Samsung

A newly surfaced patent indicates that Samsung could be working on new magnetic VR controllers for its Gear VR headset. The patent was filed back in December and published earlier this week, and in it we see details about controllers that utilize a magnetic field to determine the position of the user's hands. Virtual reality usage scenarios are specifically discussed in the patent, though the details mention using the controllers for multiple devices and not any single one in particular.

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What with 4K video recording, increasingly high-quality photos, and games that are becoming huger as they get more console-like, word today that the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will bump up its storage options is welcome. The upcoming phablet is expected to be Samsung's largest smartphone of the year in terms of its physical size, but it should also be among the most capacious in terms of storage, too. Given the Note series' ongoing ambitions as true productivity devices, that can only be a good thing.

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If you were expecting the Galaxy Note 8 to have some bold new design or innovation, you might have been disappointed by the recent renders made by OnLeaks. If you were hoping that these cases prematurely selling at accessory retailer Mobile Fun would offer some good news, sorry to burst your bubble again. While we can't yet be sure of how accurate these cases are, they pretty much confirm what we've seen and heard so far: a Galaxy Note 8 that is pretty much a larger Galaxy S8+ with a pen.

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Ten years after the first iPhone and it's time to take a head count - how does a 2007 phone compared to today's biggest and brightest. The actual anniversary is of the market release of the 1st-gen iPhone, which came to stores on June 29th, 2007. Back then, the mobile phone market was a very different place than it is today. So very many buttons! What did LG, Samsung, Motorola, and HTC have then - and what do they have now?

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No software ever ships without bugs, especially on the first release. That is true for games, operating systems, or even something as simple as an Android home screen launcher. So when the Galaxy S8 and S8+ launched with a less than smooth UI experience, users were naturally miffed but also a bit patient for an update. That update has now arrived and Samsung has updated its TouchWiz Home launcher that promises to fix that lag bug. Some users, however, are reporting otherwise.

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Samsung might really be paving the way for its silicon to compete in a broader market. Nothing has been formally announced yet, but it is already expected that Samsung will soon be selling its Exynos systems-on-chip (SoC) to other device manufactures. Now at MWC Shanghai, it is perhaps laying the groundwork for doing the same in the mobile camera space. It has announced a new ISOCELL brand for its camera sensors, hinting at the possibility of expanding the reach of those sensors to other smartphones.

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Although fingerprint scanners hiding underneath glass displays is quite the hot topic in smartphones these days, the dream isn't actually new. It has been around a few years back and some even had nearly working solutions. One of those is Qualcomm and it is now reminding everyone of that. At MWC Shanghai, the mobile chip maker will be showing off its latest ultrasonic fingerprint scanner running underneath the display of an actual commercial smartphone. And, in a way, it will be showing Samsung what it might be missing out on.

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Although it's not as insanely innumerable and unnameable as in ages past, Samsung still has quite a variety of smartphones in the worldwide market today. Each of the S, A, J, and C series has at least 3 models per year, and one or two other variants. That's not counting the lone Galaxy Note every year either. With that many models in the past year and current, the question of which ones will get which major Android update is always a guessing game. Fortunately, SamMobile has done a bit of research, scrying, and wishing to bring this compilation of which ones will get the "Big O", a.k.a. Android 8.0, in Samsung' vast Galaxy.

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All eyes may be on the upcoming launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, but the phone maker's ill-fated Note 7 will beat it to shelves as it gets a post-recall rebirth. Samsung was forced to make a costly and complex turnaround and demand back every single Galaxy Note 7 sold, after a number of the flagship smartphones burst into flames. The problem was subsequently blamed on the battery design, and now Samsung has a fix.

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We might just be counting down weeks before the Galaxy Note 8 is, once and for all, revealed to the public, but there is almost little left to know about the stylus-toting successor to last year's ill-fated model. And thanks to OnLeaks, we might already know exactly what it looks like. And it looks like it will suffer from the Galaxy S8's biggest design flaw and maybe even worse.

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Samsung Pay, the Korean company's mobile payment system, has finally added support for Discover credit cards, filling a big gap that left out some users. Samsung quietly added the support to its Android app, enabling anyone with a Discover card to add it to their digital wallet. Not familiar with Samsung Pay? We've got all the details on how to add your card.

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It appears Samsung is gearing up to launch a new consumer-tier security camera, one designed for use in and around one's home. The camera has appeared on Best Buy's website with the name 'SmartCam,' though the Korean company hasn't officially announced the product at this time. The listing shows the camera as featuring a 1080p resolution with WiFi support. The launch date isn't known, though.

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