Samsung has a long history of duplicating applications and services which are already offered by either AOSP or a proprietary service from Google. Some OEMs have chosen to embrace the fully-featured applications and services that Google offers (like we saw with the HTC 10), but then some OEMs like Samsung have chosen to be as independent from Google as possible. This actually results in a divisive debate within the community.

Some people feel this is filling up their internal storage with too many duplicated applications and services, while others enjoy it because they don’t like being tied down to Google’s ecosystem. We can’t really blame Samsung for doing this though because the more they rely on Google for these services then the more control they’re giving over (which sometimes results in less money they can potentially earn too). Samsung shut down their music service late last year (Samsung Milk Music), which is likely why they chose to go with Google Play Music this year.

So last week, Samsung announced they would be using Google Play Music as the default music player and the default music service on both the Galaxy S8 as well as the Galaxy S8+. Not only are the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ getting this treatment, but Samsung says it will happen on all Android-based Samsung phones and tablets launched in 2017.  However, there are some limitations and restrictions put in place depending on a couple of variables.

Samsung says this could change depending on which market you are located in, and which carrier you buy your device from. We’re also told that device support will be expanded on in the future too. These customers will have the ability to uploaded as many as 100,000 tracks to their own personal library (up from the regular 50,000). Lastly, those who purchase the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+ or the Galaxy Tab S3 can activate a 3-month free trial of Google Play Music (which also includes access to YouTube Red).

Source: Samsung Newsroom

Early reports indicate that Samsung’s new flagship devices are off to a pretty great start, with the lineup breaking the previous pre-orders records set by the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. However, not all things are bright and beautiful: the Galaxy S8 and S8+ have attracted a quite a bit of criticism for its red-tinted display on some units.

The issue of reddish display first came to know when the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ went on sale in South Korea, with many owners posting images of red-tinted display of their Galaxy S8 units on social media sites. It was believed the culprit had to do with Samsung’s attempt to strengthen red color on their OLED panels. Samsung reportedly developed deep red OLED displays for Galaxy S8 devices in order to avoid the issue of too much green due to the uneven distribution of subpixels in a pentile matrix. Initially, Samsung denied such issue was due to a hardware fault and advised users to adjust the color balance on their devices from within the display settings. But as more consumers raised their voices on the issue, Samsung announced on Thursday that a new software update would be rolled out next week to readjust the color balance on affected units.

Now according to a new report from the US-based review publication, Consumer Reports, the problem of the reddish display on the Galaxy S8 is not something that one should worry about.

To check the veracity of the reddish tint issue, Consumer Reports tested eight Galaxy S8 devices and found that out of eight devices, four Galaxy S8 had slightly reddish tint. The publication also notes that the issue is not immediately noticeable unless the user is comparing the two devices side-by-side.

“Our display evaluators noted that displays of four of our test models appeared slightly more red than the other four. It’s unclear how much consumers might object to the red tint, especially if they weren’t looking at two phones side-by-side.”

Additionally, Consumer Reports also said Samsung would release the software update as early as next week to address the color balance problem.

So while the issue is still there in some units, the good news is that it’s just a result of a software calibration problem, or at least it can reportedly be addressed through software, and should be fixed with the upcoming software update.

Source: BusinessKorea

What do you think? Is Samsung underplaying the significance of the displays’ red tint, or is it really not a real issue? Sound off in the comments!

When it comes to security, the recently-released Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus offers a plethora of authentication options a user can choose from to securely unlock their device. The user can choose whether they want convenience over security or vice versa and set an unlocking method accordingly. The device comes with a fingerprint scanner, iris scanner, facial recognition feature as well as all the standard Android security options such as PIN, pattern, and password to offer enhanced security.

While security options like the fingerprint scanner and face unlock can easily be found on other Android devices, too, the iris scanner is something which you will only find in the Galaxy S8. The iris scanner, as the name suggests, requires scanning user’s eyes before granting access to the device, and is arguably one of the most secure among other biometric security options.

The iris scanner is believed to be more secure and harder to manipulate for attackers than, say, fingerprint scans and passwords. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that banks and stores will be interested in taking advantage of the Galaxy S8’s iris scanning capabilities to authenticate mobile purchases in their services.

According to a report from The Korea Herald, a number of financial companies in South Korea are looking to offer users with an option to authenticate digital transactions with the iris scanner on their Galaxy S8. One of the companies seeking to implement such support in its mobile application is Samsung Card Co., a subsidiary of Samsung Life Insurance and also the largest credit card company in South Korea, the report states. Other big financial companies such as Shinhan, Hana, and Woori are also said to be planning to add the feature in their services.

The report squares with a previous report which also suggested that Samsung would make use of iris scanner and other biometric security options available on the Galaxy S8 to strengthen security while making mobile payments.

This will be the first time the iris scanner will be used to authenticate digital payments. The last year’s Galaxy Note 7 was the first to come with an iris scanner, but at the time, its usability was only limited to unlocking the device and logging into accounts.

SOURCE: The Korea Herald

Some of the “smallest” improvements found in the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ reside in the camera department. That is not entirely a bad thing, because the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge did set the bar really high for their camera performance.

The front camera on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ did receive a hardware upgrade. The S8 features an 8MP sensor with f/1.7 aperture, with the new highlight feature being its autofocus capabilities. This is the first Samsung device that features proper autofocus on the front, which should help with selfies.

Interestingly, the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+’s front camera has another trick up its sleeve:

JerryRigEverything noticed in his teardown video that the front camera on the Galaxy S8 features a stabilization mechanism. The camera module and its internal movements suggest it was actually designed to make use of Optical Image Stabilization. The front camera on the retail and review units do not seem to have have OIS capabilities enabled though, so Samsung may have just been toying with the idea.

What are your thoughts on the disabled-OIS on the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+’s front camera? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: YouTube: JerryRigEverything

Last week Samsung announced that the Galaxy S8 would ship without Bixby Voice control. It seems unlikely that that little bombshell will dissuade anyone from buying the new flagship. It is, after all, a great piece of hardware, as evidenced by our recent review.

Still, it’s a notable disappointment for one of the phone’s key selling points and a stumble for a feature that’s designed to point the way forward for the company. At present, the Samsung’s smart assistant has the makings of a compelling feature, but the execution is scattershot.

Bixby can and perhaps will be the great unifying force promised by the company. In its current state, however, it feels like a suite of features added onto Samsung’s already sizable selection of Android add-ons. The company has never wanted for apps. In fact, they’ve long been one of the driving factors its use to distinguish itself from the countless other Android manufacturers flooding the market.

That was likely a large part of the reason the company opted to launch its own assistant, after failing to make too much headway with S-Voice. Why settle for Google Assistant when you can make your own in house? Doing so could once and for all unite the Galaxy’s myriad applications under a single, accessible banner and serve as the foundation for broader controls.

After all, recent plays by Amazon, Apple and Google have all demonstrating that smart assistants are the gateway to a lot more than just the weather and silly Wikipedia questions. Among other things, they’re a common language that can serve as an entry point for unifying the smart home – a space in which Samsung is clearly heavily invested with numerous connected appliances.

It’s clear that Samsung is hanging a lot on the software. It even went so far as devoting a full button to Bixby, even as it made a big show of ditching the big home key up front. But an essential part of adoption requires a strong user experience right out of the gate, and in its present form, Bixby doesn’t deliver on the blustery promises the company made ahead of launch, when it promised it would be “revolutionizing phone interfaces.”

Samsung’s acknowledgement of its failure to ship Bixby at press time was less an admission of failure than it was an opportunity for the company to talk up the pieces that are shipping with the phone.

“With its intelligent interface and contextual awareness, Bixby will make your phone more helpful by assisting in completing tasks, telling you what you’re looking at, learning your routine and remembering what you need to do,” it said in a statement sent to TechCrunch following the news. “Key features of Bixby, including Vision, Home and Reminder, will be available with the global launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8 on April 21. Bixby Voice will be available in the U.S. on the Galaxy S8 later this spring.”

In its current state, Bixby consists of Home, the bit that pops up when you hit the side button; Vision, an image and text scanning service; and Reminder, which, well, lets you create reminders.

This early iteration of Home doesn’t do all that much to set itself apart from myriad other content aggregating mobile services. Vision, meanwhile, is the most promising piece of the offering, adding a shopping feature along the lines of Amazon Flow, which lets users buy things by scanning a label or barcode. That’s coupled with the ability to scan and translate text – definitely a helpful feature for frequent travels.

But as with the S8 itself, which the company promised would be “the beginning of a new way to experience the world” in its keynote, Samsung is setting the bar impossibly high. Sure, there are some compelling features on the horizon, like Voice, which is said to offer a more contextual user experience than Siri and the like. More features derived from the acquisition of Viv like added third-party support could help push it over the top, as well.

At present, Bixby feels like a rushed piece of an otherwise well-formed and long thought out phone. The company has the opportunity to deliver a real groundbreaking software experience in Bixby, one that could truly set its software apart from the rest of its Android brethren and help build a connected future moving forward. As it stands, however, the smart assistant has gotten off on the wrong foot with undelivered potential.

The dual-camera craze seems to be hitting several smartphone manufacturers including Apple and Huawei. One company that hasn’t put a dual-camera on its flagship phone is Samsung. That doesn’t mean the company hasn’t experimented with a dual-camera setup though, at least according to one Tweet. In the Tweet below you can see a Samsung Galaxy S8+ with dual-cameras. This is apparently a prototype and Samsung has been forthright in the past that they have experimented with the idea. The reason the company has yet to incorporate dual-cameras is they found no value in two cameras on a smartphone.

Таким был S8+, таким стал Note 8 pic.twitter.com/Q1Fk8tfMpt

— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) April 16, 2017

Both Apple and Huawei use dual-cameras for depth of field trickery and for the most part, they both work fairly well. Samsung is probably experimenting with the same concepts but likely aren’t satisfied with the results they’re seeing.

It is no secret that Samsung experimented with a dual-camera setup for its Galaxy S8 smartphone generation. The company told our own Dan Seifert as much during its preview event for the S8 in South Korea last month. Company execs told Dan that they didn’t pursue the dual-camera route because “Samsung has not found real value for it yet.”

What’s more eye-opening for us here is the fact that Samsung could have put that oddly placed fingerprint (on the new S8) sensor elsewhere. The consensus across most of the early reviews is the current placement of the fingerprint sensor is awkward and inconvenient, my unit should be here soon so I’ll most certainly have an opinion soon. It will be interesting to see if Samsung eventually embraces dual-camera technology or simply just dismisses it.

What do you think of this story? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

  Source: The Verge