Friday, April 11, 2014

Samsung’s Surround Shot Compatible with Galaxy S5, Feature Requires Download



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Samsung Galaxy S5 11.4


Those of you ripping open Galaxy S5 boxes today might be pleased to know that Samsung’s latest flagship is compatible with the company’s Surround Shot feature. Surround Shot, which first made its debut on the Galaxy Note 3, follows in the footsteps of other photosphere camera apps that came before it, allowing users to take 360-degree images. It’s a neat little feature to be sure, but there’s one small problem for users eager to try it out: it isn’t available out of the box.


Instead, users who are interested will have to head over to Samsung Apps and download it to their device. Once the plug in has been downloaded, it will appear with the other camera apps the Galaxy S5 offers. From there, users will have a bunch of blue space to fill in with pictures as they rotate around a 360-degree space, snapping image after image to eventually make one all-encompassing picture. Once you’ve made all of your captures, you’ll be able to exit the app while it continues to process the image in the background. After processing has been completed, the image can be shared to Google+.


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Basically, if you’ve used Surround Shot on the Galaxy Note 3, you’ll know what to expect this time around, only now you’ll get to take advantage of the Galaxy S5′s 16 megapixel camera. The bump up in sensor quality doesn’t go unappreciated in Surround Shot, either, as Android Central says it was able to produce 360-degree images that offered a “huge amount of detail.” In the end, Android Central that Samsung is providing “one of the best implementations of this feature,” and when it’s coupled with the Galaxy S5′s camera, it isn’t hard to believe that Surround Shot can produce some very impressive images.


The Samsung Galaxy S5 launched in 150 countries around the world today, with carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, and MetroPCS offering it over here in the US. Not only that, but the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo, and Gear Fit – smartwatches that have largely been advertised as companion devices for the Galaxy S5 – went on sale today, too. Essentially, it’s a rather exciting day if you happen to be a fan of the devices Samsung puts out. Are you picking up a Galaxy S5 today?


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When Too Many Tabs Bog you Down, These Seven Chrome Extensions Can help



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We’ve all been there, that moment when you’re browsing through the web and all of a sudden things are moving slower than normal. You think to yourself maybe I should clear out my cache, and delete my history and cookies. That age old tip for helping to speed up your browsing experience does in fact work, but it isn’t always the answer to your problems. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the issue at all. Once in a while when I go a little crazy and forget to keep myself in check while browsing, i’ll glance up at my Chrome browser bar looking for the next bookmark to hit and notice that I have an ungodly amount of tabs open. That’s right, too many open tabs can mean death for the speed of Chrome, which is the main reason I use it in the first place over other browsers. I like the simplicity of it but it also functions extremely quick. That is, until I enter Tab overkill. That’s where this list of seven different Chrome extensions can help you manage your tabs so this doesn’t happen.


The first one up is called Too many Tabs, and it gives you a great way to manage all of the tabs you have open by allowing a fast glance view of the number of open tabs. You can fully manage your tabs with this extension, from color customization to fit your taste, to switching between tabs and even closing or suspending them. The Suspension feature in particular is cool because you can basically remove the tab from your bar like it was closed out, but you have easy enough access to get back to it at a later point if need be. The next extension that you’ll want to check out is Tabman Tabs Manager. This extension works pretty much like Too many Tabs, and gives you quick access to view your open tabs from a drop down menu button that lies just to the right of the address bar where all your other extension may sit. You can also undock the drop down menu and dock the list to the side of the screen if you wish.


Tabs Outliner is what you’ll need if your constantly using more tabs at once than any one person should in a given day. Instead of giving the user a drop down window of the information of every tab you have open, the list of open tabs is ported out to its very own window separate from Chromes, and the list is broken down so that every open Chrome window you have is sectioned off with the tabs that are open in that particular window. Think about the way your PCs files manager looks. It’s powerful, yet can be a little much for anyone who isn’t using multiple tabs with multiple windows all the time. Tab Manager is your number four solution to managing and keeping track of your open tabs. You’ll find the same basic functions here as the first two, but instead of putting all the information of your open tabs into a drop down list view, things are displayed in more of a grid with just an icon of the tab. This can be changed to show the text as well if you wish, as the icon is the default view for the extension. The icon-only option makes for a nice clean look, so if you’re trying to achieve great tab management that still has a nice aesthetic approach, Tab manager is for you.


Moving right along, we have TabCloud. As the name suggests, you can save your open windows of tabs here in the Cloud which does require your Google account to be signed in, and not only allows you to save your tabs for later, but just like any of Google’s official cloud supported apps, you can access the tabs from any machine so long as you sign in with your Google account there too. Tabs are sectioned off by window here as well, kind of like Tabs Outliner but with a more clean look. FreshStart is the next extension and works pretty similarly to TabCloud, in that it lets you save your Tabs as sessions that are sectioned off by window for use later on when you need to get some more work done. FreshStart has one very awesome feature here that almost has me choosing to use this over all others, and that’s the crash protection feature. Crashes don’t happen to me often, but more than once is enough for me. The crash protection feature can be set up to save all your open sessions at a designated time interval-for example, every ten minutes-so you’re safe even if things go south and the browser shuts down on you. Lastly there’s Modern New Tab Page, which takes the home tab of sites you visit often and completely replaces it with a more Windows 8/Metro livetiles design. As one would expect with this extension, the live tiles actually are live and they do update, so things can look as much like Metro as you want. It doesn’t quite have the tab management that the others are offering, but it has the nicest design and still allows you to see recently closed tabs and sites you visit often.


Now that you have a good set of options to help you manage your tabs within Chrome, it’s time to go out and see if any of these would actually work for you, and if so which ones work best. I myself am shooting for trying out the TabCloud or FreshStart, as I am keen on the cloud save feature for saving sessions and could use the crash protection. Hopefully these extensions help some of you keep your tabs in check.


The post When Too Many Tabs Bog you Down, These Seven Chrome Extensions Can help appeared first on AndroidHeadlines.com |.


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Third Party Dotview Style Cases Begin Showing Up For The HTC One M8



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HTC’s new Dot View case for the HTC One M8 is pretty sweet, and our own Alex Maxham seems pretty fond of his. If you don’t particularly care for the design of the official Dot View case from HTC, some good news for you is that there are some third party case manufacturers that seem to be working on their own version of a Dot View case that looks just a little different but provides the overall same functionality as the original. I still stick to my guns in saying the HTC One M8 would not get any love from a case in my hands, but others prefer to do the absolute most that they can to ensure that there phone is protected, no matter how good it looks without a case on it.


Now you don’t necessarily have to go with a case that acts like the Dot View, but if you want that easy to glance feature that it provides for quick views of information, this new third party case from a company called Nillkin is worth a look. It’s called the Fresh Slide Flip, and instead of turning the whole front face-which we think is the coolest part about the Dot View-into a viewing screen of notifications, time, and missed calls, the Nillkin Fresh Slide Flip case has a small viewing screen towards the top, similar to the Flipview covers for the Samsung Galaxy devices. From the looks of things it only displays the time, but its stated at the companies website that the case also provides the user with a caller ID function for when you get calls.


The case is made of a faux leather and comes in Black, White, Blue and Red, and will only set users back around $12.80 on Amazon as opposed to the $24.99 from Nillkin themselves. It may not provide as much information as the Dot View but it certainly has a more friendly price tag associated with it. As you would expect of any case, all the buttons and port connections are accessible and use of the camera isn’t hindered. If you’re still on the hunt for a case to cover up your brand new HTC One M8, see if these cases from Nillkin fit what you’re looking for.


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My Magazine Is The Place For “All” Your News Updates, Except For Facebook



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If you’re a Samsung Galaxy device user then you may or may not get your news from Samsung’s My Magazine news feed. For those of you that are upgrading to the Galaxy S5 today or sometime soon and you frequently check your Facebook feed for news updates, My Magazine reportedly still doesn’t support Facebook so you may want to hold out or go with a different app. Although this won’t be an issue for many, there are still legions of people that use Facebook religiously for any of their news and updates so it just seems like an odd move not to update the My Magazine app to support the social feed. If you just like the style you could always use Flipboard, or if you want to all Google you could simply download and enjoy Play Newsstand which is my current favorite.


My Magazine is a feature that can be left on or turned off at the users discretion. This is great news for those of you that don’t see the need to keep anything that’s out of use powered on and running in the background. The ticker box to uncheck the My Magazine feature can be found within the settings menu. All you have to do is navigate to settings and scroll to Sound and Display, then expand the drop down menu to find and enter homescreen settings. Once inside you’ll see the My Magazine box that you can uncheck, and that’s it.


Why Samsung has chosen to leave Facebook out of the supported list of feeds is a mystery but perhaps they’re working on something to update it in the future. My Magazine sounds like it is supposed to serve as Samsung answer to Blink Feed, which is a homescreen destination where the user can access all of their news in one place. The homescreen is always accessible so there’s really no better place to put it. We know some of you may have been hoping for My Magazine to work with Facebook, but just remember you have other options at your disposal. If you don’t like Flipboard, and you’re not a fan of PlayNewsstand, my other recommendation would be to check out Pulse, which has a pretty good homescreen widget for keeping updated on the fly.


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PayPal Teases Fingerprint Payments; Dedicated Apps for Gear 2 Smartwatches



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With the Galaxy S5 and Gear 2 line of devices now available in 125 or so countries around the world, it’s no surprise that partners all over the place are announcing support for the new devices. PayPal, a company that’s very much keen to become a big mobile presence – with or without Samsung – has announced two new features for Samsung’s latest and greatest. For the Galaxy S5, the company is teasing the ability to pay for things using your fingerprint and for the Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo, the online payments firm is showing off dedicated apps for the new watches.


PayPal’s implementation on the Galaxy S5 works much as you might have guessed. You can use the fingerprint sensor as another authentication method, allowing for you to pay for things on your device with just a swipe of your finger. Ease of use is obviously the main selling point here, not having to enter that password every time will speed things up, but there’s also the added security benefits as well. PayPal is teasing this as “coming soon”, so don’t expect to be using your finger as a wallet just yet.


Click here to view the embedded video.


The Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo will be getting dedicated apps for PayPal in the near future as well, which will work similarly to the fingerprint authentication for the Galaxy S5. More of a glanceable information type thing than gloried payment method, you’ll be able to take a look at your balance, get a quick look at your recent activity and even send money to friends. Of course, you’ll also be able to pay for things using your Gear 2 watch, too as PayPal is pretty keen for us to pay for everything using PayPal. You can take a closer look at what’s to come in the trailer below.


Click here to view the embedded video.


It seems like PayPal will be one of the first companies to really make proper use of the new features on the Galaxy S5 and Gear 2 watches, so if you’re a regular user, perhaps its one more reason to consider Samsung’s latest offerings.


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Samsung’s New Galaxy S5 Commercial Says To live Life Care Free



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Get ready for the official bombardment of Samsung Galaxy S5 commercials, and ads. Now that the device is out for official launch virtually everywhere, we’re sure to see more magazine ads, more commercials, hear more radio spots, and the occasional billboard while driving down the freeway. In one of Samsung’s newest ad spots, the commercial tones down a lot of the fluff that we’re used to seeing from some of the Samsung commercials in the past, taking just a few key parts about what makes the Galaxy S5 so great from a new phone buyers perspective, and serves it up on a silver platter. The best part, is that it’s quick. Samsung skips the bull and goes straight to the sweet spot in listing just a few of the fun things that you can do with the device.


Of course the commercial has to talk about the fast auto focus, which by all accounts is honestly something I could use on my phone. If you guessed that the water resistance was a main focal point of this commercial as well you’d be right, and interestingly enough( which might just be a little bit ironic for any of those customers buying the S5 on the three other major US carriers besides T-Mobile)Download Booster gets brought up which is a feature many people at this point in time won’t get to use. As we reported yesterday we had found out that the download booster feature is something that was usable at the carriers discretion, meaning they had the option it sounds like to support it or not, and only T-mobile seems to be allowing the feature on it’s version of the device.


While the commercial is short and sweet, it does take a little bit of a different approach than HTC’s short commercial which really didn’t attempt to advertise anything. It’s cool to see just how different and similar OEMs can be when it comes to their commercials. We realize that the two ads really couldn’t be more different, but we’re merely just speaking of the decision to cut the ad short. Samsung wastes no time at all in grabbing our attention here, and we say the shorter the commercial the better.


Click here to view the embedded video.



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HTC One M8 vs LG G2





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