Move over Apple, Samsung has a new smartwatch on the way, and it’s downright beautiful.
Announced today ahead of Samsung’s press event on Sept. 3 in Berlin, Samsung’s Gear S2 features a circular watch face (rather than a square face like the Apple Watch’s) with an attractive metal frame.
That rounded shape isn’t just about good looks, though: Samsung has designed the Gear S2’s bezel to move and act as a kind of pointer for selecting and opening apps and settings menus. It’s a reworking of the traditional wristwatch shape to accommodate the functionality of a new kind of gadget — much as Apple repurposed the crown of its watch as a button for interacting with apps.
The Gear S2 will be available in two sizes: the standard Gear S2 and the slimmer and lighter Gear S2 Classic. The Gear S2 matches up with Apple’s larger 42mm Apple Watch, while the Gear S2 Classic’s parallel is the 38mm Apple Watch. Interestingly, though, both versions of the Gear S2 are larger than their Apple Watch counterparts.
Unlike Samsung’s Gear Live and smartwatches from Motorola, Sony, and LG, which run Google’s Android Wear software, the Gear S2 is powered by Samsung’s Tizen operating system. Unfortunately, that means the Gear S2 will only work with Samsung’s own smartphones.
If you do have a Samsung phone, though, the Gear S2 will provide you with notifications for things like email, news, text messages, and calendar updates. Samsung is also releasing a version of the Gear S2 with its own cellular antenna, so you can use the watch without needing your phone right there.
Like the Apple Watch, the Gear S2 will also support mobile payments via near-field communication (NFC), so you’ll be able to put your watch up to a NFC reader at a participating retailer’s register, and quickly pay for your items.
Unfortunately, retailers that support NFC technology are few and far between, so you won’t be able to use Samsung’s payment service in at too many retailers.
Samsung claims the Gear S2 will eclipse the Apple Watch in battery life. The Apple Watch usually lasts about a day before you need to recharge it. The Gear S2, though, is said to last between two and three days on a single charge. If that claim is true, the Gear S2 could be a real breakthrough for smartwatches. Like the Apple Watch, the Gear S2 comes with a wireless charger.
Samsung says it is working with app developers to ensure that there are a number of apps available for the Gear S2 at launch.
We’ll have much more on the Gear S2 when we get our hands on it in the coming days. Stay tuned.
First Impressions – This isn't the phone that Note fans wanted
Let’s start with the bad news – the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 won’t be coming to the UK or Europe any time soon. In fact, it may never come, according to our briefing with Samsung. It’s currently scheduled for release in South Korea in September with a US release date coming a little later.
That’s sad news indeed, since its predecessor – the Galaxy Note 4 – is a brilliant handset. It was certainly among the best phones launched last year, and it’s certainly one of my favourites.
The reason Samsung is being coy about releasing it in the UK and Europe is because it has another phablet on the scene. The Galaxy S6 Edge was announced with the Note 5 and is a 5.7-inch curved variant of the smaller S6 Edge. This is the phone Samsung will be pushing harder outside Korea.
Unlike the Edge , which is almost identical to its sibling barring screen size, the Note 5 is drastically different to the Note 4. I’m not convinced all the changes are for the better, though.
Same screen size, smaller body, fewer features
Galaxy Note 5 Design:153.2 x 76.1 x 7.6mm, Aluminium frame, Non-removable glass back, 5.7-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED screen
Samsung has worked some serious shrinking magic with the Galaxy Note 5. Even though it has the same screen size as the Note 4 it’s significantly svelter in both width and thickness.
This makes it easier to handle – especially with one hand. It’s also a lot more comfortable to hold. The curved aluminium frame feels much softer than the square metal on the Note 4, and it has a sweeping curve that meets the edges on the back. It rests perfectly in your palm.
This is a big phone that’s both easy and comfortable to use. So far, so good.
The incorporation of the S Pen stylus has also been finessed. You now press the S Pen into the phone and it pops out. It’s not quite the auto-eject feature some Note 5 rumours claimed, but it is neat. I did find it wasn’t that easy to get to or pull out, but then neither is fishing the S Pen out from the Note 4. Other than that the S Pen on the Note 5 is similar in design and functionality to its predecessor, and it makes the Note 5 unique among phablets.
Now to the bad part. The Galaxy Note 5 shares more design traits with the Galaxy S6 than it does with the Note 4, and that limits it. A non-removable glass back means you don’t get access to the battery and you don’t get a microSD card slot either. Like all of Samsung’s flagship phones released this year the Note 5 doesn’t allow for expandable storage.
In the S6, S6 Edge, and even the S6 Edge , this is annoying. But in a phone that’s designed to be the perfect on-the-go productivity tool – something the Note series has grown into – it’s downright negligent. Expandable storage and replaceable batteries are even more necessary when you use your phone as your main work device.
For me the Note 4 struck a great balance between slick design and functionality. It was a big step up from the all-plastic Galaxy S5. The Note 5 has swung too far the other way.
Thankfully, the 5.7-inch screen is better than ever. It’s the same Quad HD resolution as before, but colours pop with even more zeal. It’s like the screen on the Galaxy S6 has been scaled up a little. No other manufacturer comes close to Samsung’s Super AMOLED displays on a phone or phablet.
Samsung has thumbed its nose at Qualcomm once more this year and has packed the Galaxy Note 5 with its own, blisteringly fast, Exynos 7420 chipset – the same one that’s in the rest of 2015’s high-end Galaxy phones.
The Snapdragon 805 in the Note 4 was no slouch, but the Note 5 will perform better in benchmarks and should be more energy efficient thanks to a 14nm manufacturing process (compared with 20nm on the Samsung). This allows Samsung to fit more transistors into a smaller space, while at the same time reducing heat and power consumption.
The Note 5 (left) and S6 Edge (right) side-by-side
In my hour or so with the Note 5 it felt silky smooth and fast. There’s a lot of power there and using multiple apps in split-screen mode didn’t seem to faze the phablet one bit – but then I never experienced these issues using the Note 4 either.
An extra gigabyte of RAM – 4GB in total – should keep the Note 5 ticking over a little better than the S6 and S6 Edge.
There should be no complaints over the Note 5’s performance.
TouchWiz – Samsung’s reimagining of Android – is still going strong on the Note 5 but, just like on the rest of the Galaxy range, it’s now a little tamer than before. Under the UI layer is Google’s latest version of the world’s most popular mobile operating system – Android 5.1.1.
All the shortcuts you’ll be used to on a Note phone using the S Pen are there, letting you access key settings and apps quickly and efficiently. In fact it feels to me that the S Pen is faster than ever at displaying menus.
Improved cameras and improved audio
Galaxy Note 5 Camera: 16-megapixel, OIS, Phase Detection, AutoHDR, 5-megapixel front camera
The Note 5 uses the exact same camera sensor and lens as the Galaxy S6. That means it has a very solid camera that’s a step up from last year’s model. Still, it leaves me a little disappointed.
The Note 4 had an improved camera compared to the Galaxy S5 and I expected the Galaxy Note 5 to follow suit. Not to put too much of a damper on it, though, the camera is very good – in fact it’s one of the best around and goes toe-to-toe with the competition.
In some ways it’s better than the cameras on the iPhone 6 Plus and LG G4 and in others it’s slightly worse. It’s a toss-up as to whether you prefer more detail or better colour accuracy. If it’s the former you’ll be very happy with the Note 5; if the latter perhaps the iPhone or LG would be preferable.
There have been some improvements to the software, however. Samsung has uprated its VDIS, which makes videos more stable, and has added a number of movie-editing options and real-time video sharing.
Audio has also had a boost. Samsung has made software and hardware changes so the Note 5 can now upscale MP3 and comes with a dedicated clock to help reduce distortion and noise. I didn’t have a chance to test the audio quality, but hopefully it’ll be a step in the right direction for audiophiles.
The biggest surprise the Note 5 announcement brought was that it has a smaller battery than its predecessor – 220mAh smaller, to be exact.
The Note 4 was one of the best phones of last year when it came to staying power – only the iPhone 6 Plus and Xperia Z3 could compete. It’s one of the killer features of the Note series and I hope the drop in battery size doesn’t mean it’s affected too much.
Note 5 (left) and Note 4 (right) side-by-side
There are reasons to believe it won’t be. The Exynos processor should be more efficient than the Snapdragon and the battery is still a fair amount bigger than that on the Galaxy S6, which manages to last a day.
I’ll need a lot more time with the Note 5 to assess its battery life fully.
Samsung has improved wireless charging so it’s 27% faster than it is on the S6 and S6 Edge. It’ll charge a full hour faster than those, even though the battery is bigger.
From left to right: iPhone 6 Plus, Note 5 and Note 4
What’s the Galaxy Note 5 missing?
We’ve already mentioned that the Samsung has dropped the microSD slot and removable battery from the Galaxy Note 5. The former is somewhat eased by the fact that the top-of-the-line Note 5 model comes with 128GB of storage – 32/64GB are the other options. We expect the extra storage to come at a significant price, though.
The other omission is Type-C USB, something the much cheaper 5.5-inch OnePlus 2 sports.
Type-C USB has the benefit of being reversible, so you don’t have to guess which way you’re plugging it into the phone. It also has the ability for faster data transfer using USB 3.1 and improved power delivery – something OnePlus hasn’t taken advantage of. Apple’s new Macbook uses it as the main charging port.
Again this is useful for a product aimed at professionals who want the ability to quickly transfer files from PC to phone and vice versa.
The Note 5 also comes with the full gamut of other features we expect from a flagship in the Galaxy range. There’s an improved fingerprint scanner that works in tandem with NFC and magnetic secure transmission (MSG) in preparation for the launch of Samsung Pay. There’s also fast 4G and an IR blaster for controlling your home cinema system.
First Impression
There’s no denying the Galaxy Note 5 is a top-quality phone. All the elements that make the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge so strong – screen, design and processor – are there.
Unfortunately, like those phones, it lacks a number of features such as a removable battery, USB 3 and, crucially, microSD expansion. On the smaller handsets that’s less of an issue, but for a phone aimed at power users it could well be a misstep. Perhaps that's why Samsung has chosen not to launch it in the UK and Europe just yet.
Every year this decade, Samsung has used Berlin’s IFA trade show at the beginning of September to introduce a new Galaxy Note phablet, starting with the original device in the series in 2011. But this year, according toThe Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Cheng, Samsung will move up the new Note’s launch by a few weeks in order to avoid competing for attention with the announcement of the latest iPhone. Apple is expected to refresh its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus with new 6S variants, and it usually hosts its big autumn event just after IFA — so it’s understandable that Samsung would seek to secure a slightly longer hype window for one of its own halo products.
Samsung did something similar last summer by launching the well received, but short-lived Galaxy Alpha in August, exploiting a traditionally quiet time for new product releases. The fifth Galaxy Note is likely to follow a similar trajectory: launched in the midst of summer and then featured as part of Samsung’s IFA exhibition. Its actual release date is still likely to overlap with the upgraded iPhone’s, but maybe a couple of weeks of availability before Apple’s latest could be just enough to help stem Samsung’s gradual decline in sales.
Samsung isn't just the world's biggest smartphone maker but is also one of the largest semiconductor vendors on the planet. Its operations are based in South Korea, as pictured here in 2013.Shara Tibken/CNET
Samsung, the world's biggest maker of smartphones and TVs, is also dead serious about chips.
Samsung is proof that Moore's Law matters, the idea that processor power improves exponentially every two years. But to keep up the pace of chip innovation, the industry has had to throw a lot of money and a lot of great minds at the problem. So far, it's paid off for Samsung. The company is the world's biggest vendor of memory chips and the second biggest processor maker overall after Intel, which was co-founded by Gordon Moore, the man behind Moore's Law. Chances are you have a Samsung product in your life, even if it's the flash memory in your favorite tablet.
CNET
Today's chip-making business is a race to the tiny. The first companies to make next-generation products smaller and faster stand to win more customers -- at their rivals' expense -- and to recoup their investments. The also-rans? Not so much.
"It's very important for us to be first," said Kelvin Low, senior director of foundry marketing for Samsung's semiconductor business. "These days, second and third becomes extremely challenging ... because from that point on, securing market share is difficult."
Being first is so important, in fact, that Samsung skipped a step in the manufacturing process to get to more advanced chip technology before most of its rivals. Instead of having to learn one new technique, it's implementing at least three at once. That, though, can lead to problems like poor yields.
So far, the risk is paying off. Samsung is attracting new customers, which will give it a bigger slice of the foundry market -- manufacturers hired to build chips designed by so-called "fabless companies" like Qualcomm and Nvidia. Analysts believe Samsung's chip manufacturing business has won back Apple as a customer for the next iPhone processor, giving it both revenue and prestige. Apple buys more chips than any other company on the planet except Samsung, but the Korean company lost Apple's business last year because of ongoing legal fights over phone and tablet designs.
One misstep or delay, though, and all of Samsung's newly won customers might defect to other processor manufacturers.
Keeping up with Moore
In 1965, Intel's Moore noted that chips would double in complexity at a rapid, regular rate -- initially he thought every year, but later revised that to every two years -- as the building blocks of the processor got smaller and were more tightly packed together. That made devices faster, cheaper and more power efficient. His observation, dubbed Moore's Law, has been true for the past 50 years.
But it's become massively expensive for chipmakers to keep up.
It's now largely up to four manufacturers to keep Moore's Law going -- Intel, Samsung, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Globalfoundries. If those companies don't keep advancing, the smartphones we use will stop getting smarter, and the battery life of those devices will never stretch past a day or two.Moving to each new generation of processor technology takes years of development and billions of dollars in research, equipment and construction costs. Building a new semiconductor factory can cost upwards of $10 billion, limiting the companies willing and able to play at the leading edge of chip technology. It's also become exponentially more expensive for fabless chip companies to design advanced processors, which means those that don't need the most-advanced technologies for things like high-end smartphones and data centers will be slower to adopt the newer chips.
Innovation could simply stall.
Chip manufacturing is a big business. Last year, foundries made $46.85 billion in sales, up 16 percent from 2013, according to Gartner. TSMC led the group with more than half of all market share. Samsung, by comparison, ranked No. 4 with 5.1 percent share (though the figure didn't take into account the chips the company builds for itself for use in its smartphones and tablets).
Samsung is in a unique position in the chip market. It not only designs and manufactures semiconductors for its own electronics but also builds processors for other companies -- most notably, smartphone rival Apple. TSMC solely manufactures processors designed by others. Globalfoundries licenses Samsung's technology to build advanced processors for other companies. While Intel has dabbled in the foundry market -- building chips for a few small companies it doesn't compete against -- it dedicates the bulk of its manufacturing capacity for its own processors.
Second place = first loser
Being first with new technology doesn't just bring bragging rights. It attracts more customers and fills a manufacturer's factories -- helping it make more money that it can then invest in even more factories. If a chip manufacturer doesn't have a factory running at capacity, it doesn't make back the money it invested to build the facility in the first place.
Samsung surprised the industry when it started producing what's currently the most advanced technology -- known as 14 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, in reference to the size of part of a transistor -- ahead of TSMC by several months. TSMC said it plans to move to the newer technology later this year, but being even six months behind has put it at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting customers.
TSMC didn't respond to a request for comment, but the company on Thursday projected lower revenue in its current quarter in part because of tougher competition in the chip market.
Samsung is the world's biggest memory chip maker, which most of its processors built in South Korea factories, pictured here in 2013.Shara Tibken/CNET
"In the last two decades ... the most bleeding-edge technology [aside from Intel] was all developed by TSMC and its foundry service," said Gartner analyst Samuel Tuan Wang. "Now Samsung, for the first time in history, is beating the schedule of TSMC in process technology by almost two quarters."
Samsung also hit that milestone about six months after Intel -- instead of lagging its US rival by years. But Intel, while currently selling many 14-nanometer PC chips, has been slower to apply the technology to its mobile processors. Since more smartphone chips are sold than PC chips, Intel has been missing out on the faster-growing market. Samsung's Galaxy S6, which will likely be the Korean company's top-selling smartphone this year, is the first product to use Samsung's 14-nanometer chips.
How did Samsung beat TSMC? It decided to skip over 20 nanometers, the technology that's currently used by TSMC to build Apple's A8 and A8X iPhone chips and iPad processors. Instead, Samsung turned its attention and R&D investment to 14 nanometers.
"It was not an overnight thing ... [and] it's not magic," Low said. "We basically put more focus on 14 nanometers, while some other foundries chose to put [their] focus on 20 or 22."
Even if Samsung has the best technology among the foundries (not including Intel), there are risks to relying on the company as a chip manufacturer. Samsung often talks about a sort of Chinese wall between its electronics business and its chip operations, which means that the chip side of Samsung keeps confidential the products that other consumer electronics makers are building that require its processors. But it can be tricky working with a fierce rival, and it's hard to imagine Samsung spurning business from its biggest customer (itself) to meet demand for its other customers first.
For now, the question is whether Samsung can cement its momentary lead over TSMC and even catch up to Intel. Intel, for one, won't be ceding its longstanding manufacturing leadership without a fight, saying it doesn't believe any rivals will pass it when it comes to advanced chip technologies.
"I don't think that's likely, time-wise or feature-wise," Mark Bohr, an Intel senior researcher who heads a team developing the company's future chips, said when asked how likely it is that Samsung and TSMC will catch up.
Samsung in front
Still, Samsung is signing up new customers, both for its older 28-nanometer technology and its new 14 nanometers. Nvidia, one of the world's biggest graphics chipmakers, revealed in a regulatory filing last month that it added Samsung as a manufacturing partner. A year earlier, it relied mostly on TSMC.
Nvidia declined to provide information about which of its chips will be built by Samsung but said in a statement that TSMC "is and will remain a very important foundry partner for us."
Qualcomm, the world's biggest provider of the 3G and 4G LTE chips used to provide wireless service in mobile devices, also is expected to turn to Samsung for its upcoming Snapdragon mobile processors.
A museum in Samsung's chip manufacturing factory in South Korea (pictured in 2013) shows the company's progress in semiconductors since the 1970s.Shara Tibken/CNET
Qualcomm declined to comment.
And then there's Apple.
Samsung's foundry business took a hit last year when Apple turned to TSMC. The two companies had worked together for years to build chips for iPhones and iPads, but that was before Apple and Samsung faced off in high-profile patent-infringement suits.
The loss of Apple's chip business was a blow to Samsung's reputation and financial results. Gartner estimates Samsung generated $2.7 billion in sales from building Apple's chips last year, down from $4.3 billion in 2013 when it was Apple's primary manufacturer.
Market watchers believe, however, that Apple will return to Samsung for the production of at least some of the 14-nanometer A9 chips it's expected to use in the next iPhone, which is rumored for release later this year.
"Samsung is likely to take substantial share of [the] Apple A9 foundry business," Jefferies analysts noted last month.
Apple declined to comment. Samsung also declined to talk about customers beyond saying its customer list "is growing."
TSMC won't be going away either. Its foundry business is 10 times the size of Samsung's, and it doesn't have any of the tricky "frenemy" issues chip designers find with Samsung.
Other companies uncomfortable with partnering with a rival can work with Globalfoundries instead. Now owned by the investment arm of the government of Abu Dhabi, Globalfoundries works closely with Samsung and licenses the Korean company's technology for 14 nanometers. Analysts believe Apple, Qualcomm and others will rely on Globalfoundries as a second source for Samsung's manufacturing techniques, which also helps mitigate competitive risks and supply shortages.
The race continues
While Samsung's chip fortunes may be on the upswing, that could all change tomorrow. In the new manufacturing race, no one can risk slowing down.
Some experts predict that Intel, TSMC and Samsung will be neck-and-neck in delivering the next generation of technology, 10 nanometers. If Samsung and TSMC catch up with Intel, said Dan Hutcheson, CEO of chip-manufacturing research firm VLSI Research, it would weaken Intel's edge and make it even harder for the Santa Clara, Calif., company to break into mobile. And if TSMC beats Samsung to the technology, it could regain all the customers it has lost.
It's like a giant hamster wheel, with billions of dollars at stake.
"If you want to win the market, you cannot stop," Gartner's Wang said. "Once you stop, you fall behind, and that's the end of the game."
