Galaxy S7 sales top 55 million units

According to a report by market research firm Strategic Analytics, the combined sales of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge have now crossed 55 million units at the end of the first quarter of this year. Samsung is said to have sold 7.2 million units of last year’s flagship in the January-March 2017 period.

Samsung relied on the Galaxy S7 considerably late last year when the Galaxy Note 7 literally went up in flames and it was left without a new flagship smartphone. Price adjustments and attractive promotions for the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge kept Samsung competitive in the high-end segment of the mobile market.

The report also mentions that Samsung’s total smartphone shipments for the first quarter of this year came in at 92.8 million units and that it accounted for 23 percent of the global smartphone market.

The Galaxy S7 has done a lot for the company and now it’s time for the 2016 flagship to take a backseat and let the Galaxy S8 do its thing. Early signs are promising and it might very well outperform the Galaxy S7.

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Samsung gets approval to test its self-driving car on public roads

Samsung is interested in the self-driving car industry and over the past couple of years, we’ve seen the company intensify its efforts to establish a footing in this industry. The company modified a race track that it owns in South Korea to test its autonomous car. It will now be able to do that on public roads.

South Korea’s Land Ministry has given Samsung approval to test its self-driving car on public roads. The tests will help Samsung in developing high-tech sensors and computer modules aided by artificial intelligence that will enable cars to drive themselves even in challenging conditions.

This obviously doesn’t mean that Samsung is eventually going to sell you a car that can drive itself. Young Sohn, the president and chief strategy officer at Samsung, has previously confirmed that the company is not interested in building cars itself.

The efforts it’s making are focused on being a components and solutions provider for conventional car companies. Even the self-driving car it’s testing its technology on is a retrofitted Hyundai.

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Bixby released for the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ in South Korea

Samsung spent a lot of time talking about the Bixby voice interface at the Galaxy S8 event in March. It claimed that the feature enables users to do everything they can on the smartphone by using voice commands instead of tapping on the display.

However, it had to delay Bixby’s launch even though the new flagship was released on April 21. The Galaxy S8′s most talked-about feature was ironically not ready at launch. It’s ready now.

Samsung has released Bixby for the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ in South Korea. At launch, the only features it offered were Bixby Vision, Reminder and Bixby Home. The voice command feature was not available. This particular feature has now been rolled out to users in South Korea.

This means that Bixby’s voice command feature should go live elsewhere in the near future as well. Samsung US has previously confirmed that Bixby will go live properly on the Galaxy S8 later this spring.

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First proper Galaxy Tab S3 update brings April security patch

It has been a few weeks since the Galaxy Tab S3 was released after it was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona back in February. Samsung has now released the first proper firmware update for this device which brings the April security patch.

Firmware version T820XXU1AQD6 is now being rolled out by Samsung for the Galaxy Tab S3 in Europe. Apart from the April security patch, this update also brings the usual slew of performance improvements and bug fixes. Since the tablet already runs on Android 7.0 Nougat, you won’t find much in the way of new features in this update.

Samsung is rolling out the update to both Wi-Fi and 4G LTE variants of the tablet. It should go live soon across Europe so those who haven’t received an over-the-air update notification yet should expect to do so in the near future.

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T-Mobile Galaxy S6 edge+ Nougat update release will take place this week

T-Mobile is the only major carrier in the United States that hasn’t released the Android 7.0 Nougat update for the Galaxy S6 edge+ yet. Rivals Sprint, AT&T and Verizon have all followed through with the update so it’s about time that Magenta released it as well.

T-Mobile’s @askdes has confirmed via Twitter that the carrier’s engineers have approved the Galaxy S6 edge+ Nougat update and that it’s going to be rolled out this week. The update will most certainly be released in phases so it will take a while before it goes live for everybody.

The Nougat update for the Galaxy S6 edge+ will bring all of the features that are part and parcel of Android 7.0 Nougat. For a more in-depth look into all of the features, don’t forget to check out our What’s New With Nougat series.

It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days for this update to start rolling out on T-Mobile. We’ll let you know when T-Mobile releases it.

SOFTWARE UPDATE: @TMobile Engineers have approved the #GalaxyS6EdgePlus Nougat build! Should start pushing early next week!👏 http://pic.twitter.com/GPEadUQ26j

— Des 📱 (@askdes) April 28, 2017

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Galaxy S8 Tip: Change screen density to fit more content on the display

Want that tall, narrow display on your Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+ to be able to show more content on-screen than it does right now? Well, there’s a setting for that. You can change the screen density on the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ (as well as other Samsung devices running Nougat) to increase (or decrease) the amount of content you see on the display at any given moment.

By increasing screen density, you can see more in webpages, without needing to scroll as much as you usually do. Check your Instagram feed a lot? Higher screen density means you can read those long texts below images in one go. Basically, you can take better advantage of the big display of your S8 and S8+, and everything looks sharper, too. Check the image below to see an example of how higher screen density helps.

Alright, so how do you change the screen density on the Galaxy S8 or S8+? Here are the steps:

Step 1: First, you need to enable the developer options menu in the phone’s settings. To do this, go into Settings, then About phone, followed by Software information. Here, you have to tap seven times on the Build number text, which will make the developer options menu show up in the main settings screen. You will see a popup dialog telling you how many taps are left before the developer menu gets enabled.

Step 2: Go back to the main settings screen and into Developer options, which you will see at the bottom of the settings. Here, find the Minimum width setting under the Drawing section. By default, this will be set at 360 for the S8 and 411 for the S8+.

Step 3: Now comes the part where you need to test a few values out before you settle on the screen density you want. A value under and around 500 works best; anything over that and you’ll see your icons spaced out too wide and the text rather small for comfortable reading. 460 is a good number to use on the S8, while 500 works great on the S8+. Again, what setting you use is up to you.

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That’s it. Should you have any issues, do let us know in the comments. Don’t forget to check out our collection of Galaxy S8 and S8+ tips to see how you can get the best out of your new phone.

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Galaxy S8 Tip: Slide up or down the camera shutter button to zoom in or out

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ come with a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera that’s broadly similar to that of the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge. However, Samsung has done some work on the software side to things improve image quality (using Multi Frame Processing) and ease of use (through a newer camera UI).

The new camera app also comes with a handful of new features including fun stickers and Snapchat-esque filters. However, one feature that’s easy to miss is the ability to zoom in or out using the on-screen shutter button. You can hold the shutter button and drag it up or down to zoom in or out, respectively.

You can read more such Galaxy S8 tips and tricks here.

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PSA: Galaxy S8′s pressure sensitive home button is always active

Even though most Android smartphone makers moved on to on-screen navigation buttons, Samsung was reluctant in doing so because a physical home button was a part of its smartphone design philosophy for years. Now that the company has finally moved to on-screen buttons with the Galaxy S8 and S8+, it did so better than its competitors.

The on-screen home button on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ is pressure sensitive, and it’s always active. No matter what you’re doing on these smartphones, the home button is always active (unless the phones are switched off, of course). You can hard press the home button from any screen to go back to the home screen (or to wake up the phone if it’s locked).

Samsung certainly didn’t want to put off its long-time loyal users by switching to a run-of-the-mill on-screen button, and making it pressure sensitive that’s always active was a great way to make sure that Galaxy S8 users don’t miss the good old physical home button. Would other brands switch to pressure sensitive on-screen buttons as well?

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Galaxy S8 and S8+ get update in India with display color balance fix

The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are yet to go on sale in the Indian market, but Samsung is taking a preemptive measure and is already rolling out an update in the country for fixing the display’s red tint issue. The update is surprisingly large in size for one that only optimizes the display’s color tone, and one can only hope that there are performance enhancements and other improvements hidden in the update.

The red tint hasn’t completely gone away on our review units, but setting the display’s color balance to cool takes away the reddish hue (it’s still there compared to our S7 edge, but not as bad). The new firmware version is XXU1AQDG and the update is available over the air for both the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. This is the second update for the devices in India; the first became available right after we fired up our review units. You’ll see these updates available on your S8 or S8+ once you’ve set it up.

Also Read: Samsung starts rolling out update in Europe to fix the Galaxy S8′s display issue

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PSA: Double tap the Galaxy S8′s AOD home button to wake up the phone

The Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8+ feature large Infinity Displays with curved corners and edges. Samsung had to ditch its traditional physical home buttons to bring us such a beautiful smartphone design. The company has now shifted to on-screen navigation buttons (the on-screen home button is also pressure sensitive).

There are multiple ways to wake up the Galaxy S8 and S8+ from sleep. You can use either the physical power/lock button or double tap the on-screen AOD home button to wake up the smartphone. Moreover, you can also jump to a notification directly from the AOD screen by double tapping on the app icon.

Note: This method to wake up the Galaxy S8′s display works only when the Always On Display mode is active.

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