Android News

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another edition of Watchface Friday! For those unaware, every Friday, we highlight a selection of our favorite watchfaces for the  Gear S3 classic  and  Gear S3 frontier . All of the offerings are available to download through the Galaxy Apps Store, so you can rest assured that you won’t have to search all over the Internet to find something we’ve listed. Gear S3 classic Digi Rough  by Michael Wickens Lion Time: CG 01  by Wearable Tech Gear S3 frontier Proton by Alexander Schlei SMZ “Special Balck”  by Daehyun Jeon

We publish  a lot  of stories on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the majority of news breaks during our European hours of operation, which makes it difficult for our readers in the US (and other regions) to keep up. However, we think we’ve come up with a fantastic solution — a  daily recap . Here’s what we shared today. Camera Camera comparison: Galaxy S8 vs the Galaxy S7 Firmware News First security update now arriving on the Galaxy A3 (2017) Future Samsung phones may feature explosion-proof batteries Galaxy S6 edge+ now receiving June security update June security patch for the Galaxy S7 released in India Phones Face recognition has trickled down to Samsung’s budget lineup with the Galaxy J7 Max Galaxy Note 8 to come in 64GB and 128GB variants Virtual Reality Samsung patents magnetic controller for VR headsets

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Samsung is very serious about competing in the mobile virtual reality space. The Gear VR has given it a good footing and the company is now expanding its influence in this space by working hard to bring new and exciting virtual reality content . It’s also working on new VR-focused devices . The company has been granted a patent for magnetic VR hand controllers. The description provided in the patent suggests that the peripherals will be used for more accurate hand-tracking with the Gear VR headset. The method explained in the patent is “based on a magnetic field generated by a source, obtaining a coordinate of a user’s hand; and reflecting the obtained coordinate of the user’s hand in a virtual reality environment based on a change of a location of the source due to a movement of the user.” The actual design itself appears to be similar to the existing Gear VR controller but with a new strap that secures the controller to the back of the hand. This will allow users to move their ha...

Samsung would have saved billions of dollars if the Galaxy Note 7 didn’t have a battery flaw that caused handsets to catch fire. The company has taken a lot of steps since then to ensure that something like that doesn’t happen again. It’s battery-making division, Samsung SDI, is hopeful that it will be able to supply explosion-proof batteries in a few years. Samsung SDI has said that it will be able to produce solid-state batteries that are safe from explosion for smartphones in a couple of years. Samsung SDI is a major battery supplier for Samsung Electronics, the division that makes the smartphones, so it’s likely going to have dibs on the new battery technology. It remains to be seen, though, how quick Samsung Electronics is to adapt this new technology. “Our technological level to produce a solid-state battery for smartphones will be mature enough in one to two years. However, it depends on Samsung Electronics whether it will be used for phones,” a Samsung SDI official told The...

Out of all the security features that are offered on the Galaxy S8, face recognition is the least secure.  Samsung says so itself , and face recognition is meant to be a quick way of unlocking a device compared to fiddling with a fingerprint sensor or entering a PIN or pattern. Face recognition is easy to implement, as it simply uses the front camera on a device, and it might be why Samsung has built the feature into one of its new budget phones. That phone is the Galaxy J7 Max , which was recently launched in India alongside the Galaxy J7 Pro (which is the Galaxy J7 (2017) rebranded for the Indian market), and unlocking the device seems to be as quick as it is on the Galaxy S8. It’s interesting to see Samsung offering face recognition on the J7 Max but not on the new Galaxy J5 (2017) and Galaxy J7 (2017). It’s possible the J7 Pro might also have the feature in India, although we can’t be sure as we haven’t had the chance to play with the device yet. We do, however, have the Gala...

Galaxy S7 owners in India should keep an eye out for a new firmware update today. They will soon receive an over-the-air update notification if they haven’t already. The update that Samsung is rolling out for the Galaxy S7 in the country today brings the June security patch . It’s an incremental update for the handset in that it doesn’t bring much in the way of new features for the handset. All it does is update the security patch level on the handset to June 2017. Samsung detailed the June security patch a couple of weeks back. It brings 96 fixes for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) in the core Android operating system. The patch also brings fixes for 23 additional vulnerabilities found in Samsung’s own software. Users shouldn’t expect to find any new features on their handset after they’ve installed the update, then again, the Galaxy S7 is already running on Android 7.0 Nougat so they already have access to all of the latest features. Those who haven’t already received ...

The Samsung Tech Institute was established to cultivate a young and talented workforce and spur job creation by providing IT-related vocational training. With 231 branches and more than 70,000 beneficiaries worldwide as of 2016, the institutes are operated in conjunction with universities and local governments, and each is customized to meet the specific needs of the country in which it operates.     For example, programs conducted in developing markets might offer training for customer service engineers, while those in more economically developed countries are designed to support software experts. Young people who have participated in Samsung’s Tech Institutes have not only had better employment opportunities, but are also now contributing to the development of their own regional communities.   Learn more about some of the most recent initiatives of the Samsung Tech Institute that are being carried out in various corners of the world.     Bulgaria: Dev...

The Galaxy A3 (2017) is receiving its first security maintenance update in Europe. From what we can tell, the upgrade bundles all of the changes included in May’s release — 54 patches provided by Google and 11 from Samsung — alongside a number of other performance and stability enhancements. It’s a little disappointing that Samsung wasn’t able to roll out this month’s maintenance update for the Galaxy A3 (2017), but we aren’t going to complain as it’s still nice to see the firm rolling out somewhat timely quarterly upgrades for its mid-range devices, even if they aren’t the latest patches. Read more:  Samsung details contents of May security patch You can check to see if the OTA is available for your handset by navigating into  Settings , hitting  Software Update , then tapping  Download Updates Manually . If it’s ready, you’ll be prompted to download and install it, but if it isn’t, don’t panic. You’ll receive a push notification when it reaches your unit. ...

For a long time now, Samsung has been at the top of its game when it comes to smartphone cameras. The Galaxy S7 had the best overall phone camera on the market for quite a long time, and with the Galaxy S8 , Samsung has made minor changes to further improve the quality of images captured by the 12-megapixel rear camera. We’ve talked in detail about the Galaxy S8′s camera in our official review , but we haven’t yet talked about how it compares to its predecessor. Well, we’ve decided we’ll just let the pictures do the talking. The photos you see below were taken in auto mode (with HDR set to auto as well); we didn’t reach for the pro mode for any picture, as we feel most folks simply use their phones as a point-and-shoot camera instead of fiddling around with advanced settings. What we should point out here is the Galaxy S7′s camera still holds its own more than a year later, especially in daylight. Nighttime is where the Galaxy S8 leads the way, doing better with detail and color. The...

Featuring a refined design as well as new livestreaming and 4K video support, Samsung’s Gear 360 was built to make immersive, 360-degree content accessible and easy to share.   Here, product concept developers Elin Park and Jeongmin Seo from the Gear 360’s Product Strategy Team, as well as product designers Woojung Moon, Minki Ham and Namkyu Kim from the Next Generation Design Team, discuss how they optimized the device’s usability from the planning stage, how that consideration is reflected in the final design, and how to put the camera’s innovations to use to create dynamic content.     Q. What types of consumers did Samsung have in mind when designing the new Gear 360?   Elin Park: Last year’s Gear 360 targeted tech-savvy early adopters who were curious to try out a new way to create unique content. When we expanded the functionality of this year’s model, we made the device more useful to the main creators and consumers of digital content: mill...

A new report has surfaced online claiming that Samsung will launch two variants of the Galaxy Note 8 : one with 64GB and another with 128GB of storage. Both handsets are also expected to support microSD cards, which can be used to bump the memory up to 256GB. Recently, it was revealed that the Galaxy Note 8 will be Samsung’s most expensive smartphone to date, with an eye-watering price tag of around $1,000 in South Korea and more than $1,100 in Europe, North America and South America. If leaks and rumors are anything to go by, the Galaxy Note 8 will sport a 6.3-inch edge-to-edge Infinity Display, an Exynos 8895/Snapdragon 835 CPU, 6GB of RAM and a 3,300mAh non-removable battery. It should also ship running Android 7.1.1 Nougat. Unfortunately, it’s looking like Samsung has decided to position the fingerprint reader on the back of the Galaxy Note 8, even though it has the technology required to embed it in the handset’s display. Nothing is confirmed at this precise moment...

Samsung recently surprised museum visitors by exchanging a real Monet for a deceptively identical TV image in Austria. Among the art works exhibited at the Albertina in Vienna was Samsung’s The Frame TV which turns into a picture whilst in “Art Mode”. The surprising effect of how real masterpieces look on a TV can now be viewed on YouTube. As a result, the Albertina is the world’s first art museum to make masterpieces of its famous Batliner Collection of classical modernist paintings available from The Frame Art Store. Owners of The Frame can now enrich their homes with more than 40 works of art from this collection.     The Frame integrated seamlessly into the spatial ambience of the Albertina galleries by combining market leading picture quality with surprising design features never before seen on a TV. Visitors noticed nothing suspicious among the many works of art. The crowning glory for many museum visitors is the The Water Lily Pond by Monet. Or so they thought. Ins...