Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Review: redefining the best Android phone

5.2K

How do you make a better flagship phone every year? That’s becoming a difficult question for almost every smartphone brand, with faster processors and similar camera improvements in every new flagship ever released, there’s no denying that things are getting a little stagnant and settled.

Fortunately in the case of the Galaxy S22 Ultra, it isn’t just a faster flagship than its predecessor, but it also incorporates the Galaxy Note’s most celebrated feature – the S Pen, which simply sets this flagship apart from the rest that makes it a true Ultra flagship, and I’m pretty Samsung is going to have a hard time making a successor for it.

I have been using the Galaxy S22 Ultra for a month now, and one thing you can’t deny here is that the phone resembles the old Note 20 Ultra with no design continuity from last year’s S21 Ultra, which kind of feels like driving an old car with new internals, and I happen to like the the squarish design a lot, the phone still features a 6.8-inch Dyanmic AMOLED 2X display that’s 0.1-inches smaller than the Note 20 Ultra, it refreshes at 120Hz and is incredibly colorful and bright for whatever you view on, and I have to commend Samsung on finding space to fit the S Pen and a 5000mAh battery.

Compared to the regular S22, the S22 Ultra is a pretty big phone that you won’t find it easy to manage single handedly, but its sleek and squarish form does make it easier to slot into my jeans pocket than the Galaxy S21 Ultra, and I am thankful that Samsung has continued to utilize a frosted glass back that doesn’t attract fingerprints, which is great if you are someone that doesn’t use a case.

My review unit is the base storage configuration that Samsung sells, which comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage that supports the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, while my first few days with it was pleasant with the phone being able to breeze through most of my tasks, things eventually got bogged down by Samsung’s software experience, apps can sometimes freeze with a black or white screen, transition animations lagged whenever I tried to switch between apps, it can be a frustrating day-to-day experience that you shouldn’t expect from a modern flagship Android phone.

This is the storage even after removing Honkai Impact and Genshin Impact, and saving most of my photos back to my computer

Performance apart, I’d be mad to tell you that 128GB of storage is sufficient for anyone, because it totally isn’t enough for the average user for what you are going to do on the S22 Ultra, the phone’s system files already took up 20% of the total storage at 23.91GB, my library of apps including games such as Genshin Impact and PUBG Mobile would happily take up an additional 30GB of storage, and the amount of road trip photos I took recently and some 4K videos have taken up another 20GB, which ultimately I am left with around 40% of the available storage, that’s hardly sufficient throughout the ownership if I continue to stack up my photos and videos.

Granted, Samsung isn’t the only company that sells a RM5000 flagship with 128GB of storage, and you could argue that Google One and an external flash drive is a good alternative for expanding storage, but such storage capacity should never be made available on a phone made for power users, I could live with lesser RAM but definitely not storage, especially when the phone doesn’t support storage expansion.

When it comes to the S Pen, there is definitely no competition on this and Samsung is making things better with a higher polling rate when you write on the S22 Ultra, though I am neither a heavy note taker nor a creative artist, I definitely find the writing experience to be noticeably better than my Galaxy Z Fold 3.

The S22 Ultra basically features a similar camera setup as the S21 Ultra, though the primary 108MP camera now gains a larger sensor that now takes photos in a new nona-binning technology, which Samsung claims to offer an even superior low light photography experience compared to its predecessor.

With all that marketing talk out of the way, the S22 Ultra main camera takes very impressive photos in whatever lighting conditions I took, I love how it managed to boost dynamic range of photos, colors and details are on point, and the results are pretty consistent when you switch to the ultrawide and telephoto cameras in daylight photos. Low light photography is just as impressive as you’d have expect from a flagship camera, there’s minimal noise levels while details are maintained very well, which is all thanks to that larger sensor on the primary camera.

I have no doubts on Samsung’s flagship phone cameras when it comes to everyday videography, and in fact I’d consider them to be almost as good as the iPhone. This time, I was even more impressed with low light videography as I tried taking a night scooter ride video as you can see above, it is taken at an almost dark area with the only main light source coming from nearby lamp posts and the scooter’s light itself, the S22 Ultra is ultimately a superb vlogging video camera.

As far as things go, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor has definitely made the S22 Ultra a more efficient phone compared to last year’s Exynos 2100 powered S21 Ultra, I detected significant lesser battery drain during my sleeping hours, where from the period of 12AM to 8AM, the phone’s battery would only drop about 5% which is very reasonable.

During the review period, the S22 Ultra can hold more than a day of charge when I’m not doing anything heavy, but once I start pushing it with social browsing and texting, I will usually end up with 15% of battery life before ending my day, which is common for most flagship Android phones.

Since there’s 45W fast charge support this time, the phone does charge slightly faster than a 25W, but sadly that fast charging wattage is only effective when you aren’t using the phone and from the charging range of 0-50%, it can drop to as low as 10W when using the phone and 18W after it passes the 60% mark, which to be honest isn’t quite as impressive as what you get on other Android flagships.

The Galaxy S22 Ultra is a great flagship Android phone from Samsung and it is one that Samsung has pushed past the boundaries on how it can make a better succeeding flagship, though my experience has no doubt been plagued by the storage variant I’ve been provided and it is one that you should definitely skip, this is the default Android flagship you should be looking at if you are looking to replace your Galaxy Note, or simply want a camera system that just works. As of now, it’s hard to imagine what the next Galaxy S phone could be.

Buy the Galaxy S22 Ultra
here
.

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra

The Galaxy S22 Ultra is Samsung's very best effort on pushing the boundaries of what a flagship Android phone can be

KLGadgetGuy

Galaxy S22 Ultra

8

The Goods

Excellent hardware and build

Top notch camera system

Built in S Pen is useful

Improved standby battery life

The Bads

Poor 45W charging efficiency

Heavy One UI software

128GB storage barely sufficient

Heats up after a while

 8.0

Average Score

galaxy s22 ultra
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galaxy s22 ultra review


Samsung Galaxy S23 series base storage could start from 256GB

4.9K

As we are hours away from the debut of Samsung’s Unpacked event, more leaks have appeared and according to a leaked sales slide, the Galaxy S23 series are set to have a base storage of 256GB instead of 128GB on its predecessors.

Although this is certainly good news for many, the leaked sales slide also suggested that the Galaxy S23 will also have a higher starting price compared to the S22 series. If this turns out to be true, the Galaxy S23 256GB could cost RM500 more than the previous model with the same storage at RM4,199.

However, the more expensive starting price isn’t surprising since the Galaxy S23 is targeted at the iPhone 14, which the base 128GB storage model retails at RM4,199, so having offered double the storage of its direct competition is still a generous move nonetheless.

Having 256GB storage on Samsung’s flagship phone is a necessity considering its system files easily takes up 40GB of user storage, which doesn’t leave much for apps and media if the phones are still equipped with 128GB of storage.

Catch the Galaxy Unpacked livestream happening at
samsung.com/my
 at 2AM, 2 February 2023.

galaxy s23
galaxy s23 ultra
unpacked 2023


Samsung Galaxy S23 series goes official from RM3,899

4.8K

Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy S23 series flagship smartphones, comprising the S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra, these phones look very similar to their predecessors but come with improved performance and better cameras.

The S23 series are powered by a customized Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, it is a pixel binned SoC that can reach peak speeds of 3.36GHz, making it faster than other phones equipped with the same chip that are clocked at 3.2GHz, the S23 and S23+ will come with 8GB RAM, while the S23 Ultra will come with 12GB RAM. In terms of storage, the S23 is offered in 128GB and 256GB storage options, while the S23+ and S23 Ultra are offered with max storage capacities of 512GB and 1TB respectively.

Video: Galaxy S23 Early Impressions

The S23 series retain similar display sizes and Dynamic AMOLED 2X 120Hz panels as their predecessors, it is 6.1-inches for the S23, 6.6-inches for the S23+ and 6.8-inches for the S23 Ultra. Other hardware upgrades include a 200mAh increase in battery size for the S23 and S23+, which makes it to 3900mAh and 4700mAh respectively with fast charging speeds of 25W and 45W respectively, while the S23 Ultra retains the same 5000mAh cell with 45W fast charging.

What Samsung is making a big deal about its flagships is their camera capabilities, which doesn’t come as a surprise as it has always been the USP of the series. The S23 and S23+ are now capable of taking 8K 30fps videos, while the S23 Ultra gets the most upgrade with a new 200MP main sensor and a 12MP front camera with a larger pixel size, users can expect better low light camera performance as the 200MP sensor takes pixel-binned 12MP pictures by binning 16-pixels with 4 sub-pixels binning into one single pixel.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Series Price, Availability, and Preorder Details in Malaysia

The Galaxy S23 series are available in color options of Phantom Black, Cream, Lavender and Green, here are the official retail prices in Malaysia:

S23 128GB – RM3,899

S23 256GB – RM4,199

S23+ 256GB – RM4,699

S23+ 512GB – RM5,199

S23 Ultra 256GB – RM5,699

S23 Ultra 512GB – RM6,199

S23 Ultra 1TB – RM7,199

Preorders of the Galaxy S23 series begin today, with Samsung offering a double storage upgrade worth RM500 and a RM400 e-voucher for accessories. If you have a phone to trade in, Samsung offers an instant RM600 rebate on top of the phone’s trade in value. Preorder details are as below:

Models

RRP

Pre order Price²

Colours

Exclusive Gifts
[1]

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra 1TB

RM7,199

RM6,699

Phantom Black, Cream, Green and Lavender

Samsung Malaysia’s official website

·    Double Storage upgrade for the same price worth up to RM500
2
.

·    RM400 e-Voucher.

·    Eco-Promotions up to 30% off purchase-with-purchase
3
 on selected Samsung Accessories, Galaxy Tablets, Galaxy Watch, Galaxy Buds series and Samsung Care+.

·    Trade-in specials
4
 with additional RM600 rebate
5
.

Samsung Experience Stores | Samsung Authorised Partners

·    Double Storage upgrade for the same price worth up to RM500
1
.

·    Free accessories worth up to RM458
6
.

·    Eco-Promotions up to 30% off purchase-with-purchase
2
 on selected Samsung Accessories, Galaxy Tablets, Galaxy Watch, Galaxy Buds series and Samsung Care+.

·    Trade-in specials
4
 with additional RM600 rebate
5
.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra 512GB

RM6,199

RM5,699

Samsung Galaxy S23+ 512GB

RM5,199

RM4,699

Samsung Galaxy S23 256GB

RM4,199

RM3,899

[1]
 The promotion is valid while stocks last. Visit samsung.com/my for more details. Terms and conditions apply.

galaxy s23
s23 plus
s23 ultra
samsung


Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Review: All about Consistency

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By now, you may have already seen many reviews and even played around with the Galaxy S23 Ultra, some might call it the most iterative upgrade that Samsung has ever done, or you can even say that the company has taken a page from Apple, but the ultimate question is, in the current sea of flagship smartphones, can it stand out from the rest?

Galaxy S23 Ultra After 1 Month Video Review

At this time of writing, there are already several flagship phones that rivals the Galaxy S23 ultra, they include the Xiaomi 13 Pro, which has taken the competition by storm with a greatly improved camera system, followed by the vivo X90 Pro with an insanely good camera system as well and more recently, the Honor Magic5 Pro which delivers a significant upgrade over its predecessor with improved cameras and possibly a great value flagship.

These phones are the S23 Ultra’s biggest contenders and it really is mind boggling to see where its value stands to regular consumers, maybe because Samsung isn’t teasing gimmicks as much as before or they probably just did the Apple way to not fix what isn’t broken, but one thing for sure is that it already has an audience that it wants to target, and that is the real power users who absolutely wants the most out of a phone without compromising certain things for the money they are paying for.

Take the Xiaomi 13 Pro for instance, it has a great camera system but hey, it doesn’t have a 10x periscope lens and up to 1TB of storage.

The vivo X90 Pro has obviously better optics and low light performance all thanks to its V2 ISP, but the Dimensity 9200 chip is nowhere as powerful and efficient as the S23 Ultra’s custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip.

This leaves us with the Honor Magic5 Pro, which is possibly the best all-rounder Android flagship we have ever seen and the strongest contender to the S23 Ultra, but the latter owns it with a more complete camera system and let’s not forget the S Pen stylus, which is a fan favorite that no other flagships have offered.

This is where you start to see the picture that Samsung is trying to paint with the S23 Ultra, and there’s a lot of inspiration taken from Apple’s books.

For instance, it may not have the fastest wired charging speeds as compared to the rest, but its 5000mAh battery can easily last up to two days and a heavy 7-hour screen on time;

it may not have a 1-inch sensor, a dedicated ISP chip, camera co-engineering branding and efforts, but it has the most complete camera hardware and software that others couldn’t offer, and with all these benefits combined, the S23 Ultra is getting four generations of One UI and Android OS updates where none of these contenders can offer.

By not going all out in hardware, there is a buffer where Samsung can make significant upgrades in subsequent successors when the time is right, and let’s not forget it has the Galaxy Z foldables to show off what they are actually capable of.

The ones that are ultimately looking at the S23 Ultra are those who doesn’t really care about having the fastest charging or the absolutely best cameras, but rather, feature consistency on a phone.

However, does the consistency persists after using for a month alongside other flagships?

Definitely.

For one, the S23 Ultra offers the best in class software experience that no others could, coupled with the custom tuned and faster Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chip, this is the fastest and most power efficient Samsung flagship ever existed, there’s no sudden stutters and slowdowns like I used to face on previous Galaxy S phones, no toasty back even when I use it an hour straight to monitor my portfolio, an excellent battery life that I will never ever need to worry about charging after tea time, and most importantly, Samsung’s 45W fast charging is now better and charges at its max rate more consistently from 0-80% before it trickles down.

What about cameras?

Like I mentioned earlier, the S23 Ultra isn’t the best among the competition but it is the most reliable camera system that no other flagships could offer, you get an ultrawide, a dedicated 3x and 10x zoom lens to complement the main 200MP sensor.

Galaxy S23 Ultra Camera Samples

While the latter isn’t much better than its predecessor when it comes image quality, it is still one of the best in its class with excellent colors and detail, low light photos are also on point as what you’d expect from a flagship, and when you want to get up close to subjects, the telephoto and periscope lens really does a great job.

Best of all, this is probably the only Android flagship that supports 4K 60 fps video recording on all of its camera lenses, not only its video recording quality is on par with iPhones, but you also get the benefit of zooming in further all thanks to that dedicated periscope lens.

Although Samsung lowered the resolution of the front camera to just 12MP, it actually works way better than other phones with a higher resolution camera, best of all it still records 4K 60 fps videos.

Samsung finally got things right with the Galaxy S23 Ultra after years of struggling with chipsets and reliability issues, while the upgrades are definitely iterative, but they are what makes it the ultimate flagship phone to own in 2023, and it is a phone that doesn’t need to match its competition’s unique selling point to be a great phone, because it is a consistent phone that everybody wants and will easily appeal to those looking to switch from other Android phone brands or iPhones.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

The Galaxy S23 Ultra may look the same as its predecessor, but what it packs under the hood is what matters and it delivers consistency that every flagship Android successor should have.

KLGadgetGuy

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

9

 9.0

Average Score

galaxy s23 ultra
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galaxy s23 ultra review
samsung


Samsung GALAXY S5 now available in Gold and Electric Blue

330

While we’ve just published our
Samsung GALAXY S5 review
, our friends from
Samsung
 just sent us a note to tell us that the phone is now available in gold and electric blue, while the front bezel remains the same blackish colour, the perforated back cover is the one that got its colour changed and it surely looks different this time.

The
GALAXY S5
 is a pretty capable phone during our review period, with the additional of these two new colours, the phone’s retails price remains at RM2399.


Samsung GALAXY S5 Review

291

Every year, we look forward to a great smartphone from every manufacturer, we really want to see a smartphone that will change the world again like the iPhone did a few years back. We are now in year 2014, a year where we start to see many affordable and powerful smartphones coming to the market.
Samsung
, the king of Android smartphone released the 5th generation of its flagship
GALAXY S series
 and it has been with us for a few weeks, its time for a full review treatment on Samsung’s latest GALAXY S5.

Samsung GALAXY S5 Video Review

Samsung GALAXY S5
 vs Xiaomi Mi3

Samsung GALAXY S5
 vs Samsung GALAXY
Note 3

Looks same and different, with powerful internals

Its kind of difficult to describe our first impressions on the
GALAXY
 S5’s design, it simply looks the same as its predecessors but feels different at the same time.

The
GALAXY S5
 is still made out of plastic build quality, but
Samsung
 did some great cosmetic changes on the flagship to make it look like a flagship, the front bezel of the phone no longer has the textured design you find on the
GALAXY S4
, and the back cover has been replaced by a perforated back cover instead of hyperglaze coating. While many of us are sick of looking at plastic phones from Samsung, the GALAXY S5 feels really solid on hand, combined with the perforated back cover, we are able to hold the phone firmly in our hand without slipping it easily.

One thing we still don’t understand is why
Samsung
 still isn’t able to get rid of that protruding home button, it houses a fingerprint scanner underneath but we really just hate it being too sensitive in our pockets. Pressing the home button turns on the display, and you keep hearing the nasty S-Voice virtual assistant calling up.

As usual, the
GALAXY S5
 always packs the latest hardware internals that
Samsung
 can source at the time of release.

Samsung GALAXY S5 Hardware Specifications

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 Quad Core 2.5GHz
RAM/ROM: 2GB/16GB (expandable via MicroSD)
Display: 5.1″ Full HD (1920×1080) Super AMOLED
Camera: 16MP AF ISOCELL (Main), 2MP (Front)
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, BT 4.0, NFC, IR Blaster
Features: IP67 Water and Dust Resistant, Heart Rate Sensor, Pedometer
Networks: LTE/HSPA+
Battery: 2800mAh, with Ultra Power Saving Mode

Display

Samsung’s SUPER AMOLED display shouldn’t be a stranger to anyone who uses or sees a
Samsung
 smartphone, colors are vibrant with good viewing angles while maintaining an impressive level of power efficiency. The GALAXY S5 has its screen size increased to a mere 0.1 inches and has maintained the same display resolution, users with huge hands shouldn’t have issues using the phone one handed, touch responsive is also awesome which makes performing gestures and typing experience on the virtual keyboard enjoyable.

All new TouchWiz with flat design and new features

The phone runs on Android 4.4 KitKat with the latest iteration of TouchWiz, which now features a flatter design and new teal color scheme. Seriously, Samsung isn’t the only manufacturer pursuing a flat design in its user experience ever since the introduction of Apple’s iOS. Of course, we are not against it and definitely welcome that new look to Samsung’s software experience.

Samsung’s new TouchWiz not only just offer a new and refreshing look, it also has a few stuffs up its sleeve that enhances the phone’s experience. We love two features which is Toolbox and Private Mode, Toolbox lets you access five of your favorite apps from anywhere in the phone while Private Mode allows you to hide away multimedia contents and secure it with the phone’s fingerprint sensor. Check out our useful feature video down below to find our more about them.

Apart from having these new features, Samsung has introduced new operational methods in TouchWiz, such as a new way of arranging home screens, easy access to My Magazine a.k.a Flipboard, a cleaner and wider app drawer design, and a whole new settings page. Samsung has unfortunately removed features such as lockscreen shortcuts and widgets, which we can still find on older devices that runs on Android 4.4 KitKat.

Lastly, TouchWiz is still pretty heavy and uses a lot of memory resources, causing slowdowns at times on the user experience.

Download Booster, IP67 Water and Dust Resistant, Fitness and Security

When Samsung announced Download Booster on the
GALAXY S5
, which combines both mobile data and WiFi speeds to download files, we are simply awed and curious to know how the heck this amazing technology works when other manufacturers aren’t able to do so, and it certainly has a catch in using it. First, you’ll need to be connected to a WiFi network and locked on to LTE signal to use this feature. Second, the feature will only work when you’re downloading files more than 30MB. This feature may sound really practical when you’re on the go, but having such criterias to use this feature simply doesn’t make sense to us, as HSPA+ speeds are also fast enough to compensate WiFi speeds at times, why can’t Samsung be more lenient on this?

The
GALAXY S5
 is an IP67 certified water and dust resistant smartphone, , it is able to submerge in water up to 1M for 30 minutes, we realized something very weird with the phone’s speakers after taking it out of the water – it became SO soft and distorted until we thought that the speaker had water inside, in fact water has already gone into the speaker as the speaker grille doesn’t stop water from flowing in. The phone’s speaker returned to normal after sometime and if you open the back cover, you realize that the back is actually wet, which makes us think if the
GALAXY S5
 is truly water resistant.

Fitness is one of the focus on Samsung’s line of products this year, the GALAXY S5 features a heart rate sensor and built-in pedometer. We love how S-Health is able to help keep track our fitness activities, but the heart rate sensor and pedometer is simply a let down just like the company’s Gear smartwatches, the phone fails to detect our heart rate at times even if we put our finger on the sensor and the pedometer is calculating our steps even if we shake the phone a little, which isn’t a forgivable error given that Samsung aims to introduce the GALAXY S5 as a fitness companion.

Samsung is considered one of the pioneers in Android security and they continue to do so with the GALAXY S5 by introducing biometric security, users can register up to 3 finger prints and use it for making purchases on the Samsung App Store, authorizing Paypal payments, unlocking private contents and the phone. The finger print scanner on the phone isn’t the most precise device, you have to swipe your finger on the home button at a moderate speed, you can’t do it too fast, and we sometimes find that an issue when we wanted to do things faster.

Camera and Image Samples

Samsung has claimed that the
GALAXY
 S5’s 16MP ISOCELL camera has the fastest autofocus speed in mobile photography at only 0.3ms, we find that claim valid as the phone tends to detect subjects really fast. While the camera is able to produce pictures with great color saturation and detail even in low light shots, we find it a trouble to stabilize the camera at times and needed to ensure very stable hands to avoid blur in photos. Check out our sample pictures down below.

The camera also supports 4K video recording, which should look great if you have a 4K display to view on, check out the video recording sample down below.

Benchmarks and Gaming

Remember BenchmarkBooster last year, which Samsung is one of the culprits that tends to boost its devices performance to have higher scores in benchmark apps. Unfortunately the GALAXY S5 doesn’t have an amazingly high score to WOW us this time, the phone scores 35090 points and 21967 points in Antutu and Quadrant respectively. When we put a comparison with the company’s
GALAXY
 Note 3, the one year old phone with older hardware managed to outperform the
GALAXY
 S5’s benchmark results, which tells us that the phone’s software is so badly optimized that even the latest Snapdragon CPU has issues handling it, but still we won’t judge the score as bad because it is still fairly high in today’s standards.

The Snapdragon 801 CPU is a minor upgrade from the Snapdragon 800 CPU, which has a higher CPU clock speed while maintaining the same Adreno 330 GPU, games run well on the GALAXY S5 with smooth frame rates and jaw dropping graphics quality which you can expect from a flagship
Snapdragon CPU
.

Battery Life and Call Quality

The GALAXY S5 got an extra 200mAh battery bump from its predecessor, on a moderate to heavy app usage on the phone, it managed to last us around 18-20 hours in a single charge, which is pretty reasonable considering we’ve been using it to connect with Bluetooth devices, receiving instant messages, push e-mail and web browsing.

Call quality on the GALAXY S5 is superb thanks to HD voice, our callers reported extremely crisp and clear volume from our end.

Verdict – A necessary improvement from the
GALAXY S4

Samsung seems to start becoming like Apple, the company’s flagship doesn’t WOW us like it did a few years back, the phone is merely has its internals refreshed while having a similar set of features like its competitors. While the company has implemented the necessary changes on the GALAXY S5, the product feels as if it were rushed out of the labs without realizing what really needs to be improved. The GALAXY S5 is no doubt a huge improvement from the
GALAXY S4
 and remains a very capable smartphone as of today, it is still an iconic product that shouldn’t be overlooked at. The Samsung GALAXY S5 retails at RM2399, which is expensive considering its build quality and features, the flagship faces stiff competition and should be priced lower to attract customers.

The Good

+ Reasonable battery life

+ Great loudspeaker quality

+ Decent camera performance

+ Great call quality

+ IP67 water and dust resistant

+ Maintains a great set of proprietary features

+ Good security features

The Bad

– TouchWiz uses a lot of resource

– Download booster limited

– Fingerprint sensor not the best

– Disappointing fitness sensors

– Over sensitive home button

– Oudated hardware design

We rate the
Samsung GALAXY S5
 at 4 out of 5 stars.


Samsung GALAXY S5 Unboxing and First Look

1.5K

Here you go people, the most anticipated unboxing session that everyone of you have been waiting for from KLGadgetGuy, we’ve finally gotten ourselves a review unit of the Samsung GALAXY S5, which is one of the most powerful flagships that you can buy at the moment.

Just a recap on some of the notable specifications of the flagship from
Samsung
, the GALAXY S5 has a Snapdragon 801 SoC clocked at 2.5GHz, 2GB of RAM, 5.2-inch Full HD resolution display, 16GB Built-in storage with MicroSD expansion, 16MP AF main camera and 2MP front camera, HSPA+/LTE support, IP67 Water and Dust Resistant, Heart Rate Sensor and
2800mAh battery
.

With so many competing powerful smartphones in the market, how will the
GALAXY S5
 fare in our final review? Check out the unboxing video down below.

Samsung GALAXY S5
 Packaging

The
GALAXY S5
 vs 2013 Flagships


Samsung GALAXY S5 Useful Features

347

Every flagship smartphones has its own gimmicks, which includes the
Samsung GALAXY
 S5. While we don’t use the advertised features most of the time, the phone still have some really useful features that comes in handy when we need them. Therefore, we are sharing the useful features of the Samsung GALAXY S5 in the video down below and you should watch it before you buy a spanking new
Samsung GALAXY
 S5 or you’re already using one. Trust us, once you start using them you will really love the phone. Stay tuned to our full review of the Samsung GALAXY S5 coming soon. Lastly, do share this video with anyone who cares.


Samsung GALAXY S5 vs Xiaomi Mi3


Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+ – larger battery capacity and screen

328

Two brand new phones have been released by
Samsung

at Samsung’s Unpacked event besides the
Samsung
Galaxy

Note 5. The company introduced the
Galaxy S6 Edge+

with a 5.7-inch dual-curve display and an Exynos 7420 chipset and 4GB of RAM (similar with
Samsung
Galaxy

Note 5).  The difference between the
Samsung Galaxy S6

Edge+ with the predecessor will be a bigger display, more RAM, and a larger battery. The Super AMOLED been expanded to 5.7-inch and remains the same resolution at Quad HD, which adds up to 518 ppi pixel density.

The main camera seems to be the unchanged with a 16 MP
rear
camera

with optical image stabilization and f/1.9 aperture, and a 5 MP front-facing the camera with a f/1.9 aperture. Users will be receiving LTE Cat.9/Cat.6 (market dependent), Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth 4.2 with aNT+, NFC, GPS (A-GPS, GLONASS, Beidou), plus support for
Samsung

Pay via Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST)

The
Samsung
Galaxy
S6

Edge+ has the capability of fast charging both on cable and wireless
charger
, but you’ll need to buy the
charger

itself separately. Besides that, the device will run on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with the latest TouchWiz UI and supports the newest KNOX version.

Similar with the
Samsung Galaxy

Note 5, the
Galaxy
S6
Edge
+

will be only available in 32 GB and 64 GB (sorry,
Samsung

never announce 128 GB). The color variants include Black Sapphire, Gold Platinum, Silver Titanium, and White Pearl. Unlike with the
Samsung
Galaxy

Note 5, the S6 E+ will be only available for pre-order tomorrow, but the actual availability coming on August 21.

android
edge
s6
s6e
samsung
unpacked


Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Review: Beauty and Power doesn’t come cheap

283

Over the last two years, the smartphone landscape has changed dramatically, we have been introduced to phones that comes with beautiful metal unibody design, super slim form factors and the highest display resolutions, it seems that these tangible upgrades are almost reaching the ceiling for growth and till then there hasn’t been any breakthrough in hardware design from any smartphone manufacturers.
Samsung
, still known as the ‘King of Androids’ by many despite facing strong competition from Chinese manufacturers such as Xiaomi , Huawei and Oppo, has managed to make its products relevant to the market this year once again with the introduction of the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, what packs inside the Korean firm’s latest bad boy isn’t just about its all new design but also its all new crazily powerful hardware that could literally be your personal computing device. Of course, this is a smartphone, but if its hardware internals were to be made into PC hardware, I won’t be surprised.

Samsung Galaxy S6
 edge Hardware Specifications

Processor:
 Samsung Exynos 7420 64-bit Octa-Core 2.2GHz+1.7GHz (14nm, FinFET)

RAM/ROM:
 3GB/32GB (up to 128GB flash storage)

Display:
 5.1″ Quad HD (2560×1440) Super AMOLED with Gorilla Glass 4

Camera:
 16MP Sony BSI f/1.9 O.I.S (Rear), 5MP f/1.9 (Front)

Connectivity:
 WiFi 802.11 b/g/n/ac, BT 4.1, NFC, Fingerprint Scanner, HR Sensor, UV Sensor, IR Blaster

Networks:
 4G LTE Cat 6/DC-HSPA+/GSM

Battery:
 2600mAh with built-in Wireless Charging

Hardware and Design – A whole new
Samsung

You are not seeing the wrong thing, the
Galaxy S6
 edge is in fact the most beautiful smartphone that
Samsung
 has ever made after a few years sticking to hyper-glaze plastic coating and plastic bodies, the company isn’t ripping off any design cues from any manufacturers in its overall outlook but has in fact made a new face for itself – front and back Gorilla Glass 4 protected glass and an extremely beautiful steel frame that reminds us of a modern iPhone.

During the first few days of using the phone, the
S6 edge
 is just like a WOW factor to anyone who happens to notice it, the dual-sided Edge screen is the thing that catches anyone’s attention and because it is so unique, sales persons around
Samsung
 stores have been telling me that the S6 edge sold better than the S6 itself despite being RM500 more expensive.

I’ve used both the S6 and S6 edge in person and there’s just one thing that the
S6 edge
 wins me over – one handed usability. Now, the
Galaxy
 S6’s screen bezels are as thin as the S6 edge however with the curved edges on the display, the S6 edge makes it even more possible for my thumb to reach across the entire screen area comfortably.

The Edge screen does have some pluses over the standard S6 and brings some features from the Galaxy Note Edge, you will be able to see news feeds, weather, stock quotes and many other features that you can download from the
Samsung
 App Store. Compared to the Galaxy Note Edge, you will notice that Samsung has made the S6 edge’s display less curvy and you are not able to place app shortcuts and access notifications from a full screen app on the Edge screen.

Despite looking flashy and premium, the platinum gold model of the
Galaxy S6
 edge we have right here is a fingerprint magnet, though those smudges will go away with a wipe you definitely would not want to see them there affecting the handsome look of your device. In addition, the physical home button is still a pain if the phone is in your pockets, which at times activates the camera automatically with accidental double taps if you move too much and this is probably why you will to purchase a separate
case
 to go with the Galaxy S6 edge.

Similar to the Galaxy S6, Samsung has not allowed memory expansion and removable battery on the
S6 edge
 which is due to the slim hardware design and dense hardware internals and with that, Samsung made this all up by offering the fastest eMMC 5.1 flash standards and built-in wireless charging, which I’m personally satisfied enough as a person coming from many phones with the same hardware aspects.

The S6 edge’s fingerprint scanner is one of the best hardware change that Samsung has made, instead of swiping down your finger it only requires you to touch just like Apple’s Touch ID, its sensitivity is also improved with the most recent software update. Despite of that, it is not the best fingerprint scanner on an Android device but it will serve you well enough as a security feature.

At the end of the day, we have got to give our thumbs up to Samsung and its effort on ‘Project Zero’, the
Galaxy S6
 edge’s design is extremely appealing to many friends that I’ve approached and I believe this is definitely just the beginning of a new smartphone design from Samsung – don’t forget, we still have the
Galaxy
 Note 5 coming later this year.

Software – Finally, a smoother TouchWiz, some Android features removed

The
Galaxy S6
 isn’t Samsung’s only intention on getting a hardware done right, software has been another concern on previousGalaxy flagships as they come preloaded with unwanted bloat and taking a huge chunk of internal storage. TouchWiz hasn’t changed too much in terms of its flat and cartoonish design, it still isn’t the lightest smartphone software but with the powerful hardware and 64-bit support on Android Lollipop, Samsung’s proprietary software is finally has fluid transitions and it gets better with three software updates throughout our review period.

The
Galaxy S6
 isn’t Samsung’s only intention on getting a hardware done right, software has been another concern on previousGalaxy flagships as they come preloaded with unwanted bloat and taking a huge chunk of internal storage. TouchWiz hasn’t changed too much in terms of its flat and cartoonish design, it still isn’t the lightest smartphone software but with the powerful hardware and 64-bit support on Android Lollipop, Samsung’s proprietary software is finally has fluid transitions and it gets better with three software updates throughout our review period.

Despite having lesser preinstalled bloatware, Samsung has still preloaded some of its essential apps such as S-Health and S-Voice, Microsoft’s Skype, OneDrive and OneNote has also been included as part of the software experience, in which users will get 25GB of free OneDrive storage upon signing in with a Microsoft account.

Samsung’s default apps have finally adapted Android Lollipop’s material design, the phone screen calling app is now easier to navigate with nice contextual buttons, the messages app gets more fun and even lets you configure message bubbles, the e-mail app has also gotten much better with faster load speeds with gestures and lastly, the Music app has got a whole new appealing design. This is literally the largest software change Samsung has made to its software experience and I absolutely love it – Period.

Themes have recently become a pretty huge thing on Android smartphones since the inception of third party launchers followed by Chinese smartphones such as Xiaomi’s MIUI theme store, Samsung has offered the similar feature by allowing users to download themes from its App Store and it already has an impressive collection of it, I’m personally more of a fan of beautiful wallpapers but I have to say Samsung’s theme engine is pretty good in terms of quality and performance management.

Although most new features of TouchWiz have benefited users, there are still some downsides of the software. For instance, the app drawer does not allow you to categorize apps and folders alphabetically, lock screen widgets and fast scrolling between pages are no longer possible and lastly, there is no way of disabling the Flipboard’s news feed, which can sometimes get annoying with its slow load times.

Camera – Best in class on an Android device

Samsung has gotten really serious into smartphone photography since the
Galaxy Note 4
, in which we have commended on its fast response, superb picture clarity and low light capability. The Galaxy S6 edge shares the same camera optics as the S6, sporting a huge f/1.9 aperture and
Sony
 IMX240 sensor that captures 16-megapixel pictures with Optical Image Stabilization, it delivers even faster imaging performance and better pictures that we’ve experienced back in the Galaxy Note 4, the phone has even substituted my mirrorless Lumix G5 when attending events because the camera is seriously that good – superb noise reduction in low light and accurate colors in outdoors, see the images down below to believe it.

And here you go, a selfie from the front camera and we needn’t explain how exceptional its imaging quality is.

Samsung’s camera software has always been pretty favorable in our past reviews and this time, there are contexts on icons which is good for amateurs and it even explains the camera mode you choose, the Pro mode is also available for advanced users who wants to take control of their photos.

The Galaxy S6 edge has also become my favorite videography tool, with O.I.S onboard you can actually make pretty good short movie if you are in for it. However I do really wish Samsung could allow video stabilization on UHD video recording as the hardware is definitely capable of doing so, maybe I’m just asking too much as a video guy.

Benchmarks, Battery Life and Network Quality

There’s so many great things on the Galaxy S6 edge and needless to say, the phone’s powerful hardware internals claims the top of Antutu’s benchmark list and is one of the first phones to be able to achieve 53.8 FPS on Epic Citadel with its 2560×1440 resolution on Ultra High Quality graphics setting, the Galaxy S6 edge’s raw power is definitely unrivalled at this point of time and the Exynos 7420 14nm SoC is the best silicon that Samsung has fabricated. Since the phone is has both steel and glass materials, expect the phone to get warm when it is loaded.

Here come the really bad thing – Battery life. As Samsung executives used to point out in its launch, the battery is expected to give users a single day of heavy usage and in our tests, the
S6 edge
 fails to deliver that promised battery life and I have to keep a power bank in hand to charge the device in the middle of a busy working day, we could blame the power drain for one thing – the Display. Wireless charging isn’t going to save you.

Thanks to our favorite telco U Mobile, I have no issues with cell reception on the Galaxy S6 edge with consistent data speeds in good coverage areas, at times I find its reception even better than my
iPhone 6
 as I have both phones with me all the time and using the same network, business folks will love the phone’s audible loudspeaker for hands free calls.

Verdict – Speechlessly Impressed

It has been a while Samsung has made me excited with their smartphones, the Galaxy S6 edge is the most beautiful and powerful
Android smartphone
 I have ever used and its down sides isn’t a deal breaker for me at the very least, while many may conclude the Galaxy S6 is the better choice due to its price tag and similar set of features, the Galaxy S6 edge is a phone meant for folks who simply desires a unique looking smartphone with its dual-sided curve display and with that sleek looking design, the S6 edge looks more expensive and premium than any smartphones out there. Let me clarify here, this review isn’t paid bySamsung and as a critic tech reviewer, I am left speechless and impressed with what Samsung has offered on their new smartphone.

The Good:
+ Monstrous hardware performance
+ Beautiful Quad HD display
+ Impressive camera capabilities
+ Fluid software experience
+ Premium build quality

The Not so Good:
– Expensive
– No expandable storage
– Mediocre battery life
– Some Android features removed
– Phone heats up terribly under heavy load

The Galaxy S6 Edge receives a score of 8.6/10


Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge: Stunning Low Light and Night Camera Samples

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We’ve been using the
Galaxy
 S6 edge for almost five days now and now in the midst of preparing a video comparison with theiPhone 6 (it’s a teaser!), before we get there we’d like to share some stunningly good low light performance from the
Galaxy
 S6 edge’s 16-megapixel f/1.9 main camera, to be honest this is one of the very best smartphone camera that truly excels in low light photography with reasonable noise levels and without losing too much details, check out the gallery down below and stay tuned to our upcoming comparison and full review soon, on the other hand, check out the
Samsung Galaxy S6 review here
.

Low Light Camera Samples from the
Galaxy
 S6 edge


Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Unboxing, First Impressions and Initial Review

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We know most folks out there are pretty much doing two unboxings and first looks at the same time, so I and our editor Khai have decided to split Samsung’s latest flagship between the two of us – I’m holding the
Galaxy
 S6 Edge and Khai uses the
Galaxy
S6, and here is my first piece of the bolder and more beautiful of Samsung’s latest kickass device.

Samsung
 has really gone all the way out to totally redesign their smartphones this year with ‘Project Zero’ in mind, this isn’t the first time that I’ve held a Galaxy S6 edge and after using so many other phones during the period, I must say I now start lovingSamsung devices more than ever after the
GALAXY
 Note 4. First, the S6 edge costs a RM500 premium over the standard version at RM3,099, which is technically the same pricing strategy as the latest Note series, however this time
Samsung
 has made sure to equalize the design by including two edge screens for the sake of both left and right handed users.

The
Galaxy
 S6 edge has superb aesthetics, you should hold it to believe it!

When I use the GALAXY Note Edge back then, I thought it was a really clever design on first impressions as it is able to let me access shortcuts, notifications and widgets on the edge screen, however when I start using the phone with my left hand the experience got frustrating and its huge form factor annoys me even further with that. I have to say this, the
Galaxy
 S6 edge has superb aesthetics, you should hold it to believe it! The dual sided edge isn’t just all about beauty but its also about ergonomics, it makes holding the phone without feeling awkward, one handed operation is even more possible with such a form factor and even though it brings features from the Note Edge, you don’t necessarily need to rely on it to use the phone properly.

The back cover is stunningly beautiful, but its a fingerprint magnet

The Galaxy S6 edge’s back cover isn’t removable this time and for someone like me who has used numerous phones without removable batteries, I’m fine with that design and won’t really dream carrying an additional spare battery in my wallet (I have a powerbank for charging my phones). On first look, the glass backcover is stunningly beautiful and reminds us of the iPhone 4’s design language,
Samsung
 has obviously taken design cues from Apple again and I don’t think its really bad, given that the company has decided to position the S6 edge as a premium handset, however you’d be annoyed by one thing on the backcover – its a fingerprint magnet.

For the past 12 hours I’ve been installing apps and games on to the Galaxy S6 edge and while using it, I have to say
Samsung
finally knows how to make software right this time, TouchWiz is still a little cartoonish in some ways, however that infamous lag and annoying water drop sound is finally gone, there’s also lesser bloat installed and
Samsung
 has included Microsoft apps – OneDrive, OneNote and Skype – which users will get a 100GB of OneDrive storage for two years once they sign in with their Microsoft account.

I started loving TouchWiz once again when I used the GALAXY Note 4 and I loved the color schemes on it, the software on theGalaxy S6 edge does even more than what it can by finally allowing you to spice up the experience with downloadable ‘Themes’. Heck, it even has ringtones to go with which Chinese phones don’t even possess and hell yes, the phone’s downloadable themes are really high quality ones.

The Galaxy S6 edge has impressed me a lot on the software which I shall finally reveal the ultimate details in my final review and I’m seriously darn impressed with the phone’s speedy camera performance, it so fast and darn accurate with color reproduction in day time and remains impressive in low light, I will explain more about the camera’s features in my final piece and shall leave you to comment on the first few snapshots taken with the device down below.

Samsung may have just included a 5-megapixel front camera but this time, it isn’t all about the resolution itself but the f/1.9 aperture and wide angle lens it has included on to it, here’s one picture snapped from the front camera, I’m impressed and speechless.

The Galaxy S6 edge is a beautiful device and it’ll make you want one despite of its premium price tag.

While the Galaxy S6 edge may have its cons – no MicroSD expansion, heating up easily under load and non-removable battery, I’m impressed with what Samsung has done with its latest flagship, the Galaxy S6 edge maintains what Samsung is best in – a superb 5.1-inch Quad HD resolution Super AMOLED display, top notch camera performance and a snappy Exynos chip just like what the GALAXY S2 is back then. Its RM500 premium over its non-edge variant might hold you off, but if you can shell out that amount for a 128GB
iPhone 6
 or 64GB iPhone 6 Plus, the Galaxy S6 edge is way beyond better in both features and its premium design, unless you simply want a fruit logo on the back, otherwise the Galaxy S6 edge is a beautiful device that makes you want to own one despite of its expensive price.

P/S: The Galaxy S6 edge is now up for preorders at Samsung retail stores nationwide and early birds will get to own a free original Samsung Wireless Charging plate from Samsung.


Samsung Galaxy S6 / S6 Edge: Touchscreen problems?

280

We were sketchy when this news started popping up because we thought it was a localized problem, but Korean publication Asia Today has confirmed some touchscreen problems with the new line of phones from Samsung, the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge. Reporters at MWC15 ran TSP Grid Mode Test which basically allows you to draw lines on the screen to verify that the touchscreen is registering input correctly. As seen in the video below, the Samsung Galaxy S6 being tested is unable to register touch input close to the bezel.

It is unclear if this is a localized problem or if Samsung intended this, to prevent accidental input when handling the phone. I don’t see this as a real problem (yet) seeing how a lot of buttons are placed with a specific design margin within Android Studio. I could see how much this dead-zone would help though, but I would rather it be a configurable dead-zone to prevent me from accidentally deleting or forwarding messages whenever I am trying to send a voice note with one hand. Whether it is a hardware problem, a software issue, or a deliberate design; I hope the user experience will go unhampered if this really is a deliberate design.


Samsung Galaxy S6: Unboxing, First Impressions and Full Review

876

Unboxing

The Samsung Galaxy S6 costs RM2,599 and is a unique device, it feels uniquely similar to another device that is clad in metal and has all these familiar brushed aluminium sides as well. This phone was given to me late into the week, and since I had a whole weekend of using it, I’m going to cram the unboxing, the first impressions and my full review all into the same post. The box came with the device itself, the power adapter with adaptive charging abilities, the USB charging cable, some papers and the sim-eject pin.

As a challenge, I snapped all photos in this thread (except the camera samples) with an Oppo N3.

First Impressions

I expected a lot from this phone, a lot of people were calling this Samsung’s rise to glory. The phone was light but quite weighty on the camera end on first touch. The glass back is a finger print magnet — if I were to use this as my daily driver, I would really need to get a case. The protruding camera really doesn’t sit well with me but the metal finish all around reminded me of an iPhone 4. In fact, the overall aesthetics of the Galaxy S6 reminds me of an iPhone 6. Whenever people ask what phone I’m using, I just tell them I’m using an Android powered iPhone as a joke. Warren might have no complaints about his Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge because it really looks like something of it’s own, but the Galaxy S6 itself really looks uninspired. I do like the design, but I would like it better if it was on an actual iPhone.

The front of it has all the usual stuff, like the home button, the two capacitive buttons beside it, the front facing 5MP camera, the sensors, earpiece and the multicolored notification LED.

Well guess which one is the iPhone 6 and which one is the Galaxy S6 then, the right side has the SIM slot and the lock button, but there is no expandable microSD slot.

The left side has the volume rocker and the only real difference is the absence of the silent mode toggle which is only present on the iPhone 6.

The top has nothing special here, but the S6 has an IR blaster.

The bottom looks ridiculously copied, except the speaker grill on the iPhone 6 is single-rowed. The S6 has almost everything copied except the port used, micro-USB vs the iPhone’s lightning cable.

The home buttons with the finger print sensors in them — I still like the implementation of the
Oppo N3
‘s finger print sensor.

The back of the S6 has a protruding camera as well as a heart-beat monitor next to it as well as a neutral tone flash.

It’s a great phone with a great design, I’m just not sure if they designed it themselves. The phone isn’t too hefty and feels light, but I have to reiterate what I mentioned, the top of the phone feels weighted, holding the phone in one hand around the bottom needed some getting used to and the glass back is slippery. I nearly dropped the phone a few times while texting with one hand but that can be easily fixed with a case. The speakers were underwhelming and I really wished that Samsung would include front facing speakers with this iteration. Sadly, they did not and this will be another year Samsung has disappointed me. Hopefully the Note 5 will bring joy to my secret desire to own a Samsung Note.

Another thing out of the box you will notice after playing around in the phone’s settings for a bit is that the Samsung Keyboard that comes with it looks remarkably like the iOS keyboard.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Hardware Specifications

Processor
: Exynos 7420 (4-core 1.5GHz, 4-core 2.1GHz) w/ Mali-T760MP8 GPU
RAM
: 3GB
Storage
:

32GB/64GB/128GB Options
Display:
 5.1″ Full HD (1440 x 2560) IPS with Gorilla Glass 4
Camera
: 16MP w/ OIS, AF, LED flash
Connectivity
: WIFI 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1 (w/ A2DP, LE, apt-X) and NFC.
I/O
: microUSB 2.0, 3.5mm TRRS audio jack, heart rate monitor.
Battery
: 2550 mAh w/ Wireless and Adaptive Charging

Hardware and User Experience

The hardware on board is not bad, a lot of other reviewers are complaining about heat issues and I experienced it on my S6 as well. Warren was experiencing it on his S6 Edge which was heating up during mildly CPU intensive tasks. My S6 was fast but that speed was rubbing off as heat around the top right edge above the lock button. I understand the metal portion heating up, it’s transferring heat from the components to the outside air, but the glass was becoming uncomfortably warm as well.

I will never fail to mention in every Samsung review, however that the Super AMOLED display is beautiful, the blacks are just incredible and it’s definitely something LCD panels can’t achieve. The contrasts are amazing, and it really makes me feel like all other phones use cheap displays. Viewing angles are good and there were no uncomfortable tones. The fact that it is QHD though, makes the phone a little hard to use as some fonts and icons in certain apps (like
Keep
 or
Waze
 are just way too small for most people.

We have all the things that Android 5.0 comes with, like lock screen notifications, the new notification center as well as heads-up notifications.

Well, aside from the heat, there were very few things to complain about. There were a lot of great features, such as multi-window, the adaptive brightness which allows you to offset a bias to the values set by the sensor but there was no option for you to turn off those annoying key lights. Again, I mentioned this in my review of the
Samsung Galaxy A5
 where the backlit keys were giving me temporary blindness every time they came on in the dark, I would’ve expected Samsung to utilize the light sensor to determine how bright the key lights should be. And yes, I went into Settings -> Display, there was no option there to disable the key lights. They did everything right with the software but they couldn’t put in a simple option to toggle off the key lights or even control the brightness of them.

Although the keyboard looks ridiculously similar to the iOS Keyboard, the typing experience on the Samsung stock keyboard was pleasant and responsive, there were no weird delays when typing too fast but the swiping on the keyboard could really use some work. Other than that, Samsung now allows you to select the grid for the icons on your home screen. I’m not sure if there was a prior update for this on the older phones but it’s nice to see a stock launcher natively allow you to set your grid to 5×5 without having to root your phone or install a 3rd party launcher like
Nova Launcher
.

The multi-window functions are some what useful, you can have them side by side in split screen or you can have a floating window which is expandable or minimize-able.

The finger print scanner works 90% of the time, it isn’t great but it works. You can add multiple profiles to it as well, but are limited to 4 finger profiles. The Smart Lock system is pretty handy as well if you’re tired of using the finger print scanner.

I really wish that Samsung had put more thought into the overall software experience though, there are some things which are ridiculously hard to find and there are some options you just expect to be there but can’t find it at all, mainly because Samsung did not include it in their important list of things to include.

On a plus side though, there is a much more intuitive software experience for the users. Lollipop’s update as well as Samsung’s addition of the TouchWiz UI gives a very fluid software experience compared to the previous iteration on KitKat. The multi window feels much more fluid and the overall feel that Lollipop brings to the table for Samsung is a much more sweeter experience. Kudos to Samsung for adding their flavor without overpowering Lollipop.

Benchmarks and Battery Life

I honestly expected a little more from the battery, but let’s go over the benchmarks first. For a phone running a QHD display, the benchmarks are actually pretty good, until Warren pointed out to me that his S6 Edge got 53.4FPS out of
Epic Citadel
 on the same settings. So I ran my benchmark again and kept getting the same results, not sure if it’s the unit or if it’s a difference in the software between the S6 and the S6 Edge. The results on
3DMark Ice Storm Extreme
 were a bit off as well, considering that the benchmark only ran at 1080p. I have no explanation for this till I can investigate a bit more into this device.

The battery life on this device was not good at all, unless you carry around a power bank with you. The device barely lasted a day with all the normal texting, camera shooting, Googling and e-mail reading going on. I played about 10 minutes for
DJMax Technika Q
 and the battery life dipped 15%, so I don’t think anyone who buys this phone should have any plans on playing games on it at all. In my day of usage, I left everything from WiFi to NFC on and used Waze for about 2 minutes to check the traffic. If you wanna conserve some battery, you could try turning off Google Now — disabling it and uninstalling it. The S6 Edge doesn’t seem to be plagued with these issues according to Warren.

For a phone with such serious hardware, I would’ve expected Samsung to put in a much larger battery to compensate for the QHD screen and 3GB of RAM they put on board, sure the device is nice, slim and light and all; but I don’t think majority of users would’ve mind a 5.5inch screen with a larger battery on the back. I know I wouldn’t.

I also find myself covering the speaker grill whenever I play games on the S6, or when I’m holding it in landscape while watching a video. Nothing beats the Boomsound speakers from HTC I have grown to love though.

From a user experience point of view, it is definitely a great phone to use, I had no complaints whatsoever except the heat and the terrible battery life. I would consider flashing this phone to CM12 if I had the chance though, just so I could get the root options and maybe see some improvements in the battery life without all this Samsung bloatware.

The Camera

The camera is easily the wow-factor of this phone. The OIS works extremely well and the focus on this baby is amazing. There are a variety of modes available like the standard Auto mode, Pro, Selective Focus which works like the HTC’s uFocus, Slow Motion, Fast Motion to capture things like sports and if you’re not satisfied with the already available features, you can even download more presets.

The cameras onboard are 16MP shooter with a 5MP front facing camera. The main camera can shoot videos up to 4K at 30fps but my favorite mode would be shooting on 1080p at 60fps. Anyway, nothing speaks more words in a review than a picture, cause as they say: A picture is worth a thousand words. Just for fun, since I was using the Oppo N3 to take the glam shots for this review, I thought I might do a little shoot out.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Camera Shots

Oppo N3 Camera Shots

I have no idea which I prefer but the Samsung Galaxy S6 does so much better in dim lighting. The video options for the Samsung Galaxy S6 are also way more intuitive and easy to use, the Oppo’s way to shoot slow motion videos is cumbersome, and you have to go into the setting to change the way the camera is shooting; you might even be shooting slow-mo without knowing. The Samsung Galaxy S6 clearly let’s you know what mode you’re shooting in, so in those quick situations you won’t be shooting in slow motion by accident.

Verdict

If you want to grab one: Pre-orders are open until 12th of April, available
here
.


Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge to launch with different sizes

355

The rumour mill has been churning for the S7 with

technical specifications and features
 being speculated upon by many.

Now,
Korean news sources
 are saying the the S7 and the S7 Edge will be launched with different-sized screens.

According to the report, the S7 will have a display measuring at 5.2 inches, which is 0.1 inch bigger than the S6. The S7 Edge on the other hand, will have a display size of 5.5 inches, smaller than what the S6 Edge Plus has to offer.

The news report further states that Samsung is aiming to finalize the development of the S7 and S7 Edge in January, allowing the company to start the manufacturing process by February. Samsung is expected to prepare an initial production run of 5 million units that is split between two models at a 2:1 ratio. This means that 3.3 million S7 units and 1.6 million S7 Edge units will be produced for the first run.

Source :
Android Authority

s7
s7edge
samsung
smartphones


Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge will no longer receive monthly security updates

290

Samsung, like most other Android OEMs, stops rolling out regular security patch updates to its smartphones after a certain period of time. Since the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge have now been on the market for over three years, the company has
decided
 to stop pushing monthly security patches to the two phones.

The three-year-old Galaxy flagship smartphones will continue to receive security patches but they will be rolled out only once every three months. Samsung Galaxy S7 Active, which came out a few months after the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, will continue to receive monthly security patch updates for some more time.

In addition to moving the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge to a quarterly schedule, Samsung has confirmed that its latest Galaxy S10 series smartphones will receive Android security patch updates every month. The only two mid-range Galaxy smartphones that will receive monthly security updates are the Galaxy A5 (2017) and Galaxy A8 (2018).

All the new Galaxy A-series and Galaxy M-series models released this year will also receive just one security update every three months. The same goes for the recently launched Galaxy Tab S5e, Galaxy Tab A Plus 8 (2019), and Galaxy Tab A 10.1 (2019) Android tablets.

android
galaxy s7
galaxy s7 edge
samsung


Samsung Galaxy S7 may arrive earlier than expected

317

Rumors, rumors, rumors. For now, Samsung is still keeping mum about the new Galaxy S7, but from rumors and leaks, we would be probably seeing the new Galaxy S7 looking pretty similar to the Galaxy S6. In terms of looks, Samsung most likely would keep the curves and base design since the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge were very well received and applauded.

The Korea Times
 reported from a source close to Samsung, “As the S6 and S6 Edge represented progress, the S7 will have improvements both in picture quality, performance and other some new features. The key point is can consumers enjoy content with enhanced viewing quality and boosted processing speed.” With this, we can expect the Galaxy S7 to look much like the Galaxy S6, with minor tweaks to differentiate them.

In addition, there have also been sources claiming that the Galaxy S7 may be built with another type of material. Apparently, Samsung has been experimenting with magnesium based alloy for the material of the new device, claiming that it would make the phone lighter but stronger, on top of improving on heat dissipation. We are expecting the new device to sport both metal and glass since this still gives it a premium feel. We also think Samsung will still make the battery not removable since this a unibody would allow Samsung to make its device slimmer.

Another thing to look forward to is the display of the Galaxy S7. With 4k phones in the market now, we can probably expect Samsung to up the game and produce something like an 8k display. This would also improve on the Gear VR experience since it would be much sharper.

Since there are some phones that have incorporated eye-scanning technology, we might also see that in the Galaxy S7 in addition to the dual cameras, which might sport either a new BRITECELL camera, or a IMX300 sensor seen in the Xperia Z5. Who knows? Maybe Samsung might work on its own camera sensor, to boost its low-light photo taking capabilities.

Now, when do you think we will see the new Galaxy S7 announced? Most likely we can safely assume in early January during CES 2016, or maybe during MWC in late February next year.

Source:
Tech Radar

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Samsung Galaxy S7 may use a 12MP camera

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There are a lot of different rumors on the upcoming Samsung flagship phone, with one of it being that Samsung will be taking a step back from the megapixel race and equip the Galaxy S7 with a 12MP primary camera.  The flipside is that the sensor will be rather large by phone standards; 1/2-inch in size if the rumor turns out to be true, that is.

Previously rumored to come with a 20MP ISOCELL sensor, next year’s flagship has also been mentioned in the same sentence with Sony’s custom 23-24.9MP used in the Xperia Z5 generation. If this new bit of info checks out, we expect the S7 will perform better in low-light because of dubbed dual-PD (dual-photodiode) technology, and obviously larger individual photosites.

In the other hand, the Nexus 5X and 6P both equipped with Sony’s IMX377 sensor, which is 1/2.3-inch diagonal and has 1.55-micron pixels, is the largest on a contemporary flagship phones. Samsung upcoming top-tier device will improve with the difference between 1/2.3-inch, however 1/20-inch isn’t as great as to be called a jump. Comparing a single-digit percentages with the sensor diagonal of 7.75mm vs 8.00mm.

According to the source, the new sensor is set to enter mass production any day now to be able to make it to the Galaxy S7, rumored to be released as early as January 2016. You can tell by now that none of this is confirmed at the moment, so make sure to contain your excitement.

SOURCE:
Weibo

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Samsung Galaxy S7 sales hit staggering 55 million units

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Samsung dominance over the smartphone market has been going on for quite some time now, despite the increase in competition from fellow manufacturers including new players. The South Korean manufacturing giant has since unveiled the Galaxy S8 flagship series, which is dubbed as one of the best smartphones of all time. However, that still does not take the lime light away from last year’s Galaxy S7 series, having hit sn impressive 55 million shipments since it was launched.

Although it has been more than a year since the Galaxy S7’s launch, Samsung still managed to sell 7.2 million units of its 2016 flagship from January to March this year according to statistics by Strategy Analytics. It isn’t much of a surprise at all since the Galaxy S7 series pretty much stood its ground throughout the whole of 2016, especially when the Galaxy Note 7 crisis happened.

It is safe to say that Samsung still managed to thrive having launched one sole flagship last year. As impressive as the figures can be, the newly launched Galaxy S8 is expected to surpass its predecessor(s) in terms of sales. The handset sports a front with minimal bezels surrounding a beautiful display, along with Samsung’s brand new Bixby voice assistant. How well do you think the Galaxy S8 will perform?

Source:
Yonhap News

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Samsung Galaxy S8’s fourth Oreo beta disables DeX with thrid-party docks

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The Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are undoubtfully one of the best looking phones of 2017 and attracted the attention of a lot of people thanks to its near bezeless design. However, the Samsung DeX feature was left out in the dark and was never utilized by owners of the phone possibly due to the high price point it came at. But Samsung is pretty persistent that users use the DeX feature only with their own dock rather than a third-party dock.

According to XDA Developers, users are reporting that when they connect their phones to third-party docks, the DeX feature no longer comes up instead, the docks now mirrors the phone’s display. The problem with the third-party docks only appears when users are on the fourth Android Oreo beta. Huawei also has a feature that is similar to DeX on their Mate 10 phones but they do not require a dock, rather just connecting a USB Type-C cable from your phone to a screen to enable the feature.

Let’s hope that this is something Samsung is working on if this restriction were to be implemented in the final version of Oreo, it safe to assume that a lot of users will not be happy with this move.

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Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus now available in limited Rose Pink

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Samsung has been known to add new color options to its flagship smartphone models for quite some time now. Last year saw the Galaxy S7 series with new paint jobs across the year, in attempts to make up some ground for the Galaxy Note 7 crisis. This year’s Galaxy S8 Plus has also seen some new colors, the latest addition being Rose Pink, which is only limited to select regions.

By select regions we are only referring to Samsung’s home ground South Korea and fellow Asian country Taiwan, both of which are the only countries confirmed so far to get the Rose Pink model of the Galaxy S8 Plus. This color model is also said to be sold for a limited time, creating a sense of urgency for potential buyers given the fact that Rose Gold and Rose Pink smartphones typically sell well.

The Rose Pink Galaxy S8 Plus sports the same spec sheet like an ordinary S8 Plus you find out there. It comes with the exception of a different processor underneath the hood – Samsung’s own Exynos 8895 chipset instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, since it is region specific.

We can’t be certain whether or not this Rose Pink model of the Galaxy S8 Plus will be available in other regions in the future other than the ones mentioned above. Would you be interested in a Rose Pink S8 Plus?

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Samsung Galaxy S8 pricing and colour options leaked

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In what could potentially be the last batch of leaks before Samsung introduces the world to the Galaxy S8 proper, it appears that the colour options and the pricing of the smartphone and its accessories have been leaked as well.

Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus (top to bottom) in black sky, orchid grey and arctic silver (left to right)
pic.twitter.com/ISo7W10sYV

— Evan Blass (@evleaks)
March 19, 2017

Much like many other leaks surrounding the Galaxy S8, the source of said leaks comes from Evan Blass. According to this batch of leaks, it appears that the Galaxy S8 and the S8+ will be available in three colours: Black Sky, Orchid Grey, and Arctic Silver.

S8 – 799€
S8+ – 899€
DeX – 150€
GearVR – 129€
Gear360 – 229€
https://t.co/vVm6DRMkX5

— Evan Blass (@evleaks)
March 19, 2017

Blass has also managed to get some information as to the European pricing of the Galaxy S8 and its accessories. The standard S8 will retail for EUR799 (RM3,814), while the larger S8+ will go for EUR899 (RM4,291). Meanwhile, the S8’s DeX docking station would go for EUR150 (RM716). Rounding up the price list, we have the Gear VR headset and the Gear 360 camera, both of which will retail for EUR129 (RM616) and EUR229 (RM1,093) respectively.

Source:
The Verge

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Samsung Galaxy S8 series far surpasses pre-order expectations

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Samsung stormed the world when it launched the Galaxy S8 series of smartphones, comprising of the Galaxy S8 and the S8+. In the Android world, Samsung has been in its own league for quite some time now, especially when you factor in the sales of its flagship series. Similar to movies breaking box office records, it looks like the Galaxy S8 series has surpassed expectations in terms of its pre-orders, faring way better than Samsung did with its flagships last year.

The Korea Herald reports that Samsung has received a staggering 550,000 pre-orders for the Galaxy S8 within the first two days in its home country South Korea. The record figure is more than 5 times the pre-orders of the Galaxy S7 in the same duration last year. The Galaxy S7 raked in 100,000 pre-orders in its first two days. The Galaxy Note 7 fared better, scoring 200,000 pre-orders, despite the phablet being short lived after the fire crisis. Suppliers for the Galaxy S8 – Samsung Electro-mechanics and Samsung SDI are expected to bounce back from their 2016 Q4 losses caused by the Galaxy Note 7 global recall.

The Galaxy S8 series now sets a higher bar in sales for South Korean company, with one of its key selling points being the edge to edge near bezel-less display. Fellow South Korean manufacturer LG is also predicted to intensify the competition with its earlier launched LG G6 flagship smartphone.

Source:
The Korea Herald

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Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ newest update brings 480FPS Super Slow Motion mode

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Yet another update from Samsung and this has to do with a new update that gives users an extra option for slow-mo videos. Prior to this, the Galaxy S9 and S9+ came with the option of 960fps at 720p which was as good as the slow-mo on the Xperia XZ2.

The new update will give the options users the option shoot a slow-mo shot in 480fps, faster by half the default speed that the phones offered. This will allow the exposure to be shorter which will result in clearer slow-mo and with the possibility of a brighter shot. However, there is a rather odd way of activating this feature, to shoot in 480fps, you will need to enable manual Super Slow Motion mode. If you want the 960fps mode, you will need to enable the automatic mode. Samsung did not state why would users need to do this but using automatic or manual mode will still achieve the expected result of shooting slow-mo. Other than that, the update brings along device stability improvements as well as improved AR Emoji.

If you own the Galaxy S9 or S9+, you can head over to the Software Update section of the phone and do a check if you have received the update. Currently, it is being rolled out to Exynos Galaxy S9 and S9+ devices, which is the processor variant that we get in Malaysia.

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Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus Hands On Review

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We took a trip to Spain for MWC 2018 where Samsung showed off their new Galaxy S9 flagship. Comes with a dual-aperture mode and some features already seen in other flagships.

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Samsung Galaxy S9 phones will cost 100 Euro more than the S8 phones

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If you are looking to buy either the iPhone X or the Samsung Galaxy S9 when the price is announced, you might still have a predicament on your hand. A source that has been accurate with the pricing of the Galaxy phones has just revealed that it will cost at least 100 Euro more than the S8.

TechTastc, who has been accurate with the pricing has learned from their sources about the pricing of the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus will cost 899 Euro (RM4354.22) and 999 Euro (RM4838.56) respectively, putting it roughly in the price range of the iPhone X. They also confirmed that pre-orders will start 2nd March following the 25th February launch and the phones will ship 16th March.

TechTastic has also listed several case types of the S9, this includes Clear View Cover, Hyperknit Cover, LED Flip Wallet, Silicon Cover, Alcantara Cover and Protective Standing Cover. Fans of the Galaxy phones can expect to be paying that extra amount as well when it comes to Malaysia.

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Samsung Galaxy S9 Review: Impressive Refinements that are Difficult to Impress

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The Galaxy S8 is still a beautiful smartphone, so beautiful that I almost forgot about Samsung’s terrible software experience and the unfortunate incident with the Note 7, in fact I got my very own unit at the sales launch last year, which I also have to admit that the add-on purchase offer partially drove me to buy one as well, the S8 is by far one of the most satisfying Samsung devices I’ve owned. When I got my hands on the Galaxy S9 in MWC 2018, my immediate thoughts were – what is Samsung trying to offer this time? The S9 feels and looks exactly like its predecessor as if there weren’t any obvious upgrades, during my first impressions I was quick to conclude while things such as the dual aperture camera and AR emoji are cool, these software features aren’t compelling enough to make me want to upgrade from my S8, I even wrote an article back then on why you shouldn’t buy the phone at this point of time. However, after given the opportunity to spend more than a week with the Galaxy S9, I’m finally convinced that this is the flagship that I’m going to own this year, just not that soon.

Design and Hardware

“It looks the same as the Galaxy S8!”, this is the first reaction from everyone I’ve shown the Galaxy S9 to, but this doesn’t mean that Samsung didn’t make any changes to the phone’s aesthetics. Once you pick up the phone, you’ll immediately realize the difference in weight distribution, a more rounded side that offers a much comfortable grip, and a matte coated metal frame that can handle scratches better. The rear fingerprint scanner has gotten a better placement, it works faster and more precise than the Galaxy S8’s hardware, though people with larger fingers will not like the size of it, but it is definitely an improvement nonetheless.

The Infinity Display has the same size and display resolution as last year’s S8, though I have been spoilt thoroughly with the Razer Phone’s 120Hz panel, this is still one gorgeous looking panel that has great contrast and brightness levels, touch response has also somehow improved from the S8, as I find myself making less errors when typing on the S9. Like the S8, the Galaxy S9 can play HDR video content that uses the HDR10 profile, it is automatically enabled when playing HDR videos on YouTube and certain content on NetFlix.

One of the biggest, and probably my favorite improvement, is the inclusion of stereo speakers, which is provided and tuned by Samsung owned audio company, AKG. Like the HTC U11 Plus and iPhone X, the S9’s stereo speakers are located at the earpiece and the bottom right, they produce louder volume than both the U11 Plus and iPhone X, and with the help of Dolby Atmos, the soundstage gets brighter with an impressive output of low audio frequencies. The Galaxy S9 also maintains the 3.5mm headphone jack if you prefer the wired audio experience, and for those who prefer wireless audio, you’ll be glad to know that the S9 supports a variety of lossless Bluetooth codecs for Hi-Res audio, though only aptX is mentioned in the official specs, it also supports LDAC and Samsung HD.

Software and User Experience

Like the Galaxy S9’s hardware, the software is left largely unchanged from recent Samsung flagships, it ships with Android 8.0.0 with Samsung Experience 9.0 running atop. Bixby is still present as part of the experience and suffice to say, I’ve not find the need to use Google Assistant as Samsung’s voice assistant was able to pick up my Malaysian accent well enough to perform certain tasks. Even though Samsung hasn’t emphasized performance improvements or any AI features on the S9 like others, the Galaxy S9’s performance has improved significantly from the S8, all thanks to better memory optimization and the Exynos 9810 processor, there’s still minimal amount of lag across the user experience, but they aren’t as annoying as I find back on the S8.

Samsung has introduced Intelligent Scan as an improvement to facial unlock, should you prefer not to unlock the phone using fingerprint. This is a very smart alternative to Apple’s Face ID solution, where the company is able to save costs on sensors by utilizing both the front camera and Iris scanner to detect your presence, which addresses the issue of unlocking the phone with your face in dark rooms or cinemas. Unfortunately, though Intelligent Scan works well in dimly lit rooms, it struggles to detect my irises in a cinema hall, where it took almost 2 seconds to realize that I was looking dead straight onto the iris scanner, it still isn’t as sophisticated as iPhone X’s Face ID system, but thankfully the S9 has a great fingerprint scanner to save the feature from criticism.

Close enough, it looks scary!

The lack of facial recognition sensors also made AR Emoji a less fun feature on the Galaxy S9, which it isn’t able to detect facial reactions properly such as winking to make your emoji character look realistic, and it becomes worse when  used in low light. While AR Emoji is more flexible than Animoji when it comes to content creation and sharing, it just doesn’t work well on certain faces we have tried in the office, it feels like a scary cartoonish version of yourself, and I personally don’t find the 15 auto generated GIFs cool enough to share it to my friends. If you hate creating an emoji of yourself, Samsung offers a number of cartoon characters for download on Galaxy Apps, though they don’t look as refined as characters on Animojis.

Camera

Having two mechanical apertures on a single camera lens is definitely a breakthrough in smartphone camera hardware, the Galaxy S9’s 12-megapixel camera happens to sport the widest aperture of f/1.5 for low light and f/2.4 for bright outdoors. The purpose of having two apertures can be simply be referred to the human eye, as we’ll need to expand our pupils to see better in dark environments and when exposed to brighter environments, the eye pupil adjusts automatically to see properly as to not blind our vision.

In this case, I have high expectations for the S9’s camera performance when it comes to automatic image adjustments, but unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case when I compare it to the S8’s 12-megapixel f/1.7 lens, pictures taken with the S9’s camera in both outdoors and low light look very much the same as the S8, and the S8’s camera outperforms the S9 in low light with better detail and color saturation. Take a look at the images below with a comparison slider and feel free to comment on them.

Galaxy S8 Camera Samples – Flickr

Galaxy S9 Camera Samples – Flickr

Camera Samples – Galaxy S8 (Slide Right) vs Galaxy S9 (Slide Left)

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I’m also not impressed with the 960fps Super Slow Mo feature, which Samsung hyped a lot during the launch. First, it only records in 720p resolution, which feels darn pixelated when viewing on the phone’s display and more so on a PC monitor; and the worse part is, it isn’t easy to capture slow mo videos, as it only activates when it detects motion on a subject rather than the entire frame, you have got to be extremely close to the subject in order to capture a slow-mo video, it also doesn’t work well indoors and loses tracking when you move the slow-mo object too much.

The Galaxy S9’s camera fortunately still managed to impress me with 4K60p video recording, you can also take advantage of manual image controls such shutter speed, ISO and white balance while recording a video, the camera’s OIS hardware also worked well in eliminating stutters if you are shooting without a stabilizer, audio recording quality is also great with two microphones. If you are a videographer or vlogger that uses a smartphone for shooting video content, then the Galaxy S9’s camera is definitely worth looking into.

Battery Life and Network Performance

Some folks might be disappointed that Samsung hasn’t increased the battery size of the Galaxy S9 from the S8, a 3000mAh battery does sound underwhelming in today’s flagship standards, I experienced very much the same endurance as I do on the Galaxy S8, which will get you through the day with moderate and slightly more than a day with lightweight use, which isn’t too disappointing. However, what really pisses me off is that charging speed is still stuck at QC2.0 standards, which makes me assume that Samsung still hasn’t got over the Note 7 battery issue and it prefers to play safe rather than innovate.

The S9’s radio performance is excellent, as I was able to get consistent 4G speeds with no dropped calls, the phone unfortunately doesn’t support dual SIM 4G standby, which means you can’t connect to two VoLTE networks at the same time. While this is isn’t a deal breaker, this should be supported on a modern Android flagship, devices like last year’s Huawei Mate 10 has already supported this feature.

Verdict

I have mixed feelings when reviewing the Galaxy S9, I loved that it still has one of the best smartphone designs with performance improvements, but I hate the newly introduced features and gimmicks that aren’t as exciting as it should be. To call the Galaxy S9 a refined Galaxy S8 would be an understatement, because it is simply a much better smartphone than it’s predecessor in terms of user experience. Despite of that, I’m still not changing the facts of my opinion on not buying the Galaxy S9, and I would wait for a price cut to make my upgrade. The Galaxy S9 is a difficult product to convince users coming from the Galaxy S8 or Note 8 to upgrade, because it is a smartphone that requires hands-on to be appreciated.

The Good

Improved aesthetics

Faster performance

IP68 water and dust resistance

Impressive stereo speakers

4K60 video recording with manual controls

The Not so Good

Camera performance isn’t much improved from S8

No dual SIM 4G standby

No faster charging

No improvements in battery life

AR Emoji and Super Slow-Mo aren’t fun

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Samsung Galaxy S9 Revolutionizes the Camera to a Whole New Level

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If there’s one brand that’s making heads turn at the MWC this year, it’s definitely Samsung where the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus have been officially announced, with groundbreaking camera technology that’s like no other. It is just impressive how Samsung surprises us with their ideas over and over again.

Dual aperture
 At the very basis of it all, the Samsung Galaxy S9 camera adapts the human eye, where it adjusts the aperture according to the time of the day the image is captured. The camera will automatically adjust to a wider aperture when it’s dark to allow more light to be captured on the image, similarly to how a human eye adjusts accordingly.

Infinity Display
 With refined designs comes newly improved bezels that increases display size, where the S9 now gives off an “uninterrupted display”. Pretty sure the close-to-perfection display would serve as a truly immersive entertaining device for gamers (and non-gamers), because what’s not to like about it when you get to binge-watch movies with no annoying bezels that get in the way?

AR Emoji
 Even emojis get revamped too. The Galaxy S9 camera allows users to customize their very own emojis with their facial features by taking a selfie and then editing the AR emoji to their own liking. This new feature is a totally new technology and is bound to be leading the industry, making it the new rivalry for iPhone X’s Animoji.

And if things could get any better, the audience that were present at the MWC event had the opportunity for an AR experience when they were asked to scan their badges with their Galaxy Unpacked app. This then led them to witness an AR Galaxy S9 on their very own phones. Even watching the live streaming at that moment was an amazing experience.

[fshow url=https://flic.kr/s/aHsmeUeS1d]

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ will be available in Lilac Purple, Midnight Black or Coral Blue starting March 2 so we’d better mark those dates right on our calendar.

UPDATE
: The prices for each of them will be as follows:

Galaxy S9 64GB — RM3,299
 Galaxy S9+ 64GB — RM3,799
 Galaxy S9+ 128GB — RM3,999
 Galaxy S9+ 256GB — RM4,399

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Samsung Galaxy S9 will come with stereo speakers and 3D emoji

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According to a Korean publication, ETNews, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus will come with 3D emoji and stereo speakers. We have seen 3D emojis on Apple’s iPhone X but the publication has stated that it will be more advanced than the Animoji and you will be able to share it with your friends.

This new feature is in line with the new Exynos chip which Samsung has mentioned that it will have realistic face-tracking filters and stronger security for unlocking devices using facial recognition. Other than that, the new S9 phones will come with speakers at the top and bottom, giving it the stereo sound feature mentioned. The speakers will also feature Dolby Surround tuned by Samsung owned, AKG.

ETNews also mentioned that the S9 may cost between 925,000 to 1,000,000 Won (RM3372.87 to RM3646.34) when it releases. The phone will be unveiled on the 25th of February at MWC 2018. Stay tuned to as we will bringing you coverage of the event.

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Samsung Galaxy S9 will launch with a new DeX Pad

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It was speculated that the new Samsung Galaxy S9 will come with a new DeX Pad which is a different version of the DeX Station where you will place the phone flat on the surface and use it as a touchpad.

Customers will be able to purchase the accessory separately and it would seem that this speculation is accurate as Samsung has trademarked the DeX Pad name in Europe to make it in time for MWC end of next month. The DeX Pad will not only turn your phone into a touchpad but it will also feature wireless charging. There is still no indication if wires are required for communication with a monitor or if this device can be used with the S8.

When it comes to pricing, there is a big chance that this device will not be cheaper than the previous DeX Station and is expected to cost around $150 (RM603.90) at launch. We will know more about the DeX Pad during MWC 2018 when Samsung has they press conference.

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Samsung Galaxy S9 will probably be the first phones to come with Snapdragon 845 processors

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If you are looking to experience the power of the new Snapdragon 845 then you might have to look into getting the new Samsung flagships phones next year, as reports have hinted that the Galaxy S9 and S9+ will be the first phones that are equipped with the new processor.

There is also a high chance, that you might have to go over to the US to get the phones, seeing as how they release the Exynos version of the S8 here but a Snapdragon version in the US. These reports are made more solid, due to the fact that back in August Samsung has already bought up almost all the Snapdragon 845 processors for their next year flagship phones. This move is not uncommon for the Korean company, as with the S8, they bought up all the Snapdragon 835 chips forcing LG to use the 821 chips in their LG G6 phones. Other companies had to push their launches to a later date to ensure that there is enough supply to manufacture their phones.

Samsung Galaxy S9 concept design

The same reports also indicated that the S9 phones will be launching a month earlier, so we can expect these phones to be out in the market mid-March. However, all of this is still rumours and we will know more when MWC comes around in February 2018

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Samsung launches the Galaxy SmartTag to help users track their belongings

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During the Unpacked event, Samsung also announced a small Bluetooth tracker called the Galaxy SmartTag. It’s similar to Tile, a squarish tag that can be hung on devices to track them when needed.

Attach the Galaxy SmartTag to any important items to track them

The
Galaxy SmartTag
 retails for $29.99 and can be attached to any devices via a key ring. Users can download Samsung’s SmartThings app to track their lost objects via the Galaxy SmartTag — the app has a proximity indicator and the tag will ring with a tap of the button on the app.

SmartTag+ will come with Ultra-wideband technology

Samsung is also introducing a UWB version of the SmartTag called the SmartTag+. The upgraded variant features spatial accuracy by combining navigation and AR, so users will be guided to their lost item in a more precise method. Unfortunately, the SmartTag and SmartTag+ are only compatible with the Galaxy devices and cannot be used with other Android phones or iPhones.

The Galaxy SmartTag+ will be available later this year at $39.99 whereas the Galaxy SmartTag can be purchased starting January 29.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab A is now available in Malaysia

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Looking for an affordable tablet? Samsung might have something you may be interested in as the company has revealed that the 2016 Galaxy Tab A is now available in Malaysia.

Retailing for RM 799, the particular Galaxy Tab A model that Samsung has brought into the local market is the 7″ variant. So far, no mention was made as to whether or not the 10.1″ variant will be available here, but judging from the online store, that particular device is not available as of yet. Another interesting thing to note is that the Galaxy Tab A model that Samsung is offering here is the LTE version instead of the Wi-Fi only version.

Specifications-wise, the Galaxy Tab A is pretty much what you’ll expect out of a affordable device, coming with a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, and 8GB of storage which is expandable via microSD cards. Other features of the Galaxy Tab A 2016 includes a 5MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, and a 4,000mAh battery.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 leaked: 10.5-inch display, Unisoc T618 chip and 7,040mAh battery

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The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 may only arrive next year, but the Galaxy Tab A8 is expected to launch before this year ends.

Renders
 of the Galaxy Tab A8 have been revealed a few weeks ago; the design doesn’t differ much from its
predecessor
, so you’ll still see thick bezels around the display and a single camera setup on its back.

However, the camera lens seems to have switched from a squarish module to a circular design.

Rumored Galaxy Tab A8 specs

Image credit: OnLeaks x 91Mobiles

Under the hood, this phone is expected to come with a Unisoc T618 chip, though that may differ when it launches in Malaysia. It’s also expected to sport 3GB/4GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage.

You’ll still get the same 7,040mAh battery with this tablet, and it’s unlikely that Samsung will upgrade its charging speed, meaning it’ll support 15W fast charge.

The Galaxy Tab A8 is also leaked to come with an 8MP rear camera, a 5MP front camera, a side-mounted fingerprint scanner and a 3.5mm audio jack.

It’s said to be available in Gold, Silver and Gray; Samsung will be offering it in two variants – LTE and WiFi only.

In other news, Samsung recently launched the
Galaxy Tab S7 FE
 in Malaysia.

Galaxy Tab A8
samsung