Samsung bags more than one hundred awards at CES 2016

Samsung Electronics has a lot to be proud of after earning over 100 awards at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016. Some of the key areas where Samsung made its presence felt this year include Home Entertainment, Home Appliances, Mobile and the Internet of Things which Samsung is going to put a heavy emphasis on this year. It already became clear weeks ago that Samsung would capture most of the attention at CES 2016 after its unreleased Smart TV got the Best of Innovation Award, only to be followed by the UHD Alliance Premium Certification to the entire 2016 SUHD lineup.

Here’s what Gregory Lee, President and CEO of Samsung Electronics North America had to say about the future of Samsung:

Samsung continuously strives to provide consumers with innovations that matter to help them connect their busy lives with their friends, family, co-workers and even their appliances in meaningful ways

Among the winning products for Samsung at CES 2016 we can see the KS9500 Series Curved SUHD TV, Samsung’s 4-door Flex Refrigerator with Family Hub and the Galaxy TabPro S. This tablet actually gathered quite some awards like TechRadar’s Best of CES award, Engadget’s Best of CES finalist and many others.

What are your thoughts on Samsung’s CES 2016 attendance this year?

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Samsung Exynos 8 Octa infographic shows the future of chipsets

Samsung is launching the Exynos 8 Octa SoC which is due to be used in the next generation of mobile handsets and its built on the 14nm FinFET technology, one that is expected to deliver a huge profit. Samsung started mass producing the industry’s first 14nm FinFET processors for mobile devices 11 months ago so the South Korean giant is quite ahead of the game.

As opposed to the Exynos 7 Octa (7420), the Exynos 8 Octa has a 30% better performance and a 10% more efficient energy consumption. It’s an octa core processor from which 4 cores take the big load off whereas the remaining 4 cores and smaller and are meant to make the chip more efficient. This is what Samsung calls Heterogeneous Multi-Processing or HMP Solutions for short, which is a system for using the big cores and the little cores in an optimal combination. What’s more is that the 14nm FinFET technology uses a 3D transistor setting in order to increase performance and decrease chip size, and that’s where the term “14nm” comes from: electrons normally travel one way (20nm) in a 2D transistor build whereas in a 3D transistor scheme the electrons travel in three ways (14nm travel distance).

Regarding connectivity, the Exynos 8 Octa supports category 12 for downlink and category 13 for uplink so it’s a very efficient chipset from this point of view. What’s more is that its 3D performance can deliver PC or console-like gaming experience and the chip also has a very high resolution display support with four times as much detail as Full HD (4,096 x 2,160 pixels as opposed to 1,920 x 1,080)

Check out the infographic below to get a better idea of just how good this SoC is.

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Samsung Galaxy S6 gets Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow beta update

Samsung has always been slow when it comes to bringing minor Android version bumps to its smartphones and tablets, but it looks like the company is doing things a little better with the Android 6.0 beta that it released for the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge. Both devices are getting an update that brings them up to Android 6.0.1 and includes a slew of changes and new features.

Since this is beta software, the changelog is unsurprisingly rather large. The update includes additional quick settings toggles for Private Mode in the status bar, new emoji, and improved visibility of notification panel icons. Samsung is also changing the way vibration works when the device is locked with a fingerprint – users will now only get vibration feedback if their fingerprint is not recognized. With 6.0.1, the phone also has a new ‘Install overnight’ option that will install an update at night between 2 to 5 AM. Furthermore, after the phone restarts once the update is installed, it now shows a full-screen image for the part where it optimizes apps upon first boot.

There’s also an entirely new interface for the Edge screen settings. Users will now find an ‘Edge panels’ option in the settings, with an easier and more intuitive way of enabling and disabling Edge screen panels (for example, you can simply tick or untick a panel instead of going into each panel’s settings and using the on/off switch). You can also set the Edge panel’s transparency and size, and download new ones online. There’s a new Tasks edge panel that lets you set shortcuts to functionality inside apps, such as composing a new message, adding a new contact, or composing an email, and more. You can even add profiles for various settings based on your location, such as putting the phone in power saving mode when you’re at work, muting all sounds, and quite a lot more.

Android 6.0.1 brings quite a lot to the table, especially the Edge functionality that has been sorely lacking on Samsung’s Edge smartphones after the Note Edge. This hasn’t brought us any closer to knowing when the official update will roll out, but if you are using the beta, go grab the 6.0.1 update. If you haven’t gotten a notification yet, head into the Settings » About device » Software update menu.

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Samsung’s MediaSquare will redefine the social hub

CES 2016 is definitely a very exciting experience but Samsung constantly looks towards the future and the South Korean giant plans to redefine the social hub. Former MIT Media Lab researcher Jinha Lee is leading a team that’s working on a brand new concept called Samsung MediaSquare. What this concept does is allow everyone in a room to connect to your TV using their smartphones and push multimedia content to it which can easily be viewed. The concept is sort of like pinning images on a board as you’ll see in the presentation video embedded under this article, and also similar to Google Chromecast which lets everyone cast videos to a TV.

MediaSquare is a pretty unique concept and it makes a social event pretty interesting as it’s common for friends and families to want to share photos and videos, but they usually do this by attaching files to a messenger program of their choice which isn’t as intuitive or simple. Samsung MediaSquare gets rid of the traditional remote control and puts the smartphone in control, allowing the user to browse through the content that was pushed to the TV, and everyone can do this all at once.

This is still in conceptual stages but we wouldn’t be surprised to see it pretty soon. Samsung has had a remarkable presence at their CES 2016 booth with the ‘Future TV Zone’ showing us a modular display technology. The South Korean giant seems to be focusing a lot on Smart TVs and the systems that make them run, namely the GAIA security solution and the upgraded Game Service.

Check out the video embedded below showing a demonstration of MediaSquare and let us know what caught your eye at the CES 2016 booth.

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2016 Edition of the Samsung Galaxy J5 surfaces in India

Even though the current Galaxy J5 has only been on the market for a little more than six months, its 2016 edition is already in testing in Samsung’s R&D facilities in India.

Once again, it is the import database Zauba that confirms the existence of a new device. According to it, a Samsung phone with codename SM-J510 has arrived in the country for the usual test procedures. Very few details of the device are revealed, though the display of this Galaxy J5 (2016) appears to be of the 5.2 -inch variety, which is 0.2-inch larger than that of its predecessor.

Recently, we saw a comparable size bump in the Galaxy A5 (2016). Not only is the 5.2-inch display in that device larger than the 720p screen in the original Galaxy A5, it also features a higher 1080p resolution. Still, since the J series are considerably cheaper than the A series, it remains to be seen if the Galaxy J5 (2016) will come with a similar increase in pixel count.

It will probably be a while before Samsung actually launches this Galaxy J5 revamp, but at least we’ve now seen confirmation of its existence.

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Galaxy S7 edge (SM-G935A) appears on AnTuTu benchmark with 12 MP camera, 5.1-inch display

Recent leaks have suggested that the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge will be sporting a 12-megapixel camera instead of a 16-megapixel one as we have seen on Samsung flagships since 2014. If you were hoping that might not be the case, then you might need to be prepared to be disappointed, as the Galaxy S7 edge’s listing on the AnTuTu benchmark (model number SM-G935A for carrier AT&T) with a 12 MP sensor is yet another indication the megapixel count will be getting a downgrade.

Of course, just because the camera isn’t as high-resolution doesn’t mean it will be worse than what Samsung offered before. The new camera is said to have an aperture of f/1.7, which should make it even better for low-light photography, and Samsung’s excellent software processing means the end result in terms of image quality shouldn’t be affected. You might not be able to zoom in as much as you can on a 16-megapixel photo, but that shouldn’t exactly be a huge issue for most. Oh, and as we had reported, this also means the camera sensor will not protrude as much as it does on the Galaxy S6 family or the Note 5.

The benchmark listing also reveals something odd – the phone is listed with a 5.1-inch display instead of the 5.5-inch display that has been rumored for the Edge variant. This suggests the possibility that the 5.5-inch model will be the Galaxy S7 Plus, which a rumor said could launch alongside the S7 and S7 edge instead of later down the year with the Note 6. It could also be that there is no 5.5-inch variant in the works, or that the device in the benchmark is a prototype model that won’t be released as the retail unit.

Other specs in the benchmark thankfully match what we know until now – a Snapdragon 820 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel front camera, 64GB of storage, Android 6.0 Marshmallow, and a display resolution of 2560×1440 pixels. It will be very interesting to see what the actual devices will feature when they launch next month; benchmark listings are usually indicative of the final specs, and the 5.1-inch display in the AnTuTu listing is something that has us more confused than we were before.

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Samsung’s watch face section marred with quality control issues

There are countless watch faces available in the Gear store for the Gear S2, those who own the smartwatch aren’t really pressed for choice, besides that it’s also allowed to make your own and sell them on the store. The company has also released new software that allows anyone and everyone to make watch faces for the Gear S2 even if they have no formal development or design experience. It’s good that the company wants to make sure that there is always enough to go by but it must pay special attention to the kinds of watch faces that pass through its seemingly ineffective approval process and get listed on the Gear store.

We recently discovered a pretty useless watch face for the Gear S2 which costs a ridiculous thousand Euro but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The Gear store is filled with watch faces that are based on iconic designs of major Swiss manufacturers like Tag Heuer and Panerai to name a few. I am quite sure that those companies won’t be particularly happy to see that their designs, which happen to be their intellectual property, are being replicated and distributed without their knowledge or consent. This is almost similar to selling fake watches and expecting that the original manufacturers wouldn’t mind that at all, when in fact they most certainly do. It’s likely that Samsung pulls such watch faces when they are brought to the company’s attention but the company’s action shouldn’t come after the fact, it should improve its approval process for watch faces to ensure that the ones which infringe on a watchmaker’s original design or any company’s logo aren’t allowed to be listed in the first place.

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