Samsung

Apple Watch leads in bringing beneficial health monitoring features to market, but there’s one feature Samsung’s newest smart watch promises that we haven’t seen from Apple yet. Samsung’s newly unveiled Galaxy Watch Active will be able to measure blood pressure in a future update.

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Samsung unveiled its latest generation of flagship smartphones today at its Unpacked 2019 event as well as some new accessories. Along with the expected Galaxy S10e, S10, and S10+, the company kicked off Unpacked by showing off the Galaxy Fold, a foldable smartphone/tablet hybrid that will go on sale in April for a salty $1,980.

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Update 2/11/2019: Samsung now says its 2019 QLED TVs are now available to purchase or pre-order. The upcoming iTunes app and AirPlay 2 feature will be available in a future update to compatible 2019 and 2018 TVs.

Apple and Samsung today announced a partnership to put iTunes TV shows and movies onto Samsung Smart TVs from the spring. The iTunes video content will be exposed through a special app that sits alongside existing apps like Netflix, Hulu and YouTube.

The TVs will also become AirPlay 2 receivers, marking the first official AirPlay integration for third parties. The features will launch on 2019 Samsung Smart TVs and most 2018 Samsung Smart TVs through a software update.

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Citron Research took to Twitter today with a decisive message: “ROKU stock is uninvestable now”. Immediately after, the stock plunged nearly 10%. This comes after a tremendous 25% gain just 24 hours prior, when newly released strong Q4 streaming numbers boosted the stock drastically.

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Apple said that the dramatic reduction in its guidance for the holiday quarter was almost entirely due to declining sales in China. Two sets of stats today show that this is not an Apple-specific problem: smartphone shipments in China are down across the board, with Samsung taking a double hit …

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A supply-chain report says that Apple will be using a new form of screen technology to make at least one of its 2019 iPhone models thinner and lighter — a trend Apple has bucked with recent flagship versions.

The report says that Apple has decided to use touch-integrated flexible OLED panels, which have a different construction to current iPhone screens …

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Samsung has officially given an apology to its employees who have experienced serious health problems and illness after working in its factories that produce semiconductors and displays. While the company didn’t admit that its factories were the “direct cause of the workers’ illnesses”, it will be providing compensation to affected individuals. Notably, Samsung is a major supplier for components like displays and more for Apple.

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When the iPhone XS was released, we saw Apple’s flagship device square off against Samsung’s Note 9 in an app launching speed test and beat it by 14 seconds. Now, YouTuber PhoneBuff has done an iPhone XR speed test against the same Android flagship. Even with 5GB less RAM than the Note 9, the XR was still able to squeak out a tie.

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Update: The BBC reports that Samsung has denied that there is a lawsuit, but refused to confirm or deny that it is asking for some money back from Sobchak.

It’s not unusual for celebrities paid to promote Android brands to be caught using an iPhone. In many cases, they have been caught out on Twitter – like Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot.

But Samsung appears to take the matter more seriously than most: they are suing their own Russian brand ambassador for using an iPhone X for a massive $1.6M …

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The iPhone X, iPhone 8/Plus and four different iPad models are facing a potential import ban in South Korea over a patent infringement claim. Korean authorities say that no decision has yet been made, but that the ruling is ‘likely’ to go against Apple.

Ironically, however, Apple may end up being saved by the intervention of rival smartphone supplier Samsung …

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Last year I reviewed the Sonnet Fusion Thunderbolt 3 SSD, and at the time it was the fastest bus-powered external SSD that I had ever tried. But there’s now an external drive that eclipses the performance of the Fusion SSD, and it’s made by Samsung, a company with a long reputation of producing fast, reliable SSD storage.

The precursors to the X5 — Samsung’s T3 and T5 portable SSD — are still extremely popular products for those looking for a reliable and fast external storage solution, but thanks to the prevalence of Thunderbolt 3, the X5 is turning up the speed rating significantly with up to a whopping 2,800 MB/s read speeds and 2300 MB/s write.

Is the Samsung X5 Portable SSD, with its supercar-inspired looks, worth its rather hefty price of admission? Watch our hands-on unboxing and review for the answer.
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Apple has received many complaints of late of its habit of announcing products before they are ready. Airpods, HomePod, AirPower … and the new Mac Pro currently setting the record. First announced in April 2017, it is expected to be launched sometime in 2019, with cynics suggesting the end of the year rather than the beginning.

But Apple doesn’t come anywhere close to Samsung’s record. The company first released a concept video (below) for a folding smartphone way back in 2013. That date explaining the low-res screengrab above.

Five years later, we’ve still seen no sign of it, but Samsung claims that’s about to change …

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Apple is likely to establish a technical lead over most smartphone brands as the company moves to a 7nm process for the A12 chip that will power this year’s flagship iPhones. That lead could last well into next year.

Supply-chain sources say that most brands are unlikely to use sub-10nm chips for some time yet …

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Piggybacking off the success of its wildly popular T3 and T5 series of portable SSDs, Samsung today officially announced a new portable X-series NVMe SSD featuring Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. The Samsung Portable SSD X5, the company’s first portable NVMe external SSD with Thunderbolt 3, promises eyebrow-raising read speeds of up to 2,800 MB/s, 5.2 times faster than SSDs based on SATA III.
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Earlier this week, Samsung officially unveiled its new Galaxy Note 9 flagship, but now a survey from PC Mag indicates that consumers are far more excited about what Apple has in store for the iPhone this year…

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After debuting its newest smartphone, the Galaxy Note 9 yesterday alongside a fresh Apple Watch competitor and more, Samsung is out today with two new ads in its “Ingenius” campaign. However, in an awkward twist, one of the ads pokes fun at iPhone X “power” after Apple’s 2017 release was just shown to outperform the new Note 9.

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