7 Days is a weekly roundup of picks of what"s been happening in the world of technology - written with a dash of humor, a hint of exasperation, and an endless supply of (black) coffee.
This week"s highlights include Samsung announcing the Galaxy S26 series, WhatsApp working on password support, AMD cracking a 100 billion mega-deal, and Trump and Anthropic giving us some much-needed drama. Let"s get started.
Fire Susan Rice
Trying to get someone fired isn"t a new thing in the corporate world. But it makes headlines and stirs some drama when such a request (or order) comes from US President Donald Trump, who took to Truth Social to publicly urge Netflix to dismiss board member Susan Rice. Trump"s post followed Rice"s recent interview, in which she suggested that corporations that supported Trump in the past might face scrutiny in future elections.
Apple"s big week ahead
CEO Tim Cook teased that Apple will launch a platter of new products in the first week of March. We have curated a list of what new devices you should expect, including the low-cost MacBook. However, it remains to be seen how the current memory shortage affects Apple buyers. For now, the company is overpaying to source the RAM chips for the iPhone.
In other news, iPhone and iPad have been picked as the first consumer devices approved for NATO Restricted level after rigorous testing. In other words, these are eligible for use with classified NATO information without any special software or settings.
You can read our latest issue of Apple Rewind to catch up on all the news from Apple in February.
$100 for ChatGPT
OpenAI already offers a platter of ChatGPT subscriptions, with the most expensive option costing $200/mo. But if you don"t want to pay such a high monthly fee, OpenAI is reportedly working on a new $100/mo ChatGPT plan called Pro Lite. While there are no official announcements yet, users have been requesting a $100 plan on OpenAI support forums.
Good artists copy, great artists steal
Anthropic has been at the forefront of recent AI controversies. The company is already in a feud with the US Department of Defense (DoD), and in the latest, it accused China of an "industrial scale" attempt to steal Claude"s capabilities. It says that Chinese AI Labs tried to manipulate Claude by running large networks of fake accounts to extract data for training their own models.
Holding their feet to the fire
It appears Donald Trump has joined the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in arm-twisting Anthropic following its clash with the DoD over the use of its AI models for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. Trump ordered US government agencies to stop using Anthropic"s AI models and requested a phased withdrawal of Anthropic technology from federal government operations.
Meanwhile, OpenAI secured a deal with the Pentagon that allows its AI models to be used in the classified network. While the details of the agreement aren"t public, OpenAI claims it preserves ethical boundaries.
Galaxy Unpacked 2026
One of Samsung"s biggest hardware events took place this week, and the South Korean giant unveiled its flagship smartphones: Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26+, and Galaxy S26 Ultra. A standout feature is Private Display, designed to protect your privacy from shoulder surfers in public places.
The new Galaxy Buds4 and Buds4 Pro feature improved noise cancellation, better EQ, and other upgrades. However, the overall design is similar to that of the previous-generation Galaxy Buds. Samsung topped it off with a platter of new AI features, calling the Galaxy S26 an "agentic phone."
From the space
While satellite connectivity feels like something reserved for modern flagships, Samsung is trying to make emergency and data-based satellite services part of the standard infrastructure by retroactively enabling satellite SOS on older Galaxy phones, including the S21 and S22 Series, in certain markets.
In other words, these older Samsung flagships always had the hardware to support life-saving features like satellite-based emergency SOS. The South Korean giant is working with major carriers to achieve its satellite goals.
Better late than never
WhatsApp has been around for over 16 years now. The app matured a lot under Meta and is finally readying one of the long-awaited features: passwords. Yes, you will be able to add passwords as an additional layer of security. The feature was spotted in beta, and it"s suggested that users who want to can still create accounts without a password when the feature goes public.
The Meta-owned messaging platform is also working on the ability to send scheduled messages. In other words, the feature will make sure you don"t miss your friends" birthdays and face their wrath. A new menu item in group info called “Scheduled Messages” was spotted in a recent test build of the app.
Beware! It"s harmful
Instagram"s new safety feature alerts teen parents when their kid searches for harmful content from the platform, such as terms related to suicide or self-harm. The feature set to roll out in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada comes days after CEO Adam Mosseri came under fire for downplaying Instagram"s addition.
Fake Windows PC deals
You should also stay alert when shopping for Windows PCs online. It"s reported that sellers are using fraudulent and misleading tactics to sell devices on Amazon. For instance, you might see a listing for a cheap Windows PC with an odd 1.1TB or 1.2TB of storage. In reality, the device may only come with 128GB of storage, and the remaining 1TB represents the bundled OneDrive cloud storage for a year.
Adults are adults
Discord rolled out age verification on its platform, hoping to kick out predators who might harm young users. It applied teen-appropriate restrictions to all 200 million users unless they performed a face scan or provided a government ID. However, the entire thing backfired when users found troubling links to U.S. surveillance infrastructure, forcing the company to delay the feature.
100 billion GPU deal
AMD and Meta have struck a new deal estimated at over $100 billion to put 6 gigawatts of AMD Instinct GPUs. What the deal means is that the chipmaker will supply hundreds of thousands of GPUs for use at Meta"s data centers. Fine details reveal that Meta will have a legal option to buy AMD shares at locked-in prices for up to 160 million shares, and, if the agreement delivers, Meta could end up owning about 10% of AMD.
Cha-Ching!
We are talking big money numbers this week. OpenAI and Amazon have signed a multi-year infrastructure deal that includes a staggering $50 billion investment from the e-commerce giant. The deal won"t affect OpenAI"s friendship with Microsoft, and the AI giant is committing $100 billion to AWS over the next eight years to source custom silicon and cloud infrastructure.
Firefox"s AI kill switch
Firefox 148.0 is now generally available, and with it comes the AI kill switch that Mozilla announced a few weeks ago. The web browser now gives you a single button to turn on all of its AI features. You can enable individual features in the browser settings if you want to use a few of them.
Suddenly essential
Tech giants are finding ways to force AI into our lives, and Microsoft is no different. In its latest attempt, Microsoft Edge"s new feature will automatically open the Copilot side panel when you click on a link from Outlook. The idea is to let you “get more value from Copilot while extending productive browsing time in Edge.”
Microsoft is so optimistic (or maybe obsessed) about Copilot that it crowned it the best productivity app on Windows in a recent list titled "Best productivity apps in Windows for getting more done."
Moreover, it launched AI-powered insights for Copilot Notebooks to get instant summaries and skip manual labor. Organizations using Microsoft 365 Copilot are getting new features to reduce phishing and fakery, such as adding their corporate logo to the footer.
The algorithm playbook
Spotify"s latest algorithm game is new weekly charts for audiobooks. It"s been a couple of years since Spotify entered the audiobook market and captured a quarter of the market share. Now, it wants to challenge traditional bestseller lists with a real-time data loop that it fully controls.
These podcast charts will give the audio streaming giant a chance to pick winners and losers, possibly influence authors and publishers to optimize their content for the platform’s engagement metrics.
Don"t revive LibreOffice Online
The Document Foundation plans to revive the long-dormant LibreOffice Online project as a self-hosted alternative to Google Docs or Microsoft 365. The proposal is facing resistance from Collabora Online, which spun out of LibreOffice Online as a free, fully-supported online version.
According to Michael Meeks, a TDF board member and a high-ranking figure at Collabora, the claim that TDF "substantially funded" the original project is "just incorrect," adding that the real work was done through Collabora"s multi-million-euro investment. He questioned the need to resurrect a dead project when a capable option already exists.
We"re sorry
Xbox app users were spammed this week with unintentional dummy messages from Microsoft. "This is a dummy message sent via Braze, please capture a screenshot once you receive it. This should take you to the recently added gallery," it read. Microsoft quickly issued a damage-control apology for the inconvenience caused.
In more Xbox news, the Redmond giant rolled out the February 2026 Xbox update, bringing support for 1440p streaming, new system navigation sounds, and system updates for the ASUS Xbox ROG Ally handheld console.
Run errands using Gemini
Google has a new agentic Gemini feature for Android that can run errands for you using third-party apps and execute multi-step tasks. It can do stuff like ordering groceries or booking a cab ride by asking Gemini, which works in the background with the respective app on your phone. You can check its progress anytime from the notifications.
The search giant is also bringing new AI features to Google Translate to better understand foreign expressions. The successor to Google"s image generation model has arrived: Nano Banana 2, which combines the speed of the original Flash model with the Pro model"s high-quality output.
Android 17 Beta 2
Google is working on the next big upgrade for its mobile operating system and released Android 17 Beta 2 to preview new features. It brings a new suite of APIs focused on privacy, connectivity, and improved UI controls.
Google has added a mandatory three-hour delay to SMS access to improve security for One-Time Passwords (OTPs), and has improved pointer capture compatibility to treat touchpad movements and scrolling gestures as mouse events by default.
Perplexity Computer
The AI startup Perplexity has launched a new general-purpose AI agent called Perplexity Computer, designed as a one-stop shop for various AI workflows. It can break down your prompt into tasks and subtasks, and call multiple sub-agents to do the job.
For instance, it uses Anthropic"s Opus 4.6 to power its core reasoning, Gemini for deep research, Nano Banana for images, Grok for lightweight tasks, ChatGPT 5.2 for long-context recall and wide search, and so on.
A wearable you can talk to
Luna Ring got a major upgrade, making it the first wearable you can truly talk to. You can have natural-language conversations about sleep, recovery, stress, hormones, or performance, grounded in biometric data and daily-life content. And yes, the feature is supported on Luna Ring gen 1 and 2 via Siri, so you can use it without upgrading.
What happened at Microsoft this week
For those wondering what happened under the Redmond giant"s roof this week, it"s killing off an Excel feature causing too much confusion for users, announced mini PCs for Windows 365, adding a lightning-fast mode to PowerToys, and making design updates to SharePoint and Planner.
Microsoft also cleared up confusion about the recently announced changes to Windows 11 printer drivers. You can check out Taras"s freshly baked Microsoft Weekly roundup to catch up on all the interesting stories this week.
iBUYPOWER Gen 10 Series
Custom PC builder iBUYPOWER launched is freshly-baked Gen 10 Series of prebuilt and custom gaming PCs. Its Trace X and Element Pulse X cases are the highlight of the lineup, featuring refreshed, architectural-inspired designs. Moreover, the AW5 AIO cooler has a segmented display on the CPU cooling block for quick reads of your system internals.
Steam Next Fest
Valve"s Steam Next Fest demo festival is back again for PC gamers, giving you a chance to get a taste of what"s on the table for the future. You can get your hands on gameplay slices from indie developers and major publishers until March 2. The Next Fest hub page lets you browse titles by genre, theme, and feature; meanwhile, the For You tab shows recommendations based on what you have been playing.
Resident Evil
Capcom"s latest survival horror title, Resident Evil Requiem, was all over the place this week. NVIDIA bundled the game with its GeForce NOW cloud gaming platform for those who buy its 12-month Ultimate subscription.
NVIDIA also released version 595.59 WHQL of its Game Ready drivers with optimizations and multi-frame support for the latest Resident Evil title. However, the driver was pulled due to problems with fan controls.
Resident Evil Requiem received support from Intel, which released the non-WHQL Intel graphics driver 32.0.101.8531 this week, adding support for several new games and bug fixes. Similarly, AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.2.2 arrived with support for the Capcom horror title and Bungie"s extraction shooter Marathon.
What else in gaming?
The latest issue of Pulasthi"s Weekly PC Game Deals curates a number of multiplayer games on sale this week. It includes a double freebie, a classics bundle, demos to try out, Anno to play, and much more. Xbox"s latest Free Play Days offer kicked off with some high-profile titles, including Anno 117: Pax Romana and Marathon.
That said, here are some more stories from the gaming world:
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NVIDIA might have just confirmed previous RTX 6000 release date rumors
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Quake-like shooter QUOD weighs only 64KB, has full levels, enemies, and even a boss fight
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Death Stranding 2 PC system requirements are here, and they hint at a good port
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Playground Games details reworked career mode and progression in Forza Horizon 6
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ARC Raiders is getting two new robot threats and hurricanes tomorrow
From the review corner
If you"re looking for a laptop accessory, Steven got his hands on the Choetech USB-C Hub 8-in-1 Laptop Stand this week. Blessed with a compact foldable design, the stand comes with a host of ports to expand your laptop"s connectivity options, while offering up to 100W PD for fast charging.
It comes with a carry bag and can be used to add TF and SD card option to any device. Overall, the build is premium and there isn"t much to dislike about the Choetech laptop stand, except the price tag.
CHUWI CoreBook Air 14
Budget PC brand CHUWI sent Taras a new review toy, the CoreBook Air 14, priced at $550. The laptop featuring an aluminum finish comes fitted with AMD Ryzen 5 6600H, 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, 12GB SSD, and offers higher configuration options.
It comes with a camera shutter, and the 65W USB-C charger with an outdated design gets the job done. However, the budget laptop uses an old processor, doesn"t offer Windows Hello support on its 14-inch variant, and has room for improvement for the Touchpad. You can get it for as low as $478 using a promo code in the review article.
HONOR Magic V6 foldable
This week HONOR announced the Magic V6 foldable at MWC in Barcelona, and Steven Parker got his hands on one and posted a first impressions of it ahead of a full review later this year. It includes the full specs and shots taken from all sides folded, and unfolded. There"s also a video of a hinge test showing how easy it is to operate. You can check out the full hands on here.
More price drops!
We got you covered with some hot tech deals all week. For some reason, if you missed out on a great discount, here is a summary of some recent deals that are still alive:
- This unique glowing controller from PowerA is 40% off
- Grab Logitech G PRO X 2 Lightspeed for 30% off on Amazon
- The Corsair Dark CORE RGB PRO SE gaming mouse is a steal with 39% discount
- This powerful 100W three-port charger is now only $29
- LG gram Pro 17 with RTX 5050 drops to $1,997 on Amazon, nearly $900 off
- Save $120 on AMD"s best gaming Ryzen processor
- Save 19% on this highly customizable Turtle Beach controller, now at the lowest price
To view all of our recent deals, click here.
So, these were some of the biggest tech news and other updates from this week. There will be more issues of our 7 Days series in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned. You can also support Neowin by registering for a free member account or subscribing to extra member benefits, along with an ad-free tier option.