Chinese state TV slams Samsung over Note 7 recall ‘discrimination’

Just as we were beginning to think that the worst was behind Samsung regarding the Galaxy Note 7 battery fiasco, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV has lambasted Samsung for discriminating against Chinese consumers when it comes to the terms of the recall.

A commentary posted to the broadcaster's website on Thursday calls out Samsung's handling of the recall as "full of arrogance" and suggests that Samsung has discriminated against Chinese consumers by insisting that phones in the country do not need replacing. China has not been included in the global Note 7 recall, so customers are not entitled to replacements or refunds.

Samsung is already struggling to maintain its market position in the country, having recently fallen out of the top five smartphone manufacturers, and this very public blast is certainly not going to help the company's reputation in the country.

"Samsung's discriminatory policy has caused discontent from Chinese consumers," – CCTV

CCTV appears to have missed Samsung's clear memo that handsets in China are unaffected by the problem because they contain batteries produced by a different manufacturer to the global models. Galaxy Note 7 handsets in China, and safe units now shipping globally, contain a battery developed and manufactured by the country's own Amperex Technology Limited (ATL). The potentially dangerous batteries were designed by Samsung's own SDI division and were manufactured at factories in Vietnam and South Korea.

However, very limited reports of exploding handsets in China have caused some to wonder if Samsung is just ignoring the problem in the country. After two Galaxy Note 7s from Jingdong Mall caught fire, Samsung and ATL investigated the case and found that the battery was not the cause of the fire. As we've discussed previously, rare faults can occur in all lithium-ion batteries that can cause fires, but these aren't necessarily a result of a major manufacturing defect worthy of a recall.

See also: Batteries not to blame for Galaxy Note 7 fires in China149

The situation in China has not been helped by the revelation that 1,858 Galaxy Note 7 test devices with potentially dangerous batteries have been recalled in the country. However, all of these phones have been returned without incident. Just yesterday, Samsung also issued another statement to its Chinese website clarifying that the phones on sale in China are safe. However, the company has not responded to the recent claims by CCTV.

Samsung is not the first foreign manufacturer to fall foul of the state broadcaster's perhaps unfair criticisms over the past few years, which has prompted German automaker Volkswagen and rival phone manufacturer Apple to spend significant resources improving their image in the country.  With Xiaomi, OPPO, and Huawei already piling on the pressure for smartphone market share, this Galaxy Note 7 battery issue is likely to hit Samsung hard in China even though the phones are safe to use.

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Coolpad Note 5 with Snapdragon 617 and 4GB RAM launched in India

In a press conference in New Delhi, Coolpad launched the Coolpad Note 5 smartphone exclusively for the Indian market. Coolpad entered the Indian market exactly a year ago with the launch of Coolpad Note 3.

The successor to the company's Note series, Coolpad Note 5 sports a 5.5-inch Full HD display and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. For a budget smartphone, the Coolpad Note 5 packs a punch on the specifications sheet and will compete with the likes of Redmi Note 3 in the Indian market.

Coolpad Note 5 Specifications

• Operating System: Android Marshmallow 6.0.1 with CoolUI
• Display: 5.5 inch Full HD (1920×1080) IPS LCD
• Processor: 1.5Ghz Oct Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 | Adreno 405 GPU
• RAM: 4GB
• Internal Storage: 32GB; expandable up to 128GB with microSD card
• Rear Camera: 13MP with dual LED flash | f/2.2
• Front Camera: 8MP with LED flash | f/2.2
• Battery: 4010 mAh
• Dimensions: 152 x 75.7 x 8.85mm
• Weight: 173.4g

Coolpad Note 5 comes in two color options – Royal Gold and Space Grey – and will be available exclusively on Amazon for ₹10,999 via an open sale starting October 18.

On the side-lines of the Note 5 launch, Coolpad announced that the company aims to sell over 4 million Coolpad phones in India by next two quarters and be in the top 5 players in the global and Indian smartphone market. After the success of its offline pilot project in Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, Coolpad will be expanding its presence in 13 cities over the next three months.

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Unity introduces its Vulkan renderer for Android

The Vulkan API is promising exciting new things for mobile gaming and 3D application development, and today the company behind the popular Unity engine has announced that its Vulkan Renderer Preview is now live for developers to test out.

The benefits brought about with the introduction of Vulkan are a major speed boost, improved multithreading, and new graphical features. Vulkan boasts notable speed improvements over OpenGL ES 3.x, as the new API has been designed to take advantage of multiple CPU coress along with other optimizations. Unity says that it has seen benchmark performance improvements up to 35 percent with its new renderer, compared with the old OpenGL ES 3.1 renderer, even through they're both running on a single thread. The cross platform Vulkan API was officially supported on smartphones with the release on Android 7.0 Nougat.

Unity's Vulkan Renderer Preview is still in the experimental phase at the moment, but the option is now there for developers to enable, if they so choose. First, you'll need to grab the experimental build from the Unity beta page. To enable Vulkan support, open "Player Settings", then go to the "Other Settings" pane and clear the "Auto Graphics API" checkbox. Here you'll be presented with a list of graphics APIs to choose from, which should include Vulkan.

If developers want to test out the improved multi-core performance on offer with Vulkan, they can also hit the Graphics Jobs checkbox for a notable performance boost. Although Unity notes that developers should never have both "Multithreaded Rendering" and "Graphics Jobs (Experimental)" settings enabled at the same time.

See also: OpenGL ES versus Vulkan, who is the performance king?30

The team is currently testing the renderer out on the Exynos Samsung Galaxy S7 model, the Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, NVIDIA Shield Tablet, and Shield TV. For PC hardware, Unity recommends that developers grab the latest AMD and NVIDIA drivers as well. As is always the case with early builds, there are already a few documented bugs, including crashes, so be sure to back up your projects before diving in.

Download Unity 5.50b4 Beta

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Panasonic unveils bendable, twistable battery for smart products

Panasonic has announced its latest flexible battery innovation, which it will be showing off at CEATEC in Japan next week. When combined with flexible displays, printed electronics, and increasingly small processing packages, this could be the technological breakthrough that bendable smartphone enthusiasts have been waiting for.

According to Panasonic, the battery can be bent and twisted up to a radius of 25mm, with a maximum angle of 25 degrees,  over 1000 times, while still retaining 99 percent of its charge. Importantly given recent other battery related problems in the news, twisting the cell is completely safe as well. To obtain these properties, Panasonic has custom designed a laminated outer layer to prevent leakage and over-heating, and newly developed internal structure, but the real secrets are hidden away in the company's patents.

Unfortunately, as always seems to be the case with these flexible technologies, there's still more work to be done before this is ready for powerful pieces of technology, such as smartphones. Currently, the batteries are only designed to hold charges between 17.5 mAh and 60 mAh each. That's a long way behind the 3,000 mAh cells that we're used to in top of the line Android phones. However, tens of milliamp hours is enough to power some low power wearables, and these cells might be able to be chained together, say in a smartwatch strap, for some extra battery life.

Panasonic is targeting its batteries to power pieces of smart clothing, smart cards, and key cards. For starters, Panasonic's flexible lithium-ion battery will most likely make its way into small form factory IoT devices and cards, but there's the possibility that this technology could be scaled up for larger flexible electronics in the future.

After showing off its batteries at CEATEC JAPAN 2016 from October 4 to 7, Panasonic plans to begin shipping out samples by the end of October.

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Report: Xiaomi Redmi 3S Plus to go on sale in Indian retail stores from Saturday

 

Xiaomi looks determined to expand its offline presence in India. The Chinese phone maker is said to be preparing to kick off the sale of Redmi 3S Plus in Indian retail shops beginning on Saturday, according to sources cited by Gadgets 360.

The planned distribution of Xiaomi Redmi 3S Plus by retailers in India will mark the company's first foray into an offline, retail-only business model. The goal is to let the country's retailers avoid the risk of online competition and, therefore, gain a level of flexibility on the handset's pricing.

• Xiaomi launches the ultra-affordable Redmi 3S in India
• Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime on sale in India today
• 90,000 units of the Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime sold out in just 8 minutes in India

That means the Redmi 3S Plus is primarily intended to serve Xiaomi's purpose of gaining more offline traction in India rather than offering products with diversified specifications. In fact, Redmi 3S Plus doesn't deviate much from its sibling Redmi 3S Prime in terms of key specs, except for the presence of 2GB of RAM in Redmi 3S Plus.

See also: Xiaomi Redmi 3 review38

Redmi 3S Plus bears the same display and under-the-hood specs as the Redmi 3S and the Redmi 3S Prime. Thus, it will sport a 5-inch 720p display, pack a 32GB of internal storage (expandable to 128GB via a microSD card) and run on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with MIUI 8 on top.

The handset will be powered by the 1.1GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC and juiced up by a 4100mAh non removable battery. Redmi 3S Plus will also boast a 13-megapixel rear shooter and a 5-megapixel front camera. The ubiquitous fingerprint scanner will be seen on the device as well.

Retailers are expected to pin a Rs. 9,499 (~$142.5) price tag on the device once it goes on sale, with a best buy price of Rs. 8,799 (~$132).

It may not sound practical to buy the Redmi 3S Plus if you already own a Redmi 3S or Redmi 3S Prime, but do you find the handset worth the price? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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Gionee launches its first VR-ready smartphone, the S6 Pro, in India

Looking to strengthen its S Series portfolio, Gionee has announced the launch of the Gionee S6 Pro in India, entering the Virtual Reality space with its first ever phone for VR enthusiasts. The S6 Pro was first unveiled in China in June this year.

The S6 Pro boasts of a metallic unibody design with a 3D camber line back and sports a 5.5-inch Full HD display. It comes pre-loaded with Gionee's VR app for an immersive VR viewing experience and sports a Split Screen feature allowing users to continue watching a video while they receive notifications from messaging apps. Gionee also offers several games in the G-Store for virtual reality experience and entertainment. There's also inbuilt apps like Video Editor with themed and professional edits, Desktop Editor, Image+ to record your life, Video beautification, Time lapse, Text Recognition, et al.

The S6 family has focussed on selfies with its 'selfie flash' for the front camera, and the S6 Pro too packs in an 8MP, f2.2 front camera with screen flash.

Gionee S6 Pro Specifications

• Operating System: Android Marshmallow 6.0 with Amigo 3.2
• Display: 13.97cm (5.5) Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS | 2.5D curved edge display | Gorilla Glass protection
• Processor: Octa Core 1.8GHz MediaTek MT6755 Helio P10
• RAM: 4GB
• Internal Storage: 32GB; expandable up to 128GB with microSD card
• Rear Camera: 13MP with LED flash
• Front Camera: 8MP with Screen flash
• Battery: 3130mAh
• Dimensions: 153 x 75.3 x 7.6 mm
• Weight: 170 g

The Gionee S6 Pro goes on sale across stores in India tomorrow at a price of ₹23,999 ($360) in two color variants – Gold and Rose Gold. The VR set will be separately available for ₹2,499 ($38). As an introductory offer, Saavn will provide a free three months' subscription of 'Saavn Pro' to S6 Pro users.

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Samsung unveils Galaxy A8 (2016) in South Korea, pre-orders start tomorrow

SK Telecom

We saw the leaked renders, and we saw the leaked manual. Well, the wait is now officially over as Samsung and South Korea's SK Telecom have finally unveiled the Galaxy A8 (2016).

As you see above, the 2016 edition of the Galaxy A8 is undeniably a Samsung device: from the rounded corners to the home button, the design hasn't changed much since last year's Galaxy A8. Though we can't see the back of the device, SK Telecom describes it a "full-metal" device, so we might be looking at a similar design as last year's Galaxy A8.

See also: Samsung Galaxy A8 review29

In any case, there are some significant changes inside the device. The screen size and resolution remain unchanged, but this year's Galaxy A8 has Samsung's Always On Display feature. Since the device is running on Grace UX found on the Galaxy Note7, we are guessing that the A8 (2016) will have the upgraded AOD instead of the one found on the Galaxy S7 siblings. With a slight bump in the battery capacity from 3,050 mAh to 3,300 mAh, the Galaxy A8 (2016) should be able to handle AOD without giving up on you midday.

Under the hood, Samsung has revamped its internals: it now has 3GB of RAM instead of 2GB, and uses the same Exynos chipset found in the Galaxy S6 family, which is the octa-core Exynos 7420. If the Galaxy S6 is any indication, the upcoming Galaxy A8 (2016) should have no problem handling demanding tasks.

As for the camera department, the rear camera seems to be unchanged. Although we don't know what sensor it uses, according to SK Telecom, it will have a 16-megapixel shooter just like last year's model. The front-facing camera, however, has been bumped from 5-megapixels to 8-megapixels. That's something that we are seeing from other manufacturers, so it's good that Samsung is following suit.

One biggest addition is Samsung Pay. Just like its other 2016 Galaxy A series siblings, the Galaxy A8 (2016) now supports Samsung Pay out of the box. And of course, along with that comes a fingerprint scanner embedded into the home button.

One biggest addition is Samsung Pay. Just like its other 2016 Galaxy A series siblings, the Galaxy A8 (2016) now supports Samsung Pay out of the box.

If you are in South Korea, the Galaxy A8 (2016) will be exclusively available in blue with SK Telecom, for now at least. Pre-orders start tomorrow on October 1^st, and for those who place an order before October 4^th, SK Telecom will be offering a free phone case, a screen protector, and a micro-SD card. Currently, there's no official word on when it will launch outside Korea, but we will keep you posted!

What are your thoughts on the Galaxy A8 (2016)? Let us know by leaving a comment below!

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