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Microsoft remind me of ‘Note 21’ that Samsung sent to heaven
If Samsung had not discontinued the Note lineup, we would be having the Note 22 Ultra in our hands. The company sent its iconic smartphone lineup to heaven in order to push the Z line of foldables last year. Loyal Note fans are trying to forget the Note, and, Microsoft also showed its love for the canceled Samsung Galaxy Note 21, identically.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced the rollout of a new Windows 11 Insider Program Build to the Developer Channel. With the update, the company added a useful feature that lets PC users access their phone’s hotspot and even turn it ON without touching it a single time.
As Samsung is a frontiersperson when it comes to innovation, Microsoft revealed that the Instant Hotspot feature is just limited to select Galaxy devices. Interestingly, Microsoft mentioned a graphical image showing the interface of the Instant Hotspot functionality.
And here I felt, onetime again! The name of the smartphone shown in Microsoft’s blog post was set as “Maria’s Note 21.” No doubt, Samsung never launched any smartphone with the name Note 21, while it shows Microsoft also misses the Note lineup and Note 21 that now lives in heaven.
It’s not rocket science, we can use any text for the name of our hotspot, but, I’m glad to see, Microsoft also loves the iconic Note lineup that was discontinued. The employee who created the interface image of the Instant Hotspot feature might be missing Note 21 or she was using the S22 Ultra with the name Note 21.
The Galaxy Note 20 was the last Note lineup officially launched by Samsung in August 2020. Since then, the Korean tech giant has not released any smartphone with Note branding but expanded the S Pen functionality to Galaxy S Ultra and newer Galaxy Z Fold models.
Still, there’s a vast community of Galaxy Note lovers because of their large display, sharp corners, boxy design, and of course, the in-house S Pen support. Samsung officially confirmed that the Note series is no more and the iconic features will continue to arrive with other flagship devices.
Image LetsGoDigitial
Due to sluggish chip and energy sectors amid a global economic slowdown, South Korea’s major companies performed far worse than their US counterparts in the first half of 2023.
According to FKI report, South Korea’s top 100 nonfinancial firms listed on the main local bourse saw their combined sales edge up 0.3 percent on-year to $746.3 billion in the January-June period.
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Samsung saw its sales, operating profit, and net profit dip 21.5%, 95.4% and 86.9% on-year, respectively. Comparable figures of its US counterpart, Apple, dropped 4.2%, 10% and 9.2%.
The FKI stressed the need for South Korean big businesses to establish stable profit sources as they remain more vulnerable to external shocks than big U.S. companies.
The combined operating profit of the Korean companies tumbled 63.4 percent on-year to $24.8 billion won in the six-month period, while that of the U.S. corporations shrank 3.9 percent to $638.5 billion.
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Biased camera ranking puts iPhone 15 Pro Max 2nd and Galaxy S23 Ultra 15th: DXOMARK vs Practical Triumph
Camera evaluation firm DXOMARK has recently published its Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max review. In the global ranking, Apple’s hottest (LOL!) iPhone is listed second, after Huawei’s P60 Pro, while the real winner – Samsung’s Galaxy S23 Ultra is 15th.
The new iPhone 15 Pro Max comes with a 40-megapixel primary, a 12-megapixel ultrawide, and a 12-megapixel telephoto camera. Besides, the A17 Pro chipset gives a further boost to the device, enhancing the camera capabilities and photography skills.
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DXOMARK blessed the iPhone 15 Pro Max with 154 points and praised vivid brightness and contrast, accurate exposure, pleasant and natural color rendering, and skin tones, excellent detail in bright light, fast and accurate autofocus, and effective video stabilization.
iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Specs
Primary
- 48MP sensor, 2.44µm quad pixels, 24mm equivalent f/1.78-aperture lens, Dual Pixel AF, OIS
Ultra-wide
- 12MP sensor, 13mm equivalent f/2.2-aperture lens, Dual Pixel AF
Telephoto
- 12MP sensor, 1.12µm pixels, 120 mm equivalent f/2.8-aperture lens, Dual Pixel AF
At the same time, reviewers listed some cons of the latest Apple phone such as noise in low-light photos, unwanted artifacts, including flare, ghosting, and aliasing, slightly limited dynamic range in photos, and inconsistent detail across all zoom ranges.
Galaxy S23 Ultra secured 140 points, and no one cared about DXOMARK numbers. The device is equipped with 200-megapixel primary, 12-megapixel ultrawide and a dual 10-megapixel telephoto sensor setup. In practical, S23 Ultra is miles ahead of the iPhone in overall capabilities and use of technologies.
Galaxy S23 Ultra Camera Specs
Primary
- 200MP 1/1.3″ sensor, 0.6 μm pixels, f/1.7-aperture lens, PDAF, AF, OIS
Ultra-wide
- 12MP 1/2.55″ sensor, 1.4 μm pixels, f/2.2-aperture lens, PDAF, AF, OIS
Telephoto 1
- 10MP 1/3.52″ sensor, 1.12 μm pixels, f/2.4-aperture lens, PDAF, OIS, 3x optical zoom
Telephoto 2
- 10MP 1/3.52″ sensor, 1.12 μm pixels, f/4.9-aperture lens, PDAF, OIS, 10x optical zoom
Samsung has reportedly tried to make changes in the Galaxy smartphones’ internet browsers design, as part of making it easier to pick the preferred Seach Engine (browser) as default. The company ultimately backed down as Google reminded it about the breach of the agreement.
According to WallStreetJournal, Samsung had attempted to tweak the way of altering the default Galaxy Browser (search engine) for consumer convenience. Meanwhile, Google had opposed the move and emphasized to Samsung that such a move would be a breach of the agreement.
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In the past, it was rumored that the South Korean tech giant was considering Microsoft’s ChatGPT-powered Bing as the default search engine on Galaxy devices. However, Google assured it to enhance the search engine as well as bring AI capabilities for competition.
Samsung x Microsoft
ChatGPT to power Samsung AI Chatbot: Samsung’s Strategic Leap into AI Development with Microsoft
According to a recent report from Korean media outlet, Samsung is developing a “Samsung AI Chatbot” that will assist with tasks such as translation and document summarization using the Large Language Model (LLM) developed by OpenAI.
Edaily disclosed that the company is using Microsoft’s “Azure OpenAI Service” to create an AI chatbot for work assistance to be used within the company. If Samsung tries to develop its own generative AI using OpenAI’s LLM, it must use MS Azure Cloud.
- Samsung Electronics is known to have linked OpenAI’s LLM to this service and is undergoing a technology verification (PoC) process.