Themes Thursday: Four themes you should not miss checking out

Welcome back to this week’s Themes Thursday! Samsung has released 84 new themes for compatible Galaxy smartphones over the past one week, and we think you might be interested in having a look at the four themes that are listed below.

The Candie Round and Oreo themes are pretty similar with material wallpapers, clean dialer design, and bright colour combination. If you like darker theme packs, check out the Peanut theme with squircle icons. However, all these themes are paid. If you want a no-frills free theme, check out the Voyage theme from Samsung.

Candie Round | Paid

Oreo | Paid

Peanut | Paid

Voyage | Free

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Daily Recap: February 2, 2017

We publish a lot of stories on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the bulk of the news breaks during our European hours of operation, which makes it difficult for our readers in the United States to keep up-to-date with every post that goes live on SamMobile. But, we think we’ve come up with the perfect solution — a daily recap.

In the list below, you’ll find all of the stories we published today. Chances are, you’re not going to be interested in every one of them. To help you find what’s important to you, we’ve split them into their respective categories — so if you want to see the latest Galaxy S8 news, locate the Phones subheading.

Business

Samsung may set up a plant to manufacture home appliances in the US

Deal

Daily Deal: Score yourself a 3,100mAh Portable External Battery Charger for 90% off

Firmware News

Latest Galaxy Note 5 update for India brings Samsung Pay app

Verizon’s now distributing the January security patch for the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note 5

General

Samsung to release Tizen 4.0 in September 2017

Samsung sixth in the world in brand value

Phones

Buy a Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge from T-Mobile and get a year of Netflix free

Galaxy J7 (2017) reveals specs once again on Geekbench

Galaxy S8 battery reportedly being made by a Japanese company

Samsung files trademark for ‘Galaxy J7 Sky Pro’ in the US

Samsung Pay

Samsung Pay Mini launch for Android officially confirmed

Tablets

Windows 10-powered Galaxy TabPro S2 receives Bluetooth certification

Tips & Tricks

How to configure SOS Contacts on the Gear S2 and Gear S3

Nougat Tip: Get brightness control back in the notification shade

TV

Samsung may start sourcing display panels from LG by June

Watches

BMW Connected app released for Samsung Gear S2 and Gear S3

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Galaxy S8 battery reportedly being made by a Japanese company

The press is definitely going to pay a lot of attention to the Galaxy S8′s battery given that it’s the first flagship smartphone that Samsung is releasing after the disastrous battery failure of the Galaxy Note 7. The batteries for that handset were supplied by Samsung’s own battery-making division as well as ATL, a Chinese supplier. Samsung recently confirmed exactly what went wrong with the Galaxy Note 7 and detailed that batteries from both manufacturers had flaws. Perhaps that’s why the company is going to source the Galaxy S8 battery from a Japanese company.

Local media reports out of South Korea suggest that Samsung has decided to source the Galaxy S8 battery from Murata Manufacturing Works in Japan. It took over Sony’s battery business in June last year and will function as the second supplier for Galaxy S8 batteries. Samsung’s own division – Samsung SDI – will continue to supply batteries for the company’s next flagship in bulk. The orders are reportedly going to be divided between Samsung SDI and Murata Manufacturing at a rate of 8 to 2.

It was even rumored at one point that perhaps Samsung might start sourcing the Galaxy S8 battery from LG’s battery division, LG Chem, but recent reports say that it’s unlikely for that to happen now.

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How to configure SOS Contacts on the Gear S2 and Gear S3

We’ve previously showed you how to configure your Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge to send SOS alerts to contacts in the event of emergency. However, sometimes you may find yourself in a situation where it’s virtually impossible to pull out your smartphone — so Samsung’s baked a similar feature into the software of the Gear S2 and Gear S3.

Once enabled, Gear S2 and Gear S3 owners will be able to triple-press the home button to send an SOS request to their emergency contacts. Unfortunately, the wearable version is unable to record audio or take a photograph, but it does retrieve the coordinates of your location using GPS and attach them to a message that’s automatically send to predetermined recipients.

In addition to sending an SMS, users also have the option to place a call to emergency contacts. Obviously, for Bluetooth variants of the Gear S2 and Gear S3, this will only work if your device is paired with your smartphone (the same applies to the default text function), while those in possession of an LTE model will be able to use their unit’s SIM to access cellular capabilities.

Here’s how you set it up:

1. Open up the Samsung Gear application on your smartphone.
2. Locate and select Send SOS Requests.
3. Slide the toggle at the top from Off to On.
4. Select at least one emergency contact.
5. Once you’re done adding emergency contacts, go back to the main Send SOS Requests menu.

That’s all there is to it. Now when you triple-press the home button, your watch will send an SOS alert to your predefined contacts. If you are worried about accidentally sending SOS requests, you can enable a countdown option to add a 5-second wait before a message is sent. Also keep in mind that since the SOS feature uses SMS, you will be charged based on your carrier plan. 

If you happen to run into any issues along the way, do be sure to let us know in the comments section below, and we’ll do our very best to get you back on track. You can also reach out to us over on Facebook and Twitter, but unfortunately we can’t promise an as speedy response time as we can on our own platform.

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Daily Deal: Score yourself a 3,100mAh Portable External Battery Charger for 90% off

Oh, boy! If you’re in the market (or not for that matter) for a portable battery bank, you’re going to want to pin your ears back as we have a fantastic deal for you today. While stock lasts, you can score yourself a Samsung-branded 3,100mAh Portable External Battery Charger for just $6 (90% off). Yes, you read that right — $6.

By far my favourite feature about this particular external charger is that it comes with an integrated retractable microUSB cable, so you don’t have to carry around any added bulk. When your phone is running low, you simply attach it to the power bank and let it recharge. It also sports an LED to indicate the unit’s battery level.

If you like the sound of the 3,100mAh Portable External Battery Charger  and want to take advantage of the deal, simply hit the Buy Now button below. You’ll need to hurry, though, as Amazon has only assigned a small amount of inventory for this specific promotion, and we have a feeling it’s going to sell out pretty quickly.

Buy Now

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Latest Galaxy Note 5 update for India brings Samsung Pay app

After exclusively reporting a couple of months ago that Samsung is preparing to launch Samsung Pay in India, we reported just last week that the company has started teasing the Samsung Pay launch for India with the Android 7.0 Nougat update for the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 edge. It appears that the payment service will be rolling out soon as the latest Galaxy Note 5 update that Samsung has released in India today brings the Samsung Pay app.

Samsung is rolling out firmware version N920GUBU3BQA3 for the Galaxy Note 5 in India today. It comes in at just under 320MB. The update brings the usual slew of device stability improvements and bug fixes aside from the Samsung Pay app. It also includes the January security patch for the Galaxy Note 5.

The company is now starting to send out the Samsung Pay app via firmware updates in India. This suggests that the launch of its mobile payments service may just be around the corner. It may only a matter of time before subsequent updates bring this app for other Galaxy smartphones compatible with Samsung Pay.

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Verizon’s now distributing the January security patch for the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note 5

Following its rollout for the Galaxy Note Edge, Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy S5 earlier this week, Verizon has today started pushing out this month’s security patch for its carrier-locked variants of the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note 5 currently located in the United States.

The upgrade — which is arriving as software version G920VVRS4CQA3, G928VVRS3BQA1, G925VVRS4CQA3, and N920VVRS3BQA1, respectively — introduces fixes for 67 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) in the Android operating system (OS), as well as 28 exclusive patches for Galaxy handsets.

As usual, the firmware is being distributed over-the-air (OTA), so it could take a little time to show up on your device. To see if it’s ready, head into Settings » About Device » Download Updates Manually. Alternatively, you can wait until the software package is available from our database for flashing.

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Nougat Tip: Get brightness control back in the notification shade

If you had followed our coverage of the Nougat beta for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge, you had probably heard that at one point Samsung had removed the brightness control slider from the notification shade. Samsung later added a toggle for putting the brightness slider back in the notification shade; unfortunately, the final version of Nougat also hides the brightness control in the expanded quick toggles menu, so we decided to put together this post for those wondering how to put brightness control back into its original place.

To do so, drag down the notification shade, and then drag it down again to see the full list of quick toggles. See the brightness control slider here? Hit the down-facing arrow next to the slider to expand the brightness settings, then enable the Show control on top option. That’s it: you will now be able to control display brightness from the main notification shade again. Enabling or disabling auto brightness is still an extra step as you have to hit the arrow next to the brightness slider, but we’re hoping Samsung will fix this with a future update.

Found anything new on Nougat? Let us know in the comments, and check out our other Nougat tips for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge.

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Galaxy J7 (2017) reveals specs once again on Geekbench

We’ve seen evidence building up over the past few months that Samsung has the Galaxy J7 (2017) in the pipeline and will soon launch the handset. We first saw a prototype of this handset bearing model number SM-J727P make an appearance on the benchmarking website Geekbench where it revealed some of its specifications. The Galaxy J7 (2017) model number SM-J727A has now done the same thing on Geekbench.

The benchmark listing reveals that the Galaxy J7 (2017) is going to feature a 5.5-inch 720p display with a 1.5GHz octa-core Exynos 7870 processor under the hood coupled with 2GB of RAM and ARM Mali-T830 graphics processor. It also features 16GB of storage, an 8-megapixel rear and 5-megapixel front camera. It will run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box.

It’s interesting to note that the Galaxy J7 (2017) model that previously stopped by Geekbench was sporting the Snapdragon 625 processor so it’s likely that different variants of this device will have different processors. A recent report suggests that one of those variants is going to be sold by Verizon, AT&T and US Cellular in the United States, perhaps as the Galaxy J7 Sky Pro.

Samsung may launch the Galaxy J7 (2017) in the near future seeing as how the handset has already received its Bluetooth certification and has also been approved by the FCC.

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Samsung may set up a plant to manufacture home appliances in the US

According to a report from Reuters, Samsung Electronics may build a new plant in the US to manufacture home appliances. The new U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have threatened to impose an additional import tax on products manufactured abroad for US consumers, creating panic among many brands. Samsung’s plan might be a response to the same criticism.

The South Korean electronics giant is yet to decide the scale of investment and the number of products that might be manufactured at its upcoming plant. The company declined to comment on the matter, but it said that it has already made significant investments in the country, including a $17 billion chip plant in Austin, Texas. “We continue to evaluate new investment needs in the U.S. that can help us best serve our customers,” it said in response to Reuters.

Even though South Korean brands haven’t been singled out yet, companies like Hyundai and LG have started making promises regarding increased investments in the US. However, if a border tax is imposed, it would become essential for Samsung and other foreign brands to set up manufacturing plants in the US. LG is already considering Tennessee as a location to set up its new home appliances and television plant.

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Samsung to release TIzen 4.0 in September

Following the release of the second preview of Tizen .NET, it’s been revealed that Samsung has accelerated development of Tizen 4.0 so that it can meet its self-imposed deadline of a September launch. The latest version of the OS won’t be exclusive to mobile devices, though. It’ll also be compatible with home appliances, IoT, wearables and Smart TVs.

According to a roadmap posted on the Tizen Developers forum, it looks like we’ll see the third preview of Tizen .NET go up for download next month, followed by the first beta build of Tizen 4.0 in June. At present, it’s unclear whether it’ll be an opt-in program similar to one Samsung held for customers wanting to try out Android 7.0 Nougat for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge ahead of its official release.

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Buy a Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge from T-Mobile and get a year of Netflix free

Samsung and T-Mobile have teamed up to offer a new promotion aimed at customers who might be thinking about purchasing the Galaxy S7 or the Galaxy S7 edge. Customers who purchase either handset new on an Equipment Installment Plan, Jump on Demand or at full retail from participating T-Mobile stores or Costco Warehouse locations on a T-Mobile plan will receive a year of Netflix for free.

Dig deep into the rules of this promotion and you’ll find that the same incentive is also being offered to customers who purchase a Galaxy S6 or Galaxy S6 edge on T-Mobile via the methods mentioned above. The purchase has to be made before February 7. A valid Offer Claim Form has to be submitted by February 21 at http://ift.tt/2kt0qRL. Customers will be required to provide information like their full name, mailing address, phone number, IMEI number of the device and a picture of the receipt.

Once all of the formalities are done, customers will receive a single-use code which they can redeem for a free 12-month Netflix subscription at http://ift.tt/2jFUfp7. The code has to be used before March 31 or it will expire.

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