Articles about Samsung

Today, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving and Hanukah, a rare occurrence they overlap. We reflect on the things we feel -- or should be -- grateful. Ahead of the holiday meal I served up "13 things for which Google gives thanks" and colleagues Wayne Williams and Alan Buckingham "5 things to be thankful for in Windows 8.1" and "5 products I'm thankful for", respectively. I would be remiss ignoring Apple.

The fruit-logo company is unique in techdom, inventing or reinventing several hugely successful product categories. Most companies have one- or two-hit wonders. Apple has a string of smash hits, like the rarest of iconic musicians. The Beatles come to mind, because of their 50th-anniversary and name shared -- you know, Apple Records. The many things for which the company should be thankful are obvious, so let's just dispense with those and get to items other list-makers, if there are any, likely will overlook. I present Apple's thankful things from least to most important.

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After pitting its Surface 2 against Apple's iPad Air (unsurprisingly, the former wins that round), Microsoft is now going after Samsung's Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 in a new Surface RT ad that focuses on the connectivity options offered by the two devices.

It is a no-brainer as to which one wins the battle in this new ad -- yes, it is the Surface RT. The slate comes out on top as the superior device because it allows users to connect an external display, connect a drive to the full-size USB port and charge it, at the same time. Meanwhile, the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 is portrayed as the sore loser due to its significantly limited hardware design.

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A total of six Android devices from Samsung and HTC have been delisted by Futuremark after suspicions were raised about their performance in 3DMark benchmarks. Although no specific details are given about why the handsets were removed, concerns surrounded the performance of particular phones.

It comes after Samsung code appeared to detect the presence of benchmarking software and seemingly increased GPU frequency to achieve higher results. A new version of the Android app implements the delistings.

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Samsung has reshaped the smartphone market with the Galaxy Note series by giving large-screened handsets mass-market appeal. The South Korean maker has sold tens of millions of its stylus-equipped phablets and other similar devices, with the recipe also being applied by rival companies, such as HTC, LG, Nokia or Sony, seeking to make great strides of their own. After all, consumers love phablets as this segment accounted for 21 percent of all smartphone shipments in Q3 2013, according to research firm IDC.

And, today, Samsung introduces a new phablet in its lineup, called Galaxy Grand 2. The device is the successor of the Galaxy Grand, which was introduced in mid-December 2012 albeit with a smaller, 5-inch display. So how big is the new model?

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One year ago, Apple was awarded a whopping $1.05 billion in damages from Samsung after the South Korean company was found guilty in a US court of copying elements from the iPhone and using them in some of its own handsets. Infringed features included how the devices displayed text and icons, the bounce-back response found in iOS, and the tap-to-zoom, one-finger-to-scroll, two-to-pinch, and zoom navigation features. The award was so high because the jury found that Samsung had willfully stolen design elements from Apple.

Earlier this year the US District Judge who presided over the trial, Lucy Koh, upheld close to $640 million of the damages that Apple had been awarded, but said that calculations made by the original jury had errors in it and ordered a retrial for the remaining amount.

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Two days ago IDC released its latest Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker report, showing growth for both Android and Windows Phone and drops for iOS and BlackBerry.

Today Gartner provides details on worldwide mobile phone sales to end users, with the big news being that smartphones accounted for 55 percent of all mobile phone sales in the third quarter of 2013.

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Launched earlier this year in Barcelona, KNOX, as we reported at the time, is a secure Android platform powering Samsung Galaxy devices. It's designed to strengthen Android by using hardware features to provide the highest level of protection. KNOX is aimed at offering security whilst remaining manageable and addresses the need to separate work and play on the same device.

With the launch of a partner program, Samsung is helping resellers and independent software vendors to provide extra value for their customers and extend the benefits of KNOX to the enterprise market. It provides partners with assets, resources and training to help them provide support for Samsung devices. Compatibility is included for existing master data management (MDM) solutions to allow resellers to offer a complete solution or work with existing installations.

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Samsung and Google jointly released the Galaxy Nexus just over two years ago, in October 2011. The handset is no longer shiny and new, but that doesn't mean there aren't still customers using the device -- it's still for sale at retail locations like Amazon. And Nexus owners could be considered the hardcore Android fans or, in other words, the very ones who know about, and want, version 4.4 of the mobile operating system.

However, Google sticks to a rigid 18-month lifespan for devices, and this means the Galaxy Nexus will not be updated to Android 4.4. Despite the perception that the search giant isn't known for changing its mind, a sampling of the handset's owners are attempting to petition the company to do exactly that.

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According to new quarterly reports from IDC and Strategy Analytics, Samsung has increased its lead on the smartphone market in Q3 2013. The South Korean maker's shipments were higher than those of the next four-largest vendors, combined, according to the IDC data.

Samsung's smartphone shipments surpassed 80 million units (IDC -- 81.2 million; SA --88.4 million), leading to a market share above 30 percent (IDC -- 31.4 percent; SA -- 35.2 percent). Once again, the two research firms, both of which count shipments, provide different data sets for both shipments and market share. However, both reports say that in Q3 2013 smartphone shipments reached record levels (IDC -- 258.4 million; SA -- 251.4 million).

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Flat screens are so yesterday; curves are where it is at these days. Not content with constantly increasing the size of phone displays, handset manufacturers are now looking for a new twist. Both LG and Samsung have decided that curves are the way ahead. LG has officially announced the G Flex following on from the Galaxy Round that was revealed by Samsung just a few weeks ago, but it is the Samsung handset that is highlighted in a new ad.

As the Galaxy Round is destined for the Korean market, it should come as no surprise that the commercial is in Korean. This matters little as the looks of the phone speak for themselves. The advertisement demonstrates various curved objects that sit neatly in the hand to highlight that a great design decision has been made. Oddly, most of the objects shown -- an egg, a hand, a lemon, a glass -- are convex in curvature, so it's not really a direct comparison with how the handset will sit in the palm.

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According to a new survey conducted by J.D. Power among US mobile operator subscribers, Apple and Samsung lead the pack on "overall satisfaction performance". The iPhone maker ranks first for AT&T and Verizon customers while Samsung takes the top spot for Sprint and T-Mobile subscribers.

The J.D. Power survey identifies Apple and Samsung as the sole smartphone vendors to rank above the average value on all four counts -- performance, exterior design, features and ease of use. The findings of the survey are based, according to J.D. Power, on the experiences of 16,421 users who are customers of the aforementioned four-largest local mobile operators and have had their current smartphone for less than a year.

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After what was possibly the shortest-lived leak in history, Samsung announces the Galaxy Round, a smartphone with a curved screen. Just days after LG announced mass production of the first flexible display, images started to leak online that depicted a curved Samsung device.

This was followed almost immediately by a Samsung announcement, complete with the news that the phone will be available in Korea from 10 October.

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This has been a week with a lot of news about operating systems. As we near the official release OS X Mavericks went GM and was made available to developers, while in the world of Linux Red Hat Enterprise 5.10 was also unveiled. Windows 8.1 was made available for pre-order, but a study of sales figures revealed that Windows 7 continues to grow faster than Windows 8. Ahead of his retirement sometime in the next twelve months, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer was punished for poor performance with a bonus reduction, with first generation Surface sales partly to blame.

Things look better for Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2, with reports of the tablets selling out -- this is perhaps not surprising when Delta Airlines has bought 11,000 of the devices for its pilots. As well as looking forward, Microsoft also came over a little nostalgic, choosing to show off the capabilities of Internet Explorer 11 with a revived version of the classic Windows 95 game Hover.

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Benchmarks are important. The quoted figures for any piece of hardware are all well and good, but potential buyers need to know how a hard drive, processors, computer, tablet or smartphone really performs. After all, two processors with a clock speed of 3GHz do not necessarily perform equally well, and it is only through testing that it is possible to determine which one comes out on top. Few people have the means to go out and compare two similar pieces of hardware, so this is where benchmarks prove useful.

People use smartphones and tablets for different things. One person might be happy being able to take notes and make phone calls, while someone else might be looking for a 60fps hi-def gaming experience. Here benchmarks matter. It is important to be able to accurately compare devices using reliable figures. If you want to know how quickly phone A shifts pixels around the screen compared to phone B, it is important that the tests are performed in the same way, and are carried out fairly.

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We are now just days away from the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear. If you're yet to be caught up in the hype and excitement, Samsung's first commercial for the two devices could help to whip you into a frenzy. There's a slight cinematic quality to the ad which is… well… take a look for yourself. "Different" is perhaps the word.

The advertisement finds us following an artist as she uses the two devices to help her prepare for a dance performance in the evening. We see the star of the ad flick through My Magazine whilst getting ready to leave the house before showing off the Air Command and Action Memo feature when making a note of an interesting event advertised on a poster in town.

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