One million people used the Gear VR last month: Oculus

Virtual reality is beginning to pick up steam slowly. Samsung’s partnership with Oculus, which is one of the bigger players in the industry, for the Gear VR is already bearing fruit. Head of mobile at Oculus, Max Cohen, has now mentioned that the Gear VR was used by about one million people last month. He went on to say that an average user would use it for at least 25 minutes every day.

Those are pretty decent usage figures, although we don’t have the full picture yet. He didn’t talk about the sales figures of the Gear VR, nor did he mention if these are recurring users. It must be noted that Gear VR has been around for quite a while with the first commercial units shipping out in November 2015. The headset was being offered for free with pre-orders of the Galaxy S7 and the S7 edge as well.

Samsung and third-party developers have been adding new content periodically, so there’s no real dearth of quality content on the Gear VR. Earlier today, we heard about the addition of Hitman Go on the Gear VR, which further illustrates the point. So while it might be too soon to talk about the success or failure of the Gear VR, Samsung has left no stone unturned in educating its users about virtual reality and its benefits.

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U.S. launch of the Galaxy Note 6 scheduled for mid-August: Leak

Renowned leakster @evleaks a.k.a Evan Blass has stumbled across some interesting information pertaining to the upcoming Galaxy Note 6 phablet. He claims that the handset has been scheduled for a release in the U.S. on the 15th of August 2016. His tweet reads “week of August 15th”, which suggests that the date might shift around a bit.

We’ve heard a bit about the Galaxy Note 6 so far, including the fact that it might feature a USB Type-C port and possibly a curved display on board, although there’s no confirmation available on the latter.

We recently encountered a report which indicated that the Korean manufacturer might be working on a BlackBerry Hub like feature known as Samsung Focus. This would give users access to all the important notifications (emails, apps etc) right in one place. A feature like this would be ideally suited for the Galaxy Note 6.

By the looks of it, the Galaxy Note 6 is turning out to be quite an interesting phablet. With about three months left for its release, we hope to encounter more leaks.

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Hitman Go is coming to the Samsung Gear VR

Samsung and Oculus have been successful in creating developer interest to make apps and games for the Gear VR. Now, Hitman Go, a turn-based strategy game that is based on the famous Hitman franchise, will be launched for the Gear VR as well as the Oculus Rift tomorrow.

There will be two versions of Hitman Go for the Gear VR, one that costs $7.99 and the other that costs $9.99. The game developer Square Enix claims that the latter will offer “a 90 FPS game experience with seamless head tracking.” The board-like game will not only give a different perspective on the Gear VR, but it will also come with 91 different levels with inputs from previous Hitman titles like Blood Money and Silent Assassin.

Microsoft’s game studio Mojang recently released the hit title Minecraft for Samsung’s virtual reality headset, and the beautiful Land’s End game was released for the Gear VR a few months ago. The company has also worked with video streaming companies like Netflix, Hulu, and Vimeo to release official apps for the Gear VR.

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The Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 edge were an instant hit with customers in the US

Latest data from Kantar Worldpanel shows that the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 edge became an instant hit with customers in the United States as the handsets captured 5.8 percent of the US smartphone market combined in Q1 2016. Even though it was only available for the last few weeks of Q1 2016, the Galaxy S7 was the fifth best-selling smartphone during this time. Its predecessor, the Galaxy S6, didn’t do as well as the new flagship. It was only the 10th best-selling smartphone with 3.2 percent of market share after launch.

Kantar reviewed many customers who picked the new Galaxy handsets and it found that 53.5 percent of those surveyed said that they had opted for the Galaxy S7 or the Galaxy S7 edge because of the improvement in battery life. A significant chunk of buyers also said that camera quality made them put money down for the Samsung flagships. It merits mentioning here that Samsung’s new flagships are probably the most heavily promoted phones ever, with the company offered a free Gear VR for all pre-ordered units, and carriers throwing in incentives like the Gear S2 smartwatch. One can attribute the stellar performance of the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 edge post launch to these promotions but Kantar is of the view that there’s actual substance here that’s bringing in customers which is why it expects the new flagships to become the best-selling phones in Q2 2016.

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Wallpaper Wednesday: Minimal

Welcome to the latest edition of Wallpaper Wednesday. This week we’re focusing our attention on ten minimal backgrounds. All images are available in a QHD resolution, which is a perfect fit for the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy Note 5 and other flagships, but they can, of course, be used on different smartphones, too.

If any of the following images float your boat and you want to download and set one as your wallpaper, simply tap on a photo to maximise it, then click and hold to save it. Once the picture is stored locally, open up Settings, locate and select Wallpaper, then just tap the newly-saved image to set it as your background.

Alternatively, you can download a ZIP file containing all of this week’s backdrops by hitting the Download button at the very bottom of this post.

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Blur

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Bright Bars

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Divide

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Dual Circle

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Grid

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Orbital Dot

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Rainbow Diamond

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Shapes

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Smiley

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Zig Zag

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Download

Note: We’ve tried our best to identify the creators of all of the wallpapers featured in this week’s column. However, the images appear to lack copyright information, artist signatures or any real trace of origin. If you created a wallpaper we’ve posted and would like credit, or would rather we remove the image, kindly contact us.

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Update to Samsung Music app brings support for edge controls

After listing its beta music player app on the Play Store and making it compatible with the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy Note 5, Samsung has now released another update to the app with new features and minor bug fixes.

The Samsung Music app is now compatible with three more Galaxy devices: the Galaxy J3, Galaxy J5, and Galaxy J7. Apart from minor bug fixes, the update brings a new Edge Panel that lets users control music on their edge devices such as the Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy S6 edge, and Galaxy S6 edge+. It also supports shuffle and repeat options in the Easy Mode.

 

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How to set up Night Clock on the Galaxy S7 edge

Just like the Galaxy S6 edge and Galaxy S6 edge+, Samsung’s latest curved smartphone, the Galaxy S7 edge, ships with a nifty integrated Night Clock feature. For those unaware of this functionality, it’s a subtle software tweak that takes advantage of the handset’s super-dark AMOLED screen in order to exhibit a dimly illuminated clock on the edge display during a specific time frame.

Here’s how to set it up:

• Head into Settings.
• Tap on Edge Screen.
• Select Night Clock.
• Flip the switch to On.
• Choose the time you would like the clock to appear and disappear.

Voilà! You have successfully enabled Night Clock on your Galaxy S7 edge. If you happen to run into any issues along the way, do be sure to let us know in the comments section below, and we’ll do our very best to get you back on track.

For more awesome Galaxy S7 tips, click here!

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