Samsung wearables may boast fingerprint sensors

Fingerprint sensors seem to be the next big thing when it comes to mobile devices, but have you ever thought about having them in your smartwatch?

The company behind the fingerprint sensor on the Galaxy S5, Synaptics, has revealed that next year the same technology could find its way onto Samsung’s smartwatches.

Whilst there are no plans yet as to what use the sensor may have on a smartwatch, or if it will even extend past just unlocking the device, it seems Synaptics are confident companies will begin to adapt their technology to wearables, and Samsung will be the first to do so.

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Samsung Z is Galaxy on the outside, Tizen on the inside

While Samsung has been a loyal proponent of Android for quite some time, it’s also spent the past few years cooking up its own open-source mobile operating system called Tizen. After several prototypes and revisions, the company finally saw fit to unveil the Samsung Z — its first ever Tizen smartphone — a couple of days ago. It was easily the star of the show at the Tizen developer conference here in San Francisco, so we were eager to take it for a spin.

At first glance, you’d be forgiven if you mistook the Samsung Z for one of the company’s other Galaxy S handsets. It’s all very familiar, from the Samsung logo at the top right down to the single physical home button at the bottom. Flanking the button on either side are hot keys for the menu and back functions respectively, which, again, mirrors its Android cousins. Flip it around, and you’ll find that the rear is covered in that familiar faux leather material we’ve seen on other Samsung devices too. It does have sharper edges than either the recent S5 or the Note 3, however, with flatter sides and a far blockier aesthetic.

Still, the Z itslef felt pretty solid from our few minutes handling it, and that 4.8-inch 720p HD AMOLED display remained sharp and vibrant under the show floor’s fluorescent lights. On either side of the phone are buttons for volume and power, while an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash sits on the back. Other specs include a 2.1-megapixel front-facing cam, 16GB of storage, a microSD card slot, a generous 2,600mAh battery plus a 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. It even has a power saving mode, a fingerprint sensor and a heart rate monitor — you know, like that Galaxy S5.

But enough of the hardware. Let’s get down to what sets this phone apart from the rest of Samsung’s mobile lineup — the Tizen operating system. We’ll just say it upfront: It looks quite a bit like Android, or at least, the TouchWiz version of Google’s mobile OS. The app drawer, notification tray and settings page are very similar in look and feel to what we’ve seen on the GS5. Like the prototype we saw a few months ago, you can even fill the home screen with Tizen’s “Dynamic Boxes,” or what the rest of us call customizable widgets. You can apparently have as many as nine different home screens, and adding or removing these dynamic boxes is as simple as pressing and holding on the touch screen. Further, the camera app is almost identical to that of other Samsung devices, with similar settings such as “Best photo” and “Beauty face.”

There are a few uniquely Tizen touches that stand out, however. The most obvious one is that instead of just four or five favorite apps along the bottom of the home screen, you have as many as eight. Additionally, when you swipe up on those favorite apps, you’ll pull them to the top, revealing a split screen of the rest of your apps underneath. From there, you can navigate your app drawer as per usual by swiping left and right. You can also group apps together in a see-thru folder that look very similar to the ones on iOS. Also, when you’re in split-screen mode like this, you can easily swap out your favorite apps by dragging and dropping them around as you see fit. Though it’s a rather small thing, we also liked that you could change the interface’s color theme just by swapping out the wallpaper.

Understandably, there weren’t that many apps that we could play around with on the Z, as Tizen is such a young OS. Tizen apps are essentially web applications, built on standards such as WebKit and HTML5. A quick glance at the Tizen Store revealed a surprisingly healthy number of apps, though not ones from recognizable publishers. As you might expect, the Z supports most of Samsung’s own applications, such as S Health, S Voice and S Translate, all of which we saw on our show floor model.

There’s no word yet on pricing of the Z, but that shouldn’t be a concern to most of you, because it will only be available in Russia in the third quarter of this year. Samsung sees it as a test market of sorts, and will be launching an app challenge in that country to help the Tizen effort along. When we asked a Samsung spokesperson as to how the company hopes to market Tizen next to Android, all we received was a rather non-committal answer that it’s a “multi-platform company” that wishes to give its customers as many choices as possible. Still, we can’t help but wonder if Tizen, and the Z, are further signs of Samsung attempting to step out of Google’s software shadow.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Samsung Galaxy F leaked with premium design

From last year, we have been hearing that Samsung will release a premium flagship device this year, known as Samsung Galaxy F. It was rumored to show up with the Galaxy S5, and we heard about its specs several times. Now after all this time, we finally get to have a glimpse of the Samsung Galaxy F or also know as the Samsung Galaxy S5 ‘Prime’. Thanks to @evleaks, below you can see a beautiful render image, which look a lot like the Samsung Galaxy S5, only with brushed metal finish. Have a look:

@evleaks also shared a blurry image of the Galaxy F, and in the title description, they said that this device will replace the Galaxy S5 and hence there will be no Galaxy S6. However, they said that this statement is unconfirmed and unverified. We already know what will be under the hood, and it’s probably not a good successor to the Galaxy S5, but at least there will be an option for people if they want something more.

Are you looking forward to the Galaxy F? Let us know in the comment box below.

Source: @evleaks

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Samsung’s Tizen graduates from phone to television with smart TV prototype

Yesterday, Samsung released a developer kit that shows it’s planning on releasing a version of its open-sourced Tizen platform to run on smart TVs, not just wearables and smartphones. At the Tizen Developer Conference in San Francisco yesterday, the company unveiled its first ever Tizen TV prototype to show off exactly that. Installed on what appears to be a Samsung TV with a curved screen, Tizen’s smart TV interface is still in its early development stages, so it’s entirely possible that the interface on display at the conference might not make it to the final version. Yet, it’s a good indicator of Tizen’s potential, so naturally we had to take a closer look.

On the left of the Tizen’s smart TV home screen is a “Home Bar” navigation menu that lists top-level items such as Live TV, Photo & Video, Music, Apps and Source. To the right is a “Dynamic Bar” that changes depending on what section you’re in. The Music tab will reveal a list of albums, while Live TV would show current TV listings, for example. When asked how media would be loaded onto the television, a Samsung spokesperson said you’d transfer the files over USB. The Tizen OS also theoretically supports media streaming, but there’s not yet an app that can demonstrate that. You could also store those files and apps on the cloud thanks to a new Tizen online storage system called CloudBox.

Navigating through the different menu selections can either be done with a standard remote control or one that’s more like a wand, allowing you to move a cursor around like you would a mouse. What’s unique about the Tizen platform, however, is that you’re also able to use a Web-based remote with your phone without having to really pair the two. All you have to do is head to a particular URL on your phone’s web browser (either by typing it in or scanning a QR code) and you’ll immediately see buttons that correspond to the TV’s channel and volume controls. You’re also able to key in words via a wireless keyboard interface, which is far preferable to entering text with the remote control and an on-screen keyboard.

There wasn’t much in the way of apps, which is understandable considering how new the system is. Still, we did see a web browser as well as a dedicated YouTube application. The browser seemed rather zippy and smooth for the few minutes we saw it demonstrated, but of course it’s hard to really judge its performance in such a short time period. Samsung’s Executive Vice President Jong-Deok Choi said on stage that Tizen’s smart TV platform is designed to be very Web-friendly. Indeed, it’s apparently able to run web apps that are written in standards such as HTML 5 and Javascript, which opens the doors for all sorts of applications and programs to enter the smart TV space.

As Tizen is an open platform, Samsung tells us that other TV manufacturers would be able to adopt it as well. There’s currently no concrete date for a Tizen-based smart TV from the likes of Samsung, though Choi did hint on stage that a Tizen-based smart TV could be coming to the market “very soon.”

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Samsung

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Trade your DSLR today to celebrate Samsung’s ‘Ditch Day’

Been eyeing Samsung’s new NX30 mirrorless camera? Well, if you live in New York City and can make it to 42-43 Broadway Plaza in Times Square between noon and 6PM, it might be your lucky day. Thanks to Sammy’s “Ditch Day” promotion, you can trade in your current DSLR for the NX30, “while supplies last.” For more information about the terms and conditions, click here.

Filed under: Cameras, Misc

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Departing Samsung exec dares to criticize his own products

Samsung’s former head of TV innovation, Richard Bullwinkle, insists he’s still on good terms with his old employer. But that could change when the company discovers what he really thinks about its smart TVs. In an interview with Fierce Cable, he admitted that some models he’s worked on are just too slow: “The switch from live TV to Netflix takes over two minutes,” he’s reported as saying. “That’s dinosaur speed.”

More broadly, he said that the whole smart TV industry is “in trouble” due to a lack of good content and apps, which is encouraging a “very high percentage” of people to rely on a separate device like a “Roku box or Apple TV box” instead. Then again, Bullwinkle says the harm to smart TVs isn’t “fatal,” and the only reason he quit his job is because Samsung wanted him to relocate to Seoul, while he preferred to remain in California: “They offered me a chance to move to Korea to be a true Samsung executive. I thought I was already a Samsung executive.” Burn.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Samsung

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Source: FierceCable