Samsung tops global smartphone sales in Q1 2016

Samsung appears to have had a pretty successful start to the year with its latest flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge, taking the world by storm, which is likely due to an innovative marketing campaign that saw the manufacturer give away a complimentary Gear VR headset with a pre-order of the handsets. According to the Yonhap News Agency, the South Korean company sold 81.18 million smartphone units around the globe in the three month period spanning from January to March, which accounts for a whopping 23.2% of all worldwide sales, putting Samsung at the top of the table for smartphone sales in Q1 of 2016.

As good as it may seem, Samsung’s first-quarter sales actually mark a 1.1% decline from last year’s 24.1%. However, it would appear that Apple, which accounted for 14.8% of market sales and shipped 51.62 million units during the first quarter, also suffered a 3.1% decrease in sales from last year’s 17.9% presence. Chinese OEMs were amongst the only firms on the list to expand their market shares in Q1 as a result of an increased demand for budget-friendly smartphones. Xiaomi ranked in third place, shipping a total of 28.87 million handsets globally, which accounts for 8.3% of the market, marking a total increase of 2.9% from its 5.4% presence this time last year.

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These two Samsung Chromebooks will be able to run Android apps when the functionality launches later this year

Earlier today, Google took to its official blog to share a list of Chromebooks that’ll be able to run native Android applications when the newly-announced feature arrives on Chrome OS later this year. The Chromebook 2 11″ (XE500C12) and Chromebook 3 (XE500C13) are the only two Samsung-branded laptops to find their way onto the index. However, we find it somewhat difficult to imagine how apps will run on these devices seeing as neither model features a touchscreen — so users will have to scroll around and manually click to select options using the trackpad.

Despite this, it’s still pretty neat to see that the feature will be making its way to Samsung’s latest Chromebooks. I certainly can’t wait to install the native Twitter for Android client on my Chromebook 3. I’m looking forward to receiving push notifications on my computer whenever I’m mentioned in a new tweet or when one of my friends shares something interesting. I do fear, though, that having all of my favorite apps on my workhorse will distract me from completing important work throughout the day, but only time will tell.

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Samsung Pay customers can pay for goods using their Alipay account in China

As expected, Samsung has today announced a partnership with China’s second-largest online marketplace, Alibaba, which permits new or existing Alipay customers to pay for goods using their account from within the Samsung Pay application in the region. Using the service couldn’t be easier. All you have to do is swipe up from the lock screen or home screen to toggle Samsung Pay, select Alipay from the payment options menu, then scan the QR code positioned on the checkout terminal in a merchant’s bricks-and-mortar store.

Here’s what Injong Rhee, head of R&D for software services at Samsung’s mobile division, had to say about the deal:

We are excited to be working with Alipay to expand Samsung Pay services in China. The reception of Samsung Pay since its launch has been extremely positive and the service has already seen tremendous success in terms of availability and adoption by consumers. We ultimately want to make Samsung Pay available to as many consumers as possible around the globe, so that everyone can have the opportunity to enjoy the simplicity, safety and convenience of this mobile payment solution .

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Add RSS feeds to the Edge RSS panel on the Galaxy S7 edge

The Galaxy S7 edge is perhaps the most beautiful smartphone on the market currently, but many consumers buy the device because of the edge. Yes, the edge alone, sans functionality, is a pretty aesthetic that should be implemented on other smartphones (with Samsung getting credit for it, of course), but the functionality of the edge is another of its appealing factors. The edge provides settings and function shortcuts that remove barriers that can often come between the user and the information and get you to the information you need when you want it.

One of the appealing Edge panels of the Galaxy S7 edge is the Edge RSS panel that lets you add RSS feeds to your edge. If you’re a first-time user who’s never encountered the Galaxy S6 edge, then setting up the edge may prove to be mildly frustrating for you. Fortunately, we can get your Edge RSS panel set up with minimal effort.

Now, on to the easy steps.

Step 1. Enable the Edge RSS panel

You’ll need to enable the Edge RSS panel in order to add RSS feeds to the edge and enable them. To do this, go to your phone settings, select “Edge Screen” under “Phone” settings, then”Edge panels.”  Scroll the on/off toggle to the right, then scroll over to the edge panel that has the Gear S2 at the top, with “samsungmobilepress.com” above it and the Samsung Internet browser at the bottom of the strip. Check the square at the top of the strip.

Then, you’ll need to enable RSS feeds for the Edge RSS panel by visiting  “Edge feeds.” You must first, enable the Edge feeds (by tapping the quick toggle on), then check the edge panel you want to see appear on the edge of your S7 edge. Once you select it, you can then customize the screen timeout for your edge (whether you want the edge feed to remain on-screen for 15 seconds or 10 minutes).

Step 2. Add RSS feeds to your Edge RSS panel

Now that your Edge RSS panel is activated, you can start adding RSS feeds to your Edge RSS panel. To do so, you’ll need to find the website you want to add to your Edge feed.

If you want to add SamMobile.com to your news feed, for example, you’ll need to find the SamMobile RSS feed URL and add it. You can google it, but I’ve saved you the effort. Here’s the SamMobile RSS Feed link:

http://ift.tt/1O4yuZY

Now, you need click the SamMobile feed URL above if you’re on your Samsung Galaxy S7 edge. Once you’re there on the webpage, you need to share this to your Edge RSS panel. To do so, go to “More” a the top right of Samsung’s web browser. If you’re using Google Chrome, you’ll need to click the three dots at the right of the URL box, then select “share” from the list. Once you get to the list of share options, you should see “Edge RSS” in the long list of them. Select it, and you should go to the “Edge RSS” panel that lets you customize your SamMobile feed. You’ll get to select how many articles (1-5) that will appear on your news feed. Now, you can stay tuned to what we’re doing as we’re doing it.

There’s another way to do it, but this is by far the easiest of the two. This method will, of course, also work for the Galaxy S6 edge and Galaxy S6 edge Plus as well. You can view screenshots of these steps below.

Did you enjoy the following tutorial? Did this help you add SamMobile’s RSS feed to your Edge RSS? Would you like to see more tutorials like this?

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Samsung reportedly in talks to develop its own online TV streaming service

A new report claims that Samsung is in talks to develop its own online TV streaming service. The over-the-top streaming market has been gaining steam rapidly over the past couple of years and services like Sling TV and PlayStation Vue are already jostling for position. Apple is expected to come out with a similar service in the future while AT&T’s DirecTV launches one later this year. As one of the biggest manufacturers of TVs in the world, it makes perfect sense for Samsung to launch its own online TV streaming service.

The company is reportedly talking to media companies about how much they will charge to stream their channels on Samsung’s service. Samsung has also floated the idea to offer the same selection of channels to a global audience instead of just users in the United States. There is no online TV streaming service that’s offering the same collection of channels to international users so if Samsung is able to do that it will be a huge differentiating factor for its service. It goes without saying that the service will also work with Samsung’s mobile devices, the company already has a massive platform to launch the service if it decides to go in this direction. People familiar with the discussions mentioned in the report say that the talks are in early stages and the possibility exists that Samsung might ultimately decide to not launch an online TV streaming service.

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Themes Thursday: Here are six good themes from this week

Welcome back to Themes Thursday! Samsung has released a whopping 127 themes for its Galaxy smartphones this week, and we’ve shortlisted six themes that you might like.

The [Kendi] Material UI has a Material design wallpaper with squircle icons. [V] Candy Pop, Diamond Light, and Summer themes have minimalistic circular icons. The [Walk On Mars] Walk On Z theme has stock TouchWiz icons but a beautiful wallpaper.

There are a lot of other themes that were released over past one week, and you might like the ones that haven’t been showcased here. Which theme did you like?

[Kendi] Material UI

[V] Candy Pop

[Walk On Mars] Walk On Z

Diamond Light

Pale Mountains

Summer

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Samsung S Note to get scrolling screen off memo, fingerprint lock, recycle bin, other features

In addition to the new Samsung Focus app, Samsung is also working on bringing new functionality to the S Note app with the Galaxy Note 6. Well, we’re not sure if the new functionality will arrive with the Note 6 or as a separate update – the latter is possible as S Note is now available for Samsung devices on the Play Store, but S Note is set to get a few useful features at some point later this year.

The Galaxy Note 5 introduced Screen off memo, which allows users to start jotting down notes when the device is locked by simply removing the S Pen from its slot. After the update, users will be able to scroll down to add more content to the notes they take using Screen off memo. It is similar to how one can capture bigger screenshots using the scrolling screenshot function on the Note 5 and on Marshmallow-powered Galaxy devices, and we know some of us here at SamMobile will be happy to see this feature.

S Note will also let users secure their notes using their fingerprints, so you can keep all those crazy things you jotted down safe from prying eyes. This will require users to lock the device itself with a pattern, PIN or password, but if you like keeping your device unlocked, you can simply opt for a regular password to secure your notes. All this isn’t new – Private mode on Samsung devices already lets you secure S Note entries, but the update will put all these settings right into the app, removing the need to enable Private mode.

Other new features that will arrive with the update include an option to import notes from other apps, and a recycle bin that will let you retrieve deleted notes. Screen off memo will also possibly be making its way to non-Note devices, but we are told that may or may not happen. Since you don’t get a stylus with non-Note devices, there will probably be an option to assign the hardware buttons to Screen off memo, but at this point this is only speculation on our part.

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Samsung Germany offering the Gear VR for just €9.90 with the purchase of the Galaxy S7 or S7 edge

The Gear VR was initially offered for free along with pre-orders of the Galaxy S7 and the S7 edge. But this was just a limited period promotion, which meant that customers had to shell out its full value shortly after the promo period ended. Samsung Germany has now started a new promotion in order to push more units of the Gear VR. As per the company, customers who purchase the Galaxy S7 or the S7 edge can get the VR headset for just €9.90. This also includes a bunch of special VR content and games (worth €50), so it’s a very special deal.

Samsung mentions that this promotion is only valid until the 4th of June, so there are still a couple of weeks left in the promotion. If you happen to live in Germany and were contemplating the purchase of the Galaxy S7 or the S7 edge, make sure you head over to Samsung’s website right away for more details.

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Exclusive: Samsung flagships could get Android N in Q4 this year

The early reveal of Android N excited many, but for users of Samsung’s flagship smartphones, it was almost a slap in the face as Google gave us a preview of the next iteration of Android while Samsung still hadn’t pushed out Marshmallow to its flagships in many regions. But the company has slowly and surely increased the availability of Android 6.0 in the last month or so, and we now have word from our sources that the final Android N update for Samsung’s current top-of-the-line devices could arrive in the fourth quarter this year.

The fourth quarter is usually the time frame Samsung targets for major Android upgrades each year, but it’s not a timeline the company has always managed to follow. Take the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge, for example. Samsung started beta testing the Marshmallow update for these devices in December last year, with the final update rolling out in late January but only in its home market. It’s highly likely that should Samsung manage to port Android N to its flagships before the start of 2017, the update will only be made available to users in a limited number of regions before making its way around the world in the months after.

Of course, with Google moving quickly with Android N (a beta version of Nexus devices was released at Google I/O yesterday), it’s possible Samsung will follow suit. The company has streamlined its software and made it extremely consistent across all its 2015 and 2016 flagships, so it would certainly be possible to get Android N out the door for multiple devices in a short span of time. According to our insider, the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, and Galaxy Note 5 will be first in line. When it comes to tablets, the Galaxy Tab S2 should be getting the update sometime in 2017.

For those wondering if the Galaxy Note 6 will come with Android N out of the box, we’re afraid we don’t have any concrete information. Our source says firmware development on the Note 6 is in its early stages, so we can’t rule out the possibility of the device being released with Marshmallow.

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