Shopping for a big screen? Samsung's stunning 85-inch Mini-LED TV is $1,200 off right now
But every now and then, an 85-inch powerhouse goes on sale for a shockingly good price, and that's happening today with a top-tier Samsung Mini-LED TV from a couple years ago.
Right now, you can land the 85-inch Samsung QN90C Neo QLED for just $1,399 at Best Buy. That's a full $1,200 off its usual, already-discounted price — an incredible deal, especially for folks who don't want to settle for a so-so TV in order to secure a bigger picture.
This fantastic 2023 TV still has the juice two years later. As part of Samsung's Neo QLED lineup, the QN90C blends quantum dot-color with expertly engineered Mini-LED backlighting for a bright, tantalizing picture. It's also loaded with features for gaming, streaming and more. If you've been waiting for an excuse to splash out on an 85-inch TV that doesn't compromise on performance, now's your chance.
Let's get one thing out of the way right off the bat: Yes, this is a 2023 model. For all intents and purposes, though, that doesn't matter much.
If your inner-geek won't be satisfied with anything other than a brand-new, 2025 TV, this might not be the deal for you. If you've got an open mind, allow me to make my case.
In the relatively short amount of time since the QN90C's release, not much has changed in the world of Samsung Neo QLEDs — particularly when it comes to their flagship models. I've spent a ton of time with the QN90C in the last few years, and I can stand by this TV's remarkable performance.
This TV's stellar backlight control still astounds me in 2025.
You can read all about it in our full Samsung QN90C review, but here's the basic gist: The QN90C is a phenomenally bright TV whose stellar backlight control still astounds me in 2025. In fact, at the risk of throwing shade at its successors (the QN90D and QN90F), I bet the QN90C's backlight control is on par with those newer models. That's how good it is.
In terms of features, you're getting almost everything you would if you bought a top-shelf Samsung Neo QLED from 2025. The QN90C is flush with four HDMI 2.1 inputs and a cornucopia of competitive gaming features. It doesn't support 4K games at 144Hz or 165Hz, but if you weren't planning on connecting it to a gaming PC, this is far less likely to matter.
In the roughly 26 months since the QN90C's release, the brand's top-shelf TVs have benefited from improved software. Navigating smart features on the QN90C will likely feel a bit sluggish compared to a newer model, but take it from someone who's really picky about that stuff: It's not a dealbreaker.
Besides, you can just plug in a top streaming device and offload those streaming duties.
I could go on and on about this TV; about its excellent out-of-the-box color accuracy, its posh design and so on. Ultimately, though, the reason I'm sounding the alarm about this deal is because of the price.
An 85-inch TV of this caliber for $1,399 is an absolute steal. Think of it this way: If you plunked down your credit card for this TV in July of 2023, you'd have paid thousands more for the privilege. And you'd probably still love it today.
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Digital Trends
41 minutes ago
- Digital Trends
A brief history of folding phones and why the best is yet to come
If you're a fan of the best folding phones like me, you'll know it's been a breakout year for the category. The new Galaxy Z Fold 7 caps a year of multiple releases that have all vied to solve the common complaints with previous folding phones and prove that they can be just as comfortable as a regular phone. Several folding phone makers have released phones to compete in a key metric: thickness, or, namely, the lack of it. The ultra-thin folding phones sub-category has had three competitors this year that aimed to be the world's thinnest folding phone, but only one of them also delivers the smartphone-like experience we've been waiting for. Recommended Videos This is just the seventh year of folding phones, but we've already reached the point where they feel just like a regular smartphone in the pocket. Yet, Apple is still to release the rumored iPhone Fold, and every Android phone maker will also be looking to release its best foldable phone as well. Here's a look at the brief history of folding phones, and why the best is yet to come. 2018 — 2020: The Initial Foldable Era This may be surprising, but the world's first folding phone was by a company most won't have heard of. We need to rewind almost seven years to 2018 for the first commercial folding phone in the form of the Royole Flexpai, which launched in China in October that year. It started at ￥8,999 ($1,250), but as we learnt, it didn't deliver on the true promise of the folding phone. The following year, Samsung launched — and relaunched — the Galaxy Fold, and just four days after its announcement, Huawei took to the stage to unveil the Mate X. One key difference? Rather than two displays, the main display folds around the phone, forming part of its back. The smaller bezels of the Huawei Mate X also hinted at an inevitable trend. The folding phone market features more than just book-style folding phones, and that year also saw the revival of the Motorola Razr on November 13, 2019. Six years later, the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 is the latest in a long line of Razr flip phones to dominate the flip phone market. A couple of months later, in February 2020, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Z Flip, and the true flip phone competition began in the US. While book-style folding phones have had considerable competition, the flip phone market has featured several attempts by Android phone makers to launch a flip phone, but with limited success. Despite more than ten brands attempting different flip phones, the market remains an oligopoly dominated by Motorola and Samsung. The book-style market, however, is very different, and the launch of the Galaxy Z Fold 2 in September 2020 saw Samsung adopt a full-screen on the front, a design language that has continued through to the latest iteration. It also featured improved durability with new Ultra-Thin Glass, a larger battery, and triple cameras. Most importantly, it was also the launch vehicle for Samsung DeX, which remains a key part of Samsung's folding phone experience. 2021 — 2023: A Defining Era 2021 and 2022 saw the foldable market explode, as Samsung released the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Fold 4, the latter the best Samsung fold until the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Meanwhile, Huawei released the Mate X2 in February 2022 with an inward folding design, similar to other folding phones. Xiaomi launched its first and second-generation Mix Fold folding phones, and Oppo and Vivo launched their first folding phones. 2023 ushered in several changes in the folding phone market that are still prevalent today. Samsung continued its annual release with the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 in August, Google launched the first-generation Google Pixel Fold, and Honor began its current focus on thin and light design with the Honor Magic V2. However, all were dwarfed by the OnePlus Open — also known as the Oppo Find N3 — which launched in December to wide acclaim. It was a breakthrough folding phone for that era, bringing a thinner, lighter design and a focus on a great camera and excellent battery life. The OnePlus Open remains a strong folding phone in the US, despite being two years old. It wasn't just the book folding phone market that saw a major change, as the Flip phone market underwent a large shift to the current big-screen era that we're now accustomed to. Ushered in by the Razr 2023 series — which features large front screens and the innovative Razr approach to the front display — even Samsung has had to adopt this trend with the new Galaxy Z Flip 7. 2024 — 2025: The ultra-thin era Last year saw the start of the current ultra-thin era, in which Honor, Oppo, and now Samsung are all competing. A year ago, the Honor Magic V3 became the world's thinnest folding phone at 4.4mm thick when unfolded. It retained that title until the Oppo Find N5 surpassed it in February 2025, measuring 4.2mm thick when unfolded. However, this didn't last, as Honor then launched the Honor Magic V5 a few weeks ago on July 2, 2025, and it measures 4.1mm thick when unfolded. A week later, Samsung cemented its place atop many global smartphone wishlists with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, which doesn't set a record for thickness, but does so for weight at 215 grams, three grams lighter than the Magic V5. Despite not setting a record, a thickness of 4.2mm when unfolded and 8.9mm when folded means it's the first folding phone to be indistinguishable from a regular smartphone. As I covered in our Galaxy Z Fold 7 review, the design has set a new benchmark for how folding phones should feel. The Magic V5 boasts the largest battery in this category and one of the best camera systems. Meanwhile, Google is set to announce its new Pixel 10 Pro Fold later this month. 2026 onwards: the iPhone Fold era? Of course, there's one major smartphone player still to make its foldable phone entrance: Apple. The iPhone Fold is rumored to launch in September next year, potentially enabling folding phones to reach escape velocity. The iPhone, the iPad, and several products since have proved that Apple's participation in a category is necessary for that category to reach its total addressable market (TAM). Samsung has been key to the success of folding phones so far, and devices like the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 show that the company is still able to innovate. With Apple set to launch, Samsung likely to respond, and most other phone makers are likely to launch new folding phones in the wake of Apple's entrance, it's safe to say that the best is yet to come. In case it wasn't obvious, I can't wait!
CNBC
9 hours ago
- CNBC
Ethereum turns 10: From scrappy experiment to Wall Street's invisible backbone
CANNES — Ten years ago, Vitalik Buterin and a small band of developers huddled in a drafty Berlin loft strung with dangling lightbulbs, laptops balanced on mismatched chairs and chipped tables. They weren't corporate titans or venture-backed founders — just idealists working long nights to push a radical idea into reality. From that sparse office, they launched "Frontier," Ethereum's first live network. It was bare-bones — no interface, no polish, nothing user-friendly. But it could mine, execute smart contracts, and let developers test decentralized applications. It was the spark that transformed Ethereum from an abstract concept into a living, breathing system. Bitcoin had captured headlines as "digital gold," but what they built was something else entirely: programmable money, a financial operating system where code could move funds, enforce contracts, and create businesses without banks or brokers. One year earlier and 520 miles away in Zurich, Paul Brody got a call from IBM security: A kid was wandering the lab unattended. "That's not a child," Brody told them. "That's Vitalik. He's a grown-up — he just looks really young." At the time, Buterin had just founded Ethereum. The blockchain was still in its alpha stage, an early build of what would become a $420 billion platform rewiring Wall Street and powering decentralized finance, NFTs, and tokenized markets across the globe. Brody, then leading a research team at IBM, remembers how quickly the idea clicked. "One of the guys on the research team came to me and said, 'I've met this really interesting guy. He's got a really cool like a version of bitcoin, but we're going to make it much faster and programmable,'" he said. "And when he said that to me, I thought, 'That's it. That is what I want. That is what we need.'" With Buterin's help, IBM built its first blockchain prototype on Ethereum's early code, unveiling it at CES in 2015 alongside Samsung. "That was how I ended up down this path," Brody said. "I was done with all other technology and basically made the switch to blockchain." Even now, as EY's global blockchain leader, Brody remembers feeling a pang of envy. "This is a kid, and it doesn't matter," he said. "I was jealous of Vitalik… to be able to do that." He added, "I don't think opportunities like that could have been surfaced when I was that age." Now, a decade later, that experiment has quietly rewired global markets. "It's very impressive, just how much the space has succeeded and grown into, beyond pretty much anyone's expectations," Buterin told CNBC in Cannes on the sidelines of the blockchain's flagship event in Europe. Buterin said the change over the past decade has been staggering. Ten years ago, he recalled, the crypto community was "just a very small space," with only a handful of people working on bitcoin and a few other projects. Since then, Ethereum has become "this big thing," Buterin said, with major corporations now launching assets on both its base layer and layer-two networks. Parts of national economies are beginning to run on Ethereum infrastructure, a far cry from its cypherpunk origins. But Buterin warned that mainstream adoption brings risks as well as benefits. One concern is that if too few issuers or intermediaries dominate, they could become "de facto controllers of the ecosystem." He described a scenario where Ethereum might appear open, but, in practice, all the keys are managed by centralized providers. "That's the thing that we don't want," he said. Two years earlier in Prague, CNBC met Buterin at Paralelní Polis, a sprawling industrial complex turned anarchist tech hub in the city's Holešovice district. The building's labyrinthine staircases and shadowed corridors felt like a physical map of the crypto world itself — part resistance movement, part experiment in reimagining power. It was a place built on Václav Benda's concept of a "parallel society," where decentralized technologies offered refuge from state surveillance and control. It's the kind of place where Buterin, a self-described nomad, found himself at home among cypherpunks and cryptographic idealists. At the time, Buterin described crypto's greatest utility not in speculative trading, but in helping people survive broken financial systems in emerging markets. "The stuff that we often find a bit basic and boring is exactly the stuff that brings lots of value," he told CNBC at the time. "Just being able to plug into the international economy — these are things that they don't have, and these are things that provide huge value for people there." Even in Prague, where coders worked to make payments fast and censorship-resistant, the technology felt like a resistance movement — privacy-preserving, anti-authoritarian, a lifeline in countries where banking collapses were common and money couldn't be trusted. This year, Buterin keynoted Ethereum's flagship conference at the Palais des Festivals — the same red carpet venue that hosts movie stars each spring. It was a fitting symbol of Ethereum's journey: from underground hacker dens to a network that governments, banks, and brokerages are now racing to build upon. Brody, who currently leads blockchain strategy at EY, says what matters most is how deeply Ethereum is integrating into traditional finance. "The global financial system is really nicely described as a whole network of pipes," he said. "What's happening now is that Ethereum is getting plumbed into this infrastructure," Brody continued, noting that until recently, crypto operated on entirely separate rails from traditional finance. Now, he said, Ethereum is being wired directly into core transaction systems, setting the stage for massive financial flows — from investors to everyday savers — to migrate away from older mechanisms toward Ethereum-based platforms that can move money faster, at lower cost, and with more advanced functionality than legacy systems allow. Stablecoins — digital dollars that live on Ethereum — power trillions in payments, tokenized assets and funds are moving on-chain, and Robinhood recently rolled out tokenized U.S. equities via Arbitrum, an Ethereum-based layer two. Circle's USDC — the second-largest stablecoin — still settles around 65% of its volume on Ethereum's rails. According to CoinGecko's latest "State of Stablecoins" report, Ethereum accounts for nearly 50% of all stablecoin activity. Between Circle's IPO and the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act, now signed into law by President Donald Trump, regulators have new reason to engage with, rather than fight, this transformation. Data from Deutsche Bank shows stablecoin transactions hit $28 trillion last year — more than Mastercard and Visa combined. The bank itself has announced plans to build a tokenization platform on zkSync, a fast, cost-efficient Ethereum layer two designed to help asset managers issue and manage tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets while meeting regulatory and data protection requirements. Digital asset exchanges like Coinbase and Kraken are racing to capture this crossover between traditional securities and crypto. As part of its quarterly earnings release, Coinbase said this week it's launching tokenized stocks and prediction markets for U.S. users in the coming months, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro. Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets. BlackRock's tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, launched on Ethereum last year, offering qualified investors on-chain access to yield with real-time redemptions settled in USDC. Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum has proven its staying power as the trusted network for global finance. Buterin told CNBC in Cannes that there's a misconception about what institutions actually want. "A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it's stable and dependable, because it doesn't go down," he said. He added that firms frequently ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, "really value." Different institutions are choosing different layer twos for different needs — Robinhood uses Arbitrum, Deutsche Bank zkSync, Coinbase and Kraken Optimism — but they all ultimately settle on Ethereum's base layer. "The value proposition of Ethereum is its global reach, its huge capital flows, its incredible programmability," Brody said. He added that the fact it isn't the fastest blockchain or the one with the quickest settlement times "is secondary to the fact that it's overall the most widely adopted and flexible system." Brody also believes history points toward consolidation. He said that in most technology standards wars, one platform ultimately dominates. In his view, Ethereum is likely to become that dominant programmability layer, while Bitcoin plays a complementary role as a risk-off, scarcity-driven asset. Engineers, he said, "love to work on a standard… to scale on a standard," and Ethereum has become precisely that. Tomasz Stańczak, the newly appointed co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, sees the same pattern from inside the ecosystem. "Institutions chose Ethereum over and over again for its values," Stańczak said. "Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance." When institutions send an order to the market, they want to be sure that it's treated fairly, that nobody has preference, and that the transaction is executed at the time when it's delivered. "That's what Ethereum guarantees," added Stańczak. Those assurances have become more valuable as traditional finance moves on-chain. Ethereum's path hasn't been smooth. The network has weathered spectacular booms and busts, rivals promising faster speeds, and criticism that it's too slow or expensive for mass adoption. Yet it has outlasted nearly all early competitors. In 2022, Ethereum replaced its old transaction validation method, proof-of-work — where armies of computers competed to solve puzzles — with proof-of-stake, where users lock up their ether as collateral to help secure the network. The shift cut Ethereum's energy use by more than 99% and set the stage for upgrades aimed at making apps faster and cheaper to run on its base layer. The next decade will test whether Ethereum can scale without compromise. Buterin said the first priority is getting Ethereum to "the finish line" in terms of its technical goals. That means improving scalability and speed without sacrificing its core principles of decentralization and security — and ideally making those properties even stronger. Zero-knowledge proofs, for example, could dramatically increase transaction capacity while making it possible to verify that the chain is following the rules of the protocol on something as small as a smartwatch. There are also algorithmic changes the team already knows are needed to protect Ethereum against large-scale computing attacks. Implementing those, Buterin said, is part of the path to making Ethereum "a really valuable part of global infrastructure that helps make the internet and the economy a more free and open place." Buterin believes the real change won't come with fireworks. He said it may already be unfolding years before most people recognize it. "This type of disruption doesn't feel like overturning the existing system," he said. "It feels like building a new thing that just keeps growing and growing until eventually more and more people realize you don't even have to look at the old thing if you didn't want to." Brody can already see hints of that future. Wire transfers are moving on-chain, assets like stocks and real estate are being tokenized, and eventually, he said, businesses will run entire contracts — the money, the products, the terms and conditions — automatically on a single, shared infrastructure. That shift, Brody added, won't simply copy old financial systems onto new technology. "One of the lessons from technology adoption is that it's not that we replace like for like," he said. "When new things come along, we tend to build on a new technology infrastructure. My key hypothesis is that as we build new financial products, it will be attractive to build them on blockchain rails — and we'll try to do things on blockchain rails that we can't do today." If Brody and Buterin are right, the real disruption won't make headlines. It'll simply become the way money moves, unseen and unstoppable.
Forbes
11 hours ago
- Forbes
Google's Pixel 10 Pro Pricing Hides Its Subtle Influence
The upcoming 'Made By Google' event on Aug. 20 will see the launch of the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro families. Recent leaks point to an aggressive pricing strategy that consumers will welcome. Yet Google can extract more value out of the Pixel 10 family than the sticker price. Pixel 10 And Pixel 10 Pro Pricing First up, the current expectation for US prices: The four main models will be priced similarly to the Pixel 9 family. Specifically, the Pixel 10 will start at $799 for the 128 GB model, the Pixel 10 Pro starts at $999, the Pixel 10 Pro XL at $1,199 for 256 GB and the Pixel 10 Pro Fold at $1,799 for 256 GB. Samsung bumped up the prices of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 over the Z Fold 6, and Apple is expected to do the same with the various iPhone 17 Pro models compared to last year's 16 Pro portfolio. Google has decided to stick with the pricing. This will make the new handsets look more attractive to consumers in a head-to-head comparison with the competition. It also offers a certain level of convenience for those looking at the year-on-year evolution. Yet Google can find more value in the package, value that looks to have been passed on to the consumer Pixel 10 Pro BLOCK OF THREE First of all, the Pixel 10 family can shape the smartphone market. The obvious point here is the aforementioned price point. With the Pixel 10 family staying at the lower price point, it pushed other manufacturers to keep their similarly specced handsets at the same level if they want to continue looking competitive. Then you have the tone it sets for the hardware that Google would like to see at each price point. The user experience of the Pixel 10 is set to be enhanced with the addition of a third lens in the main camera. The 'base model' of premium brands has typically launched with two lenses; Google is clearly looking to redefine that part of the spec sheet through the Pixel 10 and leverage it across the Android ecosystem. That will benefit Android as a whole, and anything that benefits Android benefits Google. Finally, you have AI, and this is perhaps the most tangible benefit for Google. Artificial intelligence is one of the key features reshaping not just smartphones but the entire digital ecosystem. Google has been leaning heavily into its AI-powered assistant, Gemini, while it continues to add more AI-based features into its own software stack and Android. Again, this adoption pushes the market towards Google's vision of artificial intelligence on a mobile device. By having a first-mover advantage and establishing this as the way forward, it makes it harder for other platforms and manufacturers, such as Apple's Intelligence on the iPhone. As for the tangible, to make the best use of Gemini and Google's AI suite involves a subscription to Google AI Pro or Google AI Ultra. Trial memberships to these services are available with the purchase of a Pixel device, creating an easy on-ramp to an ongoing subscription, which in turn pulls the consumer even closer into Google's cloud system while pushing back others. The Google Advantage In The Pixel 10 And Pixel 10 Pro The Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro will undoubtedly garner critical acclaim and continue the commercial success of the previous Pixel handsets. Additionally, Google will use these handsets to maintain premium pricing across the smartphone market, promote an increase in specifications at each price point, and bring more users into Google's vision and implementation of artificial intelligence. Google is expected to launch the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Pixel 10 Pro Fold on Aug. 20, with retail sales to follow the following week. Now read the latest Pixel 10 Pro, Samsung Galaxy, and Android headlines in Forbes' weekly smartphone news digest...
