Samsung to demonstrate its smartphone design philosophy at Milan Design Week

Samsung will be mingling with design aficionados at Milan Design Week 2017 and it will demonstrate its smartphone design philosophy to them. It’s going to set up an immersive studio on Via Bergognone, Tortona where attendees will be able to experience Unconfined: The Galaxy S8 Design.

To showcase the story behind the Galaxy S8, particularly its design, Samsung has collaborated with world renowned Zaha Hadid Architects and acclaimed digital art and design collective Universal Everything.

The interactive experience that Patrik Schumacher and Johannes Schafelner of Zaha Architects collaborated on with Universal Everything was inspired by the design refinement of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. Visitors will take a journey through a completely bespoke interior which will trigger impressive digital installations that will bring to life the Galaxy design philosophy.

Unconfined: The Galaxy S8 Design will be open to visitors from April 4-9 where, obviously, the Galaxy S8 will also be on display. Samsung is predictably pulling out all the stops in getting the word out about its new flagship smartphone and we’re bound to see more activities like this to further push its new flagship smartphone.

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Apple has reportedly ordered 70 million iPhone OLED display panels from Samsung

Apple has long been rumored to be making the shift to OLED displays for the iPhone. Given that Samsung has a big lead in the mobile OLED space it was inevitable that Apple was going to source OLED displays from its biggest rival.

A lot of numbers have been thrown around over the past few months. It was reported last year that Apple had placed an order for 100 million 5.5-inch AMOLED panels from Samsung for the 2017 iPhone. We heard two months ago that both companies inked a $4.3 billion OLED supply agreement for an additional 60 million OLED panels over and above the 100 million believed to have been previously ordered.

The Nikkei Asian Review is now reporting that Apple has placed an order for 70 million OLED panels for this year’s iPhone with Samsung. Research company IHS Markit’s senior director David Hsieh says that while Apple has initially ordered 70 million units of OLED panels from Samsung, the latter is actually preparing to ramp up production to 95 million units for 2017 in case demand ends up exceeding expectations.

Whatever the final number ends up being – it’s not like the companies will ever confirm that – it goes without saying that Samsung’s position in the OLED market and its rapid expansion of its production facilities puts it at an advantage so Apple will certainly have to turn towards its rival if it wants to finally adopt an OLED display for the iPhone this year.

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Security researcher says that Tizen is a hacker’s dream, has 40 unknown zero-day vulnerabilities

Samsung plans to reduce its reliance on Android by launching Tizen-powered smartphones, smartwatches, fitness trackers, and TVs. However, the company’s Android alternative seems to have serious security related issues. A security researcher has found 40 zero-day vulnerabilities in Tizen, making millions of smartphones, smartwatches, and TVs vulnerable to hacking.

After it had came to notice last month that CIA could hack Tizen-powered Samsung smart TVs, an Israeli security researcher Amihai Neiderman managed to find 40 zero-day vulnerabilities in Tizen’s code base. These vulnerabilities would allow someone to remotely hack a Tizen-powered device. Moreover, unlike the CIA hack, these newfound vulnerabilities (also known as remote code execution) do not need a device’s physical address.

“It may be the worst code I’ve ever seen. Everything you can do wrong there, they do it. You can see that nobody with any understanding of security looked at this code or wrote it. It’s like taking an undergraduate and letting him program your software.”

Of all the vulnerabilities, Neiderman found one particular design flaw inside the Tizen store, which is said to be critical. According to Neiderman, this vulnerability allowed him to hijack the software to deliver malicious code into his Samsung TV. Since the Tizen Store has the highest privileges, it can be used by a hacker as a Holy Grail for abuse.

Amihai Neiderman, who heads research at Equus Software, first started studying Tizen’s security issues when he purchased a Tizen-powered Samsung smart TV. Once he found out how badly written his TV’s code is, he bought a bunch of smartphones to test Tizen. He says that a lot of Tizen’s code base is old and borrowed from Bada OS, but most of the vulnerabilities he found were from the code that was written within the last two years.

“You can see that they took all this code and tried to push it into Tizen,” Neiderman says.

Samsung says that it is now in contact with Neiderman to solve all the vulnerabilities and security issues in Tizen’s code. He also suggests that Samsung should reconsider deploying Tizen in phones before doing a major overhaul of the code. 

 

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SamMobile Daily Recap: April 3, 2017 — Galaxy S8, Gear S2 and more!

We publish a fair few 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 US (and other regions) to follow every post that goes live on SamMobile. But, we think we’ve come up with a 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 Galaxy news, locate the Phones subheading.

Business

Samsung cut spending on research and development last year

Samsung Group shuts down its website and blogs

Deals

Daily Deal: Save 25% on a Gear S2

Firmware News

Galaxy S8 pre-order customers in Canada will receive their orders early

Got Nougat on your Galaxy S7 or S7 edge? Try Bixby and the Galaxy S8 launcher right now

March security update now arriving on the Galaxy A5 (2017) in Europe

Samsung reportedly invested a lot of money to develop an on-screen fingerprint reader for Galaxy S8

The Galaxy S8 lets you disable the app drawer and put all apps on the home screen

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Got Nougat on your Galaxy S7 or S7 edge? Try Bixby and the Galaxy S8 launcher right now

Bixby is clearly one of the biggest features of the Galaxy S8 and S8+, with Samsung hoping to take on Google Now, Apple Siri, and Microsoft Cortana. Bixby is a virtual assistant that Samsung thinks can make your life easier by letting you do a great deal of things using voice control, in addition to showing you contextual information based on your daily usage habits, similar to Google Now. The Galaxy S8 also gets an updated TouchWiz launcher, with features such as the ability to disable the app drawer and a dedicated screen for Bixby (accessed by swiping right on the home screen).

If you thought you will have to buy the Galaxy S8 to try out the new launcher and Bixby, you thought wrong. If you have a Samsung device running Nougat, you can try out both right now. We’re not sure every Samsung device with Nougat will work, as neither app managed to install on the Galaxy Note 5, but we did try them out on the Galaxy S7 edge. The launcher works well, even if there is a bit of lag here and there. The option to sort apps alphabetically is missing, but everything else seems to work just fine.

As for Bixby, it seems that Samsung’s new virtual assistant runs fine the first time you fire it up but starts crashing once it has gathered some information. For example, Bixby shows you the last photo you have taken so you can quickly share it with others, but for us the assistant started crashing right after we took a picture using the camera. There is also no way to try out voice control, as the Galaxy S7 edge (and other Samsung devices) lack the dedicated Bixby key that is present on the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. As a result, if you want to try out Bixby, you can only test it out for a short while after it is installed, following which it is likely to start crashing on your device.

It’s possible that properly working ports for existing Samsung devices will be released in the future, although Bixby might continue to fail as it also requires data from Samsung’s servers for many of its functions. For now, if you wish to try out the Galaxy S8 launcher and Bixby on your phone, head over to the source link to download the necessary files. The entire procedure is as simple as downloading the relevant APK files and installing them on your phone.

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Daily Deal: Save 25% on a Gear S2

Looking for a smartwatch, but aren’t too fussed about having the latest one on the market? Well, for a limited time only, you can pick up a Gear S2 for just $225.02 (25% off).

Although it’s a little over two years old, the Gear S2 is still a fantastic wearable, which sports accurate health tracking functionality and 4GB of on board storage (enough space to store up to 300 songs and a slew of applications and watchfaces).

If you like the sound of the Gear S2 and want to take advantage of this promotion, hit the Buy Now button below. Hurry, though, if you want be in with a chance of scoring yourself one, as the retailer only has a limited amount of inventory.

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Galaxy S8 pre-order customers in Canada will receive their orders early

Samsung confirmed last week that it’s going to release the Galaxy S8 on April 21. That’s when the new flagship is going to be out in a handful of markets including but not limited to the United States and Canada. However, it appears that several carriers in Canada are going to ship the Galaxy S8 early to those who pre-ordered the device.

According to a report, those who pre-ordered the Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+ on Telus, Rogers, Vidéotron and Bell will receive the new handset several days before the official release date. These carriers are reportedly going to deliver the new flagship by April 17.

It’s not uncommon for carriers to do something like this. Over the past few years, we’ve seen T-Mobile do something similar in the United States and it’s likely that Magenta might start shipping out Galaxy S8 units ahead of time this year as well.

Those who placed those pre-orders certainly won’t mind, after all, it’s not exactly fun having to wait for your new smartphone once you’ve placed the order.

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Samsung Group shuts down its website and blogs

Samsung Group, the powerful South Korean conglomerate made up by lucrative companies like Samsung Electronics, has shut down its official websites and blogs after the conglomerate’s corporate strategy office was disbanded in February. The office was shut down following allegations of bribery and corruption which led to the arrest of the conglomerate’s heir Lee Jae-yong. Many have viewed the decision to shut down the official website and blogs as a bid by the largest conglomerate in South Korea to improve its public image.

These websites and blogs were used by the Samsung Group to detail the company’s history, philosophy as well as its corporate social responsibility activities for many of its affiliates. If you visit www.samsung.com now it will just redirect you to the Samsung Electronics website.

Samsung Group decided to take some responsibility for the corruption scandal by shutting down its corporate strategy office in February. A Samsung official cited in a local media report says that the conglomerate hasn’t figured out as yet how it’s going to operate CSR activities under the Samsung Group name. Discussions are taking place on whether to scrap all CSR activities or to transfer them to other affiliates.

Samsung will continue to operate its recruitment website but instead of group-wide recruitment events that took place twice a year in the past, the affiliate companies will conduct their own recruitment drives in different dates.

The biggest challenge still lies ahead for Samsung as it tries to find a way to defend Lee Jae-yong, the heir apparent, who has been behind bars for almost two months now. The formal trial is scheduled to begin this Friday.

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Samsung cut spending on research and development last year

Samsung has always been a big spender when it comes to research and development. The company’s audit report for 2014 showed that it spent just under $14 billion on R&D and the spending was increased to $14.1 billion in 2015. However, the company reduced its R&D spending in 2016 as it decided to acquire new technologies through mergers and acquisitions as well.

Data from the company’s annual business report shows that Samsung Electronics spent 14.79 trillion won or $13.2 billion on research and development in 2016 which accounted for 7.3 percent of its revenue for the year.

Samsung made a couple of major acquisitions last year including that of Viv Labs, an artificial intelligence company founded by the creators of Siri. The technology that Viv Labs has been working on is expected to make its way into Samsung’s AI-powered assistant solutions.

Its biggest acquisition ever was also announced last year when it decided to acquire Harman International and all of its brands for $8 billion. This acquisition was closed recently and Harman is now a part of Samsung Electronics.

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The Galaxy S8 lets you disable the app drawer and put all apps on the home screen

The Galaxy S8 runs Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box, and at first glance, the user interface looks very similar to the one on other Samsung devices that have been updated to Nougat. But the Galaxy S8 also introduces a few new features and changes to how things work, and one of these has to do with the home screen. On the Galaxy S8 (and S8+), Samsung has added the option to disable the app drawer and put all apps on the home screen.

This was first introduced as an experimental feature on the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge, and Samsung has now made it a mainstream feature. On the Galaxy S8, the home screen settings let you choose between having both home and app screens or simply a home screen. In the case of the latter, all apps get placed on the home screen itself, and any widgets that you might wish to add will be added to the last home screen pane. Naturally, you can also rearrange widgets by long pressing them and bringing them over to where you want to place them.

Those who want a separate app drawer also have two options to play with on the Galaxy S8. By default, there is no dedicated Apps button and the app drawer is accessed by swiping up on the home screen; this is how the app drawer works on stock Android 7.0 Nougat. Don’t like this way of accessing your apps? You can simply head into the home screen settings and turn on that Apps button. Other options in home screen settings include changing the grid size (for both the home screen icons and the app drawer icons), hiding apps, and customizing Bixby.

As the days go by, we will likely be coming across a lot of new stuff, and we’ll be sure to let you know of anything notable that we discover on Samsung’s newest flagships.

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Samsung reportedly invested a lot of money for on-screen fingerprint reader for the Galaxy S8, but results were disappointing

The only frustrating aspect about the design of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ seems to be the placement of the fingerprint sensor. There’s a good chance of the rear-facing camera lens getting smudged due to the abnormal placement of the fingerprint sensor, and Samsung knows that. Why did the company choose to place the fingerprint reader right next to the camera sensor then?

A new report from The Investor claims that Samsung poured a lot of money into Synaptics to help them in developing an on-screen fingerprint reader to allow users a larger-than-ever Infinity Display as well as an easier way for them to unlock their phone. However, Synaptics reportedly failed to develop the technology in time for the mass production of the Galaxy S8 and S8+. As a result, Samsung had no option but to relocate the fingerprint reader beside the rear-facing camera.

“Samsung poured resources into Synaptics’ fledgling technology last year, but the results were frustrating. With the production imminent, the company had to decide to relocate the fingerprint scanning home button to the back of the device at the last minute,” a source briefed The Investor on the matter on condition of anonymity. An industry insider told the Korean publication that it’s extremely difficult to make transparent sensors and components

Leaked images of a Galaxy S8+ prototype, which we reported yesterday, showed a dual-camera setup and no fingerprint sensor beside it. Moreover, the Exynos 8895 SoC also supports a dual-camera setup. This leads us to believe that Samsung had plans to use a dual rear-facing camera for the S8+, but had to ditch it to fit the fingerprint sensor without affecting the placement of the battery and wireless charging coils.

Apple is reportedly making efforts to make an iPhone with an on-screen fingerprint reader, which would help it in ditching wide bezels. If Apple debuts an iPhone with such a technology, Samsung would be on the back foot. Currently, China’s Goodix and South Korea’s CrucialTec are said to be working on such on-screen fingerprint readers, and they showcased their technologies at MWC, but no time frame was provided for their commercial launch.

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