Nougat starts rolling out to T-Mobile’s Galaxy S7 and S7 edge for beta users

While we were hoping that Nougat would reach the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge in most regions in a short time, Samsung hasn’t been very supportive, with only a handful of countries having received the update on the company’s flagship phones. Consumers in the US have been waiting as well, but at least for T-Mobile variants of the S7 and S7 edge that were running the beta, Nougat is now being sent out over the air.

The update brings all the features one expects from Samsung’s version of Nougat, including the February 1 security patch (keep in mind that the devices that were updated earlier are on the January 1 security patch). The OTA is sized at around 115 MB for both the S7 and S7 edge; naturally, those who didn’t participate in the beta will see a much larger update at some point in the near future. February 24th is apparently the date for the general rollout for devices still on Marshmallow.

The full Android 7.0 Nougat firmware should be showing up on Samsung Smart Switch and in our firmware database once the update goes live for everyone on T-Mobile, and we will be sure to inform you when that happens. In the meantime, check out this video to see all the new features and take a look at a few tips and tricks to get the most out of your Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge on Nougat.

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BREAKING: Samsung heir apparent arrested on bribery charges

Samsung heir apparent and vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Lee Jae-yong attended a hearing yesterday at a Seoul court for the second arrest warrant request submitted by South Korea’s special prosecutor’s office in connection with the influence-peddling scandal that has led to the impeachment of the country’s president. While the Samsung heir dodged arrest last month, he wasn’t so lucky this time around.

Lee Jae-yong has been arrested with physical detention early this morning on charges that include bribery to President Park Geun-hye and her close friend Choi Soon-sil. The Seoul Central District Court has ruled that there is enough evidence to support the charges against Lee. The same court had rejected the first request last month due to lack of evidence. Lee Jae-yong has been immediately placed behind bars at a detention facility in Seoul’s southwest suburb after the judgement was handed down.

The Samsung heir has been charged with embezzlement, bribery, perjury, concealment of criminal proceeds and illicit transfer of assets abroad. An arrest warrant has also been issued for Park Sang-jin, the CEO of Samsung Electronics. Lee Jae-yong is alleged to have offered bribes of more than $35 million to Choi in return for favors from Park’s administration for a controversial 2015 merger between two Samsung affiliates.

The special prosecutor’s office is also of the view that South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission and Financial Services Commission pushed policies in favor of the country’s largest and most influential conglomerate to aid the founding Lee family to further cement its grip on the empire.

For his part, Lee Jae-yong has denied all of the charges against him and maintains that he was forced to make the donations to organizations and foundations controlled by Choi. He also insists that he sought no favors in return for those contributions. It remains to be seen now who is going to fill the serious leadership vacuum that Lee Jae-yong’s arrest has left at Samsung.

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Google may have thwarted Tizen development, investigation underway

South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating the possibility that Google might have thwarted Samsung’s development of its Tizen platform. The latest investigation is focusing on the Mobile Application Distribution Agreement that Google and Samsung signed in 2011. This agreement binds Samsung to make sure that all of its Android smartphones use Google as their default search engine and that the company’s apps like Google Play, Gmail, and YouTube are pre-installed on all of its Android handsets.

Google and Samsung also signed an anti-fragmentation agreement which bars Samsung from developing its own operating system based on Android despite the fact that companies like Amazon and Xiaomi have both built their own platforms on top of the Android Open Source Project. Concerns have been raised over this in South Korea and the country’s FTC believes that these agreements might have compelled Samsung to adopt a more reserved approach to the development of the Tizen platform as it’s incompatible with Android apps. An FTC official confirmed to The Korea Times that “We are currently checking if Google thwarted competition in the OS market.”

A spokesman for Google Korea said that “Android is an open source platform. Our partner agreements are entirely voluntary — anyone can use Android without Google,” further elaborating that “The Android OS can be downloaded for free. It can be modified and used to build a phone. Many companies have used Android’s source code as the starting point for their own operating systems.”

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SamMobile Daily Recap: February 16, 2017 — Gear VR, Samsung sued over patent infringement and more!

We publish a lot of stories on a daily basis. Unfortunately, most of the news breaks during our European hours of operation, which makes it difficult for our readers in the US (and other regions) to follow every post that goes live. But, we think we’ve come up with an ideal solution — a daily recap.

In the list below, you’ll find the stories we’ve published today. Chances are, you’re not going to be interested in all 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 legal news, locate the Business subheading.

Business

Samsung heir attends second arrest warrant hearing in Seoul

Samsung sued by Technicolor over alleged patent infringement

Camera

Samsung set to benefit from growing demand for dual-camera smartphones

Deals

Daily Deal: Pick up a brand new pair of Active InEar headphones for 52% off

Firmware News

Android 7.0 Nougat firmware for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge in Sweden now available online

IoT

Could Samsung Hello actually be an Amazon Echo and Google Home competitor?

Opinion

Gear S3 installment plans and trade-in options worldwide are what’s next for the smartwatch market

Phones

Galaxy On5 Pro and Galaxy On7 Pro face significant price cuts in India

Samsung smartphones score top five positions in research and testing study

These are the extensive tests Samsung runs on its smartphones

TV

NexPlayer SDK for Tizen released for Samsung Smart TVs

Sony’s PlayStation Now cloud gaming service will stop working on Samsung’s smart TVs in six months

Virtual Reality

Samsung’s holding an event at New York Fashion Week to show attendees how useful VR can be

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Themes Thursday: Here are this week’s top ten themes

Welcome to this week’s Themes Thursday! This is where we showcase some of the best themes released each week for Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones. We noticed that our theme selection was growing a bit monotonous over the past few weeks, so each one of us at SamMobile decided to submit one theme to bring diversity.

Hopefully, most of you would like this week’s theme listing better. There are some colorful and bright themes as well as some battery saving themes listed below. A couple of themes listed below have brilliant custom Always On Display images. Let us know which new theme pack did you like from this week.

[Anup] Mix UI

[Binod] RamaUI

[Anup] Mix UI

[Kendi] Flug Black

[MINU] Flat TouchWiz Black

Always Valentine’s Day & MOH (Live & AOD)

Fight Club

Lonely Planet

Mountain Road

Night Sky Tree & MOH (Live & AOD)

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Android 7.0 firmware for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge in Sweden now available online

If you reside in Sweden and own a Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge bearing the model number SM-G930F or SM-G935F, respectively, you’ll probably be glad to hear that you can now grab the Nougat firmware files from our online database for manual flashing — so you no longer have to wait for the OTA to reach your device to start rocking the latest flavour of Android.

Model	SM-G930F
Model name	Galaxy S7
Country	Sweden (Tre)
Version	Android 7
Changelist	10422490
Build date	Thu, 02 Feb 2017 06:56:13 +0000
Security Patch Level	2017-02-01
Product code	HTS
PDA	G930FXXU1DQB7
CSC	G930FHTS1DQA4

 

Model	SM-G935F
Model name	Galaxy S7 edge
Country	Sweden (Tre)
Version	Android 7
Changelist	10422490
Build date	Thu, 02 Feb 2017 06:57:30 +0000
Security Patch Level	2017-02-01
Product code	HTS
PDA	G935FXXU1DQB7
CSC	G935FHTS1DQA4

 

If you’ve missed all of the chatter surrounding what’s new with Nougat and want to be brought into the loop, be sure to check out the short video we made which highlights all of the notable changes and features baked into the much-anticipated update. Once you’ve taken a look, feel free to let us know what new functionality you’re most excited to try out in the comments section down below.

 

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Daily Deal: Pick up a brand new pair of Active InEar headphones for 52% off

While stock lasts, you can pick up a pair of Samsung’s Active InEar headphones, which come bundled in the box of its latest smartphones, for $14.50 (52% off). Aside from sporting an in-line remote and being compatible with just about any device that sports a 3.5mm audio jack, the earphones best feature is that they ship with a set of interchangeable wingtips — so you can be certain they’re going to fit comfortably in your ears.

Want to take advantage of this deal? Great! Simply click the Buy Now button below. We strongly advise you to hurry, though, as Amazon only has a limited amount of inventory available and once it’s gone, it’s gone. We should state, however, this isn’t international promotion, so you’ll only be able to snag yourself a pair for the discounted price if you don’t reside (or know someone who’d forward them to you) in the United States.

Buy Now

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Could Samsung Hello actually be an Amazon Echo and Google Home competitor?

Several rumors and other bits of free-floating, public information could be pointing to the imminent launch of an Amazon Echo and Google Home competitor named Samsung Hello.

Puzzled together by the guys over at GalaxyClub, the idea that Samsung is indeed an Echo-competitor is based on a recent design patent, a trademark application, an import listing and a fresh Wi-Fi certification. So bear with us, as we explain.

Recently, the European Union Intellectual Property Office published a design patent, filed by Samsung in late 2016. The patent, Humanoid Robot, essentially shows a smaller, modified version of Samsung’s experimental Otto robot, which was showcased nearly one year ago.

Also, last week saw the publication of a trademark for the term Samsung Hello. The description of this trademark pretty much sums up what an Echo or Google Home competitor would do: ‘software that gives personalized features and information based on user’s preferences in the fields of weather, music, entertainment, games, travel, science, health, contact, and social news via voice command and voice recognition.’

Then, there is Samsung’s yet-to-be-identified SM-R210 device, which surfaced last year in an import listing. The device’s description included having a camera, although the SM-R series does not indicate that this device really is a camera. Otto did feature a camera, though.

Now, only two days ago the Wi-Fi Alliance certified this SM-R210, not only revealing the device has Wi-Fi capabilities, but also that is runs on Samsung’s Tizen OS. Furthermore, this would be the first product in the SM-R2xx range, indicating it is not a new or updated version of an existing Gear product. The fact this device was certified now, reveals that Samsung is prepping its launch.

With SM-R210 being a camera-packing, Wi-Fi connecting, Tizen-running, all-new Samsung device, we would not be surprised if, indeed, Samsung Hello turns out to be the commercial version of what Otto promised nearly a year ago. Of course, all of this is quite speculative, so we suggest sufficient grains of salt. But the idea does make some sense, and Samsung was never a company to idly stand by and watch others, such as Amazon or Google, develop a market.

We sure hope to learn more about Hello on February 26, at Samsung’s Mobile World Congress’ press event, or perhaps at the launch of the Galaxy S8 in March.

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Sony’s PlayStation Now cloud gaming service will stop working on Samsung’s smart TVs in six months

In a surprising move, Sony has announced that it plans to discontinue its PlayStation Now cloud gaming service on smart TVs from Samsung and other brands. The PlayStation Now service was launched for Samsung’s smart TVs in mid-2015. The company explained on its official PlayStation blog that it took this step to focus on improving the PlayStation Now experience on PlayStation 4 range of gaming consoles (PS4, PS4 Pro, and PS4 Slim) and Windows PCs.

The PlayStation Now cloud gaming service will stop working on all Samsung TVs from August 15, 2017. Additionally, the service will also be discontinued for Sony’s own smart TVs and Blu-ray players. Surprisingly, the company is also dropping support for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and the PlayStation TV. Remember that all your PS Now game saves can be accessed on Windows PCs and PS4.

If you are one of the subscribers of the service and do not wish to continue with the subscription anymore, you need to disable it from your PlayStation account.

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Samsung’s holding an event at New York Fashion Week to show attendees how useful VR can be

Samsung is hoping to further fuse fashion and technology with an event it’s holding at New York Fashion Week. However, instead of sitting in front of a runway watching models stroll back and forth, attendees will be welcomed into a room to peruse new fashion lines using a Gear VR headset, which will provide them with a 360-degree view of the collections. It’s also said that the walls will be lined with video panels, and that mirror displays will be used to showcase the latest ranges.

“The mirror display is really going be at the center of changing the retail experience for both the retailer and the customer,” says Ron Gazzola, vice president of marketing for visual display at Samsung. “The idea of developing digital display science for the fashion industry came about when we looked at the retail space. We knew developing a mirror display for fashion would be all about how to incorporate that experience.”

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