Samsung to demonstrate its smartphone design philosophy at Milan Design Week

Samsung will be mingling with design aficionados at Milan Design Week 2017 and it will demonstrate its smartphone design philosophy to them. It’s going to set up an immersive studio on Via Bergognone, Tortona where attendees will be able to experience Unconfined: The Galaxy S8 Design.

To showcase the story behind the Galaxy S8, particularly its design, Samsung has collaborated with world renowned Zaha Hadid Architects and acclaimed digital art and design collective Universal Everything.

The interactive experience that Patrik Schumacher and Johannes Schafelner of Zaha Architects collaborated on with Universal Everything was inspired by the design refinement of the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. Visitors will take a journey through a completely bespoke interior which will trigger impressive digital installations that will bring to life the Galaxy design philosophy.

Unconfined: The Galaxy S8 Design will be open to visitors from April 4-9 where, obviously, the Galaxy S8 will also be on display. Samsung is predictably pulling out all the stops in getting the word out about its new flagship smartphone and we’re bound to see more activities like this to further push its new flagship smartphone.

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Apple has reportedly ordered 70 million iPhone OLED display panels from Samsung

Apple has long been rumored to be making the shift to OLED displays for the iPhone. Given that Samsung has a big lead in the mobile OLED space it was inevitable that Apple was going to source OLED displays from its biggest rival.

A lot of numbers have been thrown around over the past few months. It was reported last year that Apple had placed an order for 100 million 5.5-inch AMOLED panels from Samsung for the 2017 iPhone. We heard two months ago that both companies inked a $4.3 billion OLED supply agreement for an additional 60 million OLED panels over and above the 100 million believed to have been previously ordered.

The Nikkei Asian Review is now reporting that Apple has placed an order for 70 million OLED panels for this year’s iPhone with Samsung. Research company IHS Markit’s senior director David Hsieh says that while Apple has initially ordered 70 million units of OLED panels from Samsung, the latter is actually preparing to ramp up production to 95 million units for 2017 in case demand ends up exceeding expectations.

Whatever the final number ends up being – it’s not like the companies will ever confirm that – it goes without saying that Samsung’s position in the OLED market and its rapid expansion of its production facilities puts it at an advantage so Apple will certainly have to turn towards its rival if it wants to finally adopt an OLED display for the iPhone this year.

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Security researcher says that Tizen is a hacker’s dream, has 40 unknown zero-day vulnerabilities

Samsung plans to reduce its reliance on Android by launching Tizen-powered smartphones, smartwatches, fitness trackers, and TVs. However, the company’s Android alternative seems to have serious security related issues. A security researcher has found 40 zero-day vulnerabilities in Tizen, making millions of smartphones, smartwatches, and TVs vulnerable to hacking.

After it had came to notice last month that CIA could hack Tizen-powered Samsung smart TVs, an Israeli security researcher Amihai Neiderman managed to find 40 zero-day vulnerabilities in Tizen’s code base. These vulnerabilities would allow someone to remotely hack a Tizen-powered device. Moreover, unlike the CIA hack, these newfound vulnerabilities (also known as remote code execution) do not need a device’s physical address.

“It may be the worst code I’ve ever seen. Everything you can do wrong there, they do it. You can see that nobody with any understanding of security looked at this code or wrote it. It’s like taking an undergraduate and letting him program your software.”

Of all the vulnerabilities, Neiderman found one particular design flaw inside the Tizen store, which is said to be critical. According to Neiderman, this vulnerability allowed him to hijack the software to deliver malicious code into his Samsung TV. Since the Tizen Store has the highest privileges, it can be used by a hacker as a Holy Grail for abuse.

Amihai Neiderman, who heads research at Equus Software, first started studying Tizen’s security issues when he purchased a Tizen-powered Samsung smart TV. Once he found out how badly written his TV’s code is, he bought a bunch of smartphones to test Tizen. He says that a lot of Tizen’s code base is old and borrowed from Bada OS, but most of the vulnerabilities he found were from the code that was written within the last two years.

“You can see that they took all this code and tried to push it into Tizen,” Neiderman says.

Samsung says that it is now in contact with Neiderman to solve all the vulnerabilities and security issues in Tizen’s code. He also suggests that Samsung should reconsider deploying Tizen in phones before doing a major overhaul of the code. 

 

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SamMobile Daily Recap: April 3, 2017 — Galaxy S8, Gear S2 and more!

We publish a fair few of stories on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the bulk of the news breaks during our European hours of operation, which makes it difficult for our readers in the US (and other regions) to follow every post that goes live on SamMobile. But, we think we’ve come up with a solution — a daily recap.

In the list below, you’ll find the stories we’ve published today. Chances are, you’re not going to be interested in all of them. To help you find what’s important to you, we’ve split them into their respective categories — so if you want to see the latest Galaxy news, locate the Phones subheading.

Business

Samsung cut spending on research and development last year

Samsung Group shuts down its website and blogs

Deals

Daily Deal: Save 25% on a Gear S2

Firmware News

Galaxy S8 pre-order customers in Canada will receive their orders early

Got Nougat on your Galaxy S7 or S7 edge? Try Bixby and the Galaxy S8 launcher right now

March security update now arriving on the Galaxy A5 (2017) in Europe

Samsung reportedly invested a lot of money to develop an on-screen fingerprint reader for Galaxy S8

The Galaxy S8 lets you disable the app drawer and put all apps on the home screen

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Got Nougat on your Galaxy S7 or S7 edge? Try Bixby and the Galaxy S8 launcher right now

Bixby is clearly one of the biggest features of the Galaxy S8 and S8+, with Samsung hoping to take on Google Now, Apple Siri, and Microsoft Cortana. Bixby is a virtual assistant that Samsung thinks can make your life easier by letting you do a great deal of things using voice control, in addition to showing you contextual information based on your daily usage habits, similar to Google Now. The Galaxy S8 also gets an updated TouchWiz launcher, with features such as the ability to disable the app drawer and a dedicated screen for Bixby (accessed by swiping right on the home screen).

If you thought you will have to buy the Galaxy S8 to try out the new launcher and Bixby, you thought wrong. If you have a Samsung device running Nougat, you can try out both right now. We’re not sure every Samsung device with Nougat will work, as neither app managed to install on the Galaxy Note 5, but we did try them out on the Galaxy S7 edge. The launcher works well, even if there is a bit of lag here and there. The option to sort apps alphabetically is missing, but everything else seems to work just fine.

As for Bixby, it seems that Samsung’s new virtual assistant runs fine the first time you fire it up but starts crashing once it has gathered some information. For example, Bixby shows you the last photo you have taken so you can quickly share it with others, but for us the assistant started crashing right after we took a picture using the camera. There is also no way to try out voice control, as the Galaxy S7 edge (and other Samsung devices) lack the dedicated Bixby key that is present on the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. As a result, if you want to try out Bixby, you can only test it out for a short while after it is installed, following which it is likely to start crashing on your device.

It’s possible that properly working ports for existing Samsung devices will be released in the future, although Bixby might continue to fail as it also requires data from Samsung’s servers for many of its functions. For now, if you wish to try out the Galaxy S8 launcher and Bixby on your phone, head over to the source link to download the necessary files. The entire procedure is as simple as downloading the relevant APK files and installing them on your phone.

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Daily Deal: Save 25% on a Gear S2

Looking for a smartwatch, but aren’t too fussed about having the latest one on the market? Well, for a limited time only, you can pick up a Gear S2 for just $225.02 (25% off).

Although it’s a little over two years old, the Gear S2 is still a fantastic wearable, which sports accurate health tracking functionality and 4GB of on board storage (enough space to store up to 300 songs and a slew of applications and watchfaces).

If you like the sound of the Gear S2 and want to take advantage of this promotion, hit the Buy Now button below. Hurry, though, if you want be in with a chance of scoring yourself one, as the retailer only has a limited amount of inventory.

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Galaxy S8 pre-order customers in Canada will receive their orders early

Samsung confirmed last week that it’s going to release the Galaxy S8 on April 21. That’s when the new flagship is going to be out in a handful of markets including but not limited to the United States and Canada. However, it appears that several carriers in Canada are going to ship the Galaxy S8 early to those who pre-ordered the device.

According to a report, those who pre-ordered the Galaxy S8 or Galaxy S8+ on Telus, Rogers, Vidéotron and Bell will receive the new handset several days before the official release date. These carriers are reportedly going to deliver the new flagship by April 17.

It’s not uncommon for carriers to do something like this. Over the past few years, we’ve seen T-Mobile do something similar in the United States and it’s likely that Magenta might start shipping out Galaxy S8 units ahead of time this year as well.

Those who placed those pre-orders certainly won’t mind, after all, it’s not exactly fun having to wait for your new smartphone once you’ve placed the order.

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