Reuters: Samsung to sell refurbished high-end phones
Samsung is preparing an official refurbished phone program, according to Reuters, which could launch “as early as next year.” The scheme would offer premium handsets — think the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note line — at a discount for customers that can’t afford them at full price. Most of the phones would be sourced from its one-year upgrade program, available in places like the US and South Korea, which gives super-fans an easier way to trade-in and acquire the latest handsets. It’s not clear, however, how much the new discounts will come to, or where the scheme will be offered.
A used phone program would give Samsung an additional revenue stream and maximize its returns on each individual handset. After all, the company would be selling the phone twice — once as new, the second as used — with presumably minimal repair costs. Since the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, Samsung has stumbled on a design philosophy that far outstrips its previous efforts. (Remember the band-aid Galaxy S5?) The superior hardware, coupled with a slightly more hands-off approach to Android skinning, has culminated in some extremely desirable smartphones. But they’re expensive — the Galaxy Note 7 starts at around $850 in the US.
While Samsung has a ton of devices that hit cheaper price-points, it’s the Galaxy S7 and Note 7 — and their most immediate predecessors — that can best compete with the competition from Huawei, Xiaomi and OnePlus. Refurbished phone sales could cannibalise Samsung’s own mid-range offerings, but they would also shore up its stake in the overall smartphone market. And for the consumer, it would be just another option when buyinh a new handset. A win-win for everyone but Samsung’s competition — especially HTC, which is already struggling to sell its best phones.
Source: Reuters
Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review: Sleeker, simpler, better than ever
Samsung has come a long way. When the very first Galaxy Note launched in 2011, it felt like a quirky anachronism — wasn’t the age of the stylus over? The answer, as evidenced by the Note line’s continued existence, is a resounding “no.” In fact, somewhere along the way, the Note transformed from a curiosity into a premium device that can (and does) outshine the Galaxy S line on which it was based. This year’s attempt — the $850+ Galaxy Note 7 — builds off what Samsung learned making the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, and you know what? The company wound up making its best phone yet in the process.
Hardware
Every year, Samsung tweaks its design language for its new Galaxy S phones and applies it to whatever Note device it releases later that year. It’s no surprise, then, that the Note 7 has more in common with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge than last year’s Note 5. Since these smartphones share so much, it’s no surprise that the subtle differences are what make the Note 7 shine.
Consider its curves, for instance. Samsung built the Note 7 with a symmetrically curved front and back; that is, the metal-and-glass body is curved the same way on both sides. As a result, there’s more of an edge for your thumb to rest on so your hand is less likely to accidentally tap something on-screen. I couldn’t count the number of times that happened to me with the S7 Edge, and it eventually got so annoying that I gave up on the phone entirely. Here’s hoping Samsung applies this knowledge to next year’s Edge. The added benefit is that these curves make the Note 7 really, really nice to hold. This symmetry of design, coupled with the phone’s light weight and lack of bezels around its 5.7-inch screen mean this is easily the nicest Galaxy Note to actually carry around and use. It’s a big phone that doesn’t feel like one.
Samsung also opted for a USB Type-C port for power and data transfer instead of the micro-USB seen on the S7. It was only a matter of time before Samsung made the switch, but I’m just a little surprised the company didn’t wait until next year. And then there’s the storage situation: The Note 7 ships with 64GB of storage, up from 32GB on both US versions of the Galaxy S7. It’s a welcome move, but maybe not a surprising one since the Note series phones were always billed as more premium devices.
The Note 7’s partner, the S Pen, has also benefitted from some thoughtful little changes. It now has a smaller, 0.7mm nib — the same size as a typical ballpoint pen — for more natural writing. You can’t stick the S Pen into its slot backward either, because Samsung really didn’t need another year’s worth of embarrassment. On the flip side, though, this year’s S Pen is slightly slimmer than the last one, which makes it just a little less comfortable to grip. Samsung couldn’t please everyone.
Some changes, however, are hardly what you’d call subtle. There’s an iris scanner above the screen for hands-free unlocking, and it works better in some situations than others. If you don’t need corrective lenses, well, congratulations: Assuming you line your eyes up properly, the Note 7 will unlock itself in less than a second. Folks who wear contacts (like I do sometimes) fall into this category too. If you wear glasses, though, expect the phone to take much longer… if it works at all.
Now, about those similarities. There are, uh, a lot of them. Most notable is the silicon, running the show, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset, 4GB of RAM and an Adreno 530 GPU. All three phones also share the same 12-megapixel, DualPixel camera setups — that’s just as well since that particular sensor is arguably at the front of the Android smartphone camera pack. (The 5-megapixel front-facing camera is the same too, but that’s way less interesting.)
Now, about those similarities. There are, uh, a lot of them. Most notable is the silicon, running the show, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset, 4GB of RAM and an Adreno 530 GPU. All three phones also share the same 12-megapixel, DualPixel camera setups — that’s just as well since that particular sensor is arguably at the front of the Android smartphone camera pack. (The 5-megapixel front-facing camera is the same too, but that’s way less interesting.)
There’s also a spot for a microSD card in the SIM tray, just like with the S7 line, and the phone is also IP68-rated waterproof, a first for the Note line. Meanwhile, I wish Samsung could have transplanted the 3,600mAh battery from the S7 Edge into the Note 7, but it seems Samsung could only fit a 3,500mAh cell into the Note 7’s curved body. Thankfully, the difference in longevity is minimal (as you’ll see later on).
Display and sound
As mentioned, the Note 7 sports a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display running at 2,560 x 1,440 (or Quad HD, or 2K, or whatever you want to call it). And wouldn’t you know it, this screen is just fantastic, replete with great viewing angles and the vivid, sumptuous colors that Samsung’s AMOLED panels are known for. (If the default color temperature is a little lurid, you can always change display modes in the settings menu.)
The screen’s bigger size means its pixel density (518 pixels per inch) is lower than that of the S7 and S7’s displays, but really, the difference is nigh-impossible to pick out; text and photos are rendered with excellent crispness. It’s a summertime champ too: With the brightness cranked to max, I had no trouble sifting through tweets and agonizing over potential Instagram filters under the sweltering August sun. If all of this sounds familiar, well, sorry. Samsung’s screens are typically first-rate, but the Note 7’s is especially pleasant (particularly since the weird, pulsating effect I noticed on last year’s Note 5 is nowhere in sight).
As you might expect, the Note 7 inherited the S7’s always-on display mode, and it’s as handy as eve. Samsung updated it with new designs, though: There are three more designs for the persistent clock and one new image (of constellations) that should wind up on the company’s earlier flagships before long. And while we’re on the subject of minor additions, there’s also a blue light filter mode that’s meant to reduce eye-strain and preserve the sanctity of your sleep cycle. These display modes are popping up all over the place, and whether they actually help is up for debate, but it’s a welcome touch as I write this review in the middle of the night.
As usual, though, the quality of the Note’s speaker setup lags behind that of the display. There’s a single grille etched into the phone’s bottom between the Type-C port and the S Pen’s hiding place, and it’s capable of churning out loud (if somewhat lifeless) audio. Things get better when you plug in a pair of headphones, at least: Samsung’s high-quality audio upscaler adds just a little more oomph to your tracks, with options for simulated surround sound, tube amp effects and concert hall reverb. I didn’t really love these effects when they first showed up on the S7s, but they grew on me — spacey, vocal-centric songs can benefit a lot from that faux surround sound, for example. Still, if you hated these effects the first time around, don’t expect to change your mind.
Software
Like all the other flagships that launched this year, the Note 7 ships with Android 6.0.1 onboard — that means you’ve got those new permissions controls, Now on Tap’s handy info cards and all the other core Marshmallow features we’ve been enjoying for nearly a year now. More interesting is how Samsung’s approach to TouchWiz continues to evolve: What used to be a bloated, obnoxious punchline of an interface gradually became bearable, and then eventually pretty nice. Lots of us (including yours truly) will always prefer stock Android, but Samsung has spent the past few years cleaning up its act and that’s worthy of some praise.
At first glance, not much has changed since the days of the S7/Edge — Flipboard’s Briefing lives to the left of your homescreens, and Samsung’s Edge UX is back. Quick recap if you haven’t used an S7 Edge: Swiping the tab on the right side (by default) of the screen brings up panes with shortcuts to your chosen apps, contacts and “tasks” like composing messages and taking selfies. You can flesh out your list with third-party “edges” for Yahoo Sports and Finance, but we still can’t craft macro-like tasks the way we could on a full-blown computer. Once it’s set up, the Samsung Pay tab lives at the bottom of the screen too — a flick upward loads your payment method and preps it for either an NFC or a magnetic “swipe” transaction.
The differences will become more apparent as you start digging a little deeper, and you’ll wonder why some of these changes haven’t been in TouchWiz from the start. Pulling down the notification shade, for instance, reveals a search bar, brightness slider and a distinct lack of circular icons — Samsung ditched them for a cleaner grid of quick settings icons. The app launcher has a search bar sitting up top too, making it easier for find the app you’re looking for. That sure beats the clumsy search button on the S7 and S7 Edge. This streamlined approach carries over into the Note 7’s settings page, where Samsung excised the circular icons and trademark teal in favor of a much simpler list of options. (Don’t worry, the interface is still punctuated with blue here and there, in case you’re not great with change.) And if you hate those rounded white frames encasing your app icons, you can turn them off. One word: hallelujah.
Naturally, there’s more going here beyond the Note 7’s clean new look. Let’s say you’re trying to keep your Tinder habits on the down low — you have the option to download the app directly into Samsung’s new secure folder, keeping it perpetually hidden from prying eyes. But what if it’s already installed? Easy. You can add the app to the secure folder and then uninstall the original instance, leaving an independent, fully functional copy hidden from the rest of the world. You can lock down this digital storehouse with a PIN, password, a fingerprint or an iris scan, but the latter two require you to set up a password just in case your biometric signature doesn’t pass muster. What you use the secure folder for is your business, but regardless, Samsung’s implementation is both clever and useful.
Samsung’s browser is also more useful thanks to its support for extensions, including a QR code reader and an “Amazon assistant” that’s meant to “get instant product matches while you shop across the web.” I’d love to tell you more about how Amazon is removing barriers between you and your darkest buying impulses, but this extension wasn’t live as of this writing. Then there are the updated power saving modes. In addition to dialing down the screen’s brightness and throttling performance, they’ll also reduce the Note 7’s screen resolution (down to as low as 720p) to conserve even more juice. Huawei adopted this trick first, but it’s remarkably handy for keeping your Note 7 alive when its battery level gets grim.
Thankfully, there aren’t a ton of pointlessly pre-loaded apps. We have the usual slew of Google apps, plus Samsung’s email client, browser, file manager and S Health app, along with all the Note-specific stuff, which I’ll get to in a second. My review unit is a T-Mobile model, and Legere’s crew thankfully didn’t go too crazy with the bloatware. All told, this version of the Note 7 comes with eight carrier apps pre-installed, ranging from the pretty useful (SlingTV was handy for following the Olympics on the move) to the irritating (I can manage my security fine, Lookout, but thanks).
Another year, another S Pen
Weird as it sounds, the Note 7 is so well put together and pleasant to use that it’s sometimes easy to forget there’s a stylus hidden inside. This year’s S Pen doesn’t look dramatically different from the Note 5’s but the changes are there if you look closely enough. As mentioned earlier, the nib is smaller for more fluid writing and sketching, and the S Pen’s body is ever so slightly narrower and lighter. You wouldn’t think a change this minute would be apparent, but it sort of is — despite near-identical dimensions, this S Pen feels a little flimsier than the one we got last year. Funny how big a difference this stuff makes.
Still, the Note 7’s S Pen still has few clear advantages. For one, it’s water resistant just like the phone itself. Since the entire package is IP68-rated, you can actually write things on the Note 7’s screen while underwater, though I’m not sure when anyone would ever actually need to. (Getting phone numbers at the beach? Who knows.) Speaking of the screen, the Note 7’s can now recognize up to 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, or double what the Note 5 was capable of. It’s one of those differences that’s only really noticeable when you have the two devices side by side: light strokes that didn’t register on the Note 5’s display showed up just fine on the Note 7, making it a better choice for artsy types who value precision. If all you’re going to do is dash off notes and reminders, though, you probably won’t notice the change much.
While we’re talking about the screen, I’m pleased that one of the Note 5’s best features has made it over to the Note 7. Removing the S Pen while the display is off brings up a dark interface for (appropriately enough) screen-off memos. Here, you can draw or leave yourself a note, and then pin it to the always-on display for easy reference throughout the day. The inherent lack of friction in this process means anyone who picks up your phone can pin doodles to your display, which in my case led to lots of juvenile drawings all over my sleeping screen. Thanks, guys.
Samsung is all too aware that the S Pen isn’t for everyone, so it cooked up a few new Air Command features to make its stylus more versatile. My eyes are pretty terrible, so it was neat being able to magnify anything on the screen up to 300 percent when pinching-to-zoom wasn’t an option. Cool? Sure. Consistently useful? Eh.
You can now translate words on-screen from one language to another too, though the translations aren’t as elegant as I’d wanted. Here’s the thing: The feature only lets you translate one word at a time, rather than sentences or paragraphs. As such, it’s handy for picking up bits of a language you don’t know, and lousy for interpreting lots of information.
And then there are the GIFs. The “smart select” feature has been updated to let you choose parts of the screen with the pen, record them and turn them into GIFs. I didn’t have high hopes for this process since making GIFs on a regular computer is sort of a pain, but it turned out to be surprisingly elegant. Once the recording is done (you can capture up to 15 seconds), it’s simple enough to doodle on top of them, change how they loop and share them everywhere. Meanwhile, Samsung’s software cleaning spree continues with S Pen stuff: Four(!) separate S Pen-specific applications have been combined into a single one called Samsung Notes. This is where you’ll do most of your note taking and doodling, and it’s perfectly serviceable; it’s good enough that I didn’t miss any of the old standalone S Pen apps.
All of these tweaks are steps in the right direction, but I wonder whether they’ll actually change anyone’s mind about the S Pen. The fact that Samsung keeps churning these devices out must mean a lot of people out there dig using a stylus, but if you weren’t sold before, you probably won’t be now.
Camera
We can keep this part brief: Both of the Note 7’s cameras are identical to the ones in the S7 and S7 Edge, and are therefore really damned good. The photos I shot over the course of a week were almost uniformly well exposed, with lots of detail (they really pop on this AMOLED screen) and vibrant, accurate colors. It’s damned fast at focusing too, thanks to the camera’s DualPixel setup. If you’ll pardon the extremely unscientific explanation, every 1.4 µm pixel on that 12-megapixel sensor is split into two photodiodes that are used to gauge the distance between the camera and the subject. Since every single pixel is used to for these focus calculations, the Note 7 is super fast at locking onto whatever’s in front of it, even when the subject is a finicky, adorable toddler celebrating her second birthday.
It goes without saying that smartphone cameras tend to suck in the dark, but the Note 7 fares well thanks to the size of the pixels on its sensor. There’s surprisingly little noise, even in shots taken outside at night, and the always-there exposure controls help reduce the influence of extra light that could otherwise soften a shot’s sharpness. In short, the Note 7 is a very impressive all-around shooter, ranking alongside the S7 and S7 Edge as one of Android-powered cameras to beat. Meanwhile, the 5-megapixel camera up front takes respectable selfies with enough verve to please all the but the most terminally vain. I just wish Samsung had bumped up the resolution a bit this time around.
The camera sensors might not have changed, but the camera interface sure has. Remember all the different mode and settings icons that used to pepper the main view of the camera app? Many of them have been moved out of sight to give you a cleaner interface. All of the photo modes from the S7 — Pro, panorama, selective focus, slow motion, hyperlapse and more — are back and still available by swiping to the right. Instead of tapping a separate button to switch cameras, though, you’ll have to swipe up.
Camera resolution options and the timer has been moved into a separate settings menu, while live filter effects can be applied by swiping to the left. Trust me: It’s all much more intuitive than it sounds, and the “out of sight, out of mind” ethos here is fine by me. After all, just about every photo I took on full auto looked great. Shooting video was similarly painless and yielded accurate, handsome footage no matter what resolution I picked. (Fair warning: Tracking autofocus doesn’t work when shooting 4K video, so be prepared to handle it yourself).
Performance and battery life
Because of those shared internals, the Note 7 performs almost exactly like the S7 and S7 Edge, which in turn behave much like the rest of this year’s flagship smartphone heap. That means this year’s Note is a smooth operator thanks to the quad-core Snapdragon 820 and 4GB of RAM. I spent my week multitasking lots, playing games like Hearthstone, Asphalt 8, Republique and generally doing my best to make the 7 stutter or slow down. I succeeded, but only rarely and never for long. If you’re concerned about whether the Note 7 can stand up to your hellacious routines, don’t be: This thing brings the heat (sometimes literally, but never to the point of discomfort).
Then again, were you expecting anything else? Qualcomm’s near-monopoly on the mobile chip business has led to a détente where one high-end device more or less performs the same as any other. That makes it hard to write about these things over and over, but it’s still a win for everyone reading this — there’s almost no such thing as a bad choice, at least as far as performance is concerned.
HTC 10
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
Samsung Galaxy Note 5
AndEBench Pro
13,601
16,673
13,030
14,152
Vellamo 3.0
4,589
4,876
4,152
4,104
3DMark IS Unlimited
29,697
26,747
26,666
26,981
GFXBench 3.0 1080p Manhattan Offscreen (fps)
47
48
47
47
CF-Bench
49,256
49,891
46,290
36,488
Because their internals are the same, differentiating factors like battery life are more important than ever. Now, the Note 7 might not have the biggest battery in Samsung’s lineup — that distinction goes to the S7 Edge — but it’s still one of the best day-to-day performers I’ve used in some time. When it came to our standard rundown test (looping a high-def video at 50 brightness), the Note 7 lasted just over 14 hours. That’s about a half hour less than the S7 Edge, just a few minutes more than last year’s Note 5, and on par with the Moto Z Force. Not the type to watch the video until your eyes bleed? That’s fine: I routinely got two full days of consistent, mixed use out of the Note 7. With the help of Android Marshmallow’s Doze feature, my runtime stretched closer to three days with more sporadic use, though your mileage may vary.
The competition
It goes without saying that if you’re looking for a phone you can use with a stylus, you can’t do better the Galaxy Note 7. That said, if you’re looking for a great phone-and-stylus combo, I’ve found that the Galaxy Note 5 still holds up really well. It’s been updated to run Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow and put up benchmark figures that were surprisingly close to this year’s model — a testament to the power of the octa-core Exynos chipset lurking inside. Alas, it’s not waterproof and lacks any expandable storage options, though you could easily find a good deal online.
The Note 7 also faces some stiff competition from its cousins, the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. They have the same brains, after all, not to mention the same waterproofing, the same punchy AMOLED screen technology and the same overarching design language. I still think the S7 Edge is too prone to accidental touches, though, a problem that frankly drives me up the freakin’ wall — I’d definitely take the Note 7 over the Edge (especially since they share those edge-centric features), but the GS7 remains an excellent choice for those who want Samsung’s best in a more compact form factor.
Meanwhile, fans of first-rate build quality should consider the HTC 10, a phenomenal smartphone that offers power and style in spades. It, too, makes use of the Snapdragon 820 chipset, but the company’s attention to detail is what really makes the HTC 10 shine — the build quality is impeccable, the phone packs a low-latency touchscreen, and it’s the first Android phone that natively supports Apple’s AirPlay streaming standard. The 10’s battery and camera aren’t quite as good as the Note 7’s, though, so you’ll have to love HTC’s design and its approach to software.
Wrap-up
When I reviewed the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge earlier this year, I was already convinced Samsung was operating at the top of its game. After using phones as well crafted as those, I didn’t think it would be possible to love the inevitable follow-up as much. I was wrong. The Note 7 isn’t a perfect phone: It’s expensive and there still isn’t a hugely compelling reason to buy into the S Pen lifestyle if you haven’t already. Even so, by combining the updates that went into the S7 siblings with a number of subtle improvements to the Note’s design and software, Samsung has built its finest phone yet. The Galaxy Note 7 isn’t just the best Galaxy Note ever — it’s a strong contender as the best Android phone you can find right now.
Milky Way’s spinning ‘halo’ helps reveal how galaxy formed
Out beyond our solar system are billions of other planets, starts, moon rocks and solar systems. Beyond that, however is an enormous, hot, gaseous halo of matter. It stretches for hundreds of thousands of light years, and could be the key to sorting out why there’s not as much matter in the Milky Way as scientists estimate there should be. Now, scientists have learned something new about this layer of gas: It’s spinning at almost the same rate as the rest of our galaxy.
The halo is typically thought of as stationary, researchers at the University of Michigan were able to record it in motion by measuring changes in light wavelengths. Contrary to common belief, they found the halo was spinning in the same direction as the galaxy’s stellar disc and, at 400,000 mph, almost as fast.
“This flies in the face of expectations,” Edmund Hodges-Kluck, assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan, explains. “People just assumed that the disk of the Milky Way spins while this enormous reservoir of hot gas is stationary — but that is wrong.” It’s more than an interesting footnote, too. Hodges-Kluck says the rotation serves as a clue to how the galaxy was formed in the first place. “It tells us that this hot atmosphere is the original source of a lot of the matter in the disk.”
Armed with this new information, researchers will be able to learn how that matter got from the outer halo to the core of the galaxy. The same data may also be able to help predict the future of the Milky Way. That, however, will take years of further research — not that the team is scared of that. “We can use this discovery to learn so much more,” says University of Michigan professor Joel Bergman. “The rotation of this hot halo will be a big topic of future X-ray spectrographs.”
Source: NASA
New Galaxy S7 Active smartphones won’t leak, says Samsung
It’s official: the Samsung Galaxy S7 Active isn’t quite as rugged as it was originally advertised. Well, it wasn’t, but it is now. Following failed underwater tests from both Consumer Reports and CNET, Samsung looked into the phone’s production process and found manufacturing problems that were compromising its water-resistance. Fortunately, the issue has been resolved. From here on out, the Galaxy S7 Active is expected to be sufficiently water-tight.
Although the production process is fixed now, there’s no real way to tell how many units in the wild are effected, though Samsung told Consumer Reports that “compared to the total number of devices sold, it was tiny.” Even so, the company says it will replace any S7 Active with water damage through the warranty period, or up to one year after the device is purchased. Unfortunately, this replacement does not apply to phones that haven’t been damaged, making it difficult for current S7 Active owners to know if it’s safe for them to take their phones in the water.
It’s never good when you have to treat your rugged phone with kids gloves.
Source: Consumer Reports
A third of the world can no longer see the Milky Way
If you never thought light pollution was a problem before, think again. New research claims that more than a third of humanity cannot see the Milky Way anymore, because artificial lights have made the night sky too bright to view the galaxy.
The study, called “The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness.” claims that 60 percent of Europeans and almost 80 percent of North Americans can’t see the collection of stars and planets anymore. The planet has, according to the paper, been hidden behind a “luminous fog that prevents most of Earth’s population from having the opportunity to observe our galaxy.”
Singapore was deemed the most light-polluted country, and I am not surprised that my incredibly well-lit home country ranks so highly. San Marino, Kuwait, Qatar and Malta join Singapore on the list of places where people can’t see the Milky Way at all.
According to the researchers, light pollution causes myriad problems, from wasting money and energy, to a loss of biodiversity and culture. These problems can be “instantly mitigated (by turning off lights),” they say. This seems like a no-brainer, but the team is also proposing several bigger changes.
In addition to recommending people use the minimum amount of light for their tasks and strongly limiting blue light that interferes with circadian rhythms, the paper suggests installing shielding to prevent light from being sent at or above the horizon level.
If you live in one of the light-polluted regions and still want to see the Milky Way, consider trekking out to Chad, the Central African Republic or Madagascar, which the study says are the least affected. Or, if you don’t want to leave your desk, check out this giant zoomable image of the galaxy. You won’t have to turn off your lights.
[Image: Amr Dalsh / Reuters]
Via: The Guardian
Source: Science Advances
Listen to the sounds of the Milky Way galaxy’s oldest stars
You probably won’t get to visit the most ancient stars in humanity’s home galaxy, but you’ll at least get to hear what they sounded like when they were young. University of Birmingham researchers have detected the acoustic oscillations of Milky Way stars that are about 13 billion years old, or not much younger than the galaxy itself. The trick was to use asteroseismology, or measuring the tiny pulses in brightness triggered by sound caught inside those stars. As you’ll hear at the source link, they’re not exactly hot summer jams — these are ominous tones that are more likely to remind you of an emergency broadcast signal than anything else.
That sound isn’t just a gee-whiz novelty. The oscillations will help scientists determine the age and mass of those stars, which should provide some insight into what our galaxy was like in its infancy. And that’s no mean feat. Previously, it was difficult to accurately gauge the age of very old stars — this could fill in a big gap in our understanding of the early cosmos.
Via: ScienceDaily, Gizmodo
Source: University of Birmingham
Samsung might have bendable, foldable smartphones ready for 2017
Bloomberg sources say that Samsung is thinking of introducing phones with bendable screens. In fact, Samsung said that it would have that technology ready by 2017 itself, just a few years ago at its investors conference. However, this goes some way to proving that Samsung has developed the tech enough to bring it to consumer product. A pair of devices will have flexible OLED screens, with one folding like a cosmetic compact and another that transforms from a 5-inch smartphone-sized screen to a display roughly eight inches large; so… a tablet.
Screen tech could be the next battleground between Samsung’s Galaxy series of phones and the Apple iPhone, which is also rumored to pack OLED screens in the future. The phones, codenamed “Project Valley”, may even appear as early as Mobile World Congress, around February 2017. Just give me my picnic blanket 4K TV already. I’ve suffered enough.
Source: Bloomberg
The Galaxy S7: imperfect, but still the best phone in 2016 [review]
I’ve now spent about three weeks with Samsung’s newest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S7. Like any experience with a new smartphone, it has its benefits and drawbacks, its features and its quirks. You may have read a few weeks ago that I’m planning on sticking with my Nexus 6P over the Galaxy S7 (Edge) and that’s still true but a lot of my original gripes have faded away over time. Pending what we see from HTC in the “10” smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S7 is shaping up to be the best smartphone in 2016.
The specs are pretty standard for what we’ll be seeing this year:
- Display: 5.1″ QHD (1440×2560, 577 PPI) Super AMOLED panel
- SoC: Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 (MSM8996)
- Memory: 4GB RAM
- Storage: 32 GB, with microSD expansion up to 200GB
- Cameras: 12 MP, f/1.7, 26mm, phase detection autofocus, OIS & 5 MP, f/1.7, 22mm
- Battery: 3000 mAh, non-removable
- OS: Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow
Given that it’s pretty much exactly the same on the inside as both the HTC 10 and LG G5, Samsung had to differentiate themselves by what’s on the outside.
Design
The Galaxy S7 is without a doubt the most elegant Android phone ever built. The industrial design of the HTC One series over the last couple of years and then the Nexus 6P last last year are certainly great, but the Galaxy S7’s fusion of metal and glass is absolutely gorgeous and it feels so great in the hand that you don’t want to put it down.
One often overlooked part of the design is where to put the 3.5mm headphone jack. It seems that nearly every OEM has moved this to the top of the phone in recent years, which leaves wires going everywhere if you’re using the phone and listening to headphones at the same time. Samsung put it back on the bottom, which may sound like a small point, but it’s an appreciated design choice.
Speaking of design choices and ports on the bottom of the phone, it is very surprising given Samsung’s propensity for wanting to be on the cutting edge that they would forego the USB type-C port on its new flagship. Every other major Android OEM that has released a phone in the last 6 months has gone with USB type-C and there has even been speculation that Apple may be putting it into the new iPhone in the fall.
The only reason that I have been able to think of that Samsung would have done this was to keep the new model phones compatible with the Gear VR headset. The Gear VR is an awesome accessory, but Samsung could definitely afford to come up with a new Gear VR tomatch the new port.
The Display
Samsung is known for having the most striking displays on the market. Another year, another Galaxy, nothing has changed. The screen on the Galaxy S7 is the same size and resolution as last year’s model. I wouldn’t be the first reviewer to say so but the Galaxy S7 is a refinement upon the S6 and in the case of the screen, there wasn’t a whole lot to improve upon because the screen in the S6 was the best on the market last year and this year it is no different.
Even though this isn’t the Edge variant of the phone, the glass does not stop flat at the edge of the phone, but instead curves around the edge by about 1mm in order to make the overall look and feel of the phone more smooth. The result of such form over function is that you end up constantly touching the screen when you’re just holding the phone normally.
The Software (aka Touchwiz)
This is without a doubt the best spin on Android that Samsung has ever made. I said the same thing last fall when I reviewed the Note 5 and I meant it. Samsung has been steadily making its flavor of Android better and better. I’m not sure how much the modern processors contribute to cleaning the clunk in Touchwiz, but the point is that the Samsung Galaxy S7 is smoother than the Nexus 6P.
Samsung has finally stopped making putting new gimmicks into the OS a selling point for its phones, which is great, but it also means there’s less to talk about on the software side of things. Still, I have some favorite features of Touchwiz that I would like to share.
Much like on the Note 5, one of my favorite features is still the theming engine/store. I’ve been a part of the root/ROM scene since my first smartp
hone in 2010 and theming has always been one of my favorite parts of that. Seeing that feature on mainstream Android devices was a dream come true and still is a lot of fun. It’s a little annoying that it is attached to the Samsung Hub rather than Google Play, but who would actually be surprised by that?
Another one of my favorites was the addition of ultra power save mode. I don’t remember seeing this on the Note 5, which was running Lollipop at the time, but this seems to be 
something that Samsung added with its Marshmallow release. It essentially takes regular power save mode on stock Android and turns it up to 11.
It limits your data and CPU usage, as well as completely shutting off a majority of the apps on your phone except for those that the user deems essential. It also utilizes the AMOLED display and makes everything black and white. It even disables the screenshot function!
The battery life on the Galaxy S7 is pretty good, but I’ve found that in a pinch, ultra power save mode can be invaluable. Ironically, using ultra power save mode disables the themes.
I’ve been using the Verizon variant of the phone, which normally requires the obligatory complaint of bloat. This isn’t to say that there isn’t bloat on this phone, there most certainly is, and you’ll probably want to be disabling some of them if you’re on Big Red lest you get annoying notifications about visiting the Verizon store. I feel sorry for the average Verizon customer who will never think to a install third-party SMS client, but I found that after I settled in with the phone and got it all set up the way that I like, I didn’t care about the apps that came pre-installed.
Samsung doesn’t just stuff things into Android, though, they take things out, too. In Marshmallow they removed two features that I thought were pretty crucial and left me disappointed with the implementation. One was something that I detailed a few weeks ago – they removed the ability for timed or ’til next alarm’ do not disturb. These are pretty small features, but why remove them? It’s really nice to be able to put my phone into do not disturb while I’m at the movies and set it to two hours so I don’t have to remember to turn it back on when I leave!
The other is something that a lot of people probably didn’t know about, maybe don’t care about, and technically can be brought back; and that’s adoptable storage. There was a feature introduced in Android 6.0 Marshmallow where the system could adopt the SD card as though it were internal memory and treat it the same way that it already treats the internal memory. That means that you can install as many apps as you want on a phone that is only sold with 32GB of storage but has been expanded to accommodate up to 160GB of storage. Samsung took this feature out. It can technically be brought back with some work at the command line, but why take it out in the first place?
Battery Life
Like I mentioned before, the battery life on the Galaxy S7 is pretty 
good. It’s not as good as the OnePlus One, but it worked some sort of magic. Impressively, Samsung packed the same 3000 mAh battery that it had in the Galaxy Note 5, which had a lot more physical space to work with and more pixels to push, into the smaller footprint of the Galaxy S7, giving it better battery life than the Note 5. The battery on the S7 regularly lasted me throughout the day and only when I was planning on going past midnight did I bother with recharging before the end of the day.
Like with overall performance, I’m sure that some of the battery performance can be attributed to the Snapdragon 820 under the bonnet, but I’ve heard that the Galaxy S7 with an Exynos 8890 Octa, which is sold everywhere that isn’t America.
The Camera
It’s no secret that Samsung is the unquestioned leader in Android cameras, if not smartphone cameras in general and that hasn’t changed with the Galaxy S7. Photos outdoors come out very crisp and enjoyable and thanks to a lower resolution sensor and some new licenced tech, it’s better than ever in low light and has an impeccably fast shutter speed/auto focus. There’s a little bit of noise in the low light photos but they’re still better than what you’ll typically see from the competition.
I’m not what you would call a photographer and if I were I wouldn’t probably recommend using a smartphone to take pictures. But for the casual snapper, it’s hard to go wrong with the S7.
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Other stuff/Final thoughts
The biggest selling point for the Galaxy S7 after having used it for several weeks is not the phone itself, but the Gear VR headset that came with a lot of early sales. Even for $99, it’s a great accessory to your smartphone.
WIN A GEAR VR!
I’ll be doing a full review of the Gear VR soon, right after we give one away, but it was the highlight of my review and for my roommate’s girlfriend, the only thing she cared about when I told her that I had the Galaxy S7 to review.
In the meanwhile, we’re going to give away a brand new Samsung Gear VR. All you have to do is head to our Instagram page and leave a comment on this post. We’ll pick a winner on April 27!
Overall, I’m still going to keep my Nexus but that doesn’t mean that the Galaxy S7 isn’t a great phone. In fact, I think it’s the best phone you can buy right now, especially if you have already owned Samsung phones and are used to some of their quirks. It’s a gorgeous phone, one that I would be ashamed to put a case on but almost definitely would have to. Make no mistake, you’ll be paying nearly $700 for this phone and almost $800 for it’s edged brethren, and that’s no small amount of money but if you have to live with a phone for two or more years, I don’t think you can go wrong with this one.
Faintest known galaxy could shed light on the early universe
Scientists have only just started finding extremely faint galaxies. However, they’ve already topped themselves by discovering the faintest known galaxy to date… and it might just provide insight into the universe’s early days. Found through gravitational lensing, the galaxy is both supremely ancient (13 billion years old) and extremely tiny (just 0.0001 percent the size of the Milky Way). In other words, it’s a textbook example of the dwarf galaxies that researchers believe were key to re-ionizing the universe and taking it out of the lightless “dark ages.” With enough study, it could help explain what triggered that ionization and fill in one of the gaps in our understanding of existence.
Via: Wired
Source: Astrophysical Journal Letters
Samsung to release Android 6.0 on the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge today
Samsung is rolling out the global update for its flagship Android devices starting today. The Galaxy S6 and S6 edge are the first of Samsung’s flagships to receive the latest version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. For a quick refresher, some of the best features in Android M are listed below:
Contextual Assistance
- Now on Tap: get assistance without having to leave what you’re doing—whether you’re in an app or on a website. Just touch and hold the home button.
- Do more with your voice. Now you can have a dialogue with any of your apps that support the new voice interaction service. For example, if a user says “play some music on TuneIn,” TuneIn will respond by asking “What genre?”.
- Direct Share: a fast and easy way to share to the right person in the right app.
Battery
- Doze: when your device is at rest, Doze automatically puts it into a sleep state to increase your standby battery life.
- App Standby: no more battery drain from seldom used apps; App Standby limits their impact on battery life so your charge lasts longer.
Privacy & Security
- On an Android Marshmallow device, apps designed for Android Marshmallow only ask for permission right when it’s needed. You can deny any permission and still continue to use the app.
- Advanced controls to turn permissions on or off for all your installed apps.
For U.S. models, depending on the carrier, Samsung will make separate announcements on the details of OS update schedules. What that means is if you bought your Samsung Galaxy S6 from AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile, you will not be getting your Android M update today. Each carrier in the U.S. has to make modifications to Samsung’s update in order for it to be compatible on their networks.
In addition to the Android M updates, Samsung is also including new features with the S6 edge display which will hopefully make the edges more useful.
- Increased edge display from 260 pixels wide to 550 pixels for more content to be displayed.
- Users can now customize up to nine panels, including the People edge and Apps edge panels.
- With all the expanded space of the upgraded edge panel, users can now add ten apps instead of five. In addition to single apps, users can add entire folders for maximum smartphone organization.
- A brand new Quick tools, which includes a ruler, compass and customizable flashlight, has also been added in a separate panel to simplify one’s everyday life.
- Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! News come pre-equipped with the OS upgrade, delivering the latest stock reports, the scores of the big games and the biggest headlines right to the edge screen.
It has taken Samsung four months to release the Android M update to just its S6 and S6 edge. Are you excited for the update? You should be because Android 6.0’s improvements are significant.
Samsung press release
Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge | SpecOut
Samsung Galaxy S6 | SpecOut
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