Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge Plus to be announced alongside each other in August
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Last week, we heard a rumour that said that Samsung would be announcing its Galaxy Note 5 phablet earlier than its IFA timeslot, moving it up around a month to try and trump the inevitably popularity of the new iPhones being announced in September. That’s not the only device that Samsung is rumoured to be announcing in the near future, and the latest rumour is saying that both the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, a larger version of the Galaxy S6 Edge, will be announced at an event sometime in mid August.
If this turns out to be true, it will be a sign of just how desperate Samsung is to gain not only market share, but to combat Apple on its own terms. Despite this, there are a lot of analysts that believe this would be a poor move on Samsung’s part as its possible the release of both these large form factor devices would cannibalize sales of both devices. All the same, we’re very interested to see whether this rumour turns out to be true as Samsung has obviously been reluctant to speak about this matter publicly.
What do you think about the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge Plus being announced at the same time? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Korea Herald via SamMobile
The post Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge Plus to be announced alongside each other in August appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
Be ready for Amazon Prime Day – it will be bigger than Black Friday!
Amazon is celebrating its 20th birthday this Wednesday, July 15th. The plan is to commemorate it with an explosion of deals the retailer claims will surpass those we typically see on Black Friday, the biggest shopping phenomenon in the USA. The special event is being referred to as Amazon Prime Day and it has the whole online shopping community going nuts; but there is one major caveat.
Amazon Prime Day is not for everyone. As its name entails, these seemingly spectacular offers will only be accessible to Amazon Prime subscribers. Those who want to take advantage of this exclusive sale will have to sign up for the $99/year service, which is a great deal if you consider it also grants access to free 2-day Prime shipping, Amazon Prime Instant Video streaming, access to Kindle books, unlimited Amazon Prime Photos cloud storage and more.
Signing up will still be a bit of a hassle for those who lack a Prime subscription, but there are some great ways to access Amazon Prime Day discounts without fully taking the plunge into the Amazon shopping ecosystem. The king of internet retailers does offer free trials to first-time users, and they plan to leverage these in order to possibly get more Prime customers in the future.
Want in on these great deals? You could test the service and enjoy them without paying a dime (at least until the trial period ends). Let’s show you how it’s done.
Start your 1-month Amazon Prime free trial
New users will have it easy once Amazon Prime day comes around. Everyone gets a 1-month free trial to Amazon Prime! All you have to do is head over to the Amazon Prime Free Trial page, click on “Start my free trial” and follow the on-screen instruction.
Sign up for Amazon Prime free 1-month trial
Users will be Prime members for a month and will be charged the subscription fee if they don’t cancel before the trial period is over. By the way, you can only sign up for this testing phase once. If you have used up your Amazon Prime free trial in the past, you will need to fork out the $99 this time around.
Are you a student?
If you are a student, you are in for a real nice treat. Amazon gives active students a 6-month free trial to Amazon Prime. To top it off, they also get a 50% discount after the trial period is over. You will need an .edu email address, but you should have no trouble obtaining one if you are part of any college or university.
Sign up for Amazon Prime free 6-month trial
Time to shop!
One of the main attractions at any shopping event is obviously the electronics deals. We are sure there will be plenty of Android and mobile-related goodies to buy at a discount, so be certain we will be all over these deals once we learn more details.
Make sure you are ready to get your free trial if you can, as July 15th is only a couple days away. If you no longer can, it will mean you have tested this service in the past and probably know how awesome Amazon Prime really is. It’s worth the $99 if you shop and use Amazon’s services constantly.
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Facebook security lead wants Adobe to say when it’s killing Flash
To put it mildly, Adobe’s Flash plugin has fallen from grace in recent years. BlackBerry, Google and other companies once thought it was crucial to the web, but you’ll now find many of these outfits going out of their way to avoid and contain Flash in the names of both security and promoting true standards. Need further proof that it’s a pariah? Just ask Facebook’s new security chief, Alex Stamos. He’s calling on Adobe to not only choose an “end-of-life date” for Flash, but to enable web browser “killbits” that shut it off for everyone at once. That’s the only way to “disentangle the dependencies” and get everyone to move on to more secure technology like HTML5, he argues.
It’s doubtful that Adobe will be quick to heed Stamos’ request any time soon given how many sites still depend on Flash. He certainly has some evidence in his favor, though. Numerous security exploits (such as those used by Hacking Team) revolve around Flash, and it’s no secret that the sandboxing features in some modern browsers are designed primarily to minimize the damage from Flash-related attacks and crashes. For Facebook, getting rid of Flash would eliminate many of the security threats against both you and the social network itself.
Filed under: Internet, Facebook
Via: Business Insider, The Verge
Source: Alex Stamos (Twitter 1), (2)
Authors call on the US to investigate Amazon’s book business
Just because Apple is on the hook for allegedly anti-competitive book sales doesn’t mean that Amazon is above reproach. As promised, groups representing both authors and booksellers are calling on the US Department of Justice to investigate Amazon for antitrust abuses. The Kindle maker is supposedly using its literary dominance to “impoverish the book industry,” hurt writers’ careers and even limit free expression. For example, the company is known to squeeze publishers who object to its pricing policies by withholding pre-orders and otherwise depriving these ‘enemies’ of income. There are also concerns that Amazon wrecks rival stores through unfair price dumping (that is, selling below cost) and refuses to carry some authors based purely on their politics or fame.
For its part, Amazon contends that it cares about books and that low prices are necessary to keep people reading. However, the critics don’t buy it. They insist that Amazon is only trying to protect its lead, and that the lower prices are strictly incidental. The industry groups certainly have a vested interest in this complaint — the publishers’ pricing deal with Apple was meant to get Amazon raising prices, after all. However, there’s no question that Amazon wields a disproportionately large amount of power. It accounts for more than a third of all paper book sales, and it’s responsible for up to 85 percent of some publishers’ sales outside of libraries. Some writers and sellers have little choice but to accept Amazon’s terms if they want to make a living, and that’s bound to create some regulatory concerns.
Source: New York Times
Inbox by Gmail prompts you to create a reminder when you try to email yourself
Google’s Inbox by Gmail apparently has a new feature: when you go to email yourself an important thought or task, the app will attempt to get you to create an actual reminder over sending yourself an email.
The prompt appears right after typing your email address in the “To” field. If you tap on the prompt, any text you’ve added in the subject and body of the email will be quickly transferred over to the reminder, and all you have to do is tap “Save.”
While it’s nothing ground breaking, it’s a cool little feature, and it makes a lot of sense, as Inbox already has some neat integration with reminders. However, it’d be nice to see Google go even further with this feature and offer it in Gmail itself.
source: Android Police
Come comment on this article: Inbox by Gmail prompts you to create a reminder when you try to email yourself
Microsoft’s 84-inch pen display isn’t going to ship on time
Looking forward to refreshing your office’s aging teleconference system with Microsoft’s 84-inch 4K collaborative pen display? You’ll have to wait: the company just announced that its $20,000 Surface Hub is going to miss its September 1st ship date.
According to a new blog post, the delay is a manufacturing issue. “We started taking pre-orders on July 1 and we’ve seen strong demand out of the gate,” wrote Microsoft Surface General Manager Brian Hall. “Based on the early interest we see, we’re tuning our manufacturing process to prepare for production at broader scale. To do this, we are adjusting our product roll-out schedule to ensure we deliver a great customer experience and set our partners up for success.” Microsoft hasn’t said exactly when it expects the oversized touch PC to ship, but plans to give customers an update early next month.
In the meantime, the company is still accepting pre-orders for both models: the $20,000 84-inch, 4K model with NVIDIA Quadro K2200 graphics as well as the $7,000 55-inch HD display, sporting a regular old Intel HD GPU.
Filed under: Displays, HD, Microsoft
Source: Microsoft
Walmart counters Amazon’s ‘Prime Day’ with its own sale
Walmart wasn’t about to let Amazon have all the fun. Not long after the online retailer announced its Prime Day sale, which is said to offer more deals than Black Friday, Walmart is saying that it will have discounts of its own online. According to USA Today, this month over 2,000 web-exclusive Rollback deals are expected to be available across multiple categories, including baby and home products as well as electronics and toys. In addition to this, Walmart’s also going to reduce the free-shipping order minimum from $50 to $35 for “at least” the next 30 days — and that’s starting next Monday. This isn’t the first time Walmart has tried to catch up to Amazon, though. Last year, the company started matching Amazon’s prices at brick-and-mortar stores, after it became apparent that the business was losing ground to its internet rival.
[Image credit: JeepersMedia/Flickr]
Filed under: Internet
Via: Entrepreneur
Source: USA Today
Apple Pay Officially Launches in the United Kingdom Today
Over the past several days, banks and merchants in the United Kingdom have been gearing up for the launch of Apple Pay, and as of today, Apple’s payments service will be officially available for use in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Apple Pay works at participating retail stores and within apps that accept it. Because it requires NFC, it is only available for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users, and Apple Watch users who have an iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, 6, or 6 Plus. In-app Apple Pay purchases can be made with an iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, iPhone 6, or iPhone 6 Plus.
According to Apple’s UK Apple Pay site, banks and credit card companies that are participating in the Apple Pay launch include American Express, First Direct, HSBC, Nationwide, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, and Ulster Bank. Additional banks like Barclays, MBNA, TSB, and more are expected to add support in the future.
More than 250,000 locations in the United Kingdom support Apple Pay as of today, ranging from fast food places like KFC and McDonald’s to shops like Boots, Marks & Spencer, and Waitrose. A full list of retail shops and apps that accept Apple Pay can be found on Apple’s website.
Apple Pay has been available in the United States since last October and today’s UK Apple Pay launch marks its first expansion. Apple is also rumored to be working on expanding the payments service to several other countries, including China and Canada.
Does Power Saving Mode actually result in better battery life on the Galaxy S6?
Various devices have power saving modes that are great for extending battery life. On the surface, they sound great because everyone wants to use their phones for as long as possible without having to sit next to a wall outlet while charging. Power saving modes can really limit what is possible in reality. So it may or may not be worth it, especially considering that the added time on batter life may not be worth it.
Note: Power Saving Mode is different than the more intense Ultra Power Saving Mode.
This test will be conducted with the Galaxy S6 Edge to show whether or not Samsung’s Power Saving Mode has a real advantage when activated.
I mostly use my phone for social media, web browsing on Chrome, and the camera here and there. In terms of outside connections, I have Bluetooth on at all times for my Gear 2 Neo with WiFi and GPS being activated when available and necessary. Although this test is being done with the Galaxy S6 Edge, the battery only differs from the Galaxy S6’s by 50mAh.
I used my phone normally in its regular full power mode and then switched to Power Saving Mode for the next day (after charging). I kept switching between these each day for eight days and what follows are my results. Again, I switched to the opposite mode after charging and not an actual 24-hour day as some days go past 24 hours.
Day 1: Full Power
On the first day, I decided to test on full power for a baseline. Totally normal day and normal use. I had been using Power Saving Mode before this and one of its changes include turning off the capacitive buttons. When I turned Power Saving Mode off, they never came back for some reason. I then toggled the switch on and off a few times and they eventually came back returned. I assume this is a bug, but figured I’d mention it in case the bug actually kept Power Saving Mode partially on.
Overall, I got pretty great battery life. It was actually the best battery life I have ever had with this phone so far.
Total time: 28hrs
Screen on time: 4hrs
Day 2: Power Saving Mode
This is the first Power Saving Mode day. I expected a little less battery just because yesterday was unusually long lasting for no apparent reason. However, due to the day running long, my charging time was different. This meant it went two nights before charging from lengthy standby time. The only good thing was my phone was now basically dead first thing in the morning making future testing more accurate.
Using Power Saving Mode here did add a few more hours of battery life with roughly the same screen on time.
Total time: 35hrs
Screen on time: 4hrs
Day 3: Full Power
The third day was a much better test as the phone was charged in the morning. Interesting enough, it lasted almost as long as the others. A little worse screen on time and lower total time.
Total time: 31.5hrs
Screen on time: 3.5hrs
Day 4: Power Saving Mode
Again, the phone was charged in the morning. I was trying to keep my use roughly the same each day so the only deciding factor is Power Savings Mode. It seemed to be adding a few more hours of life. On this day, however, I had to go out for hours on the eve of Canada Day. The time was noticeably less as it was not on WiFi and had bad signal for a few hours.
Total time: 25hrs
Screen on time: 4hrs
Day 5: Full Power
On Canada Day, I was out all day. Not the best signal and WiFi networks were few and far between. I took lots of pictures today between all of the traveling done for the holiday and there was much more use than standby time.
Screen on time was definitely lower with all of the activity. I would imagine this was because of the power-hungry camera that uses a ton of battery and switches the display’s brightness to its upper limit when turned launched.
Total time: 18hrs
Screen on time: 2.5hrs
Day 6: Power Saving Mode
Signal was a bit iffy on the sixth day and I was mostly on WiFi. I took a few pictures, but not as many as the previous day and did most of my work with Samsung’s Multi Window. Running two apps simultaneously on the display is sure to deplete battery life.
Total time: 15.5hrs
Screen on time: 3hrs
Day 7: Full Power
Multi Window was used a lot on the seventh day for work-related purposes. I had low cell signal for most of the day, but also mostly on WiFi overall. Other than that just a normal day with normal use.
Total time: 20hrs
Screen on time: 3hrs
Day 8: Power Saving Mode
This last day was more like the first couple of days where basically WiFi was used the entire day. Chrome and YouTube were the apps used most.
I could of “cheated” and not used it for a couple minutes longer, saving me battery and allowing it to have just enough to get though the night. It would of added an extra 8hrs of total time making the results to be around 20hrs total standby time. I decided that was pointless and I’d just do the extra couple google searches draining the battery into low range.
Just a quick bonus story. I ended up plugging it into a quick charger as I went to brush my teeth etc before I went to sleep. Obviously not that long, but when I came back and unplugged it the battery read 20%. It went up 15% in only a few minutes. Very impressive and giving me easily enough battery to last the night.
Total time: 13.5hrs
Screen on time: 4.5hrs
Close
Overall, the testing was pretty fair. I had a few days on each mode where I did nothing much all day and a few days where I’m working the phone’s processor.
Here are the totals:
Full Power
Standby Time: 97.5
Screen on Time: 13
Power Savings
Standby Time: 89
Screen on Time: 15.5
Interesting results, right? I expected Power Savings to be ahead in standby time and only a little difference in screen on time, but the results show the opposite. In a normal week, I actually got more standby time with full power, but, despite that, a few more hours of screen on time with Power Saving Mode on.
However, on the eighth day, which was a Power Saving Mode day, I did say that it would have been possible for me to get roughly 7-8 hours more standby time, thus making the standby time on both about equal. Personally. I think over a month the results would become very similar. It seems much more dependent on how you use your phone overall.
In terms of actual use, I didn’t notice much difference when Power Saving Mode was on. The phone felt basically the same with only the buttons losing sensitivity. A few other differences is the home screen apps refresh a little more often when exiting an app and the camera launches a little bit slower.
Due to the added battery life, I’d recommend using Power Saving Mode most of the time; the results show it can really go either way. The only time I definitely don’t recommend having it on is when you are playing high-powered games or apps that would use lots of power. Another time to keep it off is if you are using the camera to take shots of things that are moving whether it be cars, animals, or children. I was in a car trying to take pictures of rare cars driving around me and Power Saving Mode added just a touch of delay when you press the capture button. I would always end up only getting part of or totally missing the car because of this. Very frustrating and a mistake I won’t make again.
Are the results what you expected? Tell us in the comments below.
Come comment on this article: Does Power Saving Mode actually result in better battery life on the Galaxy S6?
Diving into Android M: what else is new in Preview 2?
Last week Android M Developer Preview 2 arrived on scene. That very day I released our first “Diving into M” post for the second preview, which highlighted the changes to the launcher and the ability to now edit the status bar with the Tuner UI tool in the developer options.
While I had planned to create more follow-up posts, I quickly realized that most of the changes that had been discovered were pretty small and so the decision was made to play with it throughout the weekend before summing up everything that has visibly changed all in one post — while also commenting a bit on what’s not visible.
Want to dive even deeper? Check out our full “Diving into M” series by clicking here.
As we’ve already mentioned before, the Android M Developer Preview 2 is less about showing off new changes and more about (near) finalizing the many new APIs coming with Android M so developers can test them out prior to the final release. After all, this is a developer preview.
That said, there are some changes. Let’s start by talking about the under the hood stuff.
Stability, performance, and battery life
It has to be said that, even from day one, Android M’s stability was considerably better than we saw with L. This makes sense considering Lollipop was a big departure from KitKat, while M is more a minor evolution of what was started with Lollipop. With the new preview, stability only gets better.
I used my Nexus 5 as my daily driver the entire weekend and ran into virtually no problems. Not only was my experience with the phone smoother, battery life seemed better than it had with Lollipop and — while it might have been in my head — seemed better than it had in the first preview as well. How much better depends on how heavily it is used, but I will tell you that with Android Lollipop I generally found myself going to bed with 3 to 9% battery life on average. With M, it’s been around 15 to 18%, and this weekend it is has been slightly better than that (around 15 to 20%).
Bottom-line, Android M is shaping up to be a very stable, efficient build and should hopefully have considerably less bugs and other day-one issues than we saw with Lollipop. Considering Lollipop still is riddled with bugs and performance issues, we are really excited to see that M is taking a step forward here.
As for what’s new in the Android M Developer Preview 2? Here’s what all we found (in addition to the previously mentioned launcher and status bar changes):
Memory Manager UI gets reworked
One of the changes found in the original M Preview was an improved memory manager that added several new features including a way to better see how much RAM each of your apps was using.
Finding the setting in M originally required you to take several steps, but in Preview 2 it is more prominently found in its own “Memory” tab right in the Settings screen. Beyond that, the UI has also been cleaned up considerably making it much more pleasant to use than before.
Deleting screenshots from within notification tray
Each time you take a screenshot in Android (4.0 and higher), you’ll get a notification in your tray letting you know it has been saved. With Android M Developer Preview 2, however, there’s now also an easy way to delete them as well.
It’s a simple, minor change but still a welcome one for those times when you accidentally take a screenshot at the wrong moment or simply decide not to keep it.
No more dark theme
Dark theme is no longer in Preview 2.
The new (optional) dark theme in Android M was one of the first things we noticed when diving into the developer options for the test build. It was nice to finally have another option aside from the very bright standard UI. Unfortunately, it is no longer present in the second preview.
The removal of the feature just goes to show you that test builds don’t always give an accurate picture of what to expect from final software. Is the dark theme gone forever? Hard to say. It’s possible that they were merely testing it and decided it wasn’t worth keeping. Or dark theme might not be fully ready for prime time and was removed in preview 2 to further fix it up for a final release. Only time will tell for sure.
Wrap up
As you can see, there’s not much for new features here. There are a few other minor changes like the addition of a Google on Tap option in Google settings (but it does nothing at this stage), a slight change to “Storage” (now Storage & USB), but let’s remember that Android M’s big goal was about polish and that’s exactly what we are seeing with Android M’s second preview.
What do you think of Android M in general, both the first and second preview? For those that have tried the second preview, have we missed anything noteworthy?
AIVAnet 