Samsung Packs An 8-Core Processor Into Its New 5.5-Inch Galaxy A7 Smartphone

Last year Samsung released an eight-core version of the Galaxy S5, and now it has outed a dedicated octocore smartphone in its own right: the Galaxy A7.

Korean firm teased the phone in 2014 and showcased it last week, according to a report, but now it is official with dual 1.8GHz and 1.3GHz quad-core processors (or 1.5GHz and 1.0GHz in the dual-SIM version) and a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. Those eight cores are great for handling multiple tasks, on paper, and are backed up with 16GB of memory, 2GB of RAM and a large 2,600mAh battery.

There’s no word on launch dates, initial markets or pricing, although reports last week pegged it at around $420 off contract.

The phone runs Android KitKat and sports a 5.5-inch screen, making it larger than the Galaxy A3 and Galaxy A7 that were announced back in October. Like those two products, it is another slim, metallic bodied release from Samsung, which has long been criticized for using all-plastic bodies, including faux leather.

Samsung has again focused on appealing to cameraphone enthusiasts. There is a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. On the software side, the Galaxy A7 software that Samsung claims can take a ‘wide’ selfie, while ‘auto selfie’ lets narcissists snap themselves using “a voice command or even a simple wave of the hand” –selfie sticks be damned.

Samsung is also touting ‘Always Clear Voice Auto Control’ which reduces background noise in-call, multiple screen support for apps and a private mode that “adds an extra layer of security for important files and documents.”

The introduction of the Galaxy A3, A5 and A7 over the past few months is interesting: Samsung is diversifying its focus beyond its flagship Galaxy S and Note families. The company is bracing itself for its first profit drop in three years, and its latest Galaxy S5 and Note 4 don’t appear to be selling as well as previous models.

The Galaxy A3 and A7 were pretty focused on China but Samsung is birthing a new series of phones that offer something else to consumers. With a distinctly different design, marketing focus and lower prices, the Galaxy A series looks to be its Xiaomi-like effort at bringing a quality experience to the mid-range of the smartphone market.

Samsung releases mid-range Galaxy E5 and E7 with Android KitKat

Samsung has released two new mid-tier members of the Galaxy family, the Galaxy E5 and Galaxy E7. The twosome will make their debut in India alongside the full-metal-bodied Galaxy A3 and Galaxy A5.

The Galaxy E7, the larger of the pair, is a 5.5 inch Super AMOLED display device that somewhat surprisingly will ship with Android KitKat with Samsung's Touchwiz UI - though according to Sam Mobile will beupdated to Lollipop in the near future.

The Galaxy E7 has a 13 megapixel main camera and five-megapixel rear camera loaded up with lots of selfie features, including wide angle shots up to 120 degrees, voice command, palm gesture, and Samsung's post-shot touch-up features.

Other features include 16GB onboard storage with microSD support up to 64GB, 2GB RAM, a 2950mAh battery and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. It's powered by a 1.2GHz quad core processor but, unlike Samsung's higher end devices, the E7 doesn't have LTE support and, unlike its lower end devices, doesn't appear to have dual SIM support either.

The Galaxy E5 has a five-inch display and shares the same processor, storage, and RAM specifications as the E7 but has a smaller eight-megapixel rear camera and five-megapixel front camera as well as a lower capacity 2400mAH battery.

Samsung is doubling down on India with the two new smartphones, as the company is facing stiffer competition from local rivals that threaten its dominance in the country's fast growing smartphone market.

Samsung unveiled the devices alongside its launch in India of the Galaxy A5 and Galaxy A3, which it started shipping in some markets in the last quarter of 2014. Those devices were Samsung's first stab at producing handsets with a full metal unibody and have similar specifications to the E5 and E7 however also included LTE Category 4 support.

According to the Times of India, the Galaxy E5 will retail for Rs 19,300 ($305), while the Galaxy E7 will go for Rs 23,000 ($363) in the country and are expected to be available later in January.

The four new devices for the Indian market are priced well above recently launched devices aimed at first time smartphone buyers in the country, such as Micromax's new Yureka, which costs Rs 9000 ($140) and ships with CyanogenMod. Samsung will also be contending with new low-priced entrants such as China's Xiaomi and soon may have Asus' new dual-SIM ZenFone2 snapping at its heels.

India was the fastest growing smartphone market in the Asia Pacific region last quarter and, according to IDC, while Samsung still holds a dominant 24 percent share, its growth is not keeping pace with the likes of Karbonn, Lava and Micromax.

All Of Samsung’s New Smart TVs Will Run Its Tizen Operating System

In its latest attempt to make the operating system happen, Samsung announced today that all of its smart televisions will include a Tizen-based platform in 2015.

In theory, this means that the new smart TVs will be able to sync with other Samsung devices that use Tizen, the company’s own open-source operating system. For example, they can stream content over wi-fi or connect automatically by Bluetooth. In its announcement, Samsung said its “Tizen’s compatibility with other devices establishes Samsung’s Smart TVs as the control center of any Smart Home.”

This, of course, means that Samsung will have to drum up developer interest in the OS, which was first announced in 2012, but so far as failed to emerge as a viable competitor to Android.


That hasn’t stopped Samsung rolling out products use Tizen. The decision to build Tizen into all of its smart TVs isn’t a surprise because Samsung has previously said that the Tizen-based smart TV software development kit will replace its former smart TV developer platform.

Tizen is also used in smartphones like the Samsung Z and Galaxy Gear and Samsung Gear S smartwatches. The launch of the Samsung Z has been postponed, however, and the majority of Samsung’s products still use Android, so the future of Tizen as an ecosystem remains unclear.

Samsung squeezed past Apple in consumer satisfaction for smartphones

Apple may have owned Christmas, but Samsung won the year when it came to satisfying shoppers with its phones. The latest stats from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, which surveys 70,000 consumers every year, show Samsung slightly beating out Apple by two points with a satisfaction score of 81. Sure, it's not a huge lead, but it's a big jump for the company from last year's score of 76. Apple, meanwhile, saw its score fall more than two points since last year. It's always tough to read much into these numbers (was it the Galaxy S5 that helped, or just Android improvements?), but it's still a decent win for Samsung. Don't be surprised if Samsung ends up marketing the heck out of this during the Super Bowl.

It's not as if we didn't see this coming, either. Samsung also trounced Apple in smartphone consumer satisfaction in the middle of last year (before the release of the iPhone 5s). ACSI's overall satisfaction stats for 2013 still showed Apple leading Samsung by five points, but the two were neck and neck for much of the year. J.D. Power's satisfaction survey for 2014 ranked Apple as the leading smartphone brand for all major carriers, but even then, Samsung wasn't far behind.

So what does all of this really mean? Some shoppers might not have been happy with Apple's move into the big-phone arena with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. For buyers who were used to the svelte iPhone 5 and 5s, Apple's new devices might have been tough to get used to. Samsung, meanwhile, delivered its most feature-rich entry yet with the Galaxy S5. Its water-resistant case was ideal for the accident-prone, and it offered one of the first great cameras on an Android device. The battle for our affection from both companies will only be a good thing for consumers. It'll make them both focus on delivering devices that are actually useful, rather than just meaningless spec upgrades.

Samsung's new Milk VR to round up 360-degree videos for Gear VR

The Korean electronics conglomerate on Tuesday launched Milk VR, a service that will provide free 360-degree videos to anyone using a Gear VR virtual-reality headset, which launched as a limited "Innovator's Edition" earlier this month. The content is expected to dribble out on a consistent basis in an effort to get people coming back to the service.

Samsung wants Milk VR to be a rebuttal to those skeptical about the amount of content available for the Gear VR. The videos will also serve as a model for future filmmakers or artists looking to take advantage of the virtual-reality medium, as well as build up an ecosystem and viewership for VR content. Milk VR also sits alongside the Milk Video and Milk Radio services, dragging Samsung deeper into the content game.

"Video is like the Wild West in VR," said Nick DiCarlo, head of Samsung's VR business, in an interview earlier this month. "There are so many ways to shoot immersive video. Milk VR can play a wide range of content."

Samsung partnered with Facebook's Oculus to create a mobile-powered virtual-reality headset, which was part of a large announcement that included a smartwatch and the Galaxy Note 4 smartphone. The Gear VR went on sale on December 8 in the US, intended more for developers and artists looking to test the device, rather than a mainstream consumer device. The $199 headset requires a Galaxy Note 4, which acts as its brains, display and audio output.

DiCarlo said in the interview that he was looking at engagement, not unit sales, as his metric of success for Gear VR. He declined to say when he thought virtual reality would be embraced by the masses.

The company is looking at virtual reality as a potential growth engine at a time when one of its key traditional revenue sources -- smartphones -- has slowed down, taking with it a drop a profits. While Apple has maintained its leadership at the high end of the market with premium devices, Samsung's own Galaxy S5 hasn't performed as strongly as its predecessors. At the same time, the company is seeing competitive pressure from upstart rivals such as Xiaomi, which offer lower-cost phones with comparable -- or superior -- specifications.

Samsung looks to be betting big on virtual-reality content. DiCarlo said the company is paying for the videos that will run on Milk VR.

The service will offer the videos through downloads and "adaptive streaming options." It appears as an app that can be downloaded from the VR home screen.

Samsung Releases Look At Me, An App For Kids With Autism

Over the past few years, technology has given educators and the parents of autistic children tools they could never have imagined before. Mobile apps and games help kids learn communication skills, while virtual reality can potentially teach them how to cope in different social situations. Many of these tools are created by independent developers, but as autism diagnoses increase, large companies have also begun focusing on the neurodevelopmental disorder.

The latest tech company to come out with an autism tool is Samsung, which just released Look At Me, an Android app that it claims can help kids learn how to better maintain eye contact, something that many people with autism have difficulty doing.

The app’s launch comes a few weeks after Google and advocacy group Autism Speaks announced MSSNG , a project seeking to develop the world’s largest database of sequenced genomic information from people with autism spectrum disorder and their families, which will be stored on Google Cloud Platform and made accessible to scientists for use in their research. (MSSING was previously known as The Autism Speaks Ten Thousand Genomes Program). Meanwhile, Microsoft has offered coverage for applied behavior analysis to employees’ children since 2001.

While these initiatives certainly help bring tech companies good PR, they are also important because autism spectrum disorders remain poorly understood despite the growing number of diagnoses and many treatments and services are still prohibitively expensive for families and schools.

Look At Me, which is now available on Google Play, was developed by doctors and professors from Seoul National University Bundag Hospital and Yonsei University Department of Psychology. The app uses photos, facial recognition tech, and a series of games to help kids read emotions and communicate with other people. The team behind Look At Me conducted a clinical trial with 20 children for eight weeks, and claim that 60 percent of kids tested showed improvement in making eye contact.

Samsung and BlackBerry team up for better Android security

Samsung is tapping an unlikely source to tighten up its security offerings for enterprises:BlackBerry.

The two companies announced a new security-focused partnership Thursday that will bring BlackBerry's encryption system to businesses using Samsung's Galaxy smartphones.

Beginning early next year, Samsung will integrate BlackBerry's BES12 end-to-end encryption service, into its own Knox software. Knox, which Samsung licenses to enterprise customers, adds an extra layer of security to Android devices— though the service has been criticized for weak encryption.

“BlackBerry has developed a very close partnership with Samsung and we’re committed to deepening the interaction between our engineering and product development teams for the long-term,” John Sims, BlackBerry's President of Global Enterprise Services, said in a statement.

“It is a natural progression in our path to providing our customers with more alternatives to meet their evolving mobile needs. Samsung KNOX offers a number of hardware and software security features and our partnership allows us to tightly integrate these capabilities with BES12.”

The seemingly unlikely partnership stands to benefit both companies. Samsung will be able to provide enterprise users with better security, while the ever-struggling BlackBerry will expand its software reach to new customers who don't use BlackBerry devices.

Samsung will begin to offer the software in early 2015, but the company has not revealed details about pricing.

Samsung assures people that ‘Find My Mobile’ is perfectly safe

There have been recent reports that Samsung’s Find My Mobile service, which tracks and locks misplaced smartphones, was vulnerable to attacks from hackers. On its blog, Samsung not only announced that the service was patched, but that there is nothing to worry about.

According to Samsung, to hack Find My Mobile would require a specific set of circumstances to take place. Here’s how Samsung laid things out:
The attacker occupies a way to send a link containing malicious code.
The Find My Mobile user sets up Find My Mobile Remote control ‘ON’
The user enters his/her ID and password and logs on Find My Mobile website
The user clicks the link in e-mail/instant message/SMS sent by attackers

As can possibly be surmised, it seems to be a very specific set of circumstances that was unlikely to have affected many people. Even so, according to Samsung, no user information was compromised. The reported issue was patched on October 13, so Find My Mobile users don’t have much to fret about, other than losing their phones.

The Galaxy Note Edge and its cool curved screen is out on November 14

The Galaxy Note Edge is one of the most exciting phones we’ve seen this year. Its spec sheet closely resembles the Galaxy Note 4, but it comes with an always-on curved screen section down the right-hand side, spilling the display over the edge of the phone. It incorporates shortcuts, handy tools, and a notification bar. It
also means the Note Edge looks like no other phone on the market.

Updated on 11-03-2014 by Andy Boxall: Added in confirmation of the Note Edge’s release in America, plus details on its price and availability.

The unusual Note Edge is now ready to go on sale in America, and you’ll be able to buy it on November 14. Best of all, it’ll be sold through Samsung’s own stores in Best Buy, plus on the AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular networks. The Galaxy Note Edge was revealed in September, and initially thought to only get a limited release.

AT&T has confirmed it’ll be putting the phone up for pre-order on November 7, and that it’ll cost you $400 with a two-year contract. It’s not cheap, but you’re getting a phone that’s unlike anything else on the market. You could select an AT&T Next option instead. The Next 12 plan is $27.50 per month, or it’s $22.92 on Next 18.

If you’d prefer to buy the phone through Sprint, there’s no down payment with the network’s Easy Pay plan, provided you sign up to pay $35 per month for two years. It’s also quick to point out the Note Edge qualifies for its $60 per month unlimited plan.

T-Mobile and Verizon have both put up a pre-registration pages for the Note Edge, but haven’t published any pricing details yet. It’s all quiet over at U.S. Cellular, but expect details to be made public before November 14.
Hints of the Note Edge’s arrival spread from Japan

Japanese network NTT DoCoMo released its winter 2014 schedule showing which new smartphones would be sold over the coming months, and the most exciting addition to the catalog was Samsung’s Galaxy Note Edge. Proudly displayed on the DoCoMo website, the launch date was somewhere between late October and mid-November, depending on the color you choose.

Prior to this a report from Korea indicated Samsung would struggle to produce enough Galaxy Note Edge devices for a major launch, and that the phone would be a limited edition, perhaps only with a local release. This was also the impression given when the phone was revealed during the IFA show at the beginning of the month, and Samsung employed the same limited run strategy with the curved Galaxy Round.

UK online retailer Clove Technology stated the Edge wouldn’t be receiving much of a European release, and Samsung has said the device will get a release in Canada, after its U.S. launch. Samsung’s U.S. web portal has a promo page up for the Note Edge, ready for its arrival.

Scared of breaking your phone? Samsung offers an extended warranty program — for a price

No matter how well we take care of our smartphones, accidents still happen. While your brand new smartphone may come with a warranty, reading the fine print reveals that accidental damage is not covered. Even though there are multiple phone insurance services out there, including ones from your carrier, Samsung brought a new option to the table with its Protection Plus Mobile Elite extended warranty program.

The program covers all kinds of accidental damage, which can include drops, spills, and cracked screens. It also covers any electrical and mechanical failures, as well as other issues that might crop up. Samsung guarantees that if you break your device, it will be replaced in two business days or less. You can even file up to three claims over the two-year period.

However, the price of the extended warranty program could make people pause — it isn’t exactly cheap. For Galaxy S users, the program costs $100, while Galaxy Note users will have to cough up $130. In addition, you’ll need to pay a service fee of $75 or $95, respectively.

Currently, the extended warranty program is only available for the Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S5, and Galaxy S4. If you decide to pay for the program, you’ll have to wait 15 days for the warranty to go into effect. Make sure you don’t break your phone before then.

Android L could be coming to Galaxy S5, Note 4 as early as November

In the wake of iOS 8, the operating system that will power the soon-to-be-shipped iPhone 6, coverage of Android L has slowed to a crawl. Android L debuted over the summer to an overwhelmingly positive response, but as Google has been very deliberate about actually bringing the new OS to Android phones, many Android users have simply moved on with their lives. Thankfully, they might not have to

wait much longer.

According to SamMobile’s insiders, Samsung is planning to roll out Android L for the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 4 some time in November or early December. The Galaxy S5 has been available since April and we now know that the Galaxy Note 4 will hit store shelves on October 17th. Even though the wait has been substantial, it would be a reasonably quick turnaround for an Android update.

Rumors have begun to spread that the Nexus 9 will be one of the first devices to launch with Android L next month. If Google does unveil a Nexus 9 preloaded with Android L in October, the timeline might just add up for Samsung.

As it stands, Apple has an opportunity to run away with the holiday season if Google doesn’t intervene. The iPhone 6 is already on track to break every record the iPhone 5s set last year. Android L could be one way for Google (and Samsung) to plug the leak.