HMD Global, the licensee company of Nokia-branded phones for a while, is scaling back its operations in the US. According to Wired’s Julian Chokkattu, HMD has decided to scale back in the market due to a “challenging geopolitical and economic environment”. While the brand didn’t get into the details, one of the reasons could be related to the ongoing Trump tariff situation in the US.

The Nokia phone maker intends to wind down its operations in the US

It appears that the end of both Nokia-branded and HMD phones and tablets in the US is near. HMD Global licensed the Nokia name in 2016 to make new devices under the iconic moniker, but decided to launch products under its own brand in 2023. HMD is now exiting the US market, possibly due to the ongoing tariff situation, which is raising costs for both companies in consumers.

Over on Threads, Wired writer Julian Chokkattu shared a statement from HMD Global. “Like many global businesses, HMD is navigating a challenging geopolitical and economic environment. After careful consideration, we have made the decision to scale back our US operations”, reads the company’s statement.

HMD Global appears to have stopped selling both its own-branded and Nokia devices entirely in the United States. The company’s webstore is no longer online in the country. Product pages of both the HMD and Nokia phones either don’t have buying information, or have a “Where to buy” button that doesn’t work.

However, some phones, like the HMD Fusion and Skyline, are still available to buy from Amazon and other e-commerce portals. The sellers on these platforms could just be selling the remaining stocks of Nokia and HMD products.

HMD will continue to honor warranty coverage for existing products

Although HMD is scaling back its business in the US, it will continue to honor all of its obligations for existing consumers. The brand will continue to provide warranty coverage and service for existing products. Furthermore, the company’s statement said that it will offer full support for US customers through its global teams. So, if you already own an HMD or Nokia phone or tablet, you shouldn’t worry about the warranty and service support.

As for its employees in the US, HMD didn’t confirm details of any job losses. The brand only said that it is “committed to supporting them during this transition.”

Galaxy AI is one of Samsung’s biggest areas of innovation, but some are nervous they’ll soon have to pay for its features. Samsung has been clear since launch that it may begin charging for Galaxy AI from “the end of 2025” onward. That deadline is fast approaching, but the company has yet to confirm plans for a paid subscription.

Some speculated this week’s Unpacked event would be when Samsung would unveil a paid structure for Galaxy AI, but that didn’t happen. However, the brand did use briefings around the event to confirm Galaxy AI’s default features will remain free.

In a briefing on Samsung’s latest foldable smartphones, a representative for the company confirmed default Galaxy AI features will remain free to use.

“We’ve been building this open platform that supports collaboration with a diverse variety of AI agents,” said Peter Park, Senior Product Manager at Samsung Electronics America. “While plans for premium AI experiences will be decided in close coordination with our partners, there are no plans to charge for Galaxy AI experiences provided by default.”

That means features like Audio eraser, Drawing Assist, Generative Wallpapers, Live translation, Note Assist, Now brief, Writing assist, and Zoom nightography will remain free. As Android Police points out, anything on this Samsung website that isn’t made in collaboration with Google is a default feature, and therefore should remain free to use.

The complicating factor is Galaxy AI is sometimes paired with Google’s Gemini features, which Samsung won’t have control over pricing for.

For now, Samsung hasn’t shown any clear signs of introducing a paid subscription. We may hear more about it later this year, or it may be that Samsung has used the “end of 2025” date to ensure it wouldn’t have any legal disputes if it did choose to launch a subscription. Samsung may ultimately choose to keep the service free for longer.

Right now, it’s likely Samsung wants to keep these features free to encourage more usage of Galaxy AI. Many people upgrading their phones for the first time in two years won’t have had access to Galaxy AI until they buy a new phone.

YouTube believes its Trending page has served its purpose, and the video streamer is set to shut it down in the next couple of weeks. Both the Trending and Trending Now features within YouTube will be removed on July 21, 2025.

Announced in a blog post, YouTube says, “We’re making updates to better match how people discover trending content today by shifting away from one all-encompassing Trending list towards category-specific charts that we’ll continue to invest in over time.”

As part of this change, YouTube points users toward three new pages, and an older charting tool. Those are Trending Movie Trailers, Trending Music Videos, Weekly Top Podcast Shows, and the preexisting Gaming Explore Page. As part of that last link, there’s a dedicated Trending Gaming Videos list.

Interestingly, these pages don’t appear to use the same algorithms as YouTube’s original feature. At the time of writing, a music video for a Blackpink’s song JUMP is the number one video on the Trending page, but it is in position four on the company’s music charts.

The second most popular video on the original tool is from the band TWICE with their single This Is For, which is in position seven on the music chart. One theory is that YouTube Music is being taken into account for the new chart, which may not have been the case on the original Trending page.

YouTube says it will expand into other charts over time. For example, personal vlogs often appear in YouTube’s lists, but these won’t have a place in the new system. We may see the company expand into a personality-led chart at a later date.

YouTube may have put together this feature for launch quickly as there’s a mistake on the company’s chart for film and TV trailers. The tab reads, “YouTube music charts: United States Trending Movie Trailers.” We’d expect this to be fixed before July 21.

The race is now on for every YouTuber to try and attempt to take the final ever top spot on the Trending page on July 20. The original Trending page was first introduced in 2015.

It’s tough as a band to record, release, and market two new albums in under 30 days, but it’s much easier if all of the music is artificially generated. That’s confirmed to be the case with The Velvet Sundown, which has risen through the ranks on Spotify over the last month since the release of its first album.

Listeners to The Velvet Sundown have grown since the early June debut, and after a week of accusations that the band were an AI-generated project, the owners of the Spotify account have now confirmed its use of AI.

The band’s social media and promotion has used hyper-realistic visuals that suggested to listeners the people pictured weren’t real and that the music was also AI-generated. Now, the band’s owners have updated its Spotify bio to confirm its use of AI alongside some human controlled elements.

“The Velvet Sundown is a synthetic music project guided by human creative direction, and composed, voiced, and visualized with the support of artificial intelligence,” the band’s bio now reads. “This isn’t a trick – it’s a mirror. An ongoing artistic provocation designed to challenge the boundaries of authorship, identity, and the music of music itself in the age of AI.”

The statement was posted soon after someone faked ownership of the band in interviews with mainstream press. Andrew Frelon spoke to Rolling Stone claiming to have ownership over the AI-generated band. Since then, Frelon has admitted to lying in the interview and confirmed he isn’t affiliated with the band.

Within 24 hours of Frelon’s own blog post, the band’s owners updated the Spotify bio to confirm it is an AI-project for the first time. So far, the real owners have remained anonymous. We’ve yet to learn exactly which AI tools are being used for The Velvet Sundown.

The band doubled its monthly listeners in the last week alone after outlets began covering the controversy and speculation ramped up on whether the band were AI-generated.

As Google’s AI rivals introduce video-generation tools, Gemini feels left behind in the race to video, with its version locked behind a limited preview. Google is changing that today with its new Veo 2 model, available now to those with an Advanced subscription.

The new video model allows you to create what Google calls “detailed videos with cinematic realism” from text prompts. You can create up to eight-second-long video clips in a 720p resolution, which will then generate an MP4 in a 16:9 aspect ratio.

“By better understanding real-world physics and human motion, it delivers fluid character movement, lifelike scenes, and finer visual details across diverse subjects and styles,” Google says.

Veo has previously been available in early access, allowing users to create 1080p video—for 50 cents per second of video generated. Clips are now free to produce for those on Advanced plans, but as with most AI video-generation tools, there’s a limit to how many you can request each month. Google didn’t share that limit; it says it will tell users as they approach it.

Google also introduced direct sharing tools so you can upload the files directly to YouTube Shorts or TikTok. It’s unlikely you’ll want to upload 16:9 clips to either of these vertical video platforms, though.

Alongside the Veo 2 video tool, Google is also introducing Whisk Animate, which allows you to make your images into 8-second videos using the same tech as Veo 2. This feature isn’t as readily available as Veo 2, but if you’re in the US, you can access it through Google Labs.