Leaked Galaxy Tab S4 render reveals the new S Pen

The first official Galaxy Tab S4 press render has been leaked online and it reiterates what we know about the tablet so far. Samsung will reportedly switch to the 16:10 aspect ratio for this tablet’s display and that’s evident from the render. It also gives us our first glimpse of the new Galaxy Tab S4 S Pen.

New Galaxy Tab S4 S Pen

The leaked renders come from @evleaks who has a solid track record. The first render shows us the Galaxy Tab S4 hooked up to a keyboard attachment which will likely be sold separately. He later posted a side-by-side comparison of the S Pen for the Galaxy Tab S3 and Galaxy Tab S4. The new stylus looks sleeker and appears to have a glossy finish instead of the matte finish of last year’s model. Gone is the clip at the top that made the S Pen look more like a conventional pen.

It’s unclear, though, if this S Pen is going to have the new features that Samsung is expected to introduce with the Galaxy Note 9’s S Pen. The upcoming flagship’s stylus reportedly features Bluetooth support which will enable it to offer features such as music playback control.

The last render shows off the back of the Galaxy Tab S4 and its white color. We get to see the new S Pen once again and it indeed appears to have a glossy finish. There’s no fingerprint sensor at the back so it’s possible that the Galaxy Tab S4 may not have one. It could rely only on the iris sensor and facial recognition for access control.

The Galaxy Tab S4 specs include a 10.5-inch 2560×1600 pixel resolution display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The tablet is also said to feature a 12-megapixel rear and 7-megapixel front camera. It will ship with Android 8.1 Oreo.

Samsung is yet to confirm when the Galaxy Tab S4 is going to be announced. It’s possible that the company may unveil its new tablet at the IFA 2018 trade show in Berlin this September.

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Alleged Galaxy Note 9 render brings no surprises

We’re less than a month away from the official launch of Samsung’s new flagship smartphone. An alleged official render of the Galaxy Note 9 has been leaked online today and it doesn’t bring any surprises as far as the design is concerned. That’s to be expected from the Galaxy Note 9 which wasn’t said to get any major design changes in the first place.

The reports about this handset so far have also suggested that the Galaxy Note 9 will be quite similar to the Galaxy Note 8. Samsung fans shouldn’t keep their fingers crossed for a significantly higher screen-to-body ratio as well. Samsung isn’t adopting the notch anytime soon so that’s out of the question too for this device.

Galaxy Note 9 render

It’s claimed to be an official render of the Galaxy Note 9. It’s certainly not an official press render as those tend to show the wallpaper and the lockscreen. This may have come from an accessory manufacturer. There’s always the possibility that it’s inaccurate.

The reason why this alleged Galaxy Note 9 render is passable is because so little is expected to be changed on the new flagship as far as the design is concerned. The front panel leaks that we saw a few weeks ago also suggested the same. Even the early Galaxy Note 9 hands-on claimed that are no major changes to the design of the handset. There have been reports, though, that the bottom bezel will be slightly slimmer than it is on the Galaxy Note 8.

The Galaxy Note 9 may come with a 6.4-inch Infinity Display, just a tad larger than the Note 8’s 6.3-inch display. It will be powered by the Exynos 9810 and the Snapdragon 845 in select markets with 6GB of RAM. It’s possible that Samsung may launch a variant with 8GB of RAM. A 4,000mAh battery may be onboard as well.

Samsung will officially unveil the Galaxy Note 9 at an event in New York City on August 9. That’s also where it will confirm the pricing and availability information for this handset.

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Samsung Developer Conference 2018 takes place November 7-8

Samsung has its own annual developers’ conference to showcase the advancements it has made in software and how it wants to go about making life easier for developers to make apps for its devices. Many workshops are on the agenda as well for developers so that they can learn how to best leverage Samsung’s software.

Samsung Developer Conference 2018

The company today confirmed when the Samsung Developer Conference 2018 is going to take place. Last year’s conference was held from October 18-19. The SDC 2018 will take place from November 7-8 in San Francisco this year.

Thousands of developers, innovators, technologists and content creators will attend the Samsung Developer Conference 2018. They will experience new software, services and products both from Samsung and its partners in diverse categories ranging from mobile, wearables, cloud and the Internet of Things.

The event will take place at Moscone West in San Francisco on November 7-8. Samsung has only confirmed the event dates today as registrations haven’t opened as yet. The company says that it will soon confirm when registrations will open for SDC 2018.

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PSA: Good Lock 2018 may now be available for more users from Galaxy Apps

Good Lock 2018 may be available directly from the Galaxy Apps store for users in some countries that weren’t part of Samsung’s official announcement of its powerful customization app. The official list of countries where Good Lock 2018 is available includes South Korea, the United States, the UK, Singapore, Australia, and Canada. But we have been able to access Good Lock 2018 through Galaxy Apps on our devices in India, and it’s possible the same is the case for some other countries as well.

Good Lock 2018 availability still sketchy

Good Lock 2018 doesn’t show up in Galaxy Apps for our devices in Pakistan and the Netherlands, so it’s tough to say just how widespread the app’s availability is at the moment outside of the officially supported markets. In India, we can access both the main Good Lock 2018 app and all of the apps that it bundles (such as Task Changer and QuickStar) from Samsung’s app store. Whether that’s the case for you is something you can check by opening Galaxy Apps on a supported phone (which is most of the high-end phones since the Galaxy S7 that are running Android 8.0 Oreo) and searching for the terms ‘good lock’.

Of course, if it doesn’t show up in the search results, you can manually install the 2018 iteration of Good Lock. We have instructions on doing so here. If you haven’t already tried out Good Lock 2018, we also have a post detailing its features.

Can you see Good Lock 2018 in Galaxy Apps on your device/in your country?

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July 2018 security patch update released for the Galaxy J2 Pro

It’s nearly mid-July, but Samsung is yet to release the latest security patch for most of its devices. The company kicked things off last weekend, though, by bundling the July 2018 security patch with the Android 8.0 Oreo update for the Galaxy A8 (2018) and Galaxy A8+ (2018). As has been the case for a long time now, the latest security patch has been pushed to a non-flagship device first, and the tradition is continuing with the release of the July patch for the Galaxy J2 Pro (2018).

Galaxy J2 Pro update

The update is going out to the Galaxy J2 Pro in India, one of the prime markets for Samsung’s budget Galaxy J series phones. It carries build number J250FXWU2ARF3 and is available from our firmware section. Of course, you should first try and see if you can download it over the air. To do so, open the Settings app on the phone, tap Software update, then tap Download updates manually. Connecting to a Wi-Fi network is recommended unless you have a fast mobile data plan with sufficient bandwidth.

For details on the July 2018 security patch, check out this post.

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Exclusive: Gear S4 will come with Bixby support, as expected

It’s been more than a year since Bixby came knocking on the door to Samsung’s galaxy. It didn’t have the kind of debut it should have had for a virtual assistant so late to the game, and the lack of support for voice control everywhere except the US and Canada was its primary shortcoming. For those who could use voice control, however, Bixby impressed with its ability to do almost everything a user can do by touch. Bixby has seen many improvements since it was first released and is found on all Galaxy flagships since the Galaxy S8, and it will soon be making its debut on Samsung’s smartwatch lineup as well.

Bixby coming to Samsung’s wearables should surprise no one

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Gear S4, which is pretty much guaranteed to launch as the Galaxy Watch later this year, will have Bixby installed. For those who were uncertain, well, we can confirm that Bixby is indeed going to be present on Samsung’s upcoming smartwatch. It shouldn’t, however, add a third button to the watch, unlike Samsung’s flagship phones. It would only be replacing S Voice as the primary virtual assistant on the Gear S4, so we can expect to be using the home button on the watch for accessing Bixby. Of course, we should also be able to wake it up by saying ‘Hi Bixby’.

Samsung will soon be unveiling Bixby 2.0 alongside the Galaxy Note 9, and we can expect the same to be available on the Gear S4. Bixby 2.0 will offer quicker response times and is aimed at “expanding its own ecosystem in the industry”, as Samsung mobile division CEO DJ Koh had himself said last year, and bringing the company’s wearable devices into the fold would certainly be a major step towards cementing that ecosystem.

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Galaxy S9 hits 1Gbps download speeds on Telefónica’s ‘4.9G’ network

Samsung’s flagship smartphones are capable of hitting gigabit LTE speeds. The Galaxy S8 was its first flagship with a gigabit LTE chip. T-Mobile conducted a test with the handset in a lab to hit peak download speeds of over 900Mbps. The average user won’t get speeds anywhere near that, though.

While not quite the gigabit connection, AT&T’s Licensed Assisted Access service delivers peak download speeds of up to 500Mbps but with its own caveats. It’s only available in some cities and requires the user to be in the vicinity of the LAA site. Telefónica has now demonstrated a better way of achieving 1Gbps LTE with the Galaxy S9.

Galaxy S9 can hit 1Gbps download speed on LTE

Telefónica’s “4.9G” network is obviously not 5G but it delivers speeds close to what the next-generation standard promises. It’s powered using existing Samsung and Nokia hardware to deliver LTE speeds of up to 1Gbps before 5G is ready to kick things up a notch.

The carrier jointly announced with Samsung and Nokia that they have been successful in delivering gigabit LTE by aggregating three bands of licensed radio spectrum. They’re calling the LTE Advanced Pro technology 4.9G because it almost rivals the speeds expected on 5G networks. 4.9G doesn’t deliver reduced latency, though, like 5G and doesn’t have the enhanced security features as well.

The Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ have the hardware required to function on the 4.9G network. In areas where the network is available, they will be able to enjoy significantly higher LTE speeds. The availability is understandably limited right now.

Telefónica has launched its 4.9G service commercially in Segovia, Spain with Nokia’s AirScale base stations. It will expand it to other locations including Talavera de la Reina which also rolling out 5G-capable hardware over the next two years. The carrier expects to launch its commercial 5G service by 2020.

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Samsung mass producing its new 256Gb fifth-generation V-NAND

Samsung today announced that it has started mass production of its new fifth-generation V-NAND memory chip. The company says that the chip features the industry’s fastest data transfer speed. It’s also said to be the first to apply the “Toggle DDR 4.0” NAND interface.

The industry’s first use of Toggle DDR 4.0 interface enables the data transfer speed between storage and memory over Samsung’s new 256Gb V-NAND has crossed 1.4Gbps which is a 40 percent improvement over its 64-layer predecessor.

Better performance with superior energy efficiency

There are more than 90 layers of “3D charge trap flash (CTF) cells” inside Samsung’s fifth-generation V-NAND which is the largest amount in the industry. They’re stacked in a pyramid structure with microscopic channel holes vertically drilled throughout. The channel holes are only a few hundred nanometers wide and contain over 85 billion CTF cells that can store three bits of data each.

Despite the bump in performance, Samsung says that the energy efficiency of the new chip is comparable to that of the 64-layer chip. That’s largely because the operating voltage has been reduced from 1.8 volts to 1.2 volts. The new V-NAND chip also offers the fastest data write speed of 500-microseconds. It’s an improvement of 30 percent over the write speed of the predecessor. The response time to read signals has been reduced significantly to 50μs.

Samsung also announced today that it’s preparing to introduce 1Tb and quad-level cell offerings to its V-NAND lineup eventually. Samsung’s new high-performance memory chip will be used in a variety of devices including but not limited to premium smartphones.

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Gear S4 may end up being called the Samsung Galaxy Watch

It was first rumored a couple of months ago that Samsung might bring its next smartwatch under the Galaxy umbrella. The company’s upcoming smartwatch is currently referred to as the Gear S4. It seems that this may very well be the case as a logo registration for the Samsung Galaxy Watch has been spotted.

The company has registered the Samsung Galaxy Watch logo in its home country of South Korea. It filed the necessary paperwork with the Korean Intellectual Property Office last month. Samsung has already filed for protection of the Samsung Galaxy Watch and even the Samsung Galaxy Fit brand names in the United States.

Samsung Galaxy Watch

Some rumors have suggested that Samsung’s next smartwatch may actually be powered by Wear OS, Google’s wearable device platform. That doesn’t appear to be the case at this point in time. The switch to the Galaxy branding might give the impression that it may be an Android-powered device but it’s highly likely that Samsung will retain the Tizen OS for this smartwatch.

Reports suggest that the new smartwatch is going to have an updated design and a larger battery. It may even be capable of measuring the user’s blood pressure if recent rumors are believed. No word as yet on when Samsung is planning to launch the device.

Samsung has scheduled an event on August 9 for the Galaxy Note 9 but it seems unlikely that it will unveil the Gear S4/Galaxy Watch there. We may have to wait for it until September since the IFA 2018 convention in Berlin may be the venue of choice for the smartwatch’s unveiling.

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