Today the Samsung Galaxy S7 reached the point at which it will likely no longer receive new software updates. The device was first released in March of 2016, as a machine that'd ultimately be Samsung's last major smartphone to use a hardware home button*. This was also the last Galaxy S smartphone with a truly rectangular display.
Samsung is notorious for its terrible software support even for its flagship phones. To be fair, however, it has been improving and keeps on trying, despite the sometimes more publicized reports of its failures. It does try to quickly update its very latest premium phones to the latest Android release and has even expanded its software support coverage to four years of security updates. And that is happily the case at least for the Galaxy S7 line whose time has finally come after four years of receiving that promise.
Thanks to the frightening prospect of being bored at home, the number of purchases of entertainment devices, from gaming consoles to tablets, have surged recently. This is definitely an opportune time for Amazon Apple whose Kindle readers, Fire tablets, and iPads have become synonymous with digital content consumption. Not one to be left out, Samsung is also pushing its own affordable Galaxy Tab A slate forward but it might come a little too late for T-Mobile customers.
Along with the surge in users on the Internet, there has also been a rise in the purchases of computers and especially laptops in the past weeks and months. This is mostly connected by the need to take work home during quarantine and shelter-in-place periods. Unfortunately, that fell outside the launch window of many new notebook computers that just got announced last week. The Galaxy Chromebook, however, was announced way back in January and it's only now that it's landing in the US to give Chrome OS users a stylish but expensive option.
When you buy a flagship device, you build up an expectation that device would be supported with timely updates. That's especially true if the device is barely a year old. Of course, some companies, like Apple, Google, and the late Essential, are better than others while some, like Samsung, are improving yet struggling to change old habits. The Galaxy Tab S6, for example, is not just Samsung's latest tablet, it is also one of the few remaining premium Android tablets in the market and it's only getting the latest Android update half a year after Android 10 was released.
For years, Samsung Mobile has been dancing between two mobile processors, the Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm as well as the Exynos from its own sibling, Samsung Electronics LSI. In the past, the difference between the two chips in the same phone models hasn't been that noticeably but that gap seems to be getting wider and wide. Matters have seemed to come to a head this year with the Galaxy S20 and its Snapdragon 865 and Exynos 990 variants. According to benchmarks and user testing, the two couldn't be further apart in terms of performance.
A new leak suggests that the next generation of Samsung's Galaxy Buds truly wireless earbuds may feature a unique 'bean' shape that offers a snug fit without the discomfort of in-ear designs. The 'bean' Galaxy Buds would measure just under 1-inch in length, the new leak claims, with the design nestling the body of each earpiece into the natural curvature of the ear.
If you want the latest and greatest smartphone features, you usually have to buy the latest and greatest smartphone, but a software update for the Galaxy S10 series and Note 10 is bucking that trend with my favorite Galaxy S20 camera feature. Rolling out from today in the US, the new firmware adds several of the photography features from Samsung's 2020 flagships to last year's phones, including one I'm still very excited about.
It has become a tradition for some manufacturers (except Samsung and Apple it seems) to get some benchmarking sites to help hype up a product with their reviews. Often, however, these reviews come after the product gets announced though are definitely some that publish their super early thoughts on Day Zero. DisplayMate is once again bucking that trend by announcing that the OnePlus 8 is its new darling, more than a week before the phone even gets announced.
Samsung has revealed that a new software update will bring some Galaxy S20 features to the Galaxy S10 and the Galaxy Note 10. Specifically, the update will bring a few camera features with it, along with the Galaxy S10's Gallery and sharing features. Even better is that Galaxy S10 and Note 10 users won't have to wait very long for this update to arrive.
A leak of a single piece of plastic today tells a story of the future of Samsung's future top-tier smartphone lineup. This single piece of plastic shows the most significant elements of the Samsung Galaxy Note 20, both front and back. We can glean that this device has a rectangular backside camera array with rounded corners - this indicates the path Samsung will take with consideration for their most recently released Samsung Galaxy S20 lineup.
There's no question that flagship phones have become expensive devices, with many of them running $1000 or more. Samsung's Galaxy S20 lineup has not been immune to this price inflation, with the Galaxy S20 5G running $999.99, the Galaxy S20+ 5G priced at $1,199.99, and the Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G rounding out the bunch at a whopping $1,399.99.