Samsung Galaxy S7

Samsung Galaxy S7 is expected to debut in less than three months and rumor mills are working overtime to present a final picture of the device specs and features. Samsung is looking forward to improve the popularity of its S series after the lukewarm response to the Galaxy S6. Furthermore launching the S7 during the first quarter of the year will help in making huge sales and almost no threat from the next iPhone. Here is a list of the Samsung Galaxy S7 specs and features, which have emerged in the recent past.

Two designs to debut together

Samsung has established a dual lunch model for itself by the releasing of Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge variant a while back. Similarly it is being expected that Samsung will unveil two designs and models as Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge featuring a curved screen. Samsung Edge will always feature its awe-aspiring curved display design, which has been loved both by the consumers and critics alike.

Qualcomm processor expected to make a comeback

Samsung and Qualcomm relations soured in the recent past and Samsung even went ahead to launch the high end Galaxy S6 variants featuring it own home grown Exynos processors. However Samsung will be using both the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chipset and its Exynos 8890 processor for the Galaxy S7. Snapdragon will be used in the S7 devices for the India while Snapdragon 820 will be used in the devices manufactured for the China, US and other markets.

MicroSD slot to return in Galaxy S series

Samsung has to bear a huge pressure from the consumers with its strategy to do away with the microSD card slots. There are some credible rumors which points that Samsung is all set to reintroduce the microSD card slots in the Galaxy S7. However, it has not been whether Samsung has ditched the micoSD card slots due to price concerns or technical reasons earlier.

Galaxy S7 Force Touch technology

Samsung has also filed a patent for its own exclusive 3D touch technology. Samsung 3D touch technology is described as a system wherein different voltages will help in getting different options to get selected. For example, a hard press will result in capital letter and a softer press will help in getting lowercase letters while typing.

Better and advanced camera hardware

Samsung Galaxy S series comes under the premium and high end smartphone segment wherein it is necessary to offers top class camera capabilities in the phone. Samsung is looking forward to heighten its upcoming Galaxy S7 camera capabilities by getting hand on the 23MP IMX300 camera, which was used by the Sony in its Xperia Z5 flagship.

Samsung Galaxy S7 to release in February

Samsung has launched the Galaxy S6 at MCW 2015 and Galaxy S5 at MCW 2014. Therefore, it can be easily said that Galaxy S7 will make its debut at MCW 2016, which takes place at the end of the February. It is widely expected that Samsung Galaxy S7 will each to the stores by April first week after the official release in the February.

Google Uncovers 11 Serious Security Flaws within the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge

Google Discovered 11 Serious Security Problems – Samsung’s Galaxy S6

Google has discovered 11 serious security problems in Samsung’s Galaxy S6 smartphone in a sequence of severe test intended to clear the vulnerabilities in handsets. The company had set its security analyst team Project Zero with the challenge to seek out bugs in the Galaxy S6 Edge running an open source version of Google’s Android software called Android Open-Source Project – AOSP, to see how quickly Samsung patched the issue.

Google calls the companies, Original Equipment Manufacturers or OEMs, whose smartphones use its software that include Samsung, LG and Motorola. The researcher of Project Zero, Natalie Silvanovich, wrote in a Google blogpost that, `OEMs are an important area for Android security research since they introduce additional and possibly vulnerable code in Android devices at all privilege levels and they decide the frequency of the security updates which they provide for their devices to carriers’.

Project Zero researchers that were based in Europe and North America, identified within a week, 11 possibly severe security issues in the device especially surrounding media processing and device drivers. They reported the susceptibilities to Samsung specified that eight of the 11 were fixed in their October Maintenance Release while the remaining three which had been marked as lower-severity would be fixed throughout November.

Project Zero – Seeking Bugs in Software

Mr Silvanovich added that it is promising that the highest severity issues were fixed and updated on-devices in a reasonable time frame’. Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge had been released together with its non-curved equivalent the Galaxy S6 in April.

 It was launched as Samsung’s flagship handsets to contend against iPhone 6 and 6 Plus which was released the previous September and these two smartphones faced disappointing sales with Samsung’s profit fell by 8% in July. Recently, it’s most recent version of Android 6.0; Marshmallow had been issued by Google.

Google Nexus 5, 6, 7 and 9 smartphones together with LG’s G4 now are capable of running it while the other manufacturers Samsung, HTC as well as Sony are likely to update their devices in the following weeks. Project Zero has been running for some time now by Google with the task of seeking out bugs in software, alerting the software makers and then reporting the public if nothing is fixed in an attempt to force something to be done.

Internal Contest between Two Teams of Google’s Project Zero Security Teams

Earlier, Google had taken on Windows and OS X with Project Zero bugs, however now it is Samsung in the firing line for 11 serious faults with the Galaxy S6 Edge. The issues with Samsung’s device as high impact have been described by Google, which means that they tend to be quite serious.

The faults comprise of script injections, driver issues, image parsing issues, permission weaknesses as well as a directory traversal bug that enables a file to be written in unexpected settings. Project Zero blog post of Google tends to go in-depth on each of the 11 security faults detected in the Galaxy S6 Edge. Presently most of them are already fixed but three of the tricky ones still remain which include the script injection bug with two specific image parsing errors.

All this was part of an internal contest between two teams of Google’s Project Zero security teams. They had selected Galaxy S6 Edge since it is a decent example of a recently released high-profile Android smartphone.

How to Unlock Your Samsung Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge

Did you know that there are some awesome hidden features on your Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge, that you can activate by navigating to system/csc/Features.xml and adding the corresponding line to the end of the file for each feature? It’s recommended that you do a backup before this process, and then you can safely enable: camera during call, continuous music while using camera, scheduled messaging option in your messaging app, and much more.

Your device has a lot of potential, but you need to know how to unlock it in order to benefit from it. And I do mean “unlock it” in its literal sense. Unlocking your Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge will allow you to get your favorite cell phone plan, no matter what carrier offers it; it will help you escape outrageous roaming fees when you travel outside the country, by using local SIMs; it will make you more money when you sell your device to upgrade to a newer model.

Those are your benefits for unlocking your Samsung Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge. Now let’s see what your options are for unlocking it:

•  Go to a local phone repair shop. The prices aren’t high, but the risk of damaging your phone is real because they use a piece of hardware to do so. And on top of that, you have to leave your phone with them - can you imagine staying a day without it? 
•  Go to your carrier. Network providers are obliged to unlock your phone, for free or a fee, but they don’t advertise this. The downside is that you’ll most likely have to wait for your contract to expire, in order to benefit from this. 
•  Go to an online unlocking platform or app. UnlockUnit.com and UnlockScope.com are good examples, because they have great reviews on ReviewCentre. Other people’s experience is a great indicator of the quality of the service. They help you buy the unique unlocking code attributed to your phone in the factory, from the comfort of you own home.

They both have a turnaround time of 1 to 6 hours for Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge devices, and a discount that’s running for a limited time on the site.

How to unlock your Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge safe, fast and secure

First of all, you’ll need to check and make sure that your device is locked. Then, for the unlocking process to go smoothly, you’ll need internet access, a second SIM card from a different network provider and, obviously, your locked smartphone

All good? Now head to the order page and quickly fill in the form with the country and network provider you bought it from, your 15 digit IMEI (which you can find out by calling *#06# or going to Settings > More > About device > Status), and your email address. At this point, this is all you have to do.

Then, you’ll be redirected to the payment page. You can pay for your unique unlock code through credit card, PayPal, Skrill, MoneyBookers or Bitcoin. Cool huh?

Once the payment is completed, your order has been successfully submitted and, at any moment, your code should arrive in your email inbox.

Then simply insert the SIM card from a different network provider, and your device will display the message “SIM Network Unlock PIN” or “Enter Unlock Code” and an empty box (see the image below). In that empty space you have to insert the unlocking code received.

Right after hitting the unlock button, your Samsung Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge will be permanently unlocked and, from now on, you can use it with any carrier in any country in the world.

If you prefer to do this through an app rather than on your computer, you can download the UnlockScope app from Play Store instantly. If you have any questions or would like to share your unlocking experience with us, please leave a comment in the section below.

Samsung Galaxy: What You Need to Know About Reported Security Risk

Reports suggest that millions of owners of Samsung Galaxy Smartphone might be at risk dealing with calls eavesdropping, data theft and malware installation. Downside to this problem is the fact that no action can be taken by the owners to avoid this situation. The security flaw has been found in the Swiftkey keyboard software that has been preinstalled on nearly 600 million smartphones made by the South Korean electronics giant.

This security flaw was reported by Nowsecure, mobile security company. Since the users have no option to uninstall this software they are basically powerless and more prone to this vulnerability. According to the reports some of the devices which have been disclosed to have been affected include Galaxy S6, S5, S4 as well as S4 mini. Statement released by Samsung has suggested that they are working on releasing out a solution to this problem in the coming few day. This fix will be accessible to the uses through their Samsung Knox service. This fix will be like a security policy updated which can be downloaded and installed on the phones.

The statement of the company also indicated that they are taking any emerging security threats seriously. They are not only working on the security policy update but they are working on the Swiftkey to avoid any potential threats in the near future.

Customers are already getting upset with the increasing instances of security flaw and security breaches in terms of their data getting compromised as well as getting held by banks and retailers. Now if the same happens on the mobile device, we can understand their fury? According to the reports released by Target, nearly 40 million people has reported their credit cards to be stolen at the sale terminals and this was followed by increasing hacks on email addresses, names as well as phone numbers that affected 70 million customers. According to Nowsecure, Samsung was already informed about this problem in December 2014.

Even though Samsung has already started giving patch to their mobile network operators but they cannot confirm if the carriers are providing the same on the devices as well. According to the devices lists which have got affected, all these phones have unknown patch condition or they do not have the patch available. The phones are becoming highly vulnerable to flaws and attacks from various fronts.

For instance a small time hacker might be able to gain access to the phone by using unsecured Wi-Fi connections on the other hand and sophisticated hacker will take a professional approach to gain access through proper sources. Some of the security experts have stated that this latest attack might fetch many returns for the hackers.

They stated that users should avoid using insecure Wi-Fi networks to avoid risks, try using different types of mobile devices as well as keep updated about the patch update and timing. They stated that lots of things were not in place which can make it difficult for the hackers to extract any benefits. It looks to be very unusual path taken by people to hack into computers and devices.