Make your home smarter with the $249 SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit

SmartThings has been in the business of making IoT-enabled smart devices for quite some time now, it ended up being acquired by Samsung which now wants to be a force to be reckoned with in the IoT arena. To provide an easy way for people to make their home smarter the company has introduced the $249 SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit which features a SmartThings Hub as well as compatible accessories.

The Hub is what connects all of the smart lights, locks, sensors and cameras together and makes these accessories play nicely with each other. In the Kit buyers get two Multipurpose Sensors to go with the Hub, these sensors can be used to monitor doors, cabinets, windows to easily check whether they’re open or closed. There’s also a Motion Sensor in the Kit and an Outlet for controlling small appliances, electronics and lights. Setting everything up is quite easy and the smart devices can then be managed easily via the SmartThings app for Android and iOS, the app lets users control lights, receive notifications when movement is detected and access a wide range of other features. The SmartThings Home Monitoring Kit is now available for purchase, it costs $249 and is available online from Samsung as well as retailers like Best Buy and Amazon.

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Jay-Z visits Samsung HQ in Silicon Valley, is Samsung buying Tidal?

Rap mogul Jay-Z owns music streaming service Tidal, which hasn’t been performing as well as competing services, so could Jay-Z be looking to offload the service to a company with deeper pockets that can take Tidal into another direction? Well, that’s the buzz these days, as earlier this week Jay-Z visited Samsung HQ in Silicon Valley which have led to rumors that the company might have some interest in buying Tidal.

Variety reports that Jay-Z was seen leaving the office of Samsung Research America where the Samsung MSCA unit is also located, this unit creates Samsung’s content strategy for services like Milk Music. The scribe also reports that one of Jay-Z’s meetings there was with Daren Tsui, Samsung’s SVP of content and services, said to be “the driving force behind Milk Music.” A deal with Samsung could put Tidal on the map, the Korean manufacturer can provide Tidal with a huge distribution base by pre-loading the app on its smartphones. Jay-Z’s name recognition could be beneficial for Samsung, they could strike deals for product promotion and with Tidal in the fold, also provide an improved on-demand music experience better than what Milk Music currently offers. It’s too soon to say though if a deal will materialize, both Samsung and Tidal have not commented on the matter, so we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out.

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Analyst believes Samsung will lose Apple’s business for iPhone 7 processors because of ‘Chipgate’

Apple opted for both Samsung and TSMC to manufacture its new A9 processor that you’ll find in the company’s latest mobile devices, Samsung’s A9 chip is made on a 14nm process while TSMC’s chip is made on a 16nm process. This has led to a new controversy called “Chipgate,” with multiple reports claiming that the TSMC chip provides 20% better battery life than its Samsung counterpart. Apple tried to downplay the issue by saying that its tests show that the actual battery life of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus even when variable component differences are taken into account, vary within just 2-3% of each other.

It’s unclear what percentage of A9 chips both manufacturers are supplying Apple, some believe that Samsung has received majority of the orders while others say TSMC is the major supplier for the A9. A JP Morgan Securities analyst believes that this controversy has cost Samsung Apple’s business for the iPhone 7 processor. TSMC is now expected to receive all orders for the A10 processor since Samsung’s A9 chip is underperforming. Even if this is true one can’t expect Samsung to sit idly by while TSMC takes away all of Apple’s business, but we must not forget that TSMC did receive all orders for Apple’s A8 chip in 2014, so it won’t be surprising if Apple goes down this road again for the A10. There’s a long way to go before A10-powered products enter mass production, a lot can happen between now and then.

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Samsung begins disclosing some details of its monthly security updates

Samsung has had a habit of releasing monthly security updates without disclosing what’s actually in those updates, what issues that it has addressed and fixed, users don’t really know what the update fixes and can only figure it out if an apparent issue doesn’t exist after the update is installed. There appears to be a slight change in the way Samsung does things, following Google’s decision to start publicly disclosing details of monthly security updates Samsung has started doing that as well.

The company has quietly launched the Samsung Mobile Security Blog “to keep users informed of developing security issues,” it’s really barebones right now as far as design and content go but Samsung does say that this blog will serve as a main source for security notifications. Samsung mentions that its recent update brings latest security patches from Google aside from its own code fixes, and that it has addressed 14 updates in the release, but it hasn’t publicly disclosed all of them just yet.

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