Samsung Pay rumoured to launch in China, Spain, and the UK in early 2016
Samsung Pay launched in South Korea and the US earlier this year, and it’s been going great guns, already notching up more than 1 million users in Samsung’s home market. Besides the possibility of becoming available for more brands in the future, it seems that Samsung has its eyes on expanding its mobile payments system to other regions as well.
According to a report by SamMobile, Samsung is planning on launching Samsung Pay in China, Spain and the UK in the first quarter of 2016, which would tie in nicely with the marketing campaign for the upcoming Galaxy S7 and S7 edge handsets.
Currently, only the Note 5, Galaxy S6 edge+, Galaxy S6 edge, and Galaxy S6 smartphones are compatible with Samsung Pay, with the Tizen-powered Gear S2 smartwatch only supporting payments via NFC. Samsung Pay’s main attraction is its ability to work with regular terminals thanks to the payment system’s MST technology which allows it to mimic magnetic card swipes.
Source: SamMobile
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Amazon’s pre-Black Friday deals will start November 20 and last for eight days, company says
Amazon has been advertising its early Black Friday deals for some time now, but the company has just announced an additional eight days of Black Friday deals that are set to start or November 20, this upcoming Friday. Keep in mind, these deals aren’t like Amazon’s prior deals–they’re actually looking very good so far.
Starting on November 20, Amazon will be adding new deals every five minutes for the eight days this sale will go on for. However, this promotion will go beyond Black Friday, with Amazon planning on putting a big focus on mobile shopping. The online retailer plans on offering exclusive discounts through the Amazon app, which are set to start on Thanksgiving day and run through December 8. You can get an idea of a small fraction of what Amazon will be offering at the source link below.
Additionally, Amazon will be letting users take advantage of a new featured called “Watch a Deal.” This will allow consumers to pick a deal they’re interested in, and then will be notified as soon as the products are about to go on sale.
Get your wallets ready, folks. This one’s going to be a good one!
source: Amazon
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Apple Launches Magnetic Apple Watch Dock for $79
Following a handful of leaked images yesterday, TechCrunch has confirmed that Apple has launched an official Apple Watch magnetic charging dock today for $79.
German blogger Benjamin Scholtysik managed to get his hands on the official dock from the Apple Store in Berlin, but the accessory does not appear to be on the Apple Online Store or stocked at Apple Retail Stores in the United States yet.
The dock cost €89 in the Berlin Apple Store and allows users to charge the Apple Watch both flat and in Nightstand mode. The accessory also comes with a 2M lightning cable that attaches to the base of the dock to provide charge to the MagSafe adapter at its center. Scholtysik posted an unboxing and impressions video of the dock on his YouTube channel (via 9to5Mac), showcasing the packaging of the accessory and detailing the way it transforms from a flat orientation into Nightstand mode.
It remains unclear when the new first-party product will make its way to the Apple Online Store and Apple Retail Stores in the U.S. in other countries. With the holiday shopping season kicking into high gear in just over a week, it makes sense for the company to add the accessory to its retail locations and online options in time for new Apple Watch owners this holiday.
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Horror game ‘The Park’ creeps onto consoles in 2016
The Park, a dark thriller about a child lost in an amusement park, was not everybody’s cup of tea when it came out for the PC on Halloween. But we certainly had fun with the messed-up, H.P. Lovecraft-style story, and other players must have too, because it’s now coming to the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. Developer Funcom said it was “encouraged by the positive reactions we have received on the Windows PC version.” As a reminder, you play the game as a distraught mother seeking her son in a decrepit amusement park. The atmosphere is over-the-top creepy, but are the scares real or in her paranoid mind? If you want to play on console, you’ll find out in early 2016.
Via: Eurogamer
Source: Funcom
The freedom to explore most open-world games is a lie
Open-world games aren’t going away anytime soon, but more often than not when we play them we’re being led around by a breadcrumb trail instead of actually exploring. Sometimes even quite literally. The reasoning for that is because it’s much easier for game developers to stick a mini-map or quest directions in the heads up display than it is to integrate means of navigation into the game world itself. It’s a topic YouTuber Mark Brown knows well and he’s taking it for a spin in developer Bethesda Softworks’ sprawling Fallout 4. In his latest entry into his Game Maker’s Toolkit series he explains why he’s turning off the quest markers in Fallout‘s irradiated Boston and trying to let his nose lead the way, so to speak.
Source: Mark Brown (YouTube)
Samsung announces BRITECELL smartphone image sensor
Speaking at its 2015 Investors Forum, Samsung has revealed details about its new BRITECELL camera technology. The technology is expected to appear in future smartphones, possibly even the Galaxy S7.
BRITECELL is designed to improve performance in low light environments, as the name implies, by building on the company’s ISOCELL technology and resulting in less color artifacts. Oddly enough, Samsung says that it can accomplish this with smaller pixel sizes. The pixel size shrinks from 1.12um to 1.0um, resulting in a 17 percent reduction in module height and an increase in density up to 20 megapixels, all while allowing for similar low light sensitivity at 1.12um. With smartphones becoming thinner and lighter, there is an aesthetic need for Samsung to make its camera modules smaller.
The main improvements to light capture appears to come from changing the pixel arrangements, rather than their size. Samsung intends to do away with the traditional Bayer filter layout, replacing the green pixels with white ones. By removing the filter layer over the green pixels, more light will enter the sensor. Samsung’s ISCOCELL technology prevents light bleed between cells here, but processing will be needed to compensate for the different colors.
Samsung also has some improved image processing technology heading our way too. Smart WDR is designed to further increase a picture’s dynamic range by using multiple exposures, similar to how HDR software features work in many camera apps. Phase Detection Autofocus also makes an appearance in Samsung’s latest sensor technology, which allows for faster focusing using light detection in some of the sensor’s pixels. We have already seen PDAF appear in a number of new flagship smartphones that are powered by Sony’s latest Exmor RS sensors.
Samsung did not specifically mention any products that would be using its new BRITECELL technology, although it does appear destined for smartphones. Some rumors have already speculated that Samsung will debut this sensor in the Galaxy S7, much like it made use of its own ISOCELL sensors for the Galaxy S5.
Along with its new image sensor, Samsung also announced a ‘Bio Processor’ designed for wearable products. More specifically, the processor is designed around health tracking, packing heart rate, electrocardiogram, skin temperature and other processing components into a single SoC package.
As a result of these optimization, the chip fits into an 80 percent smaller space and consumes 50 percent less power, compared with using individual discrete components. Given that wearable product are limited in internal space and battery capacity, this chip could prove popular in future devices. Samsung also reckons that the automotive and gaming industries will also be interested in its Bio Processor, and that the information collected from these sensors could even be used in a security system to identify individuals.
Samsung stated that it is in talks with several companies to make use of its Bio Processor for wearables. We can probably expect to see Samsung’s latest processors and image sensors appear in consumer products next year.
Google Photos update helps free up precious phone storage
Running out of storage space on a phone is a major pain point that affects millions of Android users across the world. Google understands that, and has come up with a simple solution that helps free up storage space on one’s phone.
Google has pushed a major update for Google Photos, which introduces two new features to the gallery app. While one feature helps free up space from your phone’s internal storage, the other allows users to downgrade previously uploaded “Original” images to “High quality”.
First up, Google has introduced the “Free up space” feature, accessible from within the app’s settings menu. Simply activate the feature and Google Photos will remove from your device copies of photos and videos that have already been backed up on the cloud. Alternatively, Google can keep a close eye on when phone’s storage space runs low, and then proceed to remove backed up copies of photos and videos that are older than 30 days.
Users can still access their entire media collection from within the Google Photos Android or iOS apps, or using the web app, as long as they are connected to the internet.
Version 1.9 of the Google Photos app also introduces a simple way to downgrade all your original quality photos, which you have uploaded before, to compressed high quality photos. Before this update, users had no way to have their previously uploaded photos get compressed to the smaller “high quality” standard. Do keep in mind that storing original quality photos still count against your storage space, whereas high quality photos have free unlimited storage.
Apart from adding these two features, the updated Google Photos app fixes a bug that prevented users from deleting photos stored on the microSD card, resulting in a frustrating experience for users who would continue to see photos in the gallery despite having deleted them.
Previous updates to Google Photos added features such as Chromecast support, labels and sharing, etc. The gallery app was originally released in May 2015, and has since surpassed 100 million active users, a metric that’s even more relevant than app downloads.
The latest version of Google Photos for Android is already rolling out, and is coming soon to iOS.
Marshmallow coming to LG G3 next month
While LG is still struggling to properly rollout Android 6.0 for its current flagship, the G4, the South Korean company is already planning to bring Marshmallow’s sweetness to the G3 by mid December.
According to a report published on a Polish website, the update is already in the last stage of testing and it is likely to be available to LG G3 users in Poland between 16th and 18th December. The report cited a tweet by Polish LG executive Jaroslaw Bukowski, who confirmed that the update was being prepared.
If you remember, LG had to halt Android M update for the G4 in Poland last month after running in to some technical issues. Earlier, the company had incessantly bragged about being the first non-nexus company to bring Android 6.0 update to its devices. The G4 is receiving Marshmallow in South Korea, but there is still no word as to when the update become available globally.
Source: Tablaty.pl
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The HTC One M9s launches in Taiwan with a MediaTek SoC and Sapphire camera lens in tow
In case you were thinking that HTC’s range of handsets made too much sense, the Taiwanese handset manufacturer has just announced a new model in its One line-up. The new handset is called the One M9s, and is, for the moment, aimed purely at Taiwan. The main takeaway from the One M9s is that uses a MediaTek processor along with a Sapphire protected rear camera lens.
The HTC One M9s appears to be another mish-mash of components used in other models, using the same metal unibody as the original M9, but sporting a 13MP rear camera with OIS( optical image stabilisation) formerly seen in the M9+ Supreme Camera edition. Instead of using the Snapdragon 810 chip, the M9s switches over to the same MediaTek Helio X10 processor seen in other One variants, most recently the HTC One A9 (reviewed here). We have the rest of the specifications below:
- 5-Inch Full HD display
- MediaTek Helio X10 Octa-core processor @ 2.2GHz
- 2GB RAM
- 16GB Internal storage
- MicroSD card support (up to 2TB)
- 13MP Rear camera with BSI sensor, OIS, f/2.0 aperture and Sapphire glass lens
- 4MP UltraPixel front camera
- HTC BoomSound
- WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz & 5GHz)
- NFC/ Bluetooth 4.1/ GPS/GLONASS/ Beidou
- Battery: 2,840mAh (non-removable)
- Dimensions: 144.6 x 69.7 x 9.61mm
- Weight: 158 grams
The HTC One M9s is available to pre-order in Taiwan for NT$12,900 (around $390), with shipping scheduled to start from November 21. As yet, it’s unknown whether the HTC One M9s will launch in other regions.
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Details emerge on accessories for the upcoming Galaxy S7 and S7 edge
We are smack in the middle of November, and already there are numerous dates being bandied about guessing when Samsung will announce the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge handsets, with February being favoured as the most likely. The speculation was fuelled further by the news that Samsung had begun developing firmware for the two handsets, and with the alleged rumour that AT&T is already testing the S7. While details about the actual handsets are a little sketchy, today’s leak brings us some news about the accessories for the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge.
According to SamMobile, Samsung will launch four different covers for the upcoming Galaxy S7 handsets, consisting of the following:
- Glitter Cover
- S View Cover
- Clear Cover
- Keyboard Cover
It’s difficult to imagine the Keyboard Cover working well on a 5.1-inch display, so either the S7 will be sporting a slighter larger screen or Samsung has reworked the Keyboard Cover to be less conspicuous.
Source: SamMobile
Come comment on this article: Details emerge on accessories for the upcoming Galaxy S7 and S7 edge
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