The Android 8.0 Oreo update for the Galaxy S8 and S8+ has caused a fair deal of problems. Samsung didn’t waste much time in rolling out the official update to beta testers after the beta program concluded, and there was unsurprisingly a mad rush from Galaxy S8 owners who weren’t getting the update to grab official Oreo firmware and flash it on their device. Only Samsung had a surprise in store: The Android 8.0 Oreo firmware uses a new compression algorithm that the existing Odin tool – which is used to flash firmware on Samsung devices – couldn’t read.
Galaxy S8 Oreo firmware can now be flashed without issues
A new version of Odin is now available from our database; you can download it here or from the individual pages for each firmware file for the S8 and S8+ or any other recent device. You have to use this new version of Odin to be able to flash Oreo firmware on the Galaxy S8 and S8+, and it will also be required for future releases of Oreo for other devices. If you have been holding out on upgrading to Oreo because of the reported problems with its firmware, well, you can finally make the jump to the latest and greatest version of the OS.
Of course, if Oreo isn’t available for your country yet, we would recommend waiting until Samsung officially releases the update. If Oreo firmware is available for your country, the latest build of Oreo is G950FXXU1CRB7 and G955FXXU1CRB7 for the S8 and S8+ respectively. You could also flash the first release – build number XXU1CRAP – but since Samsung didn’t deem it to be stable enough, we’d caution against doing so.
After a mere six months since the last flagship announcement from Samsung, the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ are finally here. In case you’ve missed the extensive flooding of information, here is the glorious official spec sheet for the S9 duo. If you consider yourself a Samsung fanatic, then you already know that Samsung releases two CPU variants for its flagship devices, one being the Qualcomm Snapdragon and the other its homegrown Exynos processor. With the exception of the Galaxy S6 in 2015, this has been the case for quite some time. Let’s break down which markets will receive either the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 or the Samsung Exynos 9810 for the S9 duo in 2018.
Exynos or Snapdragon in your market?
As usual, one of the largest markets for flagship devices, the United States, will receive the Snapdragon 845 model. As we saw last year with the Galaxy S8 duo, the S9’s will be the first devices to rock the latest processor from Qualcomm. China is also a consistent recipient of the Snapdragon processor and this year is no different. Latin America and Japan are included in the bunch as well. The rest of the world, including the whole of Europe, will receive the native Samsung Exynos 9810 processor.
Now, both processors are similarly clocked and contain eight cores. The Exynos contains four 2.7 GHz Mongoose M3 cores coupled with four 1.7 GHz Cortex-A55 cores. The Snapdragon sports four 2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold cores coupled with four 1.7 GHz Kryo 385 Silver cores. Despite the similarities, historically, the Exynos processor outperforms the Snapdragon. So far, benchmark information for the Snapdragon 845 and Exynos 9810 has made its way to the public, and both variants do look rather promising.
After months of rumors and never-ending leaks, Samsung has finally announced the Galaxy S9 and S9+ at a special event in Barcelona. Even though almost everything about the devices was leaked well before the announcement, there was still a lot to cover after the official unveiling.
Missed our Galaxy S9 MWC coverage? No problem
Post the launch event, carriers and retailers have announced pre-order dates and prices for the Galaxy S9. Samsung has posted detailed information about various Galaxy S9 features and published marketing videos on its YouTube channel. We have covered almost all of this yesterday, but in case if you missed it, you can find all our Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ related coverage below.
We’ve had the chance to play with the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ at the Mobile World Congress, and so have other publications, but it will be a while before the new flagships are seen in stores so regular folks can check them out in person. Yes, the wait can be excruciating, especially when the newly announced devices are as good as the Galaxy S9 and S9+, and pictures and hands-on videos are the closest one can get. We’ve seen a few requests for putting up more Galaxy S9 pictures, so that’s exactly what we’re doing with this article.
For those who haven’t been following our Galaxy S9 coverage, Samsung’s latest flagships are packed to the brim with impressive features. The S9 and S9+ sport a rear camera with a mechanically adjustable aperture for improved photography in both low-light and bright conditions (the S9+ also gets dual rear cameras), with support for slow-motion videos at 960 frames per second. You can use the AR Emoji feature to create emojis that look and emote like you, and last but not the least, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ also come with stereo speakers. The speakers are tuned by AKG and support Dolby Atmos for virtual 360-degree surround sound.
The technical specs include the new Exynos 9810 chip that’s a monster when it comes to benchmarks (the US and China variants will be powered by the Snapdragon 845), 6GB of RAM on the S9+, 64/128/256GB of expandable storage, Android 8.0 Oreo, IP68 water and dust resistance, and the same displays and batteries as the Galaxy S8 and S8+. Iris and facial recognition have been improved and can now be used together; the fingerprint sensor has been relocated below the rear camera and supports a new one-swipe gesture for registering fingerprints.
Our full review of the Galaxy S9 and S9+ will come in a few weeks; we’re trying to get it done by March 16, the official release date for the phones, so you can go in prepared if you’re thinking of buying either of the two handsets. Now, without further ado, go ahead and check out all the images of Samsung’s latest and greatest below!
Samsung has been offering a heart rate sensor in its Galaxy flagship smartphones for the last few years. In the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+, the company has added an advanced optical sensor to the heart rate monitor to enable blood pressure measurements directly from the smartphone without any external hardware.
Jointly developed by Samsung and UCSF
To harness the potential of this new optical sensor, Samsung, in collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), has announced the launch of the My BP Lab smartphone app for blood pressure and stress research. The My BP Lab app leverages the optical sensor built into the newly-announced Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ to provide users with richer and more accurate information about their health. The jointly developed app uses data from the sensor to offer personalized insights for improving daily health.
When users open the My BP Lab app, they will be invited to join a three-week research study by the UCSF. The study will track stress and how it affects users’ wellbeing. Those who participate in the study will have to report on their sleep, exercise, and diet, along with using the Galaxy S9’s optical sensor for blood pressure measurements throughout the day. In return, users will gain personalized and on-demand information about their stress and blood pressure levels. The study aims to optimize My BP Lab to provide “contextualized and scientifically informed feedback.” The study also improves the accuracy of the BP readings with real-world data from thousands of users.
The program is limited to the United States, and users must be eighteen years or older. It goes without saying that users also need to have the Galaxy S9 and S9+ to participate in the program. The app will be available in the Google Play Store on March 15.
Samsung has been actively updating the Galaxy A8 (2018) and Galaxy A8+ (2018), its best mid-range phones yet, since before the devices went on sale. The A8 and A8+ were among the first devices to get the January 2018 security patch, and while it’s a tad too late now for the February patch, Samsung is sending out the latest security fixes to the Galaxy A8 duo. The update also brings improvements to calls, Bluetooth, camera, and Wi-Fi. As usual, the changelog doesn’t say exactly what the improvements are, but it’s good to see the company supporting its newest mid-range phones so well.
Galaxy A8 (2018) update brings February patch, stability improvements
The Galaxy A8 (2018) and A8+ (2018) update is rolling out in various markets, including Russia and the Netherlands, and will bump the firmware version up to A530FXXU2ARB6 and A730FXXU2ARB6 respectively. The update should pop up on your A8 or A8+ on its own if you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network. If waiting is not your thing, you can manually pull the update from the Settings » Software update menu on the device. The over-the-air download comes in at 400 MB, so make sure you have the requisite data bandwidth if you’re updating directly from the phone. Needless to say, the new builds are available in our firmware database as well, and the update should also be available via Samsung’s Smart Switch software on a PC.
The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ have been official for almost 24 hours now, with both devices gaining considerable praise for taking the best of the Galaxy S8 and S8+ and adding awesome new features without raising the prices all that much. Our own hands-on experience is available for everyone to read, and now, we also have the official Galaxy S9 wallpapers that you can download to get a feel of Samsung’s newest flagships on your device’s home screen. As expected, the S9 brings a slew of new wallpaper backgrounds, one for each color variant (purple, black, gray, and blue) of the device, and all of them are available as high quality files.
Galaxy S9 wallpapers
The wallpapers you see in this post have been resized so you can take a peak without having to wait for the page to load. The full wallpaper files are quite big in size, so we’ve zipped them up and uploaded them on Google Drive; you can download the entire package here and extract them on a PC or through the My Files app on your Samsung device. We will also be adding these wallpapers to our wallpaper archive shortly so you can download the individual files in their original size and quality, so stay tuned.
