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The Weekly Authority: The speed of things, next Snapdragon next week, and more
August 24, 2025
Welcome back to The Weekly Authority, the Android Authority series that recaps the top Android and tech news from the week and what it all means, plus one deeper dive each week into what’s happening and what matters. Tristan Rayner at the wheel, and I’m talking all about speed later on. But first…
The Deals section jumps to the top of this weekly because, well, we all know what season we’re in right now!
I’ve scrubbed up a shortlist of some of the best deals that I think you shouldn’t miss. Just about every deal on a useful gadget is in thisBlack Friday/Cyber Monday deal hub, too.
Oh, and in case you were curious, The Wirecutter noted that this Black Friday we’re seeing bigger discounts than usual on higher-end TVs, including the leading range of LG OLED TVs. Good chance to upgrade if you’re considering a PS5 or Xbox Series X/S!
Popular news
A quieter week for tech news as many of us took some well-deserved time off to relax, eat, and grab some bargains. Let’s start with the weirdest happening:
Leaks dropped around new Surface hardware, too:
A slower week for reviews here atAndroid Authority, so catch up on some non-smartphone reviews as the season slows.
Features and opinion
Judging by the Slack messages, the team was flat out keeping an eye on deals for our readers, but there was at least one good read:
Instant Authority: Why everything is faster
Bill Gates is still one of the richest people in the world, but Elon Musk rocketed past him (pun intended) this week to become the second wealthiest person on earth.
How did that happen? Well, 2020 is all about unprecedented velocity in our world. And Gates himself didn’t exactly crystal-ball these scenarios, but he did give us a memorable quote back in 1996 about how things change in a dual-speed way:
With that in mind, let’s take a look at how disruption in technology is feeding itself in these unprecedented times.
Elon Musk’s rise to become the second richest person in the world is absolutely remarkable: Musk added $100 billion to his wealth over the past 11 months! That’s a casual $250 million per day. Since I wrote about Muskreaching $128 billion in wealth on Tuesday this week, theBloomberg Billionaires Indexindicates he’s added another $14 billion to hit $142 billion overall. Musk is now starting to close in on Jeff Bezos’ monumental wealth at $187 billion (his ex-wife is at ~$60 billion, by the way), as the world’s richest person.
Billionaires just aren’t made this fast this many times over, and the $100 billion-plus figure was first reached by Bill Gates ahead of the dot com crash.
Here’s where it gets a little wild, in 2020.
It may not be a surprise to understand that tech causes disruption to existing models, and successes can be faster than ever.
It may not be quite as well understood that once the established model is broken, the successes keep coming. Let’s look at streaming.
Streaming:
So, some good news: the names we see building the platforms that look entrenched and too-big-to-challenge can be disrupted when it’s the best execution to date.
Medical miracles:
As we see three viable vaccines for COVID-19 emerge at the end of 2020, the race to a finish line has happened faster than most imagined.The New York Timesshowed back in April,in a well-sourced yet slightly pessimistic guide, that a realistic timeline would take years. Instead, we have three vaccine candidates with high efficacy by the end of 2020.
And here’s one last little show of speed in 2020, in the physical world where progression is usually slower. It’s a teaser ahead of the release ofSpeed Test Gfor PC/Mac, as opposed to Android and iPhone, from our own Gary Sims. Gary’s done some preliminary testing of Macs including the brand new M1 MacBook Air.
Because this data is ahead of Gary’s official release of data, I’m just going to give one glimpse.
Not that this is the full story of the M1 Mac vs Intel MacBook Pro by any means. But the jump in both performance and power efficiency is one of the biggest in years. It may be slower than what we’re seeing in the digital-first wold, but big leaps are still possible even in hardware. MaybeWirth’s Law won’t play outin the Arm-based world?
What does it all mean?
Tech’s disruption to our lives has a long way to run yet. Everything is faster because mobility and hardware are good enough to achieve much of what we want and need.
Tech calendar
Tech tweets of the week
This month, we’re giving away three prize packs! Enter theNovembergiveawayfor your (last!) chance to win. I don’t even have an AA hoodie. And I work here!
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