Samsung is blowing out its official S9, S9+ and Note 8 cases for as low as $10

Find a new case for your phone at a hefty discount.

If you’re a current owner of a Samsung Galaxy S9 or S9+ device, Samsung has a blow out sale going on right now taking the price of some of its official cases for those devices down to as low as $10 each. As these cases start at $30 normally, this offer is saving you at least $20 no matter which case you choose. There are even a few Galaxy Note8 cases available in this sale. Shipping is free on all orders.

This isn’t the only great offer Samsung has available right now either. It’s also giving customers a free ChromeBook 3 and microSD card with purchases of an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S9 or S9+ device. So if you’re still rocking the Note8, this would be the perfect time to make the switch.

The cases available in today’s sale include:

• Galaxy S9: Silicone Cover, Gray for $9.99 (was $30)
• Galaxy S9+: Silicone Cover, Gray for $9.99 (was $30)
• Galaxy S9+: Hyperknit Cover, Red for $14.99 (was $35)
• Galaxy Note8: Alcantara Cover, Black for $9.99 (was $30)
• Galaxy Note8: Protective Cover, Black for $14.99 (was $35)
• Galaxy Note8: Rugged Protective Cover, Black for $24.99 (was $50)

With prices like these, it’d be surprising for these cases to stay in stock for very long. Head over to Samsung today to grab one yourself before they’re all gone.

See at Samsung

These awesome retro game cabinets are available at a $101 discount when you pre-order

Got a quarter?

What was your game of choice as a kid? The one you pumped all your change into? The one where you actually had to travel to it just to play, instead of simply turning on your TV? Play it again and forever with one of the Arcade 1Up gaming machines. Each one has a selection of classic arcade games and an outer decor with logos and art. Pick the one with your favorite game or buy them all and laugh maniacally when you realize you don’t have to pump quarters in to keep playing.

Pre-orders start now but the cabinets don’t release until September 25. Arcade 1Up plans to release five cabinets total. If you want to buy one, you’ll want to be looking at Walmart. There you can find four of five currently available for pre-order at $299. GameStop is selling the cabinets, too, but for $399.99.

• Street Fighter cabinet: Street Fighter II Champion Edition, Street Fighter II Turbo, and Street Fighter II The New Challengers (Walmart/GameStop)

• Centipede cabinet: Centipede, Crystal Castles, Missile Command, and Atari Millipede (Walmart/GameStop)

• Asteroids cabinet: Asteroids, Tempest, Major Havoc, and Lunar Lander (Walmart/GameStop.

• Rampage cabinet: Rampage, Gauntlet, Joust, and Defender (Walmart/GameStop)

That last one is my personal favorite because it has the game I spent most of my time playing – Joust. Love that game. Heck, if I ever find my way to an arcade bar these days it’s the game I still play the most. Stupid pterodactyls.

Each cabinet has a 17-inch LCD screen, licensed artwork, and controls for multiplayer. These aren’t exactly full-sized arcade cabinets, coming in at 45.8 x 23 x 19 inches and weighing 63 pounds. While much larger than novelty cabinets we’ve seen before, you’ll probably still want to play these in a sitting position.

See at Walmart

Dashlane 6 now available with VPN, credit monitoring, and more

All the new goodies will set you back $9.99/month.

Password managers are essential tools in mid-2018, and one of the most popular — Dashlane — is now getting its big version 6 update. You’ll still be able to generate and store secure passwords with Dashlane 6 like you’ve done before, but instead of focusing solely on passwords, you’ll now have access to a heap of tools to keep your digital presence as safe and secure as can be.

Upon opening Dashlane 6, you’ll see the all-new Identity Dashboard. Here, users can view their Password Health Score with a breakdown of what’s affecting it, Dark Web monitoring data, security alerts, and more.

Dashlane 6 also brings real-time credit monitoring, up to $1 million in coverage for identity theft insurance, and a full-fledged VPN to keep your online activity secret when using a public Wi-Fi network.

If you’re interested in checking this out for yourself, Dashlane 6 still has a free plan that lets you store up to 50 passwords and use Dashlane on one device. You can then upgrade to Premium or Premium Plus for $4.99/month or $9.99/month, respectively. No matter which of the paid plans you choose, each one is billed annually.

This pricing makes Dashlane one of the more expensive options compared to LastPass and 1Password, but considering all of the new features beyond password management that you now get, it sounds well worth the cost.

Do you think you’ll sign up for Dashlane 6?

See at Dashlane

How strong is Gorilla Glass 6? We sat down with Corning to talk about the future of phones

Corning is sitting behind the curtain, designing the glass that keeps our phones alive.

Corning recently unveiled its next-generation Gorilla Glass. It’s promised to be stronger than ever and designed to balance the effects of drops from heights and numerous drops to address what we need most— phones that won’t shatter when they slip out of our hands.

I spoke with Scott Forester Division Vice President of Marketing and Innovation Products at Corning about Gorilla Glass 6 and the future of glass technology.

Corning first looked at what Gorilla Glass 5 has accomplished and thought about the biggest issue with glass on phones. Though Gorilla Glass 5 out-performs from higher drops, it was counter-productive to increase the height success rate when the deeper issue lies in how often we drop our phones, not at what height we drop them from.

With our previous generation, Gorilla Glass 5, we were showing drop survivability up to 1.6 meters, so basically selfie height and 80 percent of the time in our testing the devices would survive on to rough surfaces like concrete or asphalt. With Gorilla Glass 6, we were able to raise that height even higher, but you would get kind of diminishing returns because not all of us are basketball players dropping phones from way up there.

So we actually started doing consumer surveys. What we found when we did a global survey is that most people drop their phone on average about seven times a year — and about half the time they’re dropping it from one meter high.

So with Gorilla Glass 6, we wanted our teams to look at how we could address this particular problem — which we’ve all encountered, which is dropping our phones multiple times or repetitive times. With Gorilla Glass 6, in our testing, we’ve shown it passing or surviving 1-meter drops, on average, 15 times. Compared to Gorilla Glass 5, our 1-meter performance is about 2x better. Most competitive glasses would actually fail the first time you drop it on a rough surface from 1 meter. So we feel like we’ve, again, kind of raised the performance of the glass, and specifically addressed the customer issue that we hear, which is drop performance in our phones.

So, since Gorilla Glass 6 is better from less heights, but more often, does that mean it no longer meets the original standard of Gorilla Glass 5’s 1.6-meter drop performance? No. It has both! It still provides the same success rate from 1.6 meters (actually a bit higher), but now it also, has a higher success rate from just 1-meter.

Gorilla Glass 6 actually raises the performance of drops from heights better than Gorilla Glass 5. In Addition to that, it gives you the continuous drops, as well. So you get the benefit on both sides of those attributes.

I know what you’re all thinking. “So, why does my phone screen crack if Gorilla Glass is so great?” You’re not the only one who worries about that. Forester’s own kids ask him the same question.

Those are the questions we all face, right? I mean, my kids ask the same questions.

If you were to bend the glass rod you would create this tensile stress on the surface of the glass. It’s that tension that’s going to basically separate the glass and propagate the cracks, and then eventually break. So what we do with Gorilla is, we actually put a counterforce in there called compressive stress. It’s actually keeping the surface under compression and acts like an armor that’s fighting against that tension you get when you drop your phone. With Gorilla Glass 6, we were actually able to put 40 percent more compressors stress into the glass surface.

Corning also takes into consideration a wide variety of different phone features, like glass thickness, whether the glass is raised above the phone significantly, how stiff is a device, what’s underneath the glass (like screws or components that could create a localized bending event), and more. There are innumerable possibilities to consider when creating real-world scenarios for drop events.

There are always other real-world aspects that play into drop performance. It gets really complex, and as a user, it can be kind of frustrating.

All those factors play into drop performance. In fact, if you have two phones that had exactly the same glass, exactly the same thickness, but they were designed by two different engineers with different displays or structures underneath, they performed differently. That has less to do with the glass. It just has to do with the way the phone is designed.

Hopefully it kind of gives you a broader perspective of the different variables that are in play versus it just being when you drop your phone on the asphalt outside.

Corning works very hard, and for a very long time to create thousands of scenarios for drop events using what they call “pucks” as the testing material (because, you know, dropping thousands of $800 phones would be kinda expensive).

We do thousands of drops events a year. We look at those four important elements; glass thickness, how proud the glass is (how much it is raised up from the phone), how stiff the entire phone is, and whether it’s a micro or localized stiffness. Then, we create a puck that we think is in the envelope — that’s kind of on the average. Then we use that puck to evaluate all of our materials.

One final thing Forester mentioned to me was how glass is positioned to be an ideal material for the future. The reason? It’s non-conductive, which is something metal can never be. Glass can always be made stronger.

What’s interesting is, as glass has gotten more durable and able to withstand these drops, you’re actually starting to see it reach a threshold where people are willing to remove the material on the back of the phone. Instead of it being metal or plastic, they’ll put glass. Designers are starting to feel that glass is significantly better than previous generations. It’s really broken – no pun intended – the perception of what glass can do and now.

Glass is kind of on the right side of the technology curve, from a material set. 5G has these microcells — small wavelength antennas, which can interfere with things like rain and environmental conditions, and they’re hypersensitive to metal. So the less metal you can put on your phone, the more flexibility you’re going to have to adopt things like 5G. Glass is a really unique material set when you begin to add all those components features you don’t think about every day.

Glass, it sounds like, is the future of phones and Gorilla Glass has proven its mettle at being the strongest you can put on a mobile device.

Do you think the next generation of Gorilla Glass is going to keep your phone screen from cracking as often? Has your phone avoided the dreaded cracked screen so far?

Samsung Galaxy Note 9 rumors: Release date, specs, price, and features!

Here’s everything we know about the Galaxy Note 9!

Now more than ever, Samsung’s Galaxy S+ phones are becoming eerily similar to the Note series. The Note used to be Samsung’s way of touting all of the latest and greatest tech it had to offer, and while this is still the case, the same can be said for this year’s Galaxy S9+.

Samsung needs more than just the S Pen to make the Note 9 stand out from its own phones and the rest of the competition, and luckily, all signs are pointing to something exciting for this year’s release. Here’s what we know so far!

July 26, 2018 — Fortnite for Android will reportedly be exclusive to the Note 9 for 30 days and come with V-Buck pre-order bonuses

There’s a lot of hype surrounding the Note 9, but there’s even more excitement for the phenomenon that is Fortnite. We’ve been anxiously waiting for more info about the game’s Android release since Epic confirmed it last May, and now a report from 9to5Google is here to shed a lot more light on the matter.

Fortnite will reportedly come to Android first as an exclusive for the Galaxy Note 9. It’ll stay that way for 30 days, and after that, be released for other compatible Android handsets. If the Note 9 is expected to launch at some point in late August, that’d put Fortnite’s general Android availability at some point in late September.

Along with this, it’s also said that an optional pre-order bonus for the Note 9 will be $100 to $150 worth of V-Bucks (the in-game currency for Fortnite). If you don’t care about that, you can choose to get wireless AKG headphones instead.

July 24, 2018 — A leaked image shows off the Note 9 in three colors

Another day, another leak from Evan Blass. Last week, we saw the front and back of the blue Galaxy Note 9, but with today’s leaked image we see the phone in three colors — black, blue, and brown.

It looks like the blue Note 9 will be the only model with the yellow S Pen teased in Samsung’s official event invite. The other two will have color-matched S Pens, all of which look fantastic.

What will the Galaxy Note 9 look like?

Quick answer — a lot like the Note 8.

We’ve seen one collection of renders for the Note 9 so far (pictured above), and save for the fingerprint sensor being moved below the rear camera sensor, the phone’s shaping up to be nearly identical to last year’s model.

As such, we can expect a large Infinity Display with slim bezels, an all-glass back, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Samsung’s event teaser suggests that we’ll get at least one bright yellow color option, but I’m still crossing my fingers the Galaxy S9’s Burgundy Red gets a wide release on the Note 9 🤞.

What specs can we look forward to?

Samsung’s Galaxy Note phones are always home to some of the best specs around, and the Note 9 shouldn’t be any different.

Based on the current rumor mill and what we’ve seen from other 2018 flagships, here’s what we think we’ll see this year.

Operating system	Android Oreo
Processor	Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 or Exynos 9810
Screen	6.3-inch Quad HD (2960 x 1440) Super AMOLED panel 18.5:9 aspect ratio
RAM	6GB / 8GB
Storage	128GB / 256GB / 512GB
Expandability	microSD up to 2TB
Battery	4,000 mAh
Connectivity	USB-C 3.5mm headphone jack
Security	Fingerprint sensor Iris scanning Face unlock
NFC	Yes

What’s going on with the S Pen?

The S Pen has always been one of the biggest draws to the Galaxy Note phones, and this year with the Note 9, we’re expecting Samsung to give the accessory one of the biggest updates we’ve seen in years.

One of the biggest changes this time around is that the Note 9 S Pen is rumored to come with Bluetooth. On one hand, this means the S Pen will need to have a battery and be charged somehow. Although we can’t confirm this, it’s likely Samsung will design a system that allows the S Pen to charge up while it’s inside the Note 9.

On a more exciting note, Bluetooth could allow for the S Pen to be useful even when it’s not in direct contact with the Note 9. Its button could act as a camera shutter, slide-show clicker, give you better alerts when it’s away from your phone, and more.

There have also been hints at some sort of gaming-specific features, but it’s unclear how exactly these will pan out.

When will the Galaxy Note 9 be released?

The Galaxy Note 9 will be announced on August 9, 2018, at an Unpacked event in New York City.

We can expect retail availability to come in a 1-2 week time frame after the announcement, if any previous launches are any indication.

How much will the Galaxy Note 9 cost?

Pricing for the Note series has steadily been going up each year, as has the majority of the smartphone industry.

The Galaxy Note 8 costs $950 unlocked, and I’d expect the Note 9 to cost either the same or slightly more. Apple proved with the iPhone X that people aren’t afraid to shell out $1000+ for a new smartphone, and I don’t consider it to be out of the question for Samsung to follow suit with the Note 9 – especially if it adopts newer technologies like an in-display fingerprint sensor.

Samsung Galaxy S9 & S9+: Everything you need to know!

Samsung Galaxy Note 9

• Samsung Galaxy Note 9 rumors: Release date, specs, price, and features!
• Is it best to buy the Galaxy S9 or wait for the Note 9?
• Do you plan on upgrading to the Note 9?
• Galaxy Note 8 review
• Join our Galaxy Note 9 forums

Updated: July 23, 2018: Added a new section for the Note 9’s S Pen.