[Poll] How often are you using AR Emoji on the Galaxy S9?

AR Emoji was one of the least exciting features that debuted on the Galaxy S9, at least if we go by the kind of reaction our readers have had. Samsung made a brilliant move teaming up with Disney to bring its famous characters to AR Emoji and has been releasing new stickers for the feature in general, but it’s unclear if any of those have actually made people care more about creating emojis of their faces and sharing them with others.

Here at SamMobile, we only tend to use it when Samsung makes announcements related to AR Emoji. After all, aren’t the usual emoji options you get on smartphones these days more than enough for conveying everyday emotions? AR Emoji is fine as a marketing ploy, especially after Apple made a big deal out of Animojis on the iPhone X. But there’s not exactly a big reason for most of us to be making emojis of our facial expressions.

Not to mention AR Emoji doesn’t work as well as it could because it doesn’t take enough time to map our faces and expressions on to the digital likeness, and it’s pretty much useless if, for example, you keep a full beard. One compelling use case we can see is video calls made using AR Emojis, although it’s unknown if Samsung’s related patent for such functionality will ever see the light of day.

What’s your opinion of AR Emoji?

So our question to you today is: How often are you using AR Emoji on your Galaxy S9 or S9+? Do you use it often, rarely, or not at all? Perhaps you had a bit of fun when your Galaxy S9 was new but have not accessed AR Emoji since? Maybe it’s one of the reasons why your kids want your phone all the time?

Tell us by voting in the poll below, then expand on your answer in the comments section. Do tell us if you think another option needs to be added to the poll and we will do the needful.

How often are you using AR Emoji on the Galaxy S9?

• Frequently
• Every now and then
• I used it when my S9 was new
• I try it every time you guys write about it
• It's my kids who use it
• Never tried it, never will

Results

• I try it every time you guys write about it 50%, 1 vote
  1 vote 50%

  1 vote - 50% of all votes
• Never tried it, never will 50%, 1 vote
  1 vote 50%

  1 vote - 50% of all votes
• Frequently 0%, 0 votes
  0 votes

  0 votes - 0% of all votes
• Every now and then 0%, 0 votes
  0 votes

  0 votes - 0% of all votes
• I used it when my S9 was new 0%, 0 votes
  0 votes

  0 votes - 0% of all votes
• It's my kids who use it 0%, 0 votes
  0 votes

  0 votes - 0% of all votes

Total Votes: 2

19 June 2018

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You or your IP had already vote.

• Frequently
• Every now and then
• I used it when my S9 was new
• I try it every time you guys write about it
• It's my kids who use it
• Never tried it, never will

×

You or your IP had already vote.

Results

The post [Poll] How often are you using AR Emoji on the Galaxy S9? appeared first on SamMobile.

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Gear S4 wireless charger certified, confirms model numbers

It’s no secret that Samsung has a couple of new smartwatches in the pipeline. We exclusively revealed a few months back that the Gear S4 has entered development and that Samsung is testing the LTE variants of this smartwatch in the United States. We have also revealed additional information about the smartwatch such as its model numbers.

The Gear S4 wireless charger has now received its certification in South Korea and the listing has confirmed the Gear S4 model numbers in the process. We have previously revealed that SM-R805 is the model number of the LTE-compatible Gear S4 model that’s going to be the successor to the Gear S3 Frontier.

Gear S4 wireless charger

The Korean Radio Research Agency has now certified a wireless charger with model number EP-YO805 and it corresponds to the SM-R805 Gear S4 model number that we have already revealed. It merits mentioning here that the Gear S3’s wireless charger had model number EP-YO760 while the smartwatch itself was classified as the SM-R760.

The listing doesn’t include any images of the charger itself but it can reasonably be assumed that it looks similar to the existing wireless charger for the Gear S3, in that it’s a cradle of sorts that you can place the smartwatch on when you want to charge it.

There isn’t a lot of information available about the Gear S4’s specifications at this point in time but we can obviously expect it to have upgraded internals. There has been talk about a thinner design and a bigger battery but it remains to be seen if that’s actually going to happen.

Samsung hasn’t revealed as yet when it’s planning to launch the Gear S3’s successor but some believe that it may happen in August alongside the Galaxy Note 9. What we do know is that whenever the Gear S4 arrives, the dressier version of the smartwatch will be offered in a new gold color.

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Samsung loses another patent battle; asked to pay $400 million in damages

Adding to Samsung’s mounting defeats in patent disputes, a federal jury in Texas, USA has found Samsung guilty of infringing a patent owned by the licensing arm of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, a premier research university in South Korea. The jury has asked Samsung to cough up $400 million in damages – a verdict which Samsung has pledged to appeal.

Apart from Samsung, Qualcomm and GlobalFoundries were also found guilty of infringing the patent but were not asked to pay any damages. The patent relates to a chip-making technology named FinFet which has long assisted in making chips smaller, efficient, and more powerful.

Damages can go up

The jury found Samsung’s infringement to be “willful,” which could result in the judge increasing the damages by up to three times. If the damages go up, this will be a bigger setback for Samsung than the one it encountered in the case against Apple.

Samsung denied infringing the patent and argued that it worked with the university to develop the technology under consideration.  The company expressed disappointment with the verdict and said in a statement, “We will consider all options to obtain an outcome that is reasonable, including an appeal.”

Unlike the disputed Apple patents which affect old Samsung smartphones, the infringed FinFet technology impacts modern processors from Samsung and other chipmakers. Considering the recurring financial implications this patent can have on Samsung, the world’s largest chipmaker, it shouldn’t be surprising if it keeps fighting this case longer than the one involving its Cupertino rival.

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Cheer for your favorite World Cup team with AR Emoji Football Edition on the Galaxy S9

Samsung’s cashing in on the 2018 FIFA World Cup with the Football Edition of AR Emoji for the Galaxy S9. Well, maybe not cashing in, as it’s a free app, but it’s a nice way for the company to promote AR Emoji. AR Emoji Football Edition lets you create a regular AR Emoji likeness of your face and put the flag of your chosen team or something like a football on top, then creates a few different GIFs of your AR Emoji cheering in front of a football field.

Let your digitally created avatar cheer for you

It’s basic stuff but a neat idea at the same time, especially for those who tend to flood their social network feeds with updates on every goal or a play-by-play of the many amazing moments the World Cup provides. Of course, you would need to own a Galaxy S9 or Galaxy S9+ to be able to use this, but by the time the next World Cup comes up, AR Emoji will probably be a part of the many new flagships Samsung would have launched by then.

To use AR Emoji Football Edition, you would need to download it from the Galaxy Apps store. The app is separate from the camera app, so simply open Galaxy Apps on your S9 or S9+, search for AR Emoji Football Edition (if you’re reading this on your phone, click this link to directly open the app’s page in Galaxy Apps), install it, then run it from the app drawer. Follow the instructions in the app to create the AR Emoji animations of your digital self, which are saved in the gallery so you can share them with others.

Don’t Miss: Daisy Duck and Goofy now a part of the Galaxy S9’s AR Emoji

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Samsung moving GPU development in-house won’t surprise anyone

Samsung already makes many of the components that go into its smartphones in-house. The company uses its own processor, modem, memory, storage, battery, display, camera, etc solutions but has to rely on ARM’s Mali for graphics cores for its Exynos processors because the company doesn’t make GPUs in-house.

Some circumstantial evidence has surfaced this week which has led to reports suggesting that the company has started developing its own graphics chip for use with Exynos processors. There’s no confirmation of this from Samsung just yet. That being said, it won’t be a surprising move when Samsung eventually ends up shifting GPU development in-house.

Developing a custom GPU is easier said than done

This isn’t the first time we’re hearing about Samsung thinking about alternatives to Mali GPUs. It was first reported back in 2014 that Samsung was going to develop an in-house GPU but it later signed a technology agreement with ARM for its Mali chips.

We exclusively reported two years ago that the company was in talks with NVIDIA and AMD for GPU technologies but nothing came off it. It was subsequently reported last year that Samsung had developed its first in-house GPU dubbed “S-GPU” and that it would be introduced with a flagship Exynos chipset in 2018 once full testing had been completed.

The Exynos 9810 is Samsung’s flagship processor for 2018 and it features the ARM Mali-G72 MP18 GPU, not a custom solution made by Samsung. So even if the company has developed one we won’t see it on flagship devices in 2018 at least.

The latest report is based on LinkedIn job descriptions of some Samsung employees who mention their work on GPU teams at the company. It has also been speculated that Samsung will introduce its own GPU with low-end smartphones and tablets initially and will continue to use ARM’s licensed designs for flagship devices. It may only make the switch for flagship devices when it launches the second-generation of its custom GPU. If things turn out exactly this way then it appears that we may not see a Samsung flagship with a custom GPU until 2020.

Samsung obviously stands to gain a lot by switching GPU development in-house. For starters, it will no longer have to make payments to ARM for licensing its designs. It will be able to better optimize the setup with its Exynos chips as well which have custom Mongoose cores that already outperform ARM’s Cortex-A cores.

It’s easier said than done, though. GPU development is a complicated process and not something that Samsung has been doing for a very long time. Even if the company has been working on this internally, it will certainly take its time in ensuring that its custom graphics chip can at least match, if not exceed, the performance of ARM’s Mali chip.

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Daisy Duck and Goofy now a part of the Galaxy S9’s AR Emoji

Samsung is expanding its repertoire of Disney characters for AR Emoji on the Galaxy S9 today with Daisy Duck and Goofy. These follow the release of avatars from Pixar’s Incredibles franchise a month ago, and the total count of Disney avatars available in AR Emoji is now around eleven. Samsung is clearly putting its partnership with The Walt Disney Company to good use to differentiate one of the most unimpressive new features that debuted on the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ from its primary rival.

Daisy Duck and Goofy now available in AR Emoji

The Daisy Duck and Goofy avatars can be accessed by updating the Mickey Mouse & Friends AR Emoji from the AR Emoji mode in the camera app (if you have never installed the Mickey Mouse AR Emoji add-on, you can follow instructions here to do so). Open the camera app, go into the AR Emoji mode, tap the plus icon at the bottom right, then tap the Galaxy Apps button. Here, find and tap on Mickey Mouse & Friends AR Emoji in the list, then press the Update button. You can then use the new characters in the camera app. If the update isn’t available for you, try again after a few hours as it can take a while for availability to expand to all countries.

Samsung will be releasing more Disney characters over the course of the year, as it had announced early on when the Galaxy S9 went official.

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