الأربعاء، 21 سبتمبر 2016

The South Korean goverment has asked Samsung to extend the Galaxy Note 7 refund deadline

The South Korean government has asked Samsung to extend the refund period for the recalled Galaxy Note 7 as it believes that the firm did not give consumers enough time to take advantage of the opportunity. In fact, it’s claiming that many customers were actually unaware they could seek a refund due to the company’s inadequate efforts to communicate with owners in possession of a faulty device.

The specific body of the government that filed the request was the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards. Its spokesperson, Nam Taek-joo, is requesting that Samsung comes up with an alternative plan on how to better notify consumers that they can either exchange their Galaxy Note 7 or receive a full refund as it appears that owners are not actively participating in either offer as a result of a lack of awareness.



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Over 70 percent of all Galaxy Note 7′s sold in Canada have been registered for replacement

Samsung Canada has revealed that over 70 percent of the 22,000 Galaxy Note 7′s sold in the region have been registered for replacement. This news comes three weeks after the manufacturer was forced to recall over two million units of the device  – inlcuding unsold stock — amid reports of handsets exploding as a result of a unsound battery.

The remaining 30 percent of Galaxy Note 7′s in the hands of the public will receive a software update shortly that will repeatedly notify owners that their specific unit is subject to the recall every time they power it on or plug it into a power outlet to charge. The upgrade will also limit the maximum charge to just 60 percent to prevent it from getting hot enough to catch fire.



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Samsung’s cash reserves hit a record high of $69 billion

Samsung has reported a significant improvement in its cash holdings as it now achieved a record high cash reserve of 77 trillion won ($69.10 billion). It’s a 7.8 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2015. Samsung counts its cash, cash equivalents, short-term financial instruments and short-term liquid assets in its cash reserves. Samsung saw an increase of 14.2 percent in its cash and cash equivalents to 25.84 trillion won from late last year while the amount of its short-term instruments went by 7.3 percent to 47.45 trillion won in the same period.

Analysts expect that as Samsung continues to streamline its portfolio its cash reserves will increase further in the coming quarters. This is supported by Samsung’s recent sale of securities in four different companies that freed up almost $900 million in cash for the company. As part of its portfolio restructuring Samsung has also sold its printing business to HP for $1.05 billion.

Samsung is expected to use this money to acquire emerging tech companies to fuel future growth engines. It may also use some of the reserves to improve dividend yields for shareholders. Samsung did say last year that it’s going to improved its dividend policies to offer greater value to shareholders. It then embarked on a $10 billion program to buyback its own shares in a move aimed at reviving investor confidence in the conglomerate.



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Samsung will roll out an update in Australia to limit the Galaxy Note 7′s maximum charge

Samsung’s subsidiary in Australia has issued a press release confirming that it will distribute an update in the region later today to limit the maximum charge of recalled Galaxy Note 7 units to just 60 percent. The main objective of this restriction is to stop the battery from getting hot enough to spark a fire.

It should be noted, however, that this won’t put an end to the risk. If you own a device that packs the defunct cell, there’s nothing from stopping it bursting into flames – so we highly recommend that you take advantage of the recall program Samsung kicked off in the country yesterday.

We’ve already received some reports from Galaxy Note 7 owners in Australia claiming that they’ve already received the upgrade, which means that everyone should have received it by the end of the week. If you’d like to see if it’s available on your unit: Settings > About Device > Software Update.

 



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Black Onyx Galaxy Note 7 reportedly being launched in South Korea early next month

We reported two weeks ago that Samsung was likely going to use the range of colors that it offers the Galaxy Note 7 in to reignite the sales momentum for its flagship handset. It was said that Samsung is going to lean on the Black Onyx Galaxy Note 7 for this particularly in its home market of South Korea as there has been incredible demand for it there. A new report out of Korea quotes a “high-ranking official” at Samsung who claims that the company is going to launch the Black Onyx Galaxy Note 7 in South Korea early next month.

Samsung’s exchange program for the Galaxy Note 7 is already underway in its home country and the company has also confirmed that sales of the phablet will resume on September 28th. The Galaxy Note 7 was launched in Blue Coral, Silver Titanium and Gold Platinum colors back in August. Samsung held off on the Black Onyx hue possibly because it wanted to have something fresh in its arsenal by the time the iPhone 7 came knocking. Whether or not just the introduction of a new color option is going to do enough to kickstart the sales momentum for the Galaxy Note 7 remains to be seen.



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Samsung has received 26 false reports of exploding Galaxy Note 7′s

Samsung has announced that it has received 26 false reports from consumers claiming that their Galaxy Note 7 had burst into flames since it issued an official recall for the device earlier this month.

It’s reported that out of all of the incidents, Samsung found no fault with the device in 12 cases. In seven, the alleged victim could not be reached via telephone or email and in another seven, the consumer cancelled the report.

Perhaps the most well-known of a false report is the explosion of a 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The owner of the vehicle was adamant that his defunct Galaxy Note 7 was the cause of the fire. However, the local fire team were unable to determine if it was.

So there you have it, folks. Don’t believe everything you hear about exploding Galaxy Note 7′s online.

 



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AT&T and T-Mobile distribute battery indicator update for the Galaxy Note 7

Following in Verizon’s footsteps, AT&T and T-Mobile have today started rolling out a maintenance update for all of their carrier-branded varaints of the Galaxy Note 7 that were purchased and registered in the United States. The upgrade bundles the green battery indicator and recurring safety warnings that we reported on yesterday.

Once installed, the upgrade will turn the battery indicator positioned in the upper-right corner of the display from white to green if the handset is safe and doesn’t sport the faulty battery that has reportedly led to over seventy devices catching fire in the United States alone.

The firmware also introduces a recurring safety notification that will appear affected units every time they are powered on or plugged into a wall outlet.

As you’d expect, both operators are distributing this release in stages. If you’d like to see if the OTA is ready for your device, simply head into Settings, select About Device, tap on the heading entitled Software Update, then hit the Download Updates Manually button.



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Wallpaper Wednesday: Fruit

Welcome to the latest edition of Wallpaper Wednesday. This week we’re focusing our attention on five fruit-inspired backgrounds. All images are available in a FHD resolution, which is a perfect fit for the Galaxy S7Galaxy S7 edgeGalaxy Note 5 and other flagships, but they can, of course, be used on different smartphones, too.

If any of the following images float your boat and you want to download and set one as your wallpaper, simply tap on a photo to maximise it, then click and hold to save it. Once the picture is stored locally, open up Settings, locate and select Wallpaper, then just tap the newly-saved image to set it as your background.

Alternatively, you can download a ZIP file containing all of this week’s backdrops by hitting the Download button at the very bottom of this post.


Currants

Currants


Grapes

Grapes


Raspberries

Raspberries


Strawberries

Strawberries


Tomatoes

Tomatoes


Download

Note: We’ve tried our best to identify the creators of all of the wallpapers featured in this week’s column. However, the images appear to lack copyright information, artist signatures or any real trace of origin. If you created a wallpaper we’ve posted and would like credit, or would rather we remove the image, kindly contact us.



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The Galaxy Note 7 recall has nothing to do with removable batteries

If you frequent any Samsung user discussions, there are three items of great importance to some long-time customers: 1) microSD card slot, 2) IR blaster, and 3) removable batteries. Sure, the microSD card slot and IR blaster seem to be the more important priorities for many who value them above all else (fortunately, I do not fit in this category), but the removable battery does have its fan base.

Samsung fanboys are looked upon in a negative light, but microSD card fanboys, IR blaster fanboys, and removable battery fanboys are even worse than the Samsung kind: after all, they make these issues of such importance that they’ll only buy from OEMs that supply these (as if to say that nothing else matters). They’ll jump from one OEM to another, provided that these three items are kept alive.

The Galaxy Note 7 recall has brought to light an issue that matters most to removable battery fanboys: that is, the cells within Samsung’s batteries that, by the way, are sealed within its 2016 “Galaxies.” Now, I’ve heard of begging the question being a fallacy, but the removable battery fanboys take this fallacy to a whole new level.

The issue with the Galaxy Note 7, as the removable battery fanboys will tell you, is the battery. To them, Samsung has “shot itself in the foot” by shipping phones with sealed batteries. “If Samsung would go back to giving removable batteries, this problem would’ve been avoided,” removable battery fanboys say. Yet, this response shows more of their fanboyism and bias to outdated battery tech than a proper answer to a pressing issue.

While the battery is the issue, the overarching issue is that the battery itself is faulty – not whether or not the battery is removable. Faulty batteries and removable batteries are two different issues. Though both could overlap, there is no evidence to consider the possibility.

The batteries being shipped in the Galaxy Note 7 are faulty (at least some of them are; Samsung has never said that all the currently-shipped phones have faulty batteries, though mass hysteria can never be contained, unfortunately). The batteries are faulty because of issues within the battery itself. Nothing has been said to confirm that Samsung’s “sealing” the battery itself, or the battery and the phone together, are causing the conflict that is resulting in explosions worldwide. The issue has been found within the battery cells, an issue that mandates using a different, non-faulty battery that doesn’t suffer from the same defect.

This is the issue, but removable battery fanboys are switching topics, throwing out the real issue and planting a smokescreen from a different discussion. The topic concerns the batteries being defective, but removable battery fanboys want to get you off topic because they still can’t accept that removable batteries are going the way of the dodo and that, contrary to what they like, the old way of battery charging has been replaced with newer, more sophisticated methods of doing so.

Instead of discussing the topic and agreeing that a replacement battery is needed, the removable battery fanboys would like to take this time to sell you on their way of doing things: just return removable batteries, they say, and all of this would never have happened. It seems to be nothing more than a political ploy to push their anti-sealed battery agenda once again.

But, as always, there’s a problem with this logic: If Samsung did go back to removable batteries (which, in my view, would be a step backward, not forward), the explosions could still have occurred. The reason concerns the fact that, if a battery batch is bad, taking one bad battery out and putting a new bad battery in will lead to the same result.

Removable “defective” batteries would be no better in my given scenario than “defective” sealed batteries. If a battery is faulty, it will still show signs – whether it can be replaced or not. And even in the case of good batteries that are both sealed and removable, explosions have still been known to occur. Science says that batteries and chemicals, when encountering heat and warming in a handset, can have the same effect as a lit stack of dynamite.

I understand that removable battery fanboys want a feature back that matters to them, and I understand their frustration with the current crop of most high-end Android smartphones because the removable battery trend is dying out quickly. However, I think that the claims made against Samsung fanboys such as “they don’t think,” “they’re clueless,” etc., are met equally with even more erroneous comments made in Galaxy Note 7 recall discussions such as “the issue is that the battery isn’t removable.”

In issues regarding phone explosions, companies like Samsung need to have both the phone and the battery back to examine the exact nature or cause of the problem. So, even if there’d been removable batteries that exploded, Samsung would still mandate that the phones be returned to examine them closely and provide some details on its own investigation. No, in the end, removable batteries would not have prevented the Galaxy Note 7 recall.

Now, removable battery fanboys believe that battery issues can be replaced by making the battery removable, allowing users to swap out batteries when they need to. Yes, this is a convenience, as some see it, but others think that wireless charging is a far more convenient option that doesn’t mandate charging a second battery, only to turn around and swap it for the dead one that mandates recharging.

What removable battery fanboys can’t wrap their minds around is that there are many consumers who just don’t care about removable batteries and live in a world where there are other more convenient charging options. Batteries are also becoming more and more durable, and fast charging now allows users to get 50% battery back in as little as 30 minutes. Many smartphones were still needing 3 hours to charge up just a few years ago; now, in as little as 90 minutes or half the time, smartphones are going from 0 to 100%.

Yes, removable batteries can take you from 0 to 100 in seconds – provided that the battery is charged. A number of removable battery advocates assume that removable batteries remove barriers and create convenience, but you must still charge the battery in either 1) a charging system or 2) a smartphone. In other words, you’re bound to a charging system or have to charge the phone as though you don’t have a removable battery. What’s the point of boasting about a feature when it requires you to either carry a charging system or forces you to charge the battery in a smartphone as if it didn’t exist? Virtual advantages are only advantages in theory – not practice.

The Galaxy Note 7 recall debacle has shown us Samsung’s ability to come forward as a truly mature tech company and admit its mistake with a promise to make things right – an act that shows a company unafraid to tackle the issue head-on – but it’s also shown us that removable battery fanboys are just as blinded by their love of removable batteries as they claim Samsung fanboys are by Samsung. It turns out that, though they don’t want you to know, removable battery fanboys, IR blaster fanboys, and microSD card slot fanboys are out there; and the truth is that there’s a fanboy of some sort in all of us.

The Galaxy Note 7 recall debacle has nothing to do with removable batteries, but removable battery fanboys are like the kid in class that says the same answer for every question: hoping the answer fits for at least 1 question, but finding it doesn’t work for any. Looking to removable battery fanboys for the right answer to the Note 7 recall debacle will get you nowhere.



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Exclusive: Samsung starts testing Android 7.0 Nougat for the Galaxy S7

It has been over a month since Google released Android 7.0 Nougat. So far, the update has only landed on Nexus devices which receive their software updates directly from Google. OEMs like Samsung haven’t updated their devices as yet because there’s a big process that needs to be completed first before any new major update can be released. Just yesterday we spotted what appeared to be a Galaxy S7 running a test Nougat firmware and we can now confirm that Samsung has indeed started testing Android 7.0 Nougat for the Galaxy S7.

Samsung is currently testing software version G930FXXU1ZPI9 internally for the Galaxy S7, it has started this test in Poland where Samsung Europe is located. The alphabet “Z” demands attention as Samsung has previously used it to denote upcoming major updates as well. This may very well be a preliminary test build so don’t think that the company will release Nougat for the Galaxy S7 within a couple of days. Samsung has not yet provided any timeframe in which we can expect Android 7.0 to land on at least its flagship devices like the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy Note 7. Those who are on carrier locked devices will have to wait even longer for the update to arrive.



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Samsung reportedly purchases new equipment to produce smaller and more efficient mobile chips

Samsung has reportedly purchased new equipment from ASML – the chip-equipment supplier based in The Netherlands – in a deal said to be worth 200 billion won ($178 million). Local news reports claim that senior vice president and chief of Samsung’s semiconductor research and development center Chung Seung-eun visited ASML’s headquarters to ink the deal. ASML is currently the only company that sells these lithography machines so it has a unique edge in the market.

Samsung and ASML were in the news recently but for an entirely different reason. The South Korean conglomerate has sold half of its 3 percent stake in ASML for over $680 million. The company did say that despite reducing its position it will continue to maintain a strategic relationship with ASML and this deal is evidence of that. ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography chip-making machines enable chip manufacturers like Samsung to develop smaller semiconductors while improving efficiency.  Reports claim that Samsung has purchased one unit currently and aims to acquire more once yield rates improve.



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[Poll] What do you think about Samsung’s way of indicating ‘safe’ Galaxy Note 7s?

After officially initiating the recall of unsafe Galaxy Note 7s, Samsung has started providing safe replacement units. The company is indicating if a particular Galaxy Note 7 is safe using a ‘green battery icon’ instead of a white one, and Google has granted a special exception to Samsung for the new battery icon.

This battery icon is visible on the status bar, in the power menu, and even in the Always On Display mode. This indication makes it easier for government, airport, and other authorities in knowing that the Galaxy Note 7 is safe for use. However, the green battery icon doesn’t gel well with the rest of the UI. Do you think Samsung could’ve implemented a better way to indicate safe Galaxy Note 7 units? Please cast your votes in the poll embedded below.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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Deal: Grab this 128GB Evo+ microSD card from Samsung for just $37.79

Whether you got yourself the recently released Galaxy Note 7 or any other smartphone that supports storage expansion, you should consider this 128GB microSD card from Samsung. Currently priced at $37.79 on Amazon, the 128GB Evo+ microSD card from Samsung is being sold at a huge discount of 63% over a regular price of $102.99.

The Evo+ range of microSD cards from Samsung are one of the fastest ones available in the market right now, which is necessary if you are shooting 4K videos. Moreover, Samsung claims that its Evo+ cards are resistant to extreme temperatures, water, shock, X-Ray, and magnetic fields. Don’t miss out on this limited time deal and head over to Amazon right now.

Note: This item ships to most of the countries around the world, but you’ll have to shell out a few extra bucks for international shipping. Amazon Prime members in the US can claim free shipping on this item.



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Samsung will repeatedly push notifications to your Galaxy Note 7 if it’s unsafe

Samsung has announced that it will be issuing a software update to all models of the Galaxy Note 7 in the United States this week that will repeatedly warn customers that their handset is unsafe and should be exchanged if it sports the faulty battery that has resulted in over seventy devices catching fire while on charge.

Verizon-branded models of the units have already received the upgrade, and it’s expected to arrive on other carrier-exclusive models later today or sometime tomorrow. Unlocked models will receive the OTA towards the latter part of the week with some reports suggesting that it will start rolling out on Saturday.

The update will also display a green battery icon at the top of the Galaxy Note 7′s screen if it packs a stable cell. This will bring it in line with the 500,000 replacement models that Samsung has already shipped to the United States for distribution to customers with a dangerous device.

galaxy-note-7-warning-verizon

A copy of the notification that’s popping up on Verizon’s Galaxy Note 7.


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Samsung 960 Pro and 960 Evo are highest capacity consumer SSDs with ridiculous speeds

Samsung is the largest SSD maker in the world and retaining the top spot requires the company to constantly come up with new storage products that push the envelope. This year, Samsung also established its lead in the global enterprise SSD market. At the SSD Summit in Seoul, Samsung today unveiled its new M.2 PCIe 960 Pro and 960 Evo SSDs. They happen to be the highest capacity consumer SSDs which feature ridiculous operating speeds.

Samsung is going to offer the 960 Pro SSD in 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. It promises peak sequential read speeds of 3,500 MB/s and write speeds of 2,100 MB/s. Offering this much storage on an M.2 SSD wasn’t easy and Samsung had to be creative with the placement of components to make this happen. For example, the controller chip has actually been stacked on top of the DRAM module to free up space for extra storage modules. Prices start at $329 for the base 512GB Samsung 960 Pro SSD model and go up from there.

The company’s 960 EVO SSD is meant for the budget conscious consumer. The 960 EVO SSD is available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities and it features Samsung’s Intelligent TurboWrite Technology which enables read speeds of 3,200 MB/s and write speeds of 1,900 MB/s. It merits mentioning here that these speeds are higher than those of the 950 Pro SSD which was released last year. Intelligent TurboWrite makes this possible by using a small buffer to write data very quickly. Once that buffer is filled the speeds tend to drop down. The new buffer size for the 250GB, 500GB and 1TB SSDs is 13GB, 22GB and 42GB respectively. Prices starting at $130 for the 250GB model.

samsung-960-pro-960-evo-ssd



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جميع الحقوق محفوظة لمدونة الغريب 2013