AT&T’s now letting Galaxy Note 7 owners swap their replacement unit for a new device

Following in Sprint’s footsteps, AT&T has today announced that it will allow Galaxy Note 7 owners to swap their replacement for any other smartphone in its range if they have any concerns over the safety of the device.

“If a customer would like to exchange a replacement Note 7 for a different device we will do,” said an AT&T representative in a statement sent to popular online blog Android Central.

AT&T’s decision comes less than 24 hours after Sprint announced that it would offer the same program to its customers. We expect to see US Cellular introduce a scheme of its own over the course of the weekend, too.

It’s believed that the carriers are allowing customers to return their devices as a result of an incident that occurred on Southwest Airlines aircraft on Wednesday, which resulted in the plane being evacuated when a replacement Note 7 caught fire.

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Samsung Z2 launches in Kenya for KSH 6,000

A day later than expected, Samsung has launched its latest Tizen-powered smartphone, the Samsung Z2, in Kenya. The handset, which is available to purchase in either black or gold from local carrier Safaricom’s online portal and brick-and-mortar stores for KSH 6,000 ($59), can be used with a selection of the operator’s reasonably priced pay as you go LTE bundles.

The Samsung Z2 isn’t the company’s most powerful Tizen device, but it’s still a great offering for those looking for a cheap entry into the smartphone market that offers exceptional battery life. It packs a 4-inch TFT display, a 1.5GHz quad-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of expandable storage and a 5MP rear-facing camera, a VGA selfie shooter and a 1,500mAh battery.

If you’re based in Kenya and would like to find out more about picking up the Samsung Z2 from Safaricom, hit the source link below.

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Samsung rolls out September security patch for the Galaxy A5 (2016) in Europe

Samsung has started rolling out the September security update for the International variant of the Galaxy A5 (2016). The upgrade — firmware version XXS3BPI8 — transports a total of 66 patches for the Android OS and nine fixes for the South Korean company’s TouchWiz user interface.

As you’d expect, the Security Maintenance Release OTA is being pushed out in stages. However, if you’d like to see if it’s ready for your device, you can do so by heading into Settings » About Device » Software Update » Update Now. Alternatively, you can always wait until you receive a notification prompting you to upgrade.

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Samsung Gear Icon X Review: Not ready for prime time yet

Samsung has been pushing towards a wire-free future. The company has been integrating more and more wireless technologies in its products. Wireless charging, NFC and MST payments, Wi-Fi speakers, you name it. The company recently unveiled its first pair of completely wireless headphones, the Gear IconX. It’s not the first in the world to offer a product in this category, but the expectations have been quite high due to the company’s reputation among consumers.

After Bragi introduced its Dash wireless headphones, big brands like Apple, Motorola, and Samsung jumped in. As opposed to offerings from Apple and Motorola, the Gear IconX earphones take a slightly different route. Samsung is leaning more towards fitness enthusiasts with the IconX. Apart from streaming audio completely wirelessly, they can also track physical activity and fitness, thanks to built-in sensors. Moreover, they can also store music so that you can leave your smartphone at your home while working out.

Due to the added features, the Gear IconX cost slightly higher than the Apple Earpods and the Motorola Verve Ones at $199.99, and Samsung India sent us a review unit a couple of weeks ago. Let’s see how good Samsung’s first completely wireless earphones are in terms of audio quality and fitness tracking.

Setup & Companion Software

The package comes with a pair of Gear IconX earbuds, three sizes of ear tips and wingtips each, the charging case, a microUSB cable, and a microUSB to USB adapter. You need to place the earbuds in the case to charge them. The earphones are compatible with smartphones running Android 4.4 (or above) and at least 1.5GB RAM. You need to install Samsung’s Gear app, which in turn will install the Gear IconX Plugin app. You can then start setting up the IconX earphones.

The app is fairly easy and intuitive to use. You can use the app to see device status, battery level, adjust volume, transfer music, adjust notification settings, and to activate or deactivate the Ambient Sound mode. Once the earphones are set up, you can just wear them and they will power on automatically and connect to each other. You can either use the smartphone or desktop app to transfer music files to the earbuds (there is 3.5GB of internal storage) or stream music from the connected phone.

If you plan to use them for fitness tracking (of course you do), you also need to install the S Health app. All the activity-related data would be visible in the S Health app. Samsung claims that the Gear IconX can be used with third-party fitness apps like Strava and Map My Run which support BLE heart rate profile.

A firmware update arrived for the Gear IconX two days after I received the review unit, and I had to use the desktop app for macOS to update the firmware. It’s strange that you need a desktop app even though Samsung could’ve achieved that using the smartphone app. The IconX work with iOS devices, but you can use them only to listen to music since the S Health and Samsung Gear apps haven’t been released for iOS yet.

Design & Fit

The Gear IconX are offered in black, blue, and white. Samsung’s design team has been killing it lately. The Galaxy S7 duo and the Galaxy Note 7 are three of the sexiest smartphones in the market right now, and the Gear IconX are no exception. They look futuristic and feel solidly built even though Samsung decided to used a plastic material for the IconX. There are three LED indicators on the case to indicate the charging status of each of the earbuds and the case. They’re orange while charging and green when the battery is fully charged.

The earbuds are not too big, and fit comfortably in most ears. However, you would need to make sure that you try every pair of eartips and wings (three pairs are provided in the box) to make sure which ones fit your ears best. Otherwise, they’ll not fit snugly, and that will turn out to be a problem while working out. Once you’ve found the perfectly fitting pair of eartips and wings, you’ll love how well the IconX feel in your ears.

There’s a flat touch sensitive area on each of these earbuds which can be used to control music playback, volume, and to start activity logging. One taps plays or pauses the music, two quick consecutive taps skip the track, and three quick consecutive taps will play the previous track. You can also swipe the touchpad up or down to increase or decrease the volume. Holding the touchpad for three seconds will begin or finish a workout.

I found the touchpad placement to be iffy. Since the touch area is almost as wide as the outer side of the earbuds, it is easy to accidentally touch the touchpad while working out, skipping or pausing the music. Also, you’ll need to get accustomed to the pressure that you have to apply for all those music touch gestures and taps.

Sound Quality & Performance

You can designate which earbud is the primary one since that will be used to take calls. I compared the audio quality of the IconX with my Jaybird X2. The volume was more than enough, but the IconX sounded quite average in comparison. The soundstage isn’t as wide as some of the good Bluetooth earphones out there, and I could notice bass cut off and slightly crackling sound at the highest volume level. Moreover, taking calls wasn’t a great experience either. The voice of the caller comes only through the primary earbud, and the quality is strictly average. The audio quality of the IconX could have definitely been better.

Most consumers won’t notice these shortcomings, but audiophiles would definitely be able to point them out. Granted, these earphones offer more features than the Jaybird X2 with a smaller footprint, but it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice audio quality. Audio quality should be the focus of every hearable device. Coming to the wireless range of the IconX, I didn’t face any problem listening to music when my smartphone was lying around 30 feet away from me. As long as you’re in the same room as your smartphone, you won’t have any problem.

The Ambient Sound mode is a well thought out feature. It amplifies and relays outside sound so that you are aware of your surroundings. It is extremely useful in those situations when you want to listen to music but also want to know if anyone is trying to have a conversation with you. They are also useful for being aware of vehicles passing by when you’re taking a run. However, the ambient audio sounds quite artificial and tinny, and you could sense a bit of delay. While talking to my brother with the ambient mode activated and the music being played, it felt as if watching a movie with lip sync issues.

Fitness Tracking

The best thing about the IconX is that it doubles up as a fitness and activity tracking device even when you don’t have your smartphone handy. Touch and hold the touchpad of the Icon X for three seconds, and you’re good to go. A female voice gently notifies you that the exercise mode has been activated. You can stop the workout using the same gesture. You can receive audio guides at selected intervals during workouts.

I used the S Health app to track fitness during the course of the review. The IconX does a decent job of tracking heart rate using the built-in heart rate monitor. However, it is only slightly more accurate than the Gear Fit 2 that I reviewed a few weeks back. You need to understand that these earphones use an optical heart rate monitor, so they will never be as accurate as some dedicated chest strap heart rate monitors available in the market.

You can see neat graphs of information such as distance, heart rate, calories burnt, and other metrics in the S Health app. If you have your smartphone in your pocket, the S Health app can also show your location and trail of your runs or cycle rides. Since the IconX lacks GPS or an altimeter, metrics such as distance and elevation will be far off from reality when not connected to a smartphone.

Samsung mentions that these earphones are splash and sweat proof, but you should remember that they’re not water-resistant, so you can’t take them for a swim.

Battery Life

Samsung has packed the Gear IconX with a 47mAh battery in each of its earbuds. They can be charged by being placed inside the charging case. The charging case also comes with a built-in battery with enough capacity to charge the IconX once. In our testing, the Gear IconX never lasted more than 1.5 hours when streaming music through Bluetooth at 80 percent volume and activity tracking. If you switch to offline music playback, you’ll be able to eke out more battery life. If you decide to turn off activity tracking, you can get up to 3-4 hours of music playback depending on the volume level. It takes a little more than an hour to charge the IconX.

If you’re a fitness enthusiast, you would want to track your activities and workouts throughout the day. Unfortunately, you can’t do that with the IconX, and you would be better off with something like the Gear Fit 2, which we reviewed recently. Apart from the battery life being extremely short, we found that the primary earbud almost always ate through battery faster than the secondary earbud. Also, the charging case didn’t charge the earbuds fully. Moreover, the case loses its charge when left for a few hours, which makes it even harder to achieve an extra charge for the earbuds.

Conclusion

The Gear IconX offers us a glimpse of a future where everything is wire-free. The earbuds fit quite well, but they aren’t the most nice sounding earphones, nor do they offer a way to track fitness and workouts all day long. It offers two big features but fails at being stellar in any of those. Extremely short battery life doesn’t help its cause either. The Gear IconX is a great product on paper or as a prototype, but it’s not ready for prime time yet. We advise you to buy the IconX only if you want to listen to music while working out but don’t want to carry more than one device at a time. Otherwise, you would be better off using the Gear Fit 2 paired to Bluetooth earphones/headphones of your choice.

Pros	Cons
Fully wireless	Sound quality is strictly average
Well-designed, extremely light, and offers a very good fit	Extremely short battery life
Splash and sweat-resistant design	Stability and connectivity issues
A bunch of ear buds and wingtips are bundled	Touch sensitive area is prone to accidental touches
Also tracks activities and heart rate	Needs a desktop app to update the firmware
4GB of onboard storage for storing music	No iOS compatibility for fitness tracking
Ambient mode is useful	Expensive

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Samsung Galaxy A9 Pro review: Insane battery life makes this one a winner

We liked the Galaxy A9. The 6-inch phablet’s claim to fame was its enormous 4,000 mAh battery, and it was also the most feature-packed smartphone in the Galaxy A lineup. A few months later, Samsung came out with the Galaxy A9 Pro for the Chinese market. The A9 Pro became the first mid-range Samsung device to feature 4GB of RAM, and the company also made the phone every so slightly thicker to upgrade the 4,000 mAh cell in the regular A9 to a 5,000 mAh unit. That’s the biggest battery we have ever seen on a Galaxy smartphone, and it’s Samsung’s answer to the slew of Chinese smartphones that have been launching in recent times with large batteries.

The Galaxy A9 Pro also gets a rear camera upgrade to a 16-megapixel sensor (the regular A9 has a 13 MP primary camera) and comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box. We managed to get our hands on a review unit following the A9 Pro’s recent launch in India, and I’ve been using it as my primary device for more than a week. We’ve already reviewed the Galaxy A9, and since the Pro retains most of the features of its non-Pro sibling, our review of the A9 Pro will be mainly about what’s different. In short, it will be a quick read, but you will hopefully be able to make a decision on whether the A9 Pro is worth your money by the end of it.

Bigger battery that goes on and on… and on

With a 5,000 mAh battery, you really can’t go wrong no matter how powerful a smartphone might be. The Galaxy A9 could last really long on a single charge, and the A9 Pro only makes things better. Following the first full charge, I only managed around 4 hours of screen time and around a day of total usage from the phone. It was disconcerting even though I knew the phone had only been charged once, but with every subsequent charge, battery life kept on improving.

Post a few charge and discharge cycles, battery life on regular usage has been stellar. The last time I checked, I managed a day and 19 hours of total usage time, with a screen time of over 8 hours. This included around 10 minutes of playing Modern Combat 5 and around three hours of exclusive usage on an LTE connection (with two SIMs active on the device). The screen on time keeps varying, but the phone manages to last over a day and a half in total on every charge, a consistency you won’t find on any Samsung device except the US-exclusive Active series. Screen on times also reach the 7 hour mark at the least, unless I do a lot of stuff on LTE instead of Wi-Fi.

Extremely low idle drain is unsurprisingly the main reason the Galaxy A9 Pro lasts so long – you can go to sleep with only 15 percent left and wake up the next morning to do your morning round of email and social media checking before reaching for the charger. Even exclusively on an LTE connection at idle overnight, the phone only lost 3 percent of its charge. Those power saving modes Samsung offers on every device? You can expect never to use those on the A9 Pro, that’s how good the phone is when it comes to battery life. The best part is that the 5,000 mAh battery doesn’t take up any noticeable space, as the A9 Pro isn’t notably heavier or bigger than any other 6-inch smartphone in the market.

Charging times on the A9 Pro are a little too long despite the fast charging support. You can expect at least two hours on the charger to see the battery go from 0 to 100, but of course, the good part is that you don’t really have to fully charge the phone to be able to use it without fear of running out of power. There’s one small niggle – the A9 Pro refused to charge fast with my third-party Tronsmart fast chargers, so I had to use Samsung’s official chargers at work and home. It’s possible Samsung has added the limitation for safety issues, but it does mean you will need to keep the official charger handy to use fast charging.

Here are a couple of screenshots of how the phone fared on different days. The last screenshot shows more than a day and a half of total usage on an LTE connection, without a single moment of usage on Wi-Fi.

More RAM brings improved multitasking

The Galaxy A9 was already an impressive performer thanks to the Snapdragon 652 SoC and 3GB of RAM, and the 4GB of RAM on the Galaxy A9 Pro helps the device keep more apps in memory and keep performance more consistent when you’re quickly jumping in and out of apps. To test things out, I started playing a game, sent it to the background, then went on using other apps for a little while. I wasn’t hopeful of the game resuming where I had left it, but that’s exactly what happened even though the game was at the eighth position up in the multitasking list. I haven’t run into any notable stutters during regular usage either, and like the A9, the A9 Pro runs even the most high-end gaming titles (like Modern Combat 5) without issues.

Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box

The Galaxy A9 Pro comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box, with most of the features you have seen on other recent Samsung devices. There’s full support for themes, Multi Window, gestures for muting, screenshot capture and more, and features like S Bike Mode and Ultra Data Saving Mode for the Indian variant of the device. Everything runs well and without issues, although Samsung is yet to release the September security patch for the device. Android 7.0 Nougat is sure to make its way to the A9 Pro in the future, something that might not be guaranteed for the Galaxy A9 since it came with Android 5.0 Marshmallow out of the box.

Higher resolution camera doesn’t equate to better images

The Galaxy A9′s camera performance was the only thing we didn’t like, and I’m afraid the bump in camera resolution hasn’t done much on the A9 Pro. The worst part about the camera is how soft photos come out. You would expect a 16-megapixel camera to capture a high amount of detail, but Samsung has some sort of post-processing going on that results in soft images even on a sunny day. This post processing doesn’t affect the center of focus, but everything outside the main area of focus has this over-exposed, softened look that is easily noticeable.

The images captured by the A9 Pro aren’t exactly bad, but even a slight amount of zooming in on a photo can reveal the aforementioned problems. Indoors and in low-light conditions the details deteriorate considerably, although optical image stabilization means camera shake isn’t an issue. The 8-megapixel selfie camera on the front remains unchanged from the A9, and it also suffers from softening and washed out colors. Overall, it certainly looks like Samsung is limiting the camera potential on its non-flagship phones on purpose, which doesn’t bode well when you have competing flagships like the OnePlus 3 available for lower prices yet impressive cameras.

Wrap up

With the Galaxy A9 Pro, Samsung took what was one of its best mid-range smartphones and threw in a couple of upgrades to make the package even more compelling. The 5,000 mAh battery simply refuses to die. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a Wi-Fi or LTE connection – the A9 Pro is guaranteed to last you at least a full day and still have enough juice to left to get to the next morning before needing a charge, and that’s with heavy usage. The additional gig of RAM allows more apps to stay in memory at a time, and all these upgrades come with just a slight increase in the device’s thickness.

But at the same time, some of the limitations of the regular A9 have carried over as well. There is no notification light, another feature – in addition to good cameras – that Samsung is keeping for its flagships. But those are pretty much the only problems with an otherwise excellent mid-range smartphone. Of course, the 6-inch display will be too big for some and the high price tag (around $480) will turn others away. But at the end of the day, the Galaxy A9 Pro has a lot going for it, and it’s a shame Samsung is limiting its availability to Asian markets.

Don’t forget to check out our review of the Galaxy A9 for details on the cameras, design, audio quality, and display, which have carried over to the A9 without any changes. We have added all the pros and cons of the regular A9 in the list below, just in case you don’t want to read the entire review.

Pros	Cons
Battery refuses to die	No notification LED
Bigger battery doesn’t affect overall size	Subpar camera experience
Fast performance	Heavy device
Very slim bezel	No wireless charging
Quick fingerprint sensor	Fast charging only works with official charger
Fast charging for a big battery
Excellent AMOLED display

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Huge hardware changes predicted for the Galaxy S8

The Galaxy S8 is going to be a crucial device for Samsung as it seeks to salvage its reputation after the botched launch of the Galaxy Note 7. It’s entirely possible that Samsung would want to push the envelope on its next flagship to show consumers and its rivals that it’s still capable of making great devices. A report out of South Korea predicts that Samsung will introduce huge hardware changes with the Galaxy S8.

The report claims that Samsung might remove the home button from the Galaxy S8. This might compel you to ask where the fingerprint sensor will go, Samsung is reportedly going to integrate it right into the display itself. Samsung’s dual-edge displays have allowed the company to eliminates bezels from the sides of its flagship smartphones and it’s now expected to expand the curved display to the top and bottom edges of the Galaxy S8. If this is true it would mean that the next flagship will truly be “full-screen.”

It’s also claimed that the Galaxy S8 is going to be the first handset in this series to feature a dual-camera. A component industry representative cited in the report says that Samsung has already finalized this decision and that now it’s just in the process of deciding whether to use an all-in-one dual-camera or separated dual-camera.

Samsung is also said to launch the Galaxy S8 earlier than expected to contain the fallout from the Galaxy Note 7 debacle that just doesn’t seem to be in a mood to end. However, the company will probably think twice about this as many believe that the Galaxy Note 7 was rushed to beat the iPhone 7 and we all know what happened next. It will surely go the extra mile to ensure that these issues don’t surface in its next flagship smartphone.

None of this has been officially confirmed as yet so take it with a grain of salt. We’re likely to hear more about this device in the coming months. The Galaxy S8 will be out in the first quarter of 2017.

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Samsung is likely to work with the hedge fund proposing its split than against it this time around

A couple of days ago New York-based hedge fund Elliott Associates publicly proposed that Samsung Electronics be split up into a holding and operating company as well as give shareholders a one-time dividend amounting to $27 billion from the company’s cash reserves. Elliott owns 0.62 percent of Samsung Electronics so it’s well within its rights to publicly make that demand which has also found support from countless minority shareholders. Samsung Electronics shares surged to a new record high following the proposal, but there’s more here than meets the eye. Samsung – particularly the founding Lee family – and Elliott Associates have a strained relationship after the bitter proxy battle of 2015.

We first need to get a sense of Samsung’s corporate structure to gain a better understanding of what Elliott wants to achieve and what it tried to achieve last year. The Samsung Group is a family-run conglomerate, they are commonly known as chaebols in South Korea and the country has quite a few of them, such as Samsung rival LG. There are 58 affiliates under the conglomerate’s umbrella all of which are bound together by a complex web of cross-shareholders.

Elliott’s fight with Samsung and by extension with the Lee family last year was over the proposed merger of Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries. It argued that the Lee family orchestrated this deal to consolidate their power over Samsung Electronics – which is most certainly the crown jewel of the Samsung empire – at the expense of minority shareholders. Elliott had a 7.1 percent stake in Samsung C&T at that time while heir apparent Lee Jae Yong who is also the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics and his family members owned 42 percent of Cheil Industries which itself owned just 1.4 percent of Samsung C&T.

Now stay with me here because this is where it gets interesting. Prior to the merger, Samsung C&T owned 4.2 percent of Samsung Electronics. A takeover of Samsung C&T by Cheil Industries would allow the Lee family to further consolidate their stake in Samsung Electronics, they already own 4.8 percent of it directly. Samsung C&T also owns 19.3 percent of Samsung Life Insurance Co. while the Lee family has a 20.8 percent stake in this affiliate. Samsung Life owns 7.4 percent of Samsung Electronics. So even with a direct single-digit stake in the conglomerate’s crown jewel, these cross-shareholdings, and last year’s merger have helped the Lee family cement their hold over Samsung Electronics.

Elliott rallied minority shareholders behind it and also approached the courts in South Korea in a bid to block this merger but the Lee family was able to put together two-thirds of the votes needed for the merger to go through. While the conglomerate said that it would listen to those who proposed the deal and take action on some proposed measures, Elliott then asked Samsung C&T to buyback its stake after it lost the proxy battle.

Industry watchers say that this merger was just one of the first steps that the Lee family took last year to increase their control over the conglomerate as they initiate the succession. Samsung has only had a chairman in name only as the current 73-year-old patriarch Lee Kun-hee suffered a heart attack in 2014 and has since been confined to the bed. His 47-year-old son Lee Jae Yong is undoubtedly the heir apparent and the C&T-Cheil merger was widely accepted as one of the ways he and his two sisters firmly brought the entity under their control. Lee Jae Yong was recently named to a seat on the company’s board of directors which was another crucial step before his eventual elevation to the chairman of the group.

To appease investors and shareholders after last year’s events, Samsung took some initiatives to increase shareholder value. It has completed a $10 billion share buyback program and has also promised to increase the dividend ratio. It was even said back then that splitting Samsung Electronics was one of the ideas that the heir apparent was considering to embrace change and restructure the conglomerate as a new leadership gradually takes its place at the helm of one of the biggest companies in the world.

Elliott wants Samsung’s crown jewel to be split into two. It has proposed that the holding company should be merged with Samsung C&T “on fair terms,” which means that some conditions might be attached to the Lee family’s control over the entity. It wants the operational company of Samsung Electronics to be listed on the Nasdaq in the US. The hedge fund has also proposed that Samsung should pay a one-time dividend amounting to $27 billion from its cash reserves of almost $70 billion and promise to dole out 75 percent of the company’s profits each year as dividends after meeting capital expenditures. Samsung’s existing dividend yield is around 20 percent. This is one proposal that the vice chairman and other executives might particularly be opposed to as Samsung Electronics has long resisted calls for increasing dividend ratio because it prefers to have a huge amount of cash in the bank as a cushion in the challenging business environment.

The hedge fund’s move to make these unsolicited corporate restructuring proposals public might have taken Samsung by surprise. It’s a rare attempt by a US-based activist investor hedge fund to push for corporate restructuring in one of South Korea’s biggest conglomerates which holds a lot of power and influence in its country. Following Elliott’s proposal, other offshore investors that back the hedge fund’s position are likely to put pressure on Samsung as well, and that might be concerning for the company because 11 of the top 20 shareholders of Samsung Electronics are international investors.

However, the proposal does come at an interesting time for Samsung. It’s in the process of paving the way for Lee Jae Yong to eventually take over as chairman of the conglomerate from his father. Samsung is unlikely to do all that Elliott proposes particularly given that it was able to beat Elliott last year and the conglomerate would not want to be seen bowing down to the demands of a foreign hedge fund. Even if the Lee family has considered splitting up Samsung Electronics so that the crown jewel can achieve its true intrinsic value as they prepare for the future, they are certainly going to engage with Elliott on their own terms. Whether or not things will get bitter like they did last time remains to be seen. Samsung has said that it’s going to “carefully consider” this proposal but there has been no confirmation as yet regarding direct contact with the hedge fund, it’s going to be very interesting to see how things progress from here.

What’s clear right now is that Samsung is more likely to work with Elliott Associates this time around rather than against it.

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Daily Deal: You can currently pick up a Galaxy Tab E 9.6 for just $199.99

Looking for a new tablet to add to your arsenal of gadgets? If so, you’ve come to the right place. While stock lasts, you can bag yourself a brand new 16GB Wi-Fi-only model of the Galaxy Tab E 9.6 anodized in a gorgeous glossy black hue for just $199.99, which is a total saving of $30.

This is the perfect deal for those in need of a new tablet for school or college. At 9.6-inches, it’s compact enough to fit into your bag — or even a pocket — but also large enough to read books, peruse documents and compose notes without having to zoom in.

Just in case you need a full refresher on its specifications, the Galaxy Tab E 9.6 packs a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, expandable flash memory (up to 256GB via microSD), a 5MP rear-facing camera, a 2MP selfie shooter and a 5,000mAh battery.

If you like the sound of the Galaxy Tab E 9.6 and want to take advantage of this fantastic promotion, hit the Buy Now button below. We strongly advise you to hurry, though, as Amazon only has a limited amount of inventory available for this specific deal, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Buy Now

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Lab test pictures show the Galaxy Note 7 combusting in spectacular fashion

We are all well aware now of the Galaxy Note 7′s tendency to explode. Samsung sprung into action last month when it announced the recall and kicked off the replacement program. However, troubling reports continue to pour in. Just a few days ago it was reported that a replacement Galaxy Note 7 deemed safe exploded just as countless unsafe units have before it leading to a federal investigation into an incident with some believing that if issues persist Samsung might have to issue a second recall. We’ve seen images of the aftermath and now a lab test conducted on the Galaxy Note 7 shows us just how spectacularly the handset burns when the battery fails.

These images come from the Applied Energy Hub battery laboratory in Singapore where researchers applied pressure on a fully charged Galaxy Note 7 to ascertain how much pressure it can withstand before combusting. The pressure was gradually increased in this stress test to see how long the Galaxy Note 7 could hold up, once that limit was reached the handset went up in flames completely and burned to a crisp on the test bench. It’s unclear whether this was a recalled or a replacement unit.

To be fair, one has to compare how much pressure the Galaxy Note 7 held up to before combusting with that of its rivals to ascertain whether a structural flaw in the device can be blamed as well. Any device can meet a similar fate if it’s exposed to pressures beyond what it’s made to withstand because lithium batteries tend to behave in this manner when they’re punctured and the internals come in contact.

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