said he would rebuild the chatbot because he was unsatisfied with some of its replies that he viewed as too politically correct — the chatbot shared antisemitic tropes. In response, xAI said it removed some posts and “has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.”

It’s not clear whether Yaccarino, as head of the social media business, had any control over Grok or the company’s other AI operations.

During her time as CEO of X, Yaccarino also faced questions about her power and influence over the company compared to Musk. The billionaire has said he is the company’s chief technology officer, leading product and technology teams, but his controversial statements and seemingly off-the-cuff policy pronouncements often seemed to leave Yaccarino on the back foot.

“Being the CEO of X was always going to be a tough job, and Yaccarino lasted in the role longer than many expected,” Jasmine Enberg, vice president at research firm Emarketer, said in emailed commentary. “Faced with a mercurial owner who never fully stepped away from the helm and continued to use the platform as his personal megaphone, Yaccarino had to try to run the business while also regularly putting out fires.”

And while X announced on-platform video podcasts with high-profile figures like Khloe Kardashian and several new finance tools, including a partnership with Visa to provide peer-to-peer payments, those features are niche offerings and the platform has not exactly become the “everything app” Yaccarino said she wanted to create.

Use of the platform has also fallen during her tenure, from 915.9 million combined active app users and unique website visitors during the month she took over to just 684.2 million last month, according to web traffic analysis firm Similarweb.

Yaccarino’s exit comes at a complicated time for Musk’s businesses, especially Tesla, and his political involvement has raised questions about his ability and commitment to lead multiple companies. Her departure comes shortly after several high level exits at Tesla, including Omead Afshar, Tesla’s head of manufacturing and operations.

Musk has also recently engaged in a high-profile feud with President Donald Trump, whom he’d previously supported, that has created a rift between Musk-world and Trump-world and prompted threats from the White House against the billionaire’s companies.

This story has been updated with additional details and context.

CNN’s Hadas Gold contributed to this report.



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Harvard Threatened by US Over Accreditation, Student Data

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(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump’s administration is intensifying its fight against Harvard University, warning that its accreditation may be in danger and formally moving to subpoena the school in a bid for information on foreign students.

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The Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday they had notified the New England Commission of Higher Education that Harvard may be in violation of anti-discrimination laws and failing to meet the commission’s accreditation standards, citing antisemitism on campus after the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

The Department of Homeland Security separately announced it was sending subpoenas because the school had “repeatedly refused past non-coercive requests to hand over the required information for its Student Visitor and Exchange Program certification.” The agency is seeking “relevant records, communications, and other documents relevant to the enforcement of immigration laws since January 1, 2020.”

The White House’s latest moves cast doubt on the progress of negotiations between Harvard and federal officials to resolve a standoff which has seen the government freeze billions of dollars of research funding and the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school sue the US.

Trump expressed optimism about a near-term settlement last month. Those conversations stalled as of late June, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said Tuesday in a cabinet meeting that the administration was “negotiating hard” with both Harvard and Columbia University. “I think we’re getting close to having that happen. It’s not wrapped up as fast as I wanted to, but we’re getting there,” she added.

Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton said in a statement that the university complies with accreditation standards. The school is “far from indifferent” about antisemitism and has taken steps including changing policies and publishing an antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias report in order to tackle its root causes on campus, he said.

“Harvard has made significant strides to combat bigotry, hate and bias. We are not alone in confronting this challenge and recognize that this work is ongoing,” Newton said.

Newton called the subpoenas “unwarranted” but said the university would “continue to cooperate with lawful requests and obligations.” The administration’s actions amount to “harmful government overreach,” according to Newton.



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Samsung cuts price of its foldables with the Z Flip 7 FE

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Samsung’s latest clamshell-style foldable is officially here, and it brought a new, more affordable sibling to the party. The Z Flip 7 was announced at Samsung’s summer Unpacked event this morning, and it’s been updated with an edge-to-edge cover screen. Alongside the Flip 7, Samsung is also launching a new model: the Z Flip 7 FE, which maintains the older, file-folder-shaped cutout for the cover screen.

The Flip 7 FE is the first foldable that Samsung has introduced in its “Fan Edition” line, which provides budget-friendly alternatives to the company’s flagship Galaxy phones. At $899, it’s not quite affordable enough to compete with Motorola’s Razr, which starts at $699, but it’s a lot cheaper than the Flip 7 model, which costs $1,099.

Both versions are available for preorder in the US starting today, with general availability beginning on July 25th. The Flip 7 comes in a few color options, including black, blue, red, and green, while its FE counterpart is only available in black or white.

The new Flip 7 FE closely mirrors the Flip 6. It has a similar 3.4-inch cover screen with a 720p resolution and a 6.7-inch internal display, a 10MP front camera, a 12MP ultrawide camera, and a 50MP wide-angle camera. It also has a 4,000mAh battery and a choice between 256GB or 512GB of storage. Some aspects are a downgrade, however — while the Flip 6 has 12GB of RAM, the Flip 7 FE only has 8GB, and it sports a slower Exynos 2400 chipset instead of the 4 nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

The Flip 7 has a few other upgrades in comparison. It features an almost borderless 4.1-inch AMOLED cover display that wraps around the camera, alongside a slimmer hinge design than its predecessor. The 6.9-inch internal display is a smidge bigger, and both the internal screen and cover display support a 120Hz refresh rate and 2,600 nits of peak brightness, while the previous generation’s cover screen capped out at 60Hz and 1,600 nits.

The Z Flip 7 also supports Samsung’s DeX desktop mode and comes with a larger 4,300mAh battery despite being slightly slimmer overall, measuring 13.7mm thick when folded. Most other features remain consistent with the previous generation.



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