الأربعاء، 14 يناير 2015

Samsung Galaxy E5 (SM-E500) firmware now online

Samsung has been rather busy in the last few months, launching a multitude of new phones, most of them being part of new lineups with simplified names. The Galaxy E5 and E7 are the most recent Android phones announced by Samsung, and now, firmware for the former have showed up online. The Galaxy E5 was made official at an event in India, but that doesn’t mean it will be limited to that country – E5 firmware for quite a few different Asian countries have gone live, all of them based on Android 4.4.4 KitKat (Samsung has promised an update to Android 5.0 Lollipop.)


All the firmware can be download from our firmware section, and they can be used to take a peep into the phone’s software as well as for restoring it to stock should the need arise. Oh, and in case you missed it, you can download wallpapers from the Galaxy E7 and A7, with firmware for the two devices also available online.






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Round smartwatches and Samsung: It’s just about time

Considering Samsung’s recent show of interest in having everything, right from your kitchen to your bathroom, connected to the internet, it is evident that a not only phones and other ‘orthodox’ tech, but also new-found gadgetry such as wearables will be the center of focus for the coming few years. As it stands, we’ve hardly seen much of an advance on the smartphone scene in the past year or so. Why, you wonder? Compare the advancements you’ve noticed in the past one year to how smartphones changed from 2012 to 2013 and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Everything’s been incremental, nothing truly groundbreaking. So, new and rather unexplored areas in technology remain to be terrains yet to be inhabited.


And who better than Samsung to do the honors. What’s great about Samsung is that the company is never shy of an experiment; whether or not these pay off is a completely different story, but the ones that do, turn into something truly special. Take for example, the Galaxy Note series. No one was really making phones as big as the first gen Galaxy Note back in the day, and the Galaxy Note itself was pretty much rubbished by the critics. Turns out though, they couldn’t be more wrong; the numbers are out for everyone to see. Even a company as ‘conservative’ as HTC has a large screen phone out, and its far from doing badly on the market.


Back to Samsung, another place where it didn’t do too badly was with its Galaxy Gear smartwatch. It was among the first smartwatches to be available in the market, and like many other Samsung products, it did pretty well. However, a certain Motorola soon changed how everyone looked at smartwatches with the launch of its round-dial Motorola Moto 360. In fact, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that it changed the smartphone market forever. After its launch, people hardly cared about smartwatches that didn’t have round dials, and every other manufacturer had to play catch up.


Funnily enough, despite being the ‘try it all till it works’ sort of a manufacturer, Samsung is yet to have a smartwatch in the market with a round dial. Its only about time. General consensus is out in the open, and there’s probably no other firm better than Samsung to realize that it does take a smartwatch with a round dial and a great build quality to succeed in the market… at least for the time being. LG’s done it. Alcatel’s done it. Heck, even a company as new as GEAK as done it. So why not Samsung?


While I can’t really give the answer to that, I can tell that its coming. Of course, nothing’s official as yet, but that’s me speaking from experience. Knowing Samsung, I wouldn’t be surprised if they launch it in metal and a cheaper, plastic option!


People have spent lavishly on the timepiece since the time it came into existence, but fact is that tech companies of today aren’t really able to churn out ones that compare to their non-smart cousins at least as far as the style quotient is concerned. The ones that have tried to do so (read: Motorola) have embraced great success in no time, which makes you wonder all the more about why Samsung doesn’t have one out already. After all, like I’ve said a million times before, the company isn’t one to shy away from experimenting.


A phone is something that you can keep inside your pocket, but people generally associate with their watches — regardless of them being smart or dumb — in a very different manner. This is perhaps why we’re noticing a massive skew towards those with designs that truly stand out. Samsung hasn’t done too bad with the pricing for its devices, but from what one sees with the Galaxy A series for example, is that the company is charging a premium for good design (at least as per the company) and proper, metal build. This makes you wonder if Samsung’s metal clad, round-dial smartwatch, whenever it does come, will burn a hole in your pocket. As it stands, the Moto 360 too isn’t the most affordable smartwatch on the market right now; it might well turn out that Samsung’s take on that isn’t the cheapest, too.


Here’s to hoping that Samsung does listen to its users (and well wishers), and makes a smartwatch that isn’t heavy on the pocket, and has a truly remarkable design. We consumers can be a demanding lot, but that’s what Samsung — or any other tech company that dreams of making it big — signed up for, anyway. As for me, I think companies should stick to churning out remarkable designs for the moment — the tech will follow suit.






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