Watch Samsung Pay in action on the Galaxy S6 edge

At its MWC 2015 event Samsung confirmed something that we had all been expecting, Samsung Pay, a new payments service that will go up against Apple Pay this year. Both the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 edge support this service. Samsung has a demo booth set up at MWC 2015 and the folks at CNET went up there to film a demo of Samsung Pay in action on the Galaxy S6 edge.

Before the service can be used, users have to save cards that they would like to use with the service, this can easily be done by simply taking a picture of the card with the smartphone’s camera. Once the cards have been saved users just need to swipe up from the home screen to bring up all available payment cards. They can swipe through them all and select one they want to use and authenticate the transaction with the fingerprint sensor.

Then all that’s left to do is to either tap the smartphone against a magnetic strip reader or an external NFC accessory, this will obviously depend upon the merchant, and once payment has been made the receipt will show up in notifications and will also be saved in the Samsung Pay app. The video can be viewed here.

Samsung Pay is set to arrive in the United States and South Korea this summer.

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Three-part video series from Samsung details the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge

Samsung may have pulled off its most critically acclaimed launch yet in the form of the Galaxy S6 Edge, which launched alongside the Galaxy S6 earlier this week. Technology enthusiasts from around the world their dose of the devices from media, which (like SamMobile) posted information and news bits about the devices. Samsung, however, seems keen on giving users a more ‘direct’ relay of how the two devices look and feel, which is why it has put up a three-part video series detailing the two phones. If you’re keen, take a look at same below. Also, if you look closely, the firs video also gives you a glimpse of the retail packaging of the two phones.

Design

Hardware

Camera

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Purported retail boxes for the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 edge appear online

Samsung has already shown off its new smartphones, the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 edge, and next month it is going to bring them to market. What will they come to market in? Samsung didn’t show off the retail boxes for these smartphones during its event, it hardly ever does to be honest, but a picture has appeared online from a well known leakster which shows purported retail boxes for the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge.

The company has previously used recycled cardboard for retail boxes but from the looks of it this time around it may have strayed from tradition for the retail boxes of its latest flagship smartphones. We’ll know for sure once Samsung starts shipping units in 20 countries on April 10th.

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Galaxy Note 4 tops Poland’s best smartphone shootout contest

You’d think that, with all the publicity surrounding Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, all other Samsung smartphones have faded backstage and out of the spotlight.

You’d be wrong for thinking so.

The Galaxy Note 4 has had its share of praise from tech reviewers and sites alike, but smartphone shootout contests pit the best of the best against each other in an effort to appease the curiosity of tech enthusiasts who always ask the question, “Which smartphone is the best of ____?” (you fill in the year).

Poland tech site Teleguru gathered eight of the best smartphones in the world and took them for a shootout in Morocco, with six of Poland’s leading photo editors and photographers, along with Teleguru website owner Filip Wisnander (who has studied photography in detail over the years) to declare the winner. Keep in mind that Poland used the smartphones that are available in Poland at the moment; this means that the iPhone 6 Plus did not make it into the shootout contest because of its lack of availability in the country.

The results are somewhat shocking: first, Samsung dominated daytime photos, being beat out by the iPhone 6 in only one category of the daytime photo tests. In perfect conditions and strong sunlight, HDR, shadow details and contrasts, and cloudy days, however, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 beat out the other seven contenders. In the HDR contest, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 surpassed the iPhone 6 by seven percentage points (33.33% to 26.19%). In the shadow details and contrasts category, the Note 4 demolished Sony’s Xperia Z3 by 24 percentage points (45.24% to 21.43%).

As for cloudy days, the Note 4 came through once more, surpassing the iPhone 5s photos by a little over 17 percentage points (47.62% to 30.95%). In cloudy day photos, the experts ranked the iPhone 5s higher than the iPhone 6 (30.95% vs. 16.67%). Overall, the Galaxy Note 4 beat out Apple’s iPhone 6 by 18.5 percentage points in daytime photography (39.52% vs. 20.95%).

The nighttime camera shootout tests provided additional results. Samsung’s phablet placed fourth in fluorescent lighting, with even Apple’s iPhone 6 taking a backseat to the Nokia Lumia 1020 (35.71% to 30.95%). Korean manufacturer and native Samsung opponent LG dominated with the use of its camera flash in the G3, winning double the percentage points in the camera flash contest as the Galaxy Note 4 (42.86% for the G3 vs. 21.43% for the Note 4).

Samsung again took the top honor in the group’s incandescent lighting contest. With artificial lighting, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 gets the slight win, with 35.71 percentage points as opposed to the iPhone 6’s 33.33 percentage points. In the nighttime category, the Note 4 bested its smartphone rival, the iPhone 6, by a little over five percentage points (27.62% vs. 22.38%).

In the end, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 more than swept both the daytime and nighttime photo shootouts with the experts giving the smartphones the following percentage ratings: Note 4 (33.57%), iPhone 6 (21.66%), iPhone 5s (14.29%), Lumia 1020 (13.57%), G3 (8.33%), Xperia Z3 (7.15%), Xperia Z1 Compact (1.43%), and the HTC One M8 (0.00%).

There were a few surprises in the photo shootout, but two come to mind. First, the Nokia Lumia 1020 outperformed both the G3 and the Xperia Z3, two smartphones from 2014 – despite the fact that the Lumia 1020 was announced in July 2013. The G3 dominated in some nighttime photos, as we’ve seen in a number of G3 reviews from reputable sources, but didn’t produce color fidelity in the other categories.

Next, the HTC One M8 did not fare well at all, bottoming out in all ten categories with zero percent. While HTC does have an excellent 5MP, HD front camera, no selfie shootouts were performed – which means that only HTC’s 4MP “UltraPixel” back camera was on display.

The key to the Note 4’s win in this shootout, as Teleguru puts it, was the Note 4’s automatic mode:

The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 totally crushed it’s opposition in automatic mode, regardless of light settings. The Korean flagship took pictures that had natural colors, lots of details and realistic contrast in most cases. However, it’s [sic] camera had problems with incandescent light, creating a strong yellowish color.

While the camera is but one component of any smartphone, you may want to make the Note 4 your smartphone of choice if camera quality is high on your priority list.

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