Samsung’s $999 Chromebook problem, and more tech news you need to know today - Android

Your good tech news digest, by way of the DGiT Daily newsletter, for Tuesday, April 7.

1. Samsung Galaxy Chromebook reviews: uh oh?

We’ve talked about the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook too many times, but for $999 and with almost no feature spared, it was meant to be the next coming of the Pixelbook.

To recap in 14 words: Samsung bet on a premium Chromebook, when most Chromebooks are $500, or much less.

In more words:

• At 9.9mm thick and 2.29 pounds, this is the thinnest Chromebook ever, and it just looks awesome. Again, it’s $999 so it needs to do everything right to be tempting for more than just enthusiasts
• Reviews hit late yesterday. The reviews are not particularly good.
• This can be wrapped up quickly: if you like battery life, don’t get one. The 4K screen seems to destroy the battery.

What else they’re saying:

• The Verge gives the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook a 6/10, giving the 4K screen and hardware a big tick, but bad battery life is looking like a killer for the $999 expense: “Samsung claimed eight hours of battery life; I got four hours and 20 minutes on a charge, swapping between several apps and several Chrome tabs at 50 percent brightness. It also doesn’t juice back up particularly fast.”
• Engadget hands over a 74/100, and says “it’s great, until the battery runs out,” and didn’t like the 16:9 screen ratio which feels limited these days. Battery comments: “The best I did was three hours and 52 minutes of use before the laptop shut down.”
• Wired gave it the best score of the three at 8/10, and didn’t seem to mind the battery life issues, partly because the reviewer wound down the brightness: “…if you turn down the brightness—and you can afford to, since the screen is so sharp—you can coax a full day of use out of the battery.”
• All reviews noted ChromeOS inconsistencies and found loads of unavailable Play Store apps, once you start looking outside the top 50.
• I don’t know if there’s hope for this laptop yet.
• Wired says you can get around it by lowering screen brightness but that’s not always an option as you move in different workplaces and as daylight changes.

Also: The Asus Chromebook Flip C436 is also now out, starting at $799. Another intriguing, expensive Chromebook. Only a few reviews I saw are available and the bad news is that it also has poor battery life.

2. Galaxy S20 Ultra or Z Flip: Which $1,400 Samsung phone should you buy? If any? (Android Authority).