Here’s an infographic on the Samsung Galaxy S line, up to number 4

Since its arrival last week the Galaxy S4 has been all the rage, easily topping our website’s daily interest chart and being all over the tech-oriented web.

But the guys over at Toptienmobiel.nl decided to take a look at the roots of the flagship, down to the first Samsung Android flagship – the Galaxy S.

The original Galaxy S launched with Android 2.1 Eclair and scored the impressive 20 million sales globally. The Galaxy S II was an all-round improvement on screen, processor, camera, OS version, TouchWiz UI and build quality. It managed to beat the sales of its predecessor in its first year of sales alone (28 million). Recently we heard that its has already passed the 40 million units mark.

The Galaxy S III upped the ante even further and managed to sell around 50 million in its first year of availability (and counting). Overall the whole Samsung Galaxy S series sold more than 100 million unitsand that sales figure will likely double with the Galaxy S4.

Thanks, Samer Hadi for sending this in!

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Google releases new ad for the Nexus 10

Google has been releasing some amazing ads lately, especially for their Nexus devices. And the latest ad for the Nexus 10 takes things up a notch.

The ad shows a couple about to have a baby. The focus of the ad is on the ‘shareability’ of the Nexus 10, and how you can have multiple user accounts on the tablet, use it for reading, watching movies, social networking, video calling and how two can people do all this from a single device.

The reason this ad is so great is because not only is it touching but also shows the product off very well, which should be the point of an advertisement after all. This is something that many companies such as Microsoft and Samsung miss entirely with their ads that are either too flashy or designed to make fun of other products rather than showcase their own. Most importantly, this ad would make you want to buy the Nexus 10, now that you know what all it can do.

I hope we see more such great ads from Google in future, and from other companies as well, for that matter. Meanwhile, you can watch it below.

Gmail for Android update brings notification screen shortcuts

Google has updated the Android version of the Gmail app and has added a very useful new feature for Jelly Bean users. As you may know, Jelly Bean features expanded notifications, which allows applications to integrate additional functionality within the notification screen, a feature the Gmail app now takes advantage of.

If you have a device running Jelly Bean, you will notice Gmail notifications now have a reply and archive button within the notification screen itself. This way, you don’t have to launch the app to reply, for instance, and can do it from the notification screen directly. By default you see Reply all and Archive options but if you prefer you can switch from Archive to Delete.

Other changes, which are available from Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich onwards include faster search experience, even when you are offline and the usual bug fixes and performance improvements. Android 2.2 and above devices also get new Labels API for third-party developers.

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Snapdragon 600 based Samsung Galaxy S4 is twice as fast as Galaxy S III and iPhone 5, easily beats HTC One too

Yesterday we got some potentially bad news for Europe – that the Galaxy S4 version in sold in Sweden will use the Snapdragon 600 chipset instead of the Exynos 5 Octa that geeks were hoping for. The same version will be sold in North America. However, then we saw some reassuring benchmarks and now we can add one more.

Primate Labs, makers of the Geekbench app took interest in the Samsung Galaxy S4 performance and made a chart to see how the new Galaxy flagship performs. Using data from a benchmark run by Android Authority, the Primate Labs chart shows that the S4 is over twice as fast as its predecessor.

It also beats the HTC One, which uses the same chipset though at a lower clockspeed (1.7GHz for the HTC, 1.9GHz for the Samsung). As for competition from other platforms, the Apple iPhone 5 scores almost the same as the BlackBerry Z10, both with about half the score of the Galaxy S4.

The Samsung Galaxy S4 used for the benchmark is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600, meaning it uses slightly updated Krait 300 cores compared to the BlackBerry Z10 and the LG Nexus 4. Also note that the Galaxy S4 used for the benchmark has not been running finalized software.

As Primate Labs points out, the iPhone 5 will be updated soon and the iPhone 5S will improve performance and we’ll have to wait and see how it stacks up. But the Z10 is it for BlackBerry, their other model coming this year, the Q10, uses a lower-end chipset.

Shame that we don’t have a score for the Galaxy S4 version with an Exynos 5 Octa – the Cortex-A15 cores are supposed to blow the Kraits out of the water, battery willing.

Source | Via

Galaxy S III and Note II to get Android 5.0, S II ends at 4.2.2

Today we got some spicy information concerning all Samsung Galaxy owners, regardless of the type of gadget they have - a smartphone or a slate. It's a list showing which devices will be getting the Android 5.0 and which will end with the upcoming Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean update.

So, the smartphones to end their life cycle with at Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean are:

• GT-I9080 – Galaxy Grand
• GT-I9082 – Galaxy Grand DUOS
• GT-I8160 – Galaxy Ace 2
• GT-I8190 – Galaxy S III mini
• GT-I8530 – Galaxy Beam
• GT-I8730 – Galaxy Express
• GT-I9070 – Galaxy S Advance
• GT-I9100 – Galaxy S II
• GT-I9105 – Galaxy S II Plus
• GT-I9260 – Galaxy Premier
• GT-N7000 – Galaxy Note
• GT-S6310 – Galaxy Young
• GT-S6312 – Galaxy Young DUOS
• GT-S6810 – Galaxy Fame
• GT-S7710 – Galaxy X Cover 2

Even though 4.2.2 version will be the last Android upgrade for those, let's not forget how old some of them actually are and how many previous updates they've got (this will be the third major update for the Galaxy S II). And when you think about the update policy of other manufacturers (if it even exists), Samsung did a commendable job keeping its high-end devices up to date.

Now comes the list with the devices which will get Android 5.0 and possibly even more updates.

• GT-I9300 – Galaxy S III
• GT-I9305 – Galaxy S III LTE
• GT-I9500 – Galaxy S 4
• GT-I9505 – Galaxy S 4 LTE
• GT-N5100 – Galaxy Note 8.0
• GT-N5105 – Galaxy Note 8.0 LTE
• GT-N5110 – Galaxy Note 8.0 Wi-Fi
• GT-N7100 – Galaxy Note II
• GT-N7105 – Galaxy Note II LTE
• GT-N8000 – Galaxy Note 10.1
• GT-N8005 – Galaxy Note 10.1 LTE
• GT-N8010 – Galaxy Note 10.1 Wi-Fi

Once again we want to remind you this list is not official, though it is claimed to come from a company's insider. You should always take such leaks with a pinch of salt, as we do.

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Samsung Galaxy S4 gets priced in the UK, will cost you £529 SIM-free

Samsung's recently launched fourth-generation Galaxy S smartphone has been the talk of the town for its powerful specifications and amazing features. At the official announcement, Samsung Mobile chief JK Shin, mentioned the availability of the smartphone but did not mention anything about the pricing of their latest flagship.

The pricing of the Samsung Galaxy S4 is no longer a mystery as the device is said to cost $579 for the16GB model in US. Now, the pricing of the latest Galaxy S smartphone in UK has been revealed by an online listing and the smartphone will cost you £529 (about $800) for the 16 GB SIM-free model.

Furthermore, Samsung Galaxy S4 is available for free from T-Mobile, Orange, O2 and Vodafone on £31 per month plan and needless to say, a two year contract.

As we already showed you yesterday, the Galaxy S4 is currently priced at €660 over at Amazon DE, and similar pre-order prices are popping up across Europe.

Surprisingly, the pricing of the Galaxy S4 smartphone is identical to that of the iPhone 5 in UK. The demand for the latest flagship device from the South Korean manufacturer is on a rise and it will be interesting to see if the smartphone can outperform its predecessor in terms of sales figures.

Thanks Ravi, for sending this in!

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US, Canada and Sweden getting Snapdragon 600 based Galaxy S4

The Samsung I9500 Galaxy S4 is the first smartphone with an octa-core processor or at least in some regions. As expected, the North American versions of the phone will use a Snapdragon chipset instead (a 600 to be precise).

So, both the US and Canada are getting quad Krait 300 cores and Adreno 320 GPU instead of Cortex-A15 / A7 CPU cores (four of each) and PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU.

We expected that version to only be available in North America and the European version to use the Exynos 5 Octa chipset. The Swedish site for major European carrier Tele2, however, lists the Samsung Galaxy S4 on pre-order with the Snapdragon 600 chipset. The prices start at SEK 220 (about $34) per month on contract.

That’s a bit disappointing, but the Qualcomm-designed chipset should still offer stellar performance – better than the competing flagships, which use the same chip but at lower frequency. Benchmarks point to great SunSpider performance – 822ms vs. 1124ms for the HTC One and 1336ms for the Sony Xperia Z.

AnTuTu scores indicated a relatively modest increase in overall performance of about 30% for a score of 21, 089 vs. 22,678 for the HTC One and 20,794 for the Xperia Z.

It remains to be seen what kind of performance the Exynos 5 Octa will offer – AnTuTu’s publicly available benchmark doesn’t support the chipset and the scores the AnTuTu team posted from in-house testing can’t be compared to the old benchmarks.

You can check out our hands-on impressions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 over here.

Source 1 • Source 2 • Source 3 | Via (in Swedish)