The first week of June is behind us, meaning it’s time to choose our winner and our loser from the past seven days.
It’s been an interesting week for music streaming services. Spotify increased its pricing in the US, making it officially more expensive than Apple Music across the pond. Meanwhile, Bang & Olufsen teamed up with Tidal to give B&O app users access to hi-res, lossless, and immersive spatial audio formats.
We also saw Asus launch the ROG Ally X, a pricier update to the original ROG Ally handheld gaming PC.
Keep reading to discover who we named our winner and loser this week, along with why.
Winner: Google
Google is our winner this week as the company finally began rolling out its Google Gemini app across the UK and Europe.
Google Gemini is essentially a rebranded version of Google’s Bard chatbot – the search engine giant’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Google’s “largest and most capable AI model” (also called Gemini) is split into three different versions: Gemini Ultra, Gemini Pro, and Gemini Nano.
Gemini Pro is the model behind the free version of the Google Gemini chatbot, while Gemini Advanced (which falls under the Google One AI Premium Plan) uses Gemini Ultra to tackle more complex tasks, like coding, logical reasoning, and creative project collaboration, for those willing to fork out £18.99 a month.
Google’s Gemini AI model can also be found powering physical devices, such as the Pixel 8 Pro.
The Gemini app was meant to launch globally in early May but failed to reach Europe during that period. Now, Google Gemini has expanded to Europe, hitting the Google Play Store in the UK and taking over tasks previously assigned to the Google Assistant.
iOS users won’t miss out either as Gemini will be rolling out in the Google app in the coming weeks.
Loser: Samsung
Our loser this week is Samsung after the company struggled to keep its Galaxy Z Fold Flip foldable under wraps not once, but twice.
First, photos of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 were spotted on a South Korean forum. The images, which were shared widely by X user @ta_tech, appeared to show a dummy version of the foldable that may have been sent out to accessory manufacturers ahead of the device’s launch.
The Galaxy Z Fold 6 is one of two Samsung foldables rumoured to be launching this summer, alongside the Galaxy Z Flip 6.
Changes highlighted in the images include sharper corners and a shorter and wider internal display. The bezels appear to remain the same size as those on their predecessor, while the crease in the centre of the screen also appears to be as apparent as ever.
Just days later, we got our first “official” glimpse of the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and its clamshell sibling, the Galaxy Z Flip 6. We say official because the images reportedly originated from an ad posted on the Samsung Kazakhstan website, though it’s safe to assume to leak was unintentional on Samsung’s part as these images were swiftly removed from the site.
The ad, which was caught by Reddit user UnironicallyMe37, appears to show the two foldables mid-fold. The sharper, more squared-off design seen in the previous leak is also visible here, as are the camera modules.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that either of these leaks is real, but the fact that they match up with each other certainly makes them more convincing.