Prolific leaker Evan Blass on Tuesday morning published on his Twitter account a purported high-resolution press rendering of Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note 8 phablet.
As Apple is said to be bankrolling its supplier LG Display's OLED expansion, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities yesterday shared his thoughts on the matter.
Apple has purchased sophisticated equipment to set up its own research and development facility in Taiwan to develop its own OLED technology in order to reduce its dependence on Samsung Electronics for iPhone OLED panels.
According to a repot Monday from Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes, the Cupertino giant has purchased chemical vapor deposition (CVD) machines from Korea-based Sunic System to build a 2.5G OLED panel line.
In-house OLEDs will allow Apple to differentiate its products from other handsets that use Samsung-built OLED panels. According to a Chinese-language Commercial Times report cited by DigiTimes, the move will break the dominance of Japan-based Canon Kokki, currently the primary supplier of CVD machines that ships the bulk of its output to Samsung.
“Samsung has bought five sets of OLED manufacturing equipment from Canon Tokki so far in 2017 and has signed contracts to buy five out of ten such machines to be rolled out by the Japan-based machinery company in 2018,” said the Commercial Times.
LG Display also purchased these machines but Apple has yet to validate its OLED panels.
iPhone 8 mockup via iDropNews.
As rumored, Samsung will be unveiling an eighth-generation Note phablet next month.
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, an industry lobbying group which counts technology giants Google, Intel, Amazon, Facebook and Apple rival Samsung as its members, among others, has sided with the Cupertino giant in its escalating legal dispute with Qualcomm over smartphone royalties related to cellular technology.
Following multiple delays stemming from lack of big data, Samsung on Wednesday said its new personal digital assistant Bixby is now available in U.S. English to customers in the United States and Korea via a software update for the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 smartphones. The company will add support for additional languages and devices “in the near future.”
Samsung Electronics has not been building Apple-designed mobile chips for iPhone and iPad for almost four years now, but the South Korean conglomerate is rumored to be sharing Apple orders with rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) from next year.
According to a report Tuesday in The Korea Herald, Samsung has invested in a new manufacturing facility for churning out chips fabricated on the more energy efficient seven-nanometer process technology solely for iPhone.
“Samsung plans to complete its own tests for the new chip-making machines soon and seek final approval from Apple for the chip production,” reads the report.
The company reportedly purchased extreme ultra violet lithography machines, the most advanced chip manufacturing equipment in the world, to use in iPhone chip production from 2018. Kwon Oh-hyun, one of Samsung’s three co-CEOs, apparently played a key role in securing the deal during his visit to Apple’s headquarters last month.
“The CEO could persuade Apple’s top brass taking advantage of their close ties on OLED,” said an industry source. Samsung, as you know, is also the sole supplier of OLED panels for the upcoming OLED-based iPhone model.
Rival TSMC also won a supply deal for next year’s iPhone and the reports said Samsung would share some parts of iPhone chip orders next year with TSMC.
Samsung's decision last year to launch its super-sized though ill-fated Note 7 smartphone earlier than usual backfired big time, but this time around the South Korean chaebol is betting that launching a next-generation Note ahead of iPhone 8 will steal Apple's thunder.
The head of Samsung's mobile division, Koh Dong-jin, confirmed to partners last Friday that a Note 8 event in New York has been scheduled for August 23, The Bell reported.
The executive apparently told local news outlets that the next Note will hit shelves overseas, including the US and UK in September, followed by an October release in other nations.
A recent report said iPhone 8 supply may not ramp up until November, with the iterative iPhone 7s/Plus models possibly facing production delays of their own.
On the other hand, The Investor said a Samsung executive would only confirm the month of August, not a concrete date. According to DigiTimes, Koh refuted market speculation of Galaxy S8 sales falling short of those for its predecessor since launch.
Cumulative Galaxy S8 sales, he said, are 15 percent higher than those of Galaxy S7 compared on the same number of selling days thus far. As for the Note family, shipments of these products totaled 2.3 million units in South Korea since their debut in 2011, he revealed.
Smartphone leakster Evan Blass speculated that Note 8 should feature the same edge-to-edge 6.2-inch OLED screen with an 18.5:9 aspect ratio as Galaxy S8 Plus.
Other rumored features should include Samsung's signature S Pen stylus, virtual assistant Bixby, a rear dual-camera system positioned horizontally and comprised of two 12-megapixel sensors, a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and more.
It should cost slightly over $900 in the US and be offered in in black, blue and gold.
Reuters was first to report a month ago that the Note brand would continue with an eighth-generation device due for an announcement in August.
Samsung Electronics today announced expanded partnership with PayPal to make it possible for customers to make in-app, online and in-store purchases with PayPal as a payment method within Samsung Pay. Access to PayPal will be available for all Samsung Pay users in the United States and will expand to other countries soon, the company said.
“Users simply add their PayPal account to Samsung Pay, and can then spend the balance anywhere Samsung Pay is accepted,” said a Samsung executive. Users will benefit from Samsung Pay's services like gift cards, and membership and loyalty programs.
The move will open up PayPal to millions of stores, PayPal noted.
“This partnership will give our customers the ability to pay with mobile almost anywhere consumers can swipe or tap a credit card,” said the Korean firm.
As a bonus, merchants will even be able to accept Samsung Pay as a method of payment in-app and online through Braintree Direct, a PayPal service. Samsung Pay works in almost any in-store POS location in the United States.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR8jxpFW1j8
The PayPal integration with Samsung Pay is supported on select Samsung phones, including Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. Last week, PayPal announced expanded Apple ID integration allowing customers in additional countries to set up PayPal as a payment method for App Store, iTunes Store and iBooks Store purchases.
Unlike Apple Pay which works with NFC point-of-sale systems, Samsung Pay supports both NFC terminals and those using traditional Magnetic Secure Transmission technology that lets it replicate a card swipe and work nearly anywhere that payment cards are accepted.
“Thanks to Samsung's advanced technology, Samsung Pay is the most widely-accepted mobile payment platform in the market and works almost anywhere you can swipe or tap a card today,” said the company. “Now, with the integration of the PayPal wallet, customers can use Samsung Pay in the most convenient ways possible.”
Samsung Pay is now available in 18 markets.
A Boston Retail Partners survey on mobile payments ranked Apple Pay first in the United States as having the largest percentage of merchants, with 36 percent accepting the technology, up from 16 percent the year before.
PayPal was a close second with 34 percent acceptance, followed by MasterCard PayPass (25 percent), Android Pay (24 percent), Visa Checkout (20 percent), Samsung Pay (18 percent), Chase Pay (11 percent) and private label mobile wallets with four percent.
PayPal previously said its popular payment system would work with Android Pay to support both mobile payments in apps and those in brick-and-mortar retailers.
Hugh Dubberly, a former Apple creative director and former member of Samsung’s global design advisory board, was cited in The Wall Street Journal's write-up Monday as saying that the pipeline that Steve Jobs started is now over. “It’s not so much that Samsung has gotten better, but Apple has fundamentally changed,” he added.
While smartphone innovation in general has stalled due to market saturation and other factors as game-changing technologies continue to give way to incremental changes, the article suggests that Samsung has out-designed Apple with its Galaxy S8.
The smartphone war is shifting to how a phone looks and feels, reads the article.
Samsung design chief M.H. Lee was cited as saying:
Companies used to design phones to show off their technology. Now the focus is on designing a product that can be a buddy to the person, inseparable to them. Smartphone design is not just artwork that expresses what you want but a process of making things people around the world can actually use.
Charles L. Mauro, president of MauroNewMedia, a product-design research firm that has done consulting work for Apple and Samsung, said smartphone aesthetics now account for about half a consumer’s purchase decision versus just seven percent of purchases in an older survey.
An excerpt from the article:
Samsung's Galaxy S8 is nudging the bar higher as Apple seeks to impress with its 10th anniversary iPhone this fall. For Apple to outdo Samsung on design, analysts said, it would need a new distinguishing feature, like a fingerprint sensor beneath the display rather than a physical Home button.
Consumer Reports ranked the Galaxy S handset the top phone for the second straight year, praising features like Galaxy S8's industrial design, battery life and camera quality.
Galaxy S8 sales hit one million units in South Korea in half the time it took for its predecessor to hit that milestone. On the other hand, it saw significantly lower global sales during its first two months of availability than the Galaxy S7 model during the same period last year.
Samsung's personal digital assistant Bixby is currently available in Korean, but its English version won't launch by the end of this month as company executives originally promised.
As The Korea Herald reported Thursday (via The Loop), Bixby's English version has been delayed because Samsung lacks big data needed to train Bixby to speak English fluently.
“Developing Bixby in other languages is taking more time than we expected mainly because of the lack of the accumulation of big data,” said a Samsung spokesperson.
Samsung’s mobile chief, Koh Dong-jin, promised in April that Bixby’s English and Chinese versions would be unveiled in May and in June of this year, respectively.
Even though Samsung launched a beta of Bixby for some US consumers last month, it was met with mixed responses due to what Samsung described as “unsatisfactory results in terms of responding to requests and questions”.
Difficult communication between the engineers located at Samsung Research America in California and the headquarters in Korea is also blamed for Bixby's English delay.
According to a source cited in the report:
Many engineers in the United States are making full efforts to develop the English version of Bixby. But, due to geographical and language barriers their frequent reports to and communication with the management located in Korea makes the progress much slower than developing the Korean version here.
This can't be good news for Samsung, which debuted its latest Galaxy S8 lineup in March with Bixby as one of its headlining features. The new handsets feature a dedicated button on the side for quickly summoning Bixby. The South Korean company even issued a software update to stop third-party apps from changing the button's function.
Although Samsung last year snapped up Viv Labs, the developer behind Apple’s Siri, their AI technology won't be used in Bixby before the personal assistant becomes more complete.
The Wall Street Journal reported two days ago that Samsung is building a Bixby-powered smart speaker, joining a proliferating arms race in tabletop devices against the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft.
At last month's Mobile World Congress Shanghai, Samsung showed a secret standalone virtual headset prototype to partners. As spotted on VR Focus, the product uses technologies allowing it to track eye and hand movement as well as determine various facial expressions.
Dubbed Exynos VR III, the head-mounted accessory is apparently a successor to another Samsung headset prototype, called Exynos VR II, that was never officially released. Samsung already offers a virtual reality headset in the form of the Gear VR device which requires the user to dock and undock their smartphone every time they use it.
Thanks to Visual Camp, a VR company that developed eye-tracking technology for the secret VR headset, we know it's powered by a Samsung-designed 10nm hexa-core chip.
The chip includes a pair of Samsung M2 CPU cores clocked at 2.5 GHz, four ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores clocked at 1.7 GHz and ARM Mali G71 MP20 graphics capable of driving two built-in 2,560-by-1,440 pixel displays at 90Hz or a single 4K external screen at 75Hz.
As mentioned, unlike Samsung's current Gear VR headset that requires a smartphone to process data and render visuals, this all-in-one head-mounted display prototype packs in all the technology needed to render virtual worlds and apps standalone.
Visual Camp's press release announcing the Samsung deal says its eye-tracking tech lets VR headsets conserve power by rendering parts of a scene the user is currently looking at very high resolution while showing anything in peripheral vision in reduced resolution.
This technique is known as “foveated rendering”.
“Several other technologies will be applied to the Exynos 3, in addition to the company's eye-tracking technology, including hand tracking, voice recognition, and facial expression recognition,” reads the press release.
A measurement of the CPU power consumption of Samsung Electronics' Exynos 8890 chip resulted in the relatively low average figure of less than three percent, said Visual Camp.
Companies like Apple, Google and Facebook are researching eye-tracking technology, too.
Apple is rumored to be working on a digital glasses or a virtual headset product that may use optics by German specialists Carl Zeiss, thought to be released in 2018 or 2019. The Cupertino giant recently acquired SensoMotoric Instruments for an undisclosed sum.
SensoMotoric Instruments is a German company that specializes in eye tracking. Their technology also uses foveated rendering, understands facial expressions and recognizes participant gestures and external events.