Month: March 2017

Enlarge / The Galaxy Unpacked 2017 invite. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung is back! After a rough stretch thanks to the recall of the Galaxy Note 7 and the arrest of Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong, Samsung is dusting itself off and jumping back into the smartphone game. "Galaxy Unpacked 2017" starts on March 29th at 11am ET (8am PT, 4pm BST, convert to your time zone here). We expect Samsung to finally take the wraps off its newest flagship, the Galaxy S8.

The Galaxy S8 promises to be a major revamp of Samsung's flagship, expected to get its most drastic redesign ever, with super-slim bezels and an extra-tall 18.5:9 display. As its first major smartphone launch since the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, we're also expecting a lot of reassurances from Samsung that this phone has gone through a battery of battery tests, which should be fun to watch. We'll be there to cover all the twists and turns live with a liveblog of the festivities and a hands-on after the event is over. You can follow along with us at the link below.

Enlarge (credit: Scott Olson | Getty Images)

The same Chinese company that bought League of Legends a couple of years ago just became one of Tesla's largest shareholders. According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing dated March 24th, Tencent Holdings Ltd. has purchased a five percent stake in the company—8,167,544 shares to be exact. According to TechCrunch, the deal was arranged a week earlier, and Tencent paid $1.7 billion for the shares.

The cash infusion will no doubt be welcome at Tesla. The company's acquisition of Solar City came with a large amount of debt, and it continues to lose money selling Model S and Model X electric vehicles—its two profitable quarters have been thanks to the sale of emissions credits to other companies. But it has bulging order books for the Model 3, and it told investors in February that production for that car begins in July. Fulfilling those orders in a timely manner won't be cheap, which is where Tencent's $1.7 billion should come in handy.

There's plenty of reason for skepticism over that target, though. The Model S and Model X both had plenty of teething troubles early on, and neither were built in numbers close to Tesla's goals for the Model 3. Tesla is also forgoing the traditional production prototype, a "beta" version of a new car that companies use to refine the product and its production process. That's a change of plan from last year, when the company told investors in a 10-K filing that a beta prototype Model 3 would be the company's next performance milestone. Last week, Elon Musk tweeted a short video of a "release candidate" Model 3: