Samsung brings the world’s biggest curved monitor to India

Samsung has announced the launch of the world’s biggest curved monitor in India. Although the model number seems to be slightly different, this appears to be the same monitor Samsung launched at Gamescom 2017 in August. Aimed at working professionals and gamers, the 49” ultra-wide curved monitor comes with thin bezels and a 32:9 aspect ratio with a resolution of 3840 x 1080 pixels.

Being a QLED monitor, it naturally comes with all the high-end bells and whistles one would expect from it. It comes with High Dynamic Range (HDR) to enhance media consumption, and a fast response time to improve gaming performance.

To enhance eye comfort for users who spend long hours staring at their PCs every day, the monitor comes with an Eye Saver Mode and Flicker Free Technology. The Monitor’s Eye Saver Mode filters Blue light and reduces eye-fatigue. Microsoft has already added a Blue light filter natively into Windows 10. It will be interesting to see if Samsung’s implementation offers any additional advantage over various other Blue light filters.

To help users utilize the screen real-estate more effectively, the monitor comes with an ‘Easy Setting Box’ application which lets the users partition the screen into different sizes with each partition capable of its own settings.

The monitor is currently available for sale on Samsung India eStore for a whopping INR 150,000 (around $2344). The monitor will also be available for sale with all the leading retailers very soon. Given the steep price and the relatively small high-end gaming market in India, it’s doubtful if Samsung will find many buyers for it in India.

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December security patch update now arriving on the Galaxy Note 5

The Galaxy Note 5 is three years old at this point, but thanks to the Galaxy Note 7 meeting an early demise, the Note 5 gets the honor of being the last real Note flagship before the Note 8 came out and won everyone over. So it’s not surprising to see Samsung maintaining its pace of providing software updates to the Note 5, which is now getting an update with the December security patch in a number of markets (including India, where the November security patch was rolled out just two weeks ago).

Only security fixes in this update

The latest update is quite small at around 17 MB (with build number , so it should have nothing but the latest security fixes to offer. To grab the update, go into the Settings » Software update menu on your phone and tap the Download updates manually option. That’s if the update hasn’t already shown up on its own, which can take a few days to happen. We also have the latest firmware available in our database if you wish to update manually (not every country’s firmware might be available right away, but don’t worry, that won’t remain the case for long).

Have you received the new update on your Galaxy Note 5?

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Galaxy Note 8 wins the ‘Flagship Smartphone of the Year’ award

After the Galaxy Note 7 debacle, which cost Samsung a whopping $17 billion, questions were raised about the viability of the Galaxy Note brand. Many believed that the Galaxy Note brand has turned into liability for Samsung, and thus may be killed forever. A year later, it is safe to say all those predictions have turned out to be wrong. Far from being dead, the Galaxy Note 8 has been earning praise from reviewers, customers and various quarters of the industry.

After winning the ‘Gadget of the Year’ award at the India Mobile Congress in September, the Galaxy Note 8 has won the ‘Flagship Smartphone of the Year’ at the Exhibit Tech Awards 2017 today in Gurgaon, India. Samsung also bagged a win in the wearables category with the Gear S3 winning the ‘Wearable Gadget of the Year’. Clearly, a good day for Samsung at the awards ceremony!

Since the launch of Galaxy Note 8 in September, the sales have been strong. In some markets, it was even able to beat the iPhone 8 sales. With robust sales and praise from critics, it is certain that the Galaxy Note series is back and here to stay.

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What’s New With Android 8.0 Oreo Part 14: Permission monitoring for background apps

Android’s method of handling permissions was given a major overhaul with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, with the OS finally allowing users to control what permissions an app could use on a permission-by-permission basis, similar to iOS had been doing for a long time. Quite a few sites have written about the Galaxy S8 receiving the App permission monitor feature from the Galaxy Note 8 with the latest Oreo beta update, and we thought we’d join in on the fun by making it a part of our What’s New With Android 8.0 Oreo series.

What’s New With Android 8.0 Oreo: Permission monitoring for background apps

With App permission monitor, Samsung allows the user to know exactly what permission an app is using when it’s running in the background. It’s not exactly a useful feature if you already trust an app with a few permissions, but its main objective is to let you know if an app accesses some data when it’s not being actively used, so we guess Samsung’s heart was in the right place when implementing the permission monitor. You can modify which apps get monitored, and also select what permissions are monitored within each app. Modifying permissions for apps remains a separate feature, accessible from the Apps section of the device settings.

To access the permission monitor on a Galaxy S8 running the Oreo beta (or a Galaxy Note 8), open the phone’s settings, go into Lock screen and security, then scroll down to find and tap the App permission monitor option. Enable the app permission monitor by using the toggle at the top of the screen. By default, all apps that have been granted a permission are monitored, but you can control which apps and what permissions within an app get monitored.

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Galaxy A8 (2018) and A8+ (2018) home button isn’t pressure sensitive

When Samsung alienated millions of users by replacing its traditional home button with an on-screen one on the Galaxy S8, the company tried to ease the transition for everyone by making the area around the software home key pressure sensitive. The result? The virtual home key on the Galaxy S8 (and the Galaxy Note 8) feels very much like a real button. You can modify the pressure sensitivity, there’s an option to allow unlocking the phone with a hard press of the software home button, and it’s also enabled at all times.

But, it doesn’t look like Samsung will be offering similar functionality on the Galaxy A8 (2018) and Galaxy A8+ (2018), which bring on-screen navigation keys to the company’s mid-range lineup (and a slew of other features). That’s right. The home button on the Galaxy A8 and A8+ isn’t pressure sensitive, which can be confirmed by looking at the user manual for these devices. There’s no mention of the option to hard press the home button anywhere, and the only way of using the home button for waking up the device is by double tapping it when Always On Display (AOD) is enabled.

If you’re not a fan of keeping AOD enabled, this means you’ll have to use the power button to wake the device up. You could also use the fingerprint sensor at the back for directly unlocking and going to the home screen, but the power button would be your only option if you have AOD off and the phone is sitting face up on a surface. Not an ideal solution, and you could say the A8 and A8+ will work like any other Android device with on-screen navigation keys and rear-facing fingerprint sensors.

A disappointing omission

Why is the home button on the A8 and A8+ not pressure sensitive? Well, there’s no way to tell. It could be a cost-saving measure or just a method of separating flagship phones from the mid-range lineup. But it does come off as a disappointing omission, as this means the Infinity Display isn’t accompanied by all of the related functionality that we see on the Galaxy S8 or Galaxy Note 8.

For consumers moving from an existing Samsung phone to either of the A8 siblings, this will result in some inconvenience as they get used to not having a physical home button. We guess it’s a good thing Always On Display comes enabled by default and isn’t as much of a battery guzzler on the Korean giant’s mid-range (and budget) phones as it is on the Galaxy S or Galaxy Note flagships.

What do you think? Should the A8 and A8+ have come with a pressure sensitive home button, especially with the high price tags they carry?

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Samsung Display could make $22 billion supplying iPhone X panels next year

The iPhone X is the first smartphone from Apple to feature an OLED display. Since Samsung has a near monopoly in the mobile OLED panel market, Apple had no choice but to turn to its rival’s display subsidiary to source the panels.

According to a new report out of South Korea, Samsung Display will supply up to 200 million flexible OLED panels for the iPhone in 2018. This will translate into revenues of up to $22 billion.

Making bank

Samsung is expected to supply Apple with 180-200 million flexible OLED panels for the iPhone X in 2018. Industry watchers believe that the supply price is $110 per panel. If that’s accurate, it will result in a revenue of $19.8-$22 billion for Samsung Display.

Samsung Display will be supplying almost four times the number of panels that it supplied for the iPhone X this year. It’s estimated that Apple sourced 50 million panels from Samsung for the iPhone X in 2017.

The yield rates at Samsung’s existing OLED production lines have reportedly improved to over 80 percent in the second half of this year. Samsung was previously believed to be investing in new production lines to meet Apple’s demand but reports now claim that improved yield rates have enabled it to meet demand with its existing production lines.

Apple is certainly going to need a lot more of these OLED panels in the coming year as demand for the iPhone X remains steady. The company will also be expected to launch a successor next year and that’s also going to have an OLED panel supplied by Samsung Display.

As we’ve said previously, the iPhone X is going to make Samsung a lot of money.

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Samsung starts mass producing industry’s first 2nd-generation 10nm DRAM

Samsung’s semiconductor business, which includes SSDs, mobile processors, DRAM, image sensors etc., has been performing exceptionally well both in terms of sales and innovation. It looks like the trend is not going to change anytime soon with Samsung doubling down on its efforts.

After launching its first 10nm-class based DRAM product in February 2016, Samsung has announced today the mass production of the industry’s first 2nd-generation 10-nm class 8 Gb DDR4 DRAM. Samsung says its new 8Gb DDR4 offers the highest performance, energy efficiency and smallest dimensions for an 8Gb DRAM chip. These chips will be used in a wide range of next-generation computing systems.

Performance and efficiency gains up to 15 percent

According to Samsung, the new DRAM offers approximately 30 percent productivity gain, 10 percent improvement in performance, and 15 percent improvement in energy efficiency over the company’s previous 10nm 8Gb DDR4 DRAM. Samsung attributes these improvements to the “use of an advanced, proprietary circuit design technology”.

Samsung says it has finished validating its latest 10nm-class DDR4 modules with CPU manufacturers, and next plans to work with OEMs to bring them to the market. Apart from rapidly increasing the production volume of the 2nd-gen 10nm-class DRAM, Samsung also plans to manufacture more of its mainstream 1st-gen 10nm-class DRAM.

With the advancements in its 10nm process, Samsung is also planning to speed-up the introduction of its next-generation DRAM chips for use in enterprise servers, mobile devices, supercomputers, HPC systems and high-speed graphics cards.

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Samsung’s former head of Bixby has left the company

Some of you might have heard about Rhee In-jong. He was Samsung’s chief technology officer and in charge of developing Bixby. He led the development of both the Korean and English versions of Bixby. Samsung confirmed today that Rhee In-jong has now left the company.

Samsung announced Bixby 2.0 a couple of months back. A new executive is leading the development of the upgraded version. Samsung Research America’s vice chief Chung Eui-suk is leading the service intelligence group now that’s tasked with developing Bixby.

Samsung’s former head of Bixby departs

When it was reported that Samsung Research America’s vice chief Chung Eui-suk would lead Bixby’s development, some speculated that Rhee In-jong had been replaced. Samsung rebutted the speculation and said that the move can’t be seen as his replacement because Rhee continues to be the head of the development division that oversees the service intelligence group.

He joined Samsung Electronics in 2011. Aside from leading the development of Bixby, he also worked on the development of Samsung’s Knox security solution as well as its mobile payments service Samsung Pay.

Apparently, it’s not corporate drama that led to his exit. Samsung revealed that Rhee had expressed his desire to leave the company due to personal reasons back in July.

We wish Rhee In-jong all the best for his future endeavors.

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Galaxy S9+ benchmark shows impressive performance

Samsung is expected to unveil its new flagship smartphones at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona come February 2018. This means that we’ll be seeing a lot of reports and rumors about the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ in the weeks leading up to the launch.

A benchmark listing for what appears to be the Galaxy S9+ has been spotted today and if the scores are accurate, the Galaxy S9+ is going to be impressive in the performance department.

Galaxy S9+ benchmark shows promise

The Geekbench listing for the Galaxy S9+ (SM-G965) shows a single-core benchmark score of 2422. The multi-core score came in at 8351. This particular device was powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor. Snapdragon-powered models are released in select markets like the United States. Other markets get the Exynos-powered models.

Data available on Geekbench shows that no other Samsung smartphone has a single-core score of more than 2000 and a multi-core score of 6500. If the numbers for the Galaxy S9+ are accurate, it may offer significantly better performance than any high-end Samsung device available today.

That’s to be expected from a new flagship smartphone with the latest silicon and 6GB RAM. The Geekbench listing also mentions that the device was running Android 8.0 Oreo which will surely be onboard when the handset is eventually released.

We will surely see additional benchmark results of the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ in the coming weeks. They will help us form a better idea of the sort of performance figures we can expect to see. The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ will likely be unveiled at MWC 2018 in February and will be released by mid-March.

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Samsung will unveil a cool and powerful soundbar at CES 2018

Samsung today announced that it’s going to unveil a wall-mountable lifestyle soundbar at the Consumer Electronics Show 2018 next month. The NW700 Soundbar Sound+ looks really cool when mounted on the wall. It’s packed with powerful audio features which include a built-in woofer that was developed at the Samsung Audio Lab.

The NW700 Soundbar Sound+ succeeds the award-winning MS650 Sound+ model and will now be the flagship premium lifestyle soundbar in Samsung’s lineup.

Raising the bar

The wall-mountable NW700 Soundbar Sound+ comes with many sound-enhancing features like multi-speaker control, distortion-canceling and wide-range tweeters. The distortion-canceling technology works by predicting distortion at the end of the speaker movement and then making the required adjustments before the distortion takes place.

All of the technologies were developed at the Samsung Audio Lab in Valencia, California. The soundbar has a slim and sleek design that’s optimized for wall mounting underneath Samsung’s TVs. It’s 53.5mm wide and is 41 percent narrower than the previous model.

The body has a built-in woofer which eliminates the need for an external subwoofer. This contributes to a clean design for a home entertainment space.

There are three sound modes – Standard Mode, Surround Mode and Smart Mode. The Surround Mode is used to expand surround sound performance while Smart Mode adjusts volume and surround sound effects automatically.

Samsung will showcase the NW700 Soundbar Sound+ at the Consumer Electronics Show 2018 next month. Pricing and availability information will be revealed later.

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Galaxy A8 (2018) and Galaxy A8+ (2018) firmware now available online

It was only yesterday that the Galaxy A8 (2018) and Galaxy A8+ (2018) were officially unveiled, with both handsets set to go on sale in early January. Samsung hasn’t yet told us where and when either of the two phones would be available, but we can take a guess as far as the list of initial launch markets is concerned by the firmware for the A8 and A8+ that are now available in our firmware database. As expected, the Galaxy A8 (2018) will get a wider launch, with firmware for the device available for a number of European countries and a few Asian ones.

Galaxy A8+ (2018) could be limited in availability

Galaxy A8+ (2018) firmware are online for only a handful of countries, so it looks like it will take longer than the A8 to hit the shelves. It’s unclear if the A8+ (2018) will be launched in Europe, as the Galaxy A7 (2017) or even the original A7 never made it to the continent (other than a country here and there). With the new Infinity Display offering a good mix of portability and screen estate, Samsung is probably even less concerned about releasing the A8+ (2018) in the European continent. It is most likely to be exclusive to markets where big-screen phones do particularly well, and while that would make business sense, it does mean prospective consumers in Europe will once again lose out on the option to get the bigger of Samsung’s A series phones.

Don’t Miss: Here are the best Galaxy A8 (2018) and Galaxy A8+ (2018)

In any case, the firmware are available for download from our database (Galaxy A8 | Galaxy A8+). The software version is 7.1.1, and while you won’t find a use for the initial firmware for your country, you’ll be able to download the full firmware for whatever software updates Samsung will release for the A8 (2018) and A8+ (2018) after they go on sale. We already have the wallpapers from these devices in our wallpaper archive, so be sure to check those out!

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