The Samsung Galaxy S7 might bring back the microSD slot

Samsung’s decision to exclude microSD slots from their 2015 flagships proved to be a very unpopular move, but the company could be looking to dodge that fire for their 2016 efforts. According to a newreport by HDBlog.It, Samsung is mulling over the possibility of reintroducing a microSD card slot for theSamsung Galaxy S7.

While the lack of the slot in the Samsung Galaxy S6, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note 5 didn’t completely doom the line as some had anticipated, we’re sure Samsung lost quite a few sales over its absence. Whether those lost sales are to blame for the overall downturn in Samsung’s smartphone shipments remains to be determined, but if they’re looking to repeat past successes then we’re sure their first consideration was to bring back some of the features they were once loved for.

We still don’t have a clear idea why Samsung ever took the microSD card slot out of the lineup in the first place. Some will be quick to point to monetary incentive — if you want more storage, you’ll have to pay Samsung a premium to get it. That’s one way to look at things, though there could be other factors — like engineering challenges — in play. This was one of Samsung’s first line of smartphones that featured a prominent block of metal, after all. It’s worth noting that Samsung’s first metal-doused phone, the Galaxy A7, had a microSD slot, so we understand if you aren’t willing to buy that story.

But the past is the past. We hope whatever reason Samsung had to exclude microSD support from their 2015 flagships will be wiped away for 2016’s expectations. As for that removable battery? We wouldn’t bet on that making a return unless Samsung suddenly falls out of love with their new premium engineering.

Samsung BRITECELL Camera Gets Officially Announced (PHOTO)

The camera found in the Galaxy S6/Edge/Plus/Note 5 is no joke. Earlier this year Samsung was finally able to deliver a smartphone camera that, for the first time ever, was capable of besting heavy weights from Apple’s lineup with little effort. It only makes that they’d want to further improve upon camera performance for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S7 and now we may finally know how.

After a Samsung trademark for something called “BRITECELL” was uncovered a couple of weeks ago, Samsung is finally ready to make it official. Announced during Samsung’s annual Investors Forum, Samsung’s upcoming BRITECELL technology looks to improve on the manufacturer’s ISOCELL camera in a number of ways. Developed in-house, BRITECELL will feature a camera module that is not only smaller in physical size, but performs better as well. While it won’t completely eliminate the camera hump found on most of their devices these days, it could soon be a little less pronounced. Baby steps, people…

According to Samsung, their BRITECELL camera features smaller, thinner 1 micron pixels that somehow manage to be more sensitive to low light for better quality stills with less color artifact. This also reduces the height of the camera by 17% without any sacrifice to the stellar photo quality already found on Sammy’s flagships. Samsung also mentions that they were also able to improve low light auto focusing merely by fine tuning some additional software.

Unfortunately, all of the above info means BRITECELL won’t have anything to do with that rumored 1/2-inch sensor making the rounds, but it’s possible we could see that launch with the Samsung Galaxy Note 6. Who knows.

Of course, all these improvements don’t really amount to jack squat until we can see it for ourselves. We’ll have to wait a little longer before we get our hands on whatever upcoming handset uses Samsung’s new BRITECELL camera, although we have a feeling it could be next year’s Galaxy S7. Stay tuned!

Speed test: HTC One A9 vs Samsung Galaxy fingerprint sensors [VIDEO]

One of the best things about the HTC One A9 is the fingerprint sensor. The sensor is fast and reliable, just like a fingerprint sensor needs to be. If it’s not fast and reliable, you’re not going to want to use it. Samsung’s fingerprint sensor on the latest Galaxy phones was starting to feel like more of a nuisance to me. I decided to compare the sensors to see if HTC’s truly is much better.

As you can see in the video, the results were not nearly as one-sided as I thought. The Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus proved to be relatively fast and surprisingly accurate. The One A9 also performed well, but I was expecting that. When the One A9 failed I was able to get it right on the next try or third try, but when Samsung’s failed I couldn’t seem to get it right.

The speed of the two sensors was also closer than I anticipated. When both displays are turned on, it’s a very tight race, but HTC’s sensor is much faster when the display is turned off. However, I think that is more a fault of the software than the sensor. The Edge+ seemed to hang just a bit longer on the lock screen. There’s one thing that makes all of these results so impressive: processors.

The Edge+ is running with Samsung’s beefy Exynos 7420, while the One A9 is running a much weaker Snapdragon 617. It was still able to keep up. I can’t help but imagine how insanely fast the HTC sensor would be if it had an equal processor. Kudos to HTC for doing a great job. Hopefully, they will be able to replicate this experience on their next flagship phone. I’m not sure I can go back to a phone without one.

Source- phandroid

Samsung's own 3D Touch interpretation revealed in patent filing

Ever since Apple launched the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus with 3D Touch, a lot of the talk in the mobile world has been focused on this feature. Alternatively called Force Touch in Apple's MacBooks, it lets different pressure levels applied to a touchscreen (or trackpad) correspond to different software actions. We've recently heard that Synaptics is working on brining just such a feature to Android, and that Samsung could be using that solution itself for the Galaxy S7.

Now though a patent application that's just been made public by the Korean Intellectual Property Office reveals that Samsung has at least been considering such an idea since April 2014. That's when this filing was registered, and it basically describes a way to have different software outcomes depending on how hard a user is pressing down the screen.

The pressure is measured through the corresponding voltage. So up until a certain threshold, if you touch the "a" key on the software keyboard, you'll get the lowercase letter, while if you press harder on the same key you'll see the uppercase "A" pop up. Another example has one key act as a space bar if it's pressed lightly, or Tab if it's pressed more vigorously. Copying text could be just a matter of pressing hard on the "c" key on the keyboard too, Samsung thinks.

What's unclear is whether Samsung's gone past the theoretical realm and actually worked on developing its own Force Touch solution since this patent application has been filed. Yet even if it hasn't, it can undoubtedly make use of Synaptics' implementation if it really wants something like this to be inside the Galaxy S7.

Is it the Galaxy A9 on the picture?

Those keeping watch on Samsung will be excited to learn about an interesting new smartphone of its apparently that's in the works. And no, we're not talking about the Galaxy S7, or any weird flip / slider phones whose indisputable retro charm does look out of place in 2015. Rather, we're talking of a purported Galaxy A9, powered by the Snapdragon 620 SoC a representative of Qualcomm's next-generation processor line-up.

The device appeared in Geekbench's score database, presented as "Samsung msm8976fhdlte-eur-open". The "msm8976" part of its name is a dead giveaway for the Snapdragon 620's presence. The chip's CPU contains eight cores - four Cortex-A72 ones and four Cortex-A53 ones. The SoC is capable of 4K video recording and playback, and contains a new, unnamed Adreno GPU. The chipset's bundled with an X8 LTE modem, which means that you can enjoy download speeds of up to 300Mbps and upload ones of up to 100Mpbs. Camera sensor support is limited to 13MP.

Besides the Snapdragon 620, the alleged Galaxy A9 packs 3GB of RAM memory and runs Android 5.1.1. With this configuration, the device scored 1325 in the single-core test, and 4461 in the multi-core test, an impressive result for what's considered to be Qualcomm's "not premium" silicon.