Posts

Showing posts from 2019

Samsung starts Android 10 development for Galaxy A50 and A40

Image
Samsung may have already released Android 10 for a surprising number of devices, including both flagship ones and those on the budget end of the spectrum, but according to the company's roadmap , it will still be a few months the slew of Galaxy phones launched this year will get the new version of Android. Except for the Galaxy A30, Samsung is currently aiming to start updating all of its A series devices to Android 10 from April. But, as we have seen with the Galaxy S10, Galaxy Note 10, and Galaxy Note 9 , Samsung has been able to push out the Android 10 update ahead of schedule. Could it do the same for some of its Galaxy A phones as well? It certainly seems plausible, as Samsung has now started development on Android 10 for the Galaxy A50 and Galaxy A40. It took the company less than two months after it started work on Android 10 for the Galaxy M20 and M30 to release the official update, so we don't see why it couldn't bring the Android 10 update to Galaxy A50 and A4

Unlocked Galaxy Note 10/Note 10+ getting Android 10 update in the US

Image
Samsung has been pretty quick with releasing the Android 10 update to its 2019 Galaxy flagships (not counting the $2000 Fold, which continues to suffer from poor software support ), and North American carriers have been kind enough to follow suit . The four major US carriers released the Android 10 update for the Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10+ over the last couple of weeks , and the unlocked variants are now receiving the update as well. Those who own an unlocked Galaxy Note 10 and Galaxy Note 10+ can download the Android 10 update over the air by opening their phone's settings, navigating to  Software update , and selecting  Download and install . It may take a few tries before the update shows up, but if it doesn't, you can always make the jump to the new version of Android and One UI 2.0 by downloading Android 10 firmware from our database and flashing it on your Note or Note 10+. If you were unable to participate in the One UI 2.0/Android 10 beta or were unwillin

Exclusive: Galaxy M21 in the works, M11, M21, M31 colors revealed

Image
Earlier this month, we exclusively revealed that Samsung is working on the Galaxy M11 and M31 and had speculated that a Galaxy M21 may exist as well. Well, our sources tell us that the Galaxy M21 is indeed in development. The Galaxy M20 is perhaps the best-selling device in the entire Galaxy M lineup, so it's not surprising that a successor is on its way. The Galaxy M21 has model number SM-M215F, and we can confirm that it will come with 64GB and 128GB storage options. The Galaxy M20 is only available with 32GB or 64GB of internal memory, so storage is an area where the M21 will bring an upgrade. Alas, that's all we know as far as the phone's specs are concerned. However, we can expect Android 10 out of the box , Samsung's Exynos 9610 or 9611 chipset under the hood, and at least a triple rear camera setup. We have also been able to find out the color options that will accompany the 2020 Galaxy M series phones. Blue and black will be common across all three devices

Happy New Year from all of us here at SamMobile!

Image
2019 has been a busy year for Samsung. The company came out with its usual excellent Galaxy S and Galaxy Note flagships and also gave us the flawed-yet-beautiful Galaxy Fold, a device we believe represents the kind of change the mobile market desperately needs. Samsung launched plenty of mid-range and budget phones as well, and as a result, we here at SamMobile have had our hands full the entire year. 2020 is promising to be no different, and we are pretty sure we will have our work cut out for us the next 12 months (and beyond). We'll be widening our scope of coverage to more Samsung products along with an increased focus on its mobile devices, and in the first quarter, you can expect to see the new SamMobile app as well. Today, however, is a day for celebration, and from all of us here at SamMobile, here's wishing you a very Happy New Year. We hope you have a great time with your friends and family and that you have the strength to follow whatever resolutions you may deci

January 2020 security update out for more Galaxy devices

Image
Samsung is refusing to let up and keeps impressing us with its fervor for releasing security updates as quickly as possible. The company pushed out the January 2020 security patch to the Galaxy A50 and Galaxy Tab S5e yesterday, and it is now rolling out the patch to four more devices. These are the Galaxy A10, Galaxy A10s, Galaxy A20, and Galaxy A30 – all four phones are receiving the January security update in Thailand. Yes, Samsung Thailand has decided to bring next month's Android security patch to multiple 2019 A series phones at the same time. And that's all the latest updates released for these devices have to offer – no new features or improvements are included. Android 10 isn't here The contents of the January 2020 patch, meanwhile, are a mystery, Samsung (and Google) will not be detailing the next security patch until a few days later. If you own one of the four phones mentioned above and reside in Thailand, you can check for the update and download it over th

Breaking: Stable Galaxy Note 9 Android 10 update released for beta users

Image
Galaxy Note 9 owners who have been using the Android 10 beta on their phone have more reason to celebrate New Year's Eve, as Samsung has now released the stable Android 10 update. A 100 MB update is rolling out to beta users in India right now – the stable update comes with software version N960FXXU4DSLB and includes the December 2019 security patch. The stable update for beta users should also be released in other markets where the beta program was launched, such as the UK. If you are using the Android 10 beta, you can download the stable update by going into the  Settings » Software update  menu and selecting  Download and install . As for those using Android Pie, we can expect the Android 10 update to be released within the next day or two. Once that happens, you can rest assured that you will find out about it right here on SamMobile . Developing… The post Breaking: Stable Galaxy Note 9 Android 10 update released for beta users appeared first on SamMobile . #Goog

Samsung said to unveil Zero Bezel TV at CES 2020

Image
Samsung is expected to raise the bar for premium TVs at CES 2020 next month. According to reports, Samsung is going to unveil the world's first true Zero Bezel TV at the trade show in Las Vegas. Reports from South Korea suggest that this new premium TV has already received a "two-thumbs up" from Kim Hyun-seok, the consumer electronics boss at Samsung, and other top executives. An indication that this may not just be a proof of concept is that Samsung will reportedly start mass producing this TV in February 2020. Samsung Zero Bezel TV may only be available in limited sizes The Samsung Zero Bezel TV will reportedly be available only in sizes from 65-inches and higher. This might mean that the manufacturing process is complicated enough that it's not suitable for smaller sizes. It could also mean that Samsung wants to further differentiate its premium TVs as more consumers opt for larger screens. The report adds that this will be unlike "bezel-less" TVs

Is the Galaxy S11 actually going to be called the Galaxy S20 instead?

Image
Since Samsung released the Galaxy S10 this year, it wouldn't have surprised anyone if next year's flagship was named the Galaxy S11. That's already what it's being called online but is it possible that Samsung is looking to shake things up a bit? There's some speculation that the upcoming Galaxy S flagship series may actually be called the Galaxy S20 instead. We haven't seen any concrete evidence to support the theory so far, which is why it remains just a theory for now. Galaxy S11 or Galaxy S20 – What's in a name? @HarmlessKarl , the founder of case manufacturer Schnail, posted a screenshot of what appears to be a communication of some sort about the next Samsung flagship's name. It suggests that the handsets which were previously known as the Galaxy S11e, Galaxy S11 and Galaxy S11+ will actually be called the Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+ and the Galaxy S20 Ultra. There's no other evidence to back this theory right now. Accessory manufacturer

Oppo F15

Image
Oppo F15 is Candybar, Touchscreen Android Smartphone from Oppo which runs on Android OS, v9.0 (Pie). Oppo F15 is available in Dark Blue, Red, Blue colors and 172 g (6.07 oz) of weight. Oppo F15 has 6.4 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display. Oppo F15 is powered by Octa-core (4x2.1 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4x2.0 GHz Cortex-A53) CPU, Mediatek MT6771V Helio P70 (12nm) Chipset and Mali-G72 MP3 GPU along with 128GB 8GB RAM.Additional features of Oppo F15 are Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic. Oppo F15 has 3G, WIFI, Bluetooth, GPS connectivity options on board. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

Samsung to showcase successful C-Lab projects at CES 2020

Image
C-Lab (Creative Lab), now known as C-Lab Inside, is an in-house start-up incubator set up by Samsung in 2012 to enable its employees to explore new business ideas. Later, the Korean company expanded the scope of its incubator by creating C-Lab Outside, a start-up acceleration program to nurture outside start-ups in Korea by providing them resources, access to technical know-how, and more. Every year Samsung picks a few C-Lab projects to showcase them at CES, and it is doing the same this year as well, making it the fifth year C-Lab will be participating in CES. The Korean company has announced that it will showcase five new C-Lab Inside projects and four C-Lab Outside start-ups at CES 2020 at its C-Labs booth in the Eureka Park, Sands Expo, from Jan 7-Jan 11. The five new C-Lab inside projects include: Selfietype – A virtual keyboard solution that combines front-facing camera and a proprietary AI engine to convert finger movements into QWERTY keyboard inputs without any addition

Daily Deal: 37% off VICSEED Car Phone Mount

Image
It's dangerous to use your smartphone to text or call while driving: Your eyes are meant to be on the road and your hands on the wheel. However, people often need to use navigation via Google Maps or other navigation apps on their smartphone in order to get to their desired location (or find the fastest route back home after a long day at work), and it's always best to keep the phone located at a position that makes it easy for you to take a glance at the phone's display. That's where car mounts that can be plugged into your car's air conditioning vents come in. There are plenty of excellent air vent car mount options available on the market, and today, you can get one from VICSEED at 37% off. The VISCEED car mount holds your phone steady as you drive, and it has universal compatibility that lets it hold any smartphone, including the Galaxy S10+ and Galaxy Note 10+ without needing any adjustments. Hit the Buy Now button below to get one before the price goes ba

Samsung will organize the third annual recycling event ahead of CES 2020

Image
Samsung, in collaboration with ERI and CTA, will organize the third annual recycling event in Las Vegas ahead of CES 2020. The event, which will be held from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. PST on January 4 at the Salvation Army at 2035 Yale Street, will provide early CES attendees a convenient way to dispose unwanted electronics in an environmentally-responsible manner. ERI, which is a leading recycler of electronic waste, will securely destroy all the data from the disposed items before recycling the e-waste. Electronic items ranging from calculators to TVs will be accepted and recycled free of charge at the event. You can find the complete list of accepted items in the image below. "With the help of partners like ERI and CTA, we have recycled over 100 million pounds of e-waste throughout the U.S. in 2018 alone, and more than 1 billion pounds since 2008. We continue to expand programs to reach our global goal of taking back more than 15 billion pounds of electronics by 2030,"

Samsung’s lucrative iPhone display contract may be under threat

Image
Samsung has been the biggest supplier of OLED displays to Apple ever since the latter made the switch to OLED panels for the iPhone in 2017. That's because no other display manufacturer has the scale and the quality that Samsung is able to provide its customers. That's not to say that they haven't been trying to catch up. China's BOE Display has been particularly hard at work trying to bridge the massive gap with Samsung . Reports claim that it may have its sights on one of Samsung's most lucrative contracts. China's BOE may take away a chunk of that Apple cash Even if the premium iPhone models do well, the ones that directly compete against Samsung's flagships, Samsung still stands to make billions of dollars because Apple has to source the majority of OLED panels from it. Apple even paid a $684 million penalty to Samsung for not meeting its minimum order quantity for the iPhone displays. On the other hand, Apple has been trying to diversify its

T-Mobile releases Android 10 update for the Galaxy Note 10/10+

Image
Samsung started rolling out the stable Android 10 update for the Galaxy Note 10/10+ earlier this month. Since then, the update has reached more markets and carriers around the world. It is now released for the T-Mobile-branded Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+ in the US. This comes a week after Verizon released the same update for the Note 10 models on its network. US carriers are usually late in releasing Android version updates, but they have upped their game this time. Ironically, unlocked Note 10/10+ models in the country are yet to receive the update, which should be frustrating for users who bought them to avoid carrier delays in pushing out updates. Samsung and carriers have been comparatively quick in releasing Android 10-based One UI 2.0 so far, thanks to the platform-level improvements made by Google to improve the update process and speed. Android 10 and Samsung One UI 2.0 are relatively minor updates, particularly when compared to the One UI 1.0 release last year. The la

January 2020 security update out for the Galaxy A50 and Galaxy Tab S5e

Image
Samsung is once again releasing the next month's security update for a couple of its devices early. The January 2020 Android security patch is making its way to the Galaxy A50 and Galaxy Tab S5e through software updates released for the two devices in some markets. The A50 update is out in Russia and comes with software version A505FNPUU3ASL6 . The update for the Tab S5e is out in Panama, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Bolivia and sports build number  T725XXS1ASL2. This isn't the first time we're seeing the January security patch on a Galaxy device. The latest Android 10 beta updates for the Galaxy S10, Galaxy Note 10, and Galaxy S9 include the patch as well, but it's only now making an appearance as a part of regular security updates for devices that are running Android Pie. As usual, we have no information on what kind of security vulnerabilities have been fixed in the next security patch, as neither Samsung nor Google will be detailing the patch until a few days int

Galaxy S11+ 5G picks up Bluetooth certification

Image
The wheels are finally in motion: The Galaxy S11 has cleared an obstacle on its way to retail shelves by picking up Bluetooth certification . To be specific, it's the 5G variant of the Galaxy S11+ (model number SM-G988B) that has been certified. The Galaxy S11+ is likely to be sold as a 5G-equipped device in all markets , while the Galaxy S11e and Galaxy S11+ could have both LTE and 5G variants, despite the fact that the Exynos 990 and Snapdragon 865 have 5G connectivity built-in as standard. The Bluetooth certification simply calls the phone a "Samsung Mobile Phone", so it's unclear if a recent rumor about Samsung possibly launching its next flagship as the Galaxy S20 has any truth to it. It's standard fare for companies to want to keep the names of their upcoming flagships a secret as they make their way through the necessary certifications ahead of an official launch, and that's probably the only reason why the certification is using a generic product nam

Samsung Galaxy Fold 2 could go on sale before the Galaxy S11

Image
A new report from Korean publication  Yonhap  says the Galaxy Fold 2, Samsung's next foldable phone, could go on sale before the Galaxy S11. Rumors have indicated that the Galaxy S11 and Galaxy Fold 2 will be announced at the same event, which isn't very surprising since the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Fold were unveiled together as well. However, it seems Samsung is now planning to put the Galaxy Fold 2 up for sale right after it goes official, at least in its home country. Rising competition in the foldables market from other manufacturers is said to be the reason for Samsung's decision. Motorola in particular has likely given the Korean giant the most cause for worry by launching the 2019 Moto Razr a few weeks ago . Motorola recently revealed that the retail launch of the new Razr has been delayed due to high demand , and it's an opportunity Samsung might want to grab by bringing the Fold 2 to retail shelves as soon as possible. Just a few days ago, we were treated to

Scoped Storage Stories: Reading via MediaStore

Image
Android 10 is greatly restricting access to external storage via filesystem APIs. Instead, we need to use other APIs to work with content. This is the ninth post in a series where we will explore how to work with those alternatives, now looking at MediaStore options. In our last episode , we looked at saving content to a Uri obtained by insert() into the MediaStore . If we put data into the MediaStore , it may also prove useful to get data back out of it. The basic recipe for this has not changed from past Android versions. You can use a ContentResolver to query() a MediaStore collection of relevance. For example, this sample project has its own edition of VideoRepository that will query() the MediaStore for all videos on external storage: suspend fun listTitles (): List < String >? = withContext ( Dispatchers . IO ) { val resolver = context . contentResolver resolver . query ( collection , PROJECTION , null , null , SORT_ORD

Galaxy S10 Lite user manual reveals some design hints

Image
It has been known for a few months now that Samsung is working on an affordable variant of the Galaxy S10 flagship . This handset, bearing model number SM-G770F, has since come to be known as the Galaxy S10 Lite. We have come across the Galaxy S10 Lite user manual which reveals some hints about the handset's design. There's nothing out of the ordinary here, but it does reiterate a design change that we're going to see on most Samsung devices in 2020. Galaxy S10 Lite user manual gives a few hints about the design The user manual is in Portuguese so the text may not make much sense to you unless you know the language. The images included in the manual show that the Galaxy S10 Lite is going to have a centered punch hole for the front camera. They also show that all of the hardware buttons will be placed on the right side of the frame. That's something we have already seen on devices like the Galaxy A51 . Samsung is expected to opt for the same placement of button

Weekly SamMobile Quiz 6 – Come test your Samsung knowledge!

Image
Consider yourself a superfan of Samsung? Take our quiz and see how many answers you can get right! This is a fun activity that we do with our readers to test their knowledge of our favorite company. The quiz has a mix of easy and difficult questions that most fans should be able to answer without turning to Google. We intend to make a new quiz for you every weekend so we hope that you'll participate and learn a thing or two about Samsung in the process! Don't forget to share the results of the quiz with your friends and see if you can outscore them. A little competition never hurt anybody! Remember, if the quiz isn't loading properly, please access the non-AMP version of this webpage. The post Weekly SamMobile Quiz 6 – Come test your Samsung knowledge! appeared first on SamMobile . #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

TECNO Pop 3 Plus

Image
TECNO Pop 3 Plus is Candybar, Touchscreen Android Smartphone from TECNO which runs on Android OS, v9.0 (Pie). TECNO Pop 3 Plus is available in Midnight Black, Vacation Blue, Hillier Purple colors and 180.5 g (6.38 oz) of weight. TECNO Pop 3 Plus has 6.52 inches IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display. TECNO Pop 3 Plus is powered by Quad-core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU, Mediatek MT6761 Helio A22 (12 nm) Chipset and PowerVR GE8320 GPU along with 16GB 1GB RAM.TECNO Pop 3 Plus has 3G, WIFI, Bluetooth, GPS connectivity options on board. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

TECNO Spark 4 Lite

Image
TECNO Spark 4 Lite is Candybar, Touchscreen Android Smartphone from TECNO which runs on Android OS, v9.0 (Pie). TECNO Spark 4 Lite is available in Midnight Black, Vacation Blue, Hillier Purple colors. TECNO Spark 4 Lite has 6.52 inches IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display. TECNO Spark 4 Lite is powered by Quad-core 1.8 GHz Cortex-A53 CPU, Mediatek MT6761 Helio A22 (12 nm) Chipset and PowerVR GE8320 GPU along with 32GB 2GB RAM.TECNO Spark 4 Lite has 3G, WIFI, Bluetooth, GPS connectivity options on board. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews

Oppo Reno3 Pro

Image
Oppo Reno3 Pro is Candybar, Touchscreen Android Smartphone from Oppo which runs on Android OS, v10.0. Oppo Reno3 Pro is available in Black, White, Starry Night, Sunrise colors and 171 g (6.03 oz) of weight. Oppo Reno3 Pro has 6.5 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display. Oppo Reno3 Pro is powered by Octa-core (1x2.4 GHz Kryo 475 Prime & 1x2.2 GHz Kryo 475 Gold & 6x1.8 GHz Kryo 475 Silver) CPU, Qualcomm SDM765 Snapdragon 765G (7 nm) Chipset and Adreno 620 GPU along with 128GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 12GB RAM.Additional features of Oppo Reno3 Pro are 800 nits max brightness, 90Hz, DCI-P3, Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic, Dolby Atmos sound. Oppo Reno3 Pro has 3G, WIFI, Bluetooth, GPS connectivity options on board. #Google #Android #Smartphones #OS #News @ndrdnws #ndrdnws #AndroidNews