Daily Deal: You can currently pick up a Gear Fit 2 for $148.66

If you’re looking for a reliable fitness tracker, you’ve come to the right place. While stock lasts, you can pick up the second-generation Gear Fit from Amazon for $148.66. That’s a total saving of $31.33. It’s worth noting, though, that the large model of the device is only eligible for the saving.

I’ve had an opportunity to go hands-on with the Gear Fit 2 in the past, and can honestly say that this is a fantastic deal. It’s a robust wearable that’s packed full of great features, including 4GB of internal memory which can be used for storing music, an integrated GPS chip and a heart rate monitor.

If you like the sound of the Gear Fit 2 and want to take advantage of this promotion, hit the Buy Now button below. We strongly advise you to hurry, though, as Amazon only has a limited amount of inventory available for this specific deal, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Read more: Samsung Gear Fit 2 review: A worthy upgrade over the Gear Fit

Buy Now

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Themes Thursday: Six new themes that you might want to check out

Welcome back to this week’s Themes Thursday! 123 themes have been released for compatible Galaxy smartphones in Samsung’s Theme Store this week. To save you from the trouble of going through each and every one, we’ve selected six good-looking themes that you might like.

Apart from a few Christmas theme packs that we listed last week, there’s one more well-designed one: [Pixome] Paper Toy Snowman (Live!). The ForYou and the [HIO] Pink Blossom themes have very pleasing and clean look to them. The Rome_MINDON Design has an impressive AoD wallpaper. Dark Emerald and Snowflake (Live)_ Biogi – TheNew themes look good too.

[HIO] Pink Blossom

[Pixome] Paper Toy Snowman (Live!)

ForYou

Rome_MINDON Design

Snowflake (Live)_Biogi – TheNew

Dark Emerald

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Samsung is a part of Khronos VR Standards initiative for virtual reality

Earlier today, Samsung announced that it had joined hands with Acer, Google, HTC, Oculus, and Sony to form the Global Virtual Reality Association. Now, the Khronos Group, which also developed Vulkan APIs, has created the Khronos VR Standards initiative in collaboration with industry leaders including Samsung, Google, Oculus, Razer, Valve, AMD, ARM, Intel, Nvidia, and others.

The goal of this initiative is to create a set of standard APIs that portable VR applications and engines can use in tandem with various hardware vendors and device drivers. Similar to Vulkan, the focus here is to get enough companies on board and to create a single API interface that can be widely used for most future VR development. This would make it easier for VR content creators and app developers to make content, apps, and games that work with a wide range of VR platforms and devices.

The Khronos Group has announced that the initiative is still in its early stages, and it is asking other brands to get on board. The companies mentioned in the image below are publicly participating in the standards initiative. There are a few other companies that are involved but not named at this point in time.

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Samsung files patent for a drone with circular design

Samsung has a firm grasp on the wearables segment, with its Gear S smartwatches and the Gear VR virtual reality headset doing extremely well in the market. The Gear 360 hasn’t seen as much success, perhaps due to its high price, but it certainly impressed everyone as the first take on a 360-degree camera. Samsung has also been working on drones for some time now to put cameras into the air, and patent applications by the company show what its drone could look like.

The Korean giant seems to have gone for a very simple design – the drone shown in the patent images is circular with a large fan right in the middle surrounding a camera, and foldable legs at the bottom. How well this drone would work is something that only Samsung could say, but it certainly looks like the company is pretty far into the development of the product as the patent applications were filed back in April this year.

As the folks over at GalaxyClub envision, it would be rather interesting if Samsung’s drone would be controllable using the company’s smartwatch and/or smartphones. However, whether Samsung would actually launch a drone any time soon remains to be seen, as drones face quite a few legal regulations that differ from country to country. Drones are also only popular among the enthusiast crowd right now and aren’t something everyone would be interested in, so it wouldn’t be surprising if Samsung keeps drone development on a low priority.

 

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Bloomberg: Galaxy S8 to feature ‘all-screen front’, virtual home button

The Galaxy S8 looks set to make quite a few big changes that may or may not go down well with consumers. We exclusively reported that Samsung will be ditching the home button with the Galaxy S8 in order to put in a larger screen with very little bezel, and Bloomberg is reporting on similar lines today that the Galaxy S8 will feature an “all-screen front” and also come with a virtual home button.

Rumors have said that the Galaxy S8′s displays will be sized at 5.7 inches and 6.2 inches, and a virtually bezel-less design would certainly allow Samsung to fit in such large displays without increasing the device’s dimensions by a large margin. Bloomberg also says that Samsung, instead of using its traditional button, is building a virtual home button “in the glass in the the lower section”. It’s not very clear what that means, but we’re guessing Samsung will be using a capacitive key for the home button or moving to on-screen navigation buttons (the latter is more plausible if an “all-screen front” is what Samsung is aiming for).

It is rather hard to believe all the rumors, but perhaps such major disruption is the only way Samsung would be able to make the Galaxy S8 stand out. As we had reported earlier this week, the Galaxy S8 will also come without a 3.5 mm headphone jack, similar to the iPhone 7, so if you thought the removal of the microSD card or the IR blaster was frustrating, you might want to brace yourself for the changes next year’s Galaxy S flagship could bring.

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Samsung teams up with Google, HTC, Oculus, Sony, and Acer to form the Global Virtual Reality Association

Virtual reality is booming. Ever since Oculus started working on its VR headset, many companies, big and small, have jumped onto the VR bandwagon. VR has the potential to be the next big computing and entertainment platform. Now, these companies joining hands to form a focus group to promote VR.

Samsung has announced on its official blog that it has joined hands with Acer Starbreeze, Facebook’s Oculus, Google, HTC VIVE, and Sony Interactive Entertainment to form the Global Virtual Reality Association. The GVRA will develop hardware as well as software standards and will promote the VR industry as a whole. It will also support responsible development and adoption of VR globally.

The group will be a resource for consumers, policymakers, and industries interested in VR.

The founding companies of the Global Virtual Reality Association hope to unlock and maximize VR’s potential by focusing on conducting research, international engagement, and development of best practices.

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Purported Galaxy J7 (2017) running Nougat granted Wi-Fi certification

A handset, believed to the the Galaxy J7 (2017), has been granted Wi-Fi certification. Unfortunately, the documentation doesn’t reveal anything about the device, other than that it sports the model number SM-J727, which is similar to the unit that was spotted on Indian import tracker Zauba’s online database a little more than two months ago.

What’s particularly interesting about this sighting is that the Galaxy J7 (2017) is reportedly already running Android 7.0 Nougat and will do so directly from its release. It’s unclear whether the unit will also be skinned with the latest version of Samsung Experience — formally known as TouchWiz — user interface, but we’re guessing it will.

Recent rumors and speculation point towards the Galaxy J7 (2017) packing a 5.5-inch Full HD display, an Exynos chipset, an Adreno GPU, 3GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable internal storage, a 13MP rear-facing camera, a 5MP selfie shooter and a 3,000mAh removable battery. It’s also expected to sport a fingerprint scanner and a pedometer.

Unfortunately, it’s unknown when the Galaxy J7 (2017) will hit the shelves. We already know that a fully-certified model is already on its way to US carrier Verizon with the model number SM-J727V. Based on this information, we’d say that it’s likely the European model will launch around six months later, though it’s perfectly possible that it’ll be available sooner.

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