Of course EE’s hyping wireless headphones on iPhone 7 day
EE’s Add to Plan scheme lets anyone taking out a two-year smartphone contract walk away with accessories in exchange for a couple of extra quid tacked onto their bill each month. Launched last year, EE today announced a slight change to the T&Cs. Instead of the cost being spread over 18 months and customers paying a premium for the convenience, they’ll now square it away in 11 and pay out no more than the retail price. A wider product range will soon be offered, too, including wearables from Fitbit (from £8 per month), smartwatches and Samsung’s Gear VR headset (also £8 per month).
What EE is pushing above all else, though, is wireless headphones from the likes of Beats, Bang & Olufsen and Skullcandy, which’ll be available through Add to Plan from £3 per month starting September 16th. Interesting timing on EE’s part, given it’s new iPhone day and many a rumour has suggested Apple is dropping the 3.5mm headphone jack this handset generation. Coincidence? Almost certainly not.
Source: EE
Samsung Galaxy Note 7 recall: how to replace your UK phone
It’s only been five days since it confirmed the Galaxy Note 7 battery problem and issued a global recall for its highly-rated smartphone, but Samsung is moving quickly to limit the damage. A couple of days after it issued replacement instructions for US consumers, the company has kicked off the exchange process in the UK, confirming that the small number of customers who received their units before the official UK launch will have their devices replaced from September 19th.
The smartphone maker says that UK providers and operators will now begin contacting buyers to arrange their exchange. Alternatively, customers can call Samsung’s customer support team on 0330 7261000 and initiate the process with the company directly. Although Samsung managed to limit the impact on UK customers by issuing the recall on the day of the UK launch, some pre-orders were sent out early and will need replacing.
At a briefing last week, Samsung admitted that a small number of Galaxy Note 7 batteries had exploded while on charge. While there have been 35 cases reported to date, the company decided to issue a global recall just to be sure. Customers in different markets will receive different advice as to when they’ll get a new Galaxy Note 7, but in the UK, expect things to ramp up in a couple of weeks time.
Source: Samsung UK
Samsung’s smart belt lands on Kickstarter
Remember that health-tracking smart belt Samsung showed at its CES booth in January? You can score one for yourself. Spinoff company Welt has started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the launch of its namesake belt. Drop $119 ($69 or $99 if you’re early) and you’ll get a subtle wearable that tracks your waistline, eating habits, step counts and the time you spend sitting. Higher-priced Classic and Premium models mainly up the style quotient. Provided the crowdfunding run is successful, you should get your Welt as early as January — just in time to track your efforts to shed weight after the holidays.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Kickstarter
IFA 2016 showed us how far wearables have come
The wearables world has come a long way in a very short time, and plenty of companies have had to learn their lessons out in public. The first devices they launched were often far, far too ugly to find mainstream acceptance, but now the fashion and wearables worlds are perfectly aligned. That’s why we’re taking a look at the devices that arrived at this year’s IFA, and comparing it with their more embarrassing predecessors. Think of it like #throwbackthursday, except nobody’s got one of those face-worn retainers you only see in ’80s movies.
ASUS’ Zenwatch
Like many other early Android Wear pioneers, ASUS thought that it was hip to be square. It made sense, since smartphones have square displays too, not to mention the (then) scarcity of truly-round displays. ASUS trimmed the price to make the Zenwatch cheaper than its rivals, and curved the glass over the face to offer an illusion of greater ergonomics. The end result is a watch that made square faces look reasonably stylish, even if it would only ever cater to a niche.
Two years down the road and ASUS has firmly grasped a copy of the fashion watch design playbook and is holding it firmly with both hands. The Zenwatch 3 is packing a rose-gold inlay, a chunky crown and double pushers, making it look less like an Android Wear device and more like a Longines. It’s the sort of watch that goes down well with business types who want to be seen wearing their money on their wrists.
Samsung Gear
When you look at the first Galaxy Gear you have to ask what Samsung was thinking, even back then. It may have been a refinement of the company’s S9110 telephone watch, but it wasn’t pretty, no sir. Admittedly, it’s a striking piece of gear, with a brutalist design, exposed screws and a humped, 1.9-megapixel camera that juts out of the band rather than the hardware. But when you look at Samsung’s earlier smartwatches, like the SPH-WP10, the Galaxy Gear looks like pure elegance.
Just three years stand between the OG Gear and the Gear S3, but they couldn’t be further apart in the looks department. The Gear S3 looks like a regular watch, the sort of ultra-masculine timepiece that you’d see advertised in an in-flight magazine. Like its immediate predecessor, the bezel acts as a control dial, but now it’s been geared so that it doesn’t even look like a watch from the future. In fact, the Gear S3 could convincingly pass for a Rolex diving watch made half a century ago.
Sony Headphones
Sony’s been there (or thereabouts) for plenty of milestones in personal audio, even if it might not want everyone to remember some of its own missteps. From 1968’s DR-4A, the company’s first noise-isolating stereo headphones, to the Xperia Ear, which will arrive in stores this November. Back in the day, a 5.5mm audio lead with a nice woven coating was what connected your headphones to the sound source of your choice. These days, of course, it’s all about Bluetooth, but the Ear lets you send commands to your phone as well as receive sounds back. Even if you wouldn’t necessarily call it a headphone, per-se.
A side effect of the design of these small earpieces, of course, is that wearing them are significantly less conspicuous. In an era where people wear enormous Beats-branded cans as a matter of course, in-ear earpieces are, by comparison, invisible. While the first-generation Xperia Ear stands out, other devices of its kind — like Bragi’s Dash — aren’t meant to be visible. Although, we’re getting to the point where it’s not necessarily right to call these gadgets wearables, since they’re not really worn so much as inserted. Then again, nobody wants to walk into an electronics store and ask for the insertables section.
Withings
Withings has built its ecosystem of health products piece by piece, but its first device with heart rate monitoring wasn’t one for the record books. The Withings Pulse was a square rubber brick that was intended to be worn on a belt clip like a pedometer. After your workout, you could pull out the device, press it against your finger and be told how well your heart was doing at that particular moment. But aside from its blocky design, it had some great features, including automatic activity detection and a long-life battery. Unfortunately, the act of removing it from the clip wore the rubber out pretty quickly, and it was easy to forget when you changed pants.
Now, the company has seen the error of its ways and baked in the optical heart rate monitor into its Swiss-inspired watch. The Steel HR masks its more technological components between an analog dial and sub-dial — the latter of which tells you how much activity you’ve undertaken that day. The only gadgety component of the watch is the digital sub-dial which offers your heart rate, as well as smartphone notifications for calls, emails and texts. By burying the nuts and bolts behind a well-designed and subtle timepiece, Withings is pushing us towards a world where we’re not even aware of the tech we’re wearing.
E-Ink Watches
Sony’s first E Ink watch, FES, arrived in 2014, and cleverly added the technology to both the face and wristband. That’s led to some interesting options for customization and promised to radically alter the way watches were worn. But it was by no means the first E Ink timepiece on the market, and an early proponent was Phosphor, which launched the Ana-Digi timepiece back in 2012. The display itself was static, and users could use a side-mounted pusher to toggle between time and date views on the face.
But adding E Ink to a watch clearly hasn’t provided the necessary surge in sales that Sony was hoping for. For the second-generation of its groundbreaking timepiece, it’s added more traditionally-watch like design cues. That includes a prominent bezel and sapphire glass across the crystal, making it slightly less exciting. Then again, it perhaps shows that the tried-and-tested formula for watches hasn’t changed much in the last century, and these companies have learned that if you can’t beat ’em, you might as well join ’em.
We’re live all week from Berlin, Germany, for IFA 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
IFA 2016: The rose gold edition
No, Apple didn’t invent the color pink, but it certainly made “rose gold” famous. It all started last year with the company’s first rose gold iPhones, the 6s and 6s Plus, which quickly inspired other manufacturers to embellish their own devices with identical hues. It’s no surprise, then, that the IFA 2016 show floor is filled with rose gold gadgets, although some would prefer to be described as “copper” or “luxury pink.” Whatever it may be, it’s become a major trend in the tech world, one that shows no sign of slowing down. With that in mind, take a look at some of the best rose gold gadgets we found in Berlin.
We’re live all week from Berlin, Germany, for IFA 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
After Math: Call me, maybe
It’s been a banner week for mobile devices not made by Apple (you’ll have to wait until the 7th for those). Samsung, quite literally, blew its chance to gain ground on Apple, given the new iPhone’s reputed lackluster feature set. Google likely killed off Project Ara, its modular smartphone. Verizon and T-Mobile both rolled out new service plans aimed at stretching subscribers’ data plans. Hasselblad actually made a photography device that won’t require the life of your first born to obtain. And Nubia unveiled its newest flagship phone — but where’s the bezel. Numbers, because how else would we determine market share?
Six futuristic phone designs
By Cat DiStasio
Cell phone technology continues moving forward year after year, but many of the developments are incremental—a better camera, more storage space, or a faster processor. Those are just the improvements that make it to the mass market, though. There’s is a whole world of innovative developments in cellular phone design and technology that most people have never heard a word about, and some of them even come from leading cell phone manufacturers. Nokia, for instance, has developed a cell phone that can recharge in your pocket and other models made from largely recycled materials. Other companies are working hard to develop modular phones that are easier to repair and upgrade, thereby cutting down on electronic waste. It’s impossible to know which of these futuristic technologies we’ll actually be able to get our hands on, but it’s fun to dream about what kind of features your cell phone might have in another five years.
Nokia’s E-Cu phone charges in your pocket
Long-time leader in cellular phone technology Nokia developed an amazing concept phone that uses body heat to recharge its battery. Although we haven’t seen this technology hit the consumer market, the Nokia E-Cu’s unique charging ability would afford cell phone owners some major freedom if it ever came to fruition. The phone’s copper exterior and its internal integrated thermogenerator converts heat from the body into electricity, making it super easy to ditch the plug-in charger and portable battery packs without any concerns of the dreaded low battery indicator.
PhoneBloks modular reparable cell phone
PhoneBloks developed a concept phone a few years ago that many others have emulated since. A series of modular components snaps together like LEGO bricks, making it simple to replace a broken part or upgrade the phone. With a modular phone, you wouldn’t have to shell out hundreds of dollars for a brand new phone just because one component of your current phone stops working. PhoneBloks could save enormous amounts of electronic waste from ending up in landfills, also, since they allow people to get maximum use out of their initial phone purchase.
Kyocera’s waterproof, washable cell phone
Countless cell phones have been rendered useless bricks after being dropped in toilets, tubs, pools, and lakes – and everyone knows at least a few people who have desperately buried their damp phone in a bucket of rice in hopes of reviving it. Kyocera and Japanese telecom firm KDDI partnered to solve this modern-day problem by creating a waterproof, soap-proof phone called Digno Rafre. If washable cell phone technology becomes the norm, it would become even easier to keep up with your Twitter feed while soaking in a bubble bath, and could even lead to cell phones that could be used underwater, which would really make for some awesome Instagram pics.
O2 Recycle phone made from freshly cut grass
Created for the Rugby Football Union’s social responsibility campaign last year, the O2 Recycle phone is composed of reclaimed cell phone parts and grass clippings collected from southwest London’s Twickenham Stadium. Designer Sean Miles of DesignWorks made just one of the ultra-green phones, putting in over 240 hours building the phone case from glass clippings which were freeze-dried within two hours of being cut from the stadium, and then pulped, molded into the casing, and coated in an eco-friendly resin. The result is a crisp green phone that blends in completely with any stadium grounds or field, and has a much smaller environmental footprint than typical plastic phone bodies.
Samsung’s flexible phone
Ever the leader in consumer electronics, Samsung released a concept in 2011 for a truly futuristic cell phone design. The flexible, bendable, OLED phone can practically be folded in half without any risk of cracking the screen or damaging the components within. At the time, Samsung promised to release the flexible phones the following year, but the project has met a number of delays and is currently expected to roll out some time in 2017. The design has evolved over the years, and some of the images Samsung has released suggest a phone that could be curled around your wrist, reminiscent of slap bracelets from the 1980s.
Nokia Remade recycled phone
Finding new ways to incorporate recycled materials into new technology is a goal many companies share. Nokia was an early adopter of the eco-friendly trend, and in 2008 they unveiled a concept phone made from aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and old car tires. The recycled components primarily went into the phone’s casing, but Nokia didn’t overlook the inner workings. The company sought to employ more environmentally sensitive technologies like printed electronics (which reduce waste and CO2 emissions during manufacturing) and a backlit display which saves energy and increases the life of the battery.

Samsung’s biggest challenge at IFA is keeping up appearances
Samsung has a huge presence at IFA. Its booth takes up an entire floor in City Cube, the newest and shiniest exhibition hall at the Messe Berlin. The company’s show area is so big, it’s in its own separate building. Samsung also held not one but two press conferences here in Berlin; one just for the Gear S3 and another that centered around the company’s home appliances and television displays. In both, Samsung was like a proud parent showing off the many accomplishments of its progeny, touting the many advances it’s made in the consumer electronic space.
This is all pretty standard for a trade show, but all the pomp and ceremony is running parallel to one of the most high profile product failings in recent history. The Galaxy Note 7, one of the flagship phones it’s proudly showing off at the show is being recalled globally due to exploding batteries. Many wondered how Samsung might react to the situation, with some suggesting the attention might be diverted somehow, or that the Note 7 might mysteriously vanish from view. Instead, the company’s sticking to its guns, and putting on a brave face here in Berlin — not easy when the world’s tech media are in full attendance.
As devastating as the news must’ve been to Samsung’s corporate HQ, if you hadn’t read the news, you’d be none the wiser if you were casually visiting Samsung’s IFA booth. The company has a dedicated area on the floor just for the Note 7, with several assistants on hand to show off the phone’s various features and to tout its prowess. Instead of hiding the phone away, or over managing things (as can sometimes be the case), there were dozens of them out in the open, ready and available for curious onlookers to play around with. Some wondered whether proud Samsung might err on the side of caution, but to its credit, it’s playing it cool.
The Galaxy Note 7 recall is one of the largest in recent memory, with over a million phones that would need to be replaced. Not just that, but the timing of the recall couldn’t be worse. The device was still being rolled out globally, and Apple’s iPhone 7 event is just a few days away. The implications for the company are massive; it would cost it hundreds of millions of dollars just on the recall and refunding process alone, even without factoring in logistics and inventory fallout. Other companies have had to deal with recalls and product defects before — Apple’s iPhone 4 Antennagate and Fitbit’s Force skin irritation issue come to mind — but few have been on such a massive, public scale.
I talked to a helper at the Samsung booth, and asked if she faced any questions about the Note 7’s recall. She said that she did get a few queries, but she simply responded with a statement that the company was working on the issue. She also said that new, updated Note 7s would be on their way to store shelves eventually, which matches Samsung’s own claim that it’ll start making exchanges in the next couple of weeks.
But here at IFA at least, everything is business as usual. Samsung’s booth was buzzing with a seemingly neverending stream of crowds. The mood was upbeat and positive, and no phones exploded. Though Samsung would likely need a long time to recuperate from such a loss — not to mention mend its reputation going forward — it appears that, if IFA is any indication, the company will very likely weather this storm.
We’re live all week from Berlin, Germany, for IFA 2016. Click here to catch up on all the news from the show.
Samsung explains how the US Galaxy Note 7 recall will work
It’s been less than 24 hours since Samsung announced its worldwide recall of the Galaxy Note 7, and owners are probably wondering exactly what’s next. The major US carriers have already provided information on what they will do for customers (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon), and now Samsung is laying out its plans for direct support. If owners want to exchange for another Galaxy Note 7, they can do that as early as next week. Their other option is to exchange the device for a Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S7 edge, plus replacement of any Note accessories and a refund of the price difference.
For their trouble, Samsung says it’s offering a $25 gift card or bill credit from “select carriers” when swapping for a new device through the replacement program. Owners should contact the retailer where they purchased the device, or call 1-800-SAMSUNG for more information. Continuing its message from earlier this morning, the company says it has identified “the affected inventory” but it’s still voluntarily replacing devices for all interested owners.
It seems like a lot of trouble and not much payback for owners who have already picked up the phone. While sales of Galaxy devices have been a bright spot for the company this year, we’ll have to wait and see how much momentum is lost because of these problems.
Update: And even with these details, the saga might not be over yet. Consumer Reports has specifically called Samsung out for failing to issue an “official” recall that would involve the US Consumer Products Safety Commission. That would require clearer information about what’s wrong and what owners will do next, but so far Samsung hasn’t done it. According to Recode, officials have “concern” about the process, but have not officially commented on the recall.
Source: Samsung
Samsung recalls the Galaxy Note 7 amid battery fears
The Galaxy Note 7 isn’t just the highest-scoring phone we’ve reviewed this year, it’s the highest-scoring product. But following several reports that batteries were exploding, Samsung has issued a global recall of the device. Sales have been halted effective immediately, and all devices sold will be replaced.
The problem occurs when faulty devices are being charged, and is down to an issue within the batteries themselves, rather than power adapters or circuitry. Apparently, it affects only a small percentage of devices, but when shipments are in the millions, that still amounts to a very big problem. Yonhap News Agency cites an anonymous official saying that batteries were sourced from both China and Korea, and it’s the Korean-made batteries that are affected. Nonetheless, Samsung is recalling all models to be sure.
At a press conference to announce the recall, Samsung said that 35 cases of the fault have been reported to date, and it estimates the problem affects only 24 in a million devices, which equates to roughly one for every 42,000 sold. Koh Dong-jin, president of Samsung’s mobile business, apologized for any inconvenience the recall may cause customers, but said it was important to put safety first.
By all accounts, this will be the highest-profile consumer tech recall in history, but it’s by no means the first. Apple has had its fair share of issues, from the Beats Pill XL recall last year to the iPhone 4 Antennagate (which resulted in free bumper cases being handed out). Fitbit had huge problems with skin irritation on the Force fitness tracker, and ended up recalling all of them. The largest recall of all, however, surrounds Takata airbags — to date, well over 50 million have been recalled.
The recall is obviously a big embarrassment for Samsung. Over one million phones will need to be replaced at considerable cost, and the halt in sales comes at a time when the device was still being rolled out globally. The company’s mobile growth had stagnated over recent quarters, but had just begun to tick up with the launch of the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.
It was hoped that the Note 7 would propel growth further, but any positive impact the device’s launch has had will now be considerably lessened. Once the recall is complete, Samsung will need to convince potential customers that the device is safe for use, and persuade them not to buy the (by then freshly-announced) iPhone 7 Plus instead.
So what happens now? Samsung has halted the sales of the device worldwide, and is preparing replacements. It says it’ll take around two weeks to get the pieces in place, and it’ll exchange devices like-for-like. Most carriers around the world had already halted sales, and any that hadn’t will now, to ensure the faulty devices don’t spread any further. The precise details of how the recall will work are likely to be announced on a regional basis.
Update: Samsung has issued an English-language statement on the recall:
“Samsung is committed to producing the highest quality products and we take every incident report from our valued customers very seriously. In response to recently reported cases of the new Galaxy Note 7, we conducted a thorough investigation and found a battery cell issue.
To date (as of September 1) there have been 35 cases that have been reported globally and we are currently conducting a thorough inspection with our suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. However, because our customers’ safety is an absolute priority at Samsung, we have stopped sales of the Galaxy Note 7.
For customers who already have Galaxy Note 7 devices, we will voluntarily replace their current device with a new one over the coming weeks.
We acknowledge the inconvenience this may cause in the market but this is to ensure that Samsung continues to deliver the highest quality products to our customers. We are working closely with our partners to ensure the replacement experience is as convenient and efficient as possible.”
Source: Samsung (KR), (EN)
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