Samsung Pay is already proving popular in Korea
Samsung Pay may only have launched in Korea last week, but the mobile payment service is already proving highly popular, according to sources in the South Korean credit card industry. The service apparently logged 10,000 credit and check card registrations on its launch day, which jumped up to around 80,000 cards within the following four days.
According to sources, Samsung Pay is proving particularly popular due to its simplicity and the fact that it can be used with a broad range of existing card readers. While mobile payment methods aren’t new in the country, most rely on NFC-enabled terminals in order to function. Less than 25 percent of affiliated stores work with NFC technology, resulting in stunted adoption. Samsung Pay works with both NFC and existing magnetic strip readers, meaning that almost every payment terminal will work with Samsung’s technology.
“Since Samsung Pay is an MST-enabled service, it can be used in most affiliated stores. I think that it played a decisive role in attracting users.”
Furthermore, customers are apparently happy about the use of a smartphone fingerprint scanner, both for security purposes but also for ease of use. Competing services such as app cards, which use bar and QR codes for payments, have had some success in Korea, but are said to be rather complicated to setup and use.
Samsung Pay is compatible with the Galaxy Note 5, S6, S6 Edge and Edge+ smartphones. The two most recent handsets in the range are said to be off to a strong start in South Korea, partly due to the introduction of Samsung Pay. More than 100,000 handsets had been sold in the country just four days after the products launched.
Read More: Video demo: here’s how Samsung Pay will work in stores
Samsung will be bringing its mobile payment method to other countries in the coming months. The US is next, with a launch date scheduled for September 25th, and Samsung has confirmed that the service will be coming to Europe too, but has not specified a release time frame yet.
Impoverished ‘Star Wars’ company to hold merchandise telethon
Things are clearly tough over at Disney headquarters. Having only grossed $2 billion from Avengers: Age of Ultron and Inside Out, the company needs your help to stay afloat. It has something called Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens coming out this December, and to help raise funds it’s planning an 18-hour marketing marathon to push products related to the little-known movie. This September 3rd, the company will unveil merchandise in “the world’s first-ever global live toy unboxing event,” which will apparently play out like a “New Year’s Eve style celebration” across 12 countries.
Just like New Year’s, Sydney will be the first city to play host to a person opening an action figure in front of a camera, before the show heads on a whirlwind tour of the globe taking in cities including Tokyo, Paris, London, New York and San Francisco. 15 products will be revealed across 15 locales, with popular YouTube unboxers like EvanTubeHD doing the unwrapping. At the end of what Disney describes as “the global fanfare,” toy retailers around the world will open up their doors at midnight to satiate rabid fans’ desires for BB-8 plushes. “Fans are encouraged to document their experiences around the event on social media using the hashtag #ForceFriday,” says Disney, while alerting its bank of a large incoming transfer.
Tags: disney, merchandise, starwars, toy, unboxing
Amazon UK will waive delivery fees if you pick your order up
In order to be eligible for “free” Amazon deliveries, you either need to spend £20 for Super Saver Delivery or jump aboard the £79 Prime train. From today, though, Amazon has another shipment option it’d like to run by you. The company has decided to waive delivery fees for orders sent to one of its Pickup Locations, saving you money while letting you collect your packages at a more convenient time.
The idea isn’t new, but getting it for free is. Plus it’s now available to all customers. If you’re at work or continually miss the post, choosing to have an order delivered to Pickup Location like a rail, tube or petrol station, newsagent or Post Office would normally incur an additional delivery charge based on weight (Prime members get it free). Now, you either have to spend £10 on book or £20 on anything else from Amazon’s store to be eligible for a free pickup.
Amazon says: “For many people, collecting from an Amazon Pickup Location is the delivery option of choice. Our customers were telling us that free delivery to a Pickup Location would be a great value service and we agree.” Makes sense for people who can’t stay home to collect their deliveries, but it also puts less pressure on its Logistics team to make door-to-door dropoffs. With over 13,000 Pickup Locations available, free deliveries might change the way some Amazon customers shop online.
Filed under:
Household, Internet, Amazon
Source:
Amazon UK
Tags: amazon, delivery, pickup location, post office, prime
LG’s non-curved 4K OLED TVs are finally here
LG is finally ready to sell the OLED 4K TVs it revealed in January, including the first ever flat models. The Korean company has invested huge sums in OLED tech, believing that consumers will be drawn in by the improved black levels, better off-axis viewing angles and more saturated colors. We’re pleasantly surprised to learn that the two flat UltraHD models (in 65- and 55-inch sizes) also have HDR capability with improved color range — provided you have content that supports it. If you’re more into curved 4K OLEDs, there’s a new 55-inch model, bringing the total number of LG OLED 4K TVs to nine.
Other features on all the new sets include ultra-thin panels (the 55-inch models are thinner than any smartphone, the company said), minuscule bezels, the webOS 2.0 smart TV platform and Harman/Kardon speakers. There’s no word on pricing yet, but the TVs will be available in Europe and the US by the end of the month. LG will also show off the TVs at IFA 2015 in Berlin, and we expect that they’ll reveal a bunch of new models as well.
Filed under:
Home Entertainment, LG
Source:
LG
Tags: 4K, HDR, IFA2015, lg, OLED, TV, UltraHD
Sony will launch the Xperia C5 Ultra Dual in India later this week
If you’re a selfie addict and you live in India, you may want to listen up as Sony has just announced it will launch its latest selfie-focused smartphone, the Xperia C5 Ultra, in the region later this week. The handset will carry a price tag of Rs. 29,990 ($450) and will be available in black, white and soft mint colorways.
Seeing as this is model of the C5 Ultra is targeted at the Asian market, it will have dual-SIM compatibility on board. All other specifications remain identical to the original model, meaning the handset will pack a 6-inch Full HD display, a 1.7GHz octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, a 13MP rear-facing camera, a 13MP front-facing shooter and a 2,930mAh battery.
The device will run the latest version of Lollipop straight out of the box, but is expected to receive the Marshmallow upgrade when Sony starts distributing it next year.
If you’re based in India, like the sound of the Xperia C5 Ultra and would like to find out more about bagging one — hit the source link below.
Source: Sony
Come comment on this article: Sony will launch the Xperia C5 Ultra Dual in India later this week
Samsung executive teases Gear S2 smartwatch
We all know that the Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch is on its way, thanks to the official pictures and previous leaks about the device. Today, Samsung mobile executive Dennis Miloseski posted a nice close-up of the smartwatch to Instagram, to fuel our appetite for a new gadget.
The picture treats us to a nice close up of what appears to be a metal frame around the display, which certainly looks rather nice. We can also spot a couple of buttons on the side of the Gear S2, perhaps to assist with navigating through the OS, which I’m assuming will be Tizen rather than Android Wear. Miloseski doesn’t say much else along with the picture, other than that he’s “Giving the new Samsung Gear S2 a test drive”.
In case you missed it, Samsung also posted the following video teaser earlier in the month. The clip gives us a little look at what we can probably expect from the software that will ship with the Gear S2. There are references to health, weather, calls, and plenty of other features.
We don’t know too much else about the smartwatch at this point, but we have also seen the smartwatch appear in a few fashion shots. Fortunately, Samsung will be unveiling the Gear S2 in Berlin at IFA on Thursday, September 3rd. There isn’t very long left to wait for all of the juicy details.
These could be the specifications for the new LG Nexus 5
We have seen plenty of leaked images of the highly anticipated LG Nexus, but hardware specifications have been much harder to come by. Until today that is, as a leaked hardware table from a prototype handset has shown up to give us a look at what might be powering the smartphone.
A lot of the table is a match for some of the very earliest rumors about the handset. There’s apparently a hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 SoC and 3GB of LPDDR3 memory forming the basis of the handset. The phone is also expected to feature a 13 megapixel IMX278 image sensor, along with optical image stabilization and LG’s laser auto-focus technology. The fingerprint scanner that was previous spotted in pictures is also listed.
The LG Nexus is expected to be the smaller of the two upcoming Nexus handsets, the other being designed by Huawei. This table suggests a reasonably sized 5.2-inch display with a 2K resolution. Overall, the hardware looks to be quite similar to LG’s existing G4 flagship, but with a few subtle changes.
See also: LG Nexus supposedly pictured in the wild
If true, these specifications are quite comparable to existing flagships on the market, although this means that these new Nexus phones may have a high price tag to match. Even so, the inclusion of a better camera and extras like the fingerprint scanner might make the new 5.2-inch Nexus a suitable upgrade for previous generation Nexus 5 owners. Are you tempted by the LG Nexus 5?
Self-driving trucks to be used for highway construction in Florida
Autonomous trucks will soon be used at highway construction sites in Florida, and unlike Daimler’s big rig that still needs someone behind the wheel, these ones are completely driverless. The truck was developed by Pennsylvania company Royal Truck & Equipment under a Department of Transportation pilot program. According to the company, there are three ways to control it: via GPS Waypoint navigation, through a remote control and via leader/follower programming. Since it’s pretty common for motorists to slam into trucks used for highway construction, the rigs will be equipped with a special crash barrier called attenuators, which you can see in the image above.
These barriers are actually the reason why Royal pushed for a completely driverless system: yes, they can save both motorists and workers, but they’ll put the driver’s life in danger in case of an accident. The company showed off its technology on Monday in its home state and is expected to deploy the trucks in Florida by the end of 2015.
Filed under:
Transportation
Tags: autonomous, driverlesstruck
There’s a new Tesla Model S long-distance record: 452.8 miles
There’s a reason this guy’s so popular. Bjorn Nyland might be familiar to readers because he just earned himself a free Tesla Model X by successfully getting ten people to buy a Model S. He was able to promote the all-electric car so well because he’s been doing it for ages. He’s proven the capability of the S by taking it 233 miles on a charge even in the deepest, darkest Norwegian winter. He also knows how to wring a lot more miles out of an electric car when the weather’s warm. A little over 452 miles, to be exact.
Decked out in a Model S with a “Slow” sticker on the rear end, Nyland and his friend Morgan Tørvolt drove for 18 hours and 40 minutes at an average speed of just 24.2 miles per hour (ouch) to get 452.8 miles out of their battery pack. They started and ended at the Supercharger station in Rødekro, Denmark. That’s an extreme bit of hypermiling that I think throws down the challenge gauntlet to Wayne Gerdes or anyone else who wants to see just how far a big EV with two people inside can go. Unsurprisingly, the duo did the drive in a P85D, which has an 85-kWh battery pack, the biggest Tesla currently sells. A P90D model is on the way, so we’ll open up the floor to comments to see how many miles you think can be be stretched out of an extra 5 kWh. Pure math would say Nyland and Tørvolt got 5.3 more miles per kWh, which would translate to 26.5 more miles. Somehow we think that’s a floor, not a ceiling.
The previous record for hypermiling an 85-kWh Model S was set by the father-son duo of David and Adam Metcalf in last 2013. Their record was 423.5 miles. The Metron 7 team took their modified all-electric Mazda minivan 513.3 miles on one charge, but that was using a 108-kWh pack.
Filed under:
Transportation
Via:
Teslarati
Source:
Bjørn Nyland (YouTube)
Tags: autoblog, bjornnyland, hypermiling, ModelS, morgantorvolt, p85d, partner, syndicated, tesla, tesla p85d, video
Humble Bundle adds three more titles to its Humble PC & Android Bundle 13
Last week Humble Bundle launched its latest ‘pay what you want’ deal which put seven fantastic Android and PC games up for grabs. However, if that wasn’t enough to tickle your fancy, the team have now added three more titles to the lineup, in addition to four great soundtrack albums.
The full list of games included in Humble PC & Android Bundle 13 can be seen below, the latest additions being the last three:
- Crimsonland
- Neverending Nightmares
- Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians
- FOTONICA
- TinyKeep
- Crowntakers
- Monster Loves You!
- Secret of the Magic Crystals
- Strata
- Doodle God
While users can pay any price they want to get their hands on the latest Humble Bundle deal, they will have to beat the average price of $2.99 to gain access to all ten games and the four albums. If they choose to give a donation lower than the medium, they will only get access to the following four titles: Crimsonland, Neverending Nightmares, Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians and FOTONICA.
Source: Humble Bundle
Come comment on this article: Humble Bundle adds three more titles to its Humble PC & Android Bundle 13
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