The components that Samsung makes find their way into a lot more devices than you'd imagine. Gaming consoles require high-performance memory and Samsung makes some of the best memory chips in the business. Naturally, its products are top-of-mind for console makers.

There have been reports about Nintendo working on a new version of its popular handheld console. The Nintendo Switch 2 is now expected to use a Samsung memory chip that will enable it to deliver faster performance than its predecessor.

Samsung may provide faster memory chips for the Nintendo Switch 2

According to reports, the Nintendo Switch 2 is expected to feature Samsung's 5th-generation V-NAND memory. It's going to be a significant upgrade over the current Switch model, as this chip is capable of delivering speeds of up to 1.4 GB/s.

It's hardly surprising that faster read speeds will be delivered by the new Nintendo Switch consoles. That's to be expected from the upgrade. It's a welcome upgrade, even though it still uses older Samsung technology, since the Korean giant has already been working on 9th and 10th-generation V-NAND chips, with the latest arriving next year.

Nevertheless, the 5th-generation V-NAND's ability to deliver read speeds of up to 1.4 GB/s will bring a noticeable change to the performance of the new console, providing enough of an incentive for gamers to switch.

Beyond that, there's not much else that's known about Nintendo's latest console. Some reports have suggested that the Nintendo Switch 2 may use a Samsung OLED display. With Samsung being the top supplier of small and medium OLED panel, this wouldn't be surprising at all.

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Last year was terrible for smartphone brands, as sales declined year-over-year. However, not everything was bad. People have actually started spending more on smartphones, and a new report reveals how much people spend on average. Consumers in Samsung's home country spent the most on average on smartphones, bringing a good outlook for Galaxy S and Galaxy Z series devices.

South Koreans are lapping up Samsung foldable phones, resulting in rise of average smartphone selling price

According to a new report from market research firm TechInsights, South Korea, Japan, and the US were the top three markets with respect to smartphone Average Selling Price (ASP). The sales of Samsung's Galaxy Z series foldable phones are among the reasons TechInsights has quoted for the rise in smartphone ASP in South Korea. This figure is estimated to keep rising until at least 2029, which is great news for Samsung's foldable phones, especially since Samsung has multiple generations of foldable phones. Price growth has also been reported for iPhones in recent years.

In Japan, though, regulatory restrictions on smartphone subsidies have slowed the growth of ASP. Japan was the top-ranked country in terms of smartphone ASP until 2020, but South Korea topped it in 2021. The UK ranked fourth in 2023 but is expected to outgrow the US this year to rank third. This is due to the higher penetration of iPhones in the past couple of years and a faster upgrade cycle. However, the US is estimated to regain its third position in the next few years. The global smartphone market is estimated to grow by 3% in 2024 compared to last year.

While 2023 was bad, the future looks bright for the smartphone market. China, India, and the US are projected to lead smartphone growth. These three countries are expected to contribute almost half the global smartphone revenue by 2024. While India ranks 71st in average smartphone selling price, its massive population will drive revenue for OEMs. This makes India one of the best markets for smartphone brands to invest in, and Samsung is already in a great position. The company was the biggest smartphone brand in India in Q1 2024.

According to Abhilash Kumar, Industry Analyst at TechInsights, new smartphone form factors, like foldable and rollable phones, and deeper 5G penetration will improve smartphone average selling prices in the coming years. The complete TechInsights report, which includes data on 88 markets, can be read here.

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Reports about green lines appearing on the display of some Samsung devices have been going around since last year. This is a big enough issue that the company has officially responded in some markets with the offer of providing a free one-time display replacement for out of warranty devices.

Samsung has been offering these display replacements for select models in India since last year, and the company has now expanded the list of supported models to include the Galaxy S21 and the Galaxy S22 series as well.

There's now a deadline to avail this replacement offer

This green line issue has primarily been reported on devices with Super AMOLED displays. Reports about the issue have reemerged over the past couple of weeks, highlighting the fact that even more devices suffer from it now, requiring Samsung to expand the free replacement offer to additional models.

Samsung India has been providing a free display replacement for affected devices since July last year. The eligible devices included the Galaxy S20 series and the Galaxy Note 20 series. The company has now expanded this list to include the Galaxy S21 series and the Galaxy S22 series.

Just like last year, all devices will also be offered a free battery and kit replacement, but it appears that there's now a deadline to avail this offer. Appointments must be booked at a Samsung Service Center until 30th April, 2024 to get a free replacement from the company.

Customers are effectively getting their entire device refurbished with this offer. Getting a new lease on life for a device like the Galaxy S22 that's still relatively modern and will have software support for some time as well is a deal too good to pass up.

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Despite challenging market conditions globally, Samsung has been quite resilient in India over the past year. While Apple stole Samsung's crown in 2023 worldwide, it isn't even close in the Indian market. In Q1 2024, Samsung was India's biggest smartphone manufacturer, and it achieved growth compared to Q1 2023.

Samsung performed well in the Indian smartphone market during Q1 2024

According to the latest figures released by market research firm Canalys, Samsung was India's biggest smartphone brand with a 19% market share. The South Korean firm shipped 6.7 million smartphones during the quarter, a 6% growth compared to Q1 2023. Canalys said that Samsung's strong performance came from stronger sales of the Galaxy S24 than its predecessor, thanks to attractive pre-booking offers, Samsung Finance+, and AI features.

Xiaomi ranked second in the market during Q1 2024, shipping 6.4 million smartphones and capturing an 18% market share. Samsung needs to be wary of Xiaomi, as there is just one percentage point difference between the two. Xiaomi's impressive 29% annual growth came on the back of great sales of affordable phones like the Redmi 13C 5G, Redmi Note 13 5G, and the POCO X6.

Vivo ranked third with 6.2 million smartphone shipments and 18% market share. That's a 14% rise compared to sales from Q1 2023. OPPO was the only brand among the top five OEMs with declining sales. It shipped 3.7 million smartphones, a 4% drop compared to sales from Q1 2023.

Realme shipped 3.4 million smartphones, 17% higher than last year's performance. It ranked fifth in the Indian smartphone market during Q1 2024. Overall, over 35.3 million smartphones were shipped in India in Q1 2023. That's 15% higher than smartphone sales in the country during the first quarter of last year.

Watch our review of the Galaxy S24+ below and click on the link below the video to buy the phone at a great price.

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Google Drive is among the best cloud storage solutions for a reason. It is extremely reliable, and Google keeps adding new features to the app on all the popular platforms. In a recent move, Google added new filters to the Google Drive app on Android. However, this feature was released a month after it was released to the iOS version of the app.

Google Drive gets new filters to find files quicker

Google has released a new update to the Google Drive app for Android, offering users a more straightforward and intuitive way to search for files. Filter categories are located just below the search bar at the top of the screen. You can filter files by File Type, Owners, and Last Modified. This will make finding files more accessible than ever. You can choose even more filters on the search results page to narrow down the file you want to see.

This updated version of Google Drive should be available to all Google Workspace users in the coming days. Some people might have received this new version already. You can search for the update on the Google Play Store by navigating to the My Apps section of the app and then hitting the Update button.

Google has added many new features to Google Drive over the past few years. Last year, it significantly improved Google Drive on foldable phones and tablets through a multi-column UI and a navigation rail on the left side of the screen. It also introduced Dark Mode to the app and a document scanner.

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Updates usually bring new features and performance improvements. However, sometimes updates also bring performance and reliability issues. One such issue could come to YouTube on older or affordable Galaxy phones and tablets.

Older and lower-end Galaxy phones could have performance issues on YouTube with AV1 decoding

Google’s Arif Dikici (Android Video and Image Codecs Team) revealed that Android will now use the AV1 decoder known as ‘libdav1d’ for YouTube. This codec was created by the team behind the popular VLC player. All devices running Android 12 or newer have software support for the codec once they have received the March 2024 Google Play System Update.

While this update will bring the improved AV1 codec that makes videos look good at lower bitrates (or slower internet connections), not every phone has native hardware support for the AV1 codec. Most mid-range and high-end phones that don’t support AV1 hardware decoding use the software decoder.

By default, apps use the existing AV1 decoder called ‘libgav1’ instead of the newer ‘dav1d’ decoder. To use the newer decoder, apps have to request it specifically. This is the same thing that YouTube started doing immediately after the March 2024 Google Play System Update was released.

So, when the older AV1 decoder is used, older affordable and mid-range phones may experience performance issues and skipped frames. Moreover, some users have expressed concerns (via Android Police and Mishaal Rahman) that their phones may use more battery power while using the older decoder on a software level.

Since not everyone has received or installed the March 2024 Google Play System Update, people with older and less powerful Galaxy phones and tablets might notice performance slowdowns in the coming weeks.

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In 2022, TSMC announced that its 2nm fabrication process, dubbed N2, will be ready for mass production by 2025. Soon after that, it was reported that the chipset in Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro series phones would be the first to use TSMC’s 2nm fabrication process. However, after that, we didn’t get any update on the matter. Well, that’s changing today.

According to a new report from Digitimes, TSMC is on track to ready the 2nm fabrication process for mass production by 2025. The publication also claims that the company plans to start small-scale production of chips on the N2 technology by the end of this year. It means that Apple could get chipsets for the iPhone 17 Pro series devices made on TSMC’s 2nm process, making them the first devices to use the company’s N2 technology.

Samsung Foundry is also expected to ready its 2nm fabrication process, dubbed the SF2, by 2025. Reportedly, Qualcomm will use this fabrication process for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5. That year's flagship Exynos chipset might also use that fabrication process. However, since the iPhone 17 Pro will come out before the Galaxy S26 series, Apple will beat Samsung in the 2nm race, at least when it comes to launching phones with 2nm chips.

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In May 2020, the NFC Forum introduced NFC Wireless Charging, a standard for offering wireless charging over Near-Field Communication (NFC). This specification offers up to 1W of power transfer over a distance of 2cm. So, if there are two devices supporting this protocol, one device can send up to 1W of power to another device wirelessly using NFC.

This technology can be very helpful in offering wireless charging over NFC in small devices that feature NFC for data transfer but don’t have enough space to house dedicated wireless charging solutions, such as wireless earbuds, location trackers, and styluses. Sadly, we haven’t seen any devices offering this feature, and that’s most probably because no platform supports it. Well, that could change very soon.

According to a new report from Mishaal Rahman on Android Authority, the system application in Android 15 Beta 1p that handles tasks related to NFC includes a class called ‘NfcCharging‘. It suggests that Google is working on adding support for wireless charging over NFC in Android 15.

If Google plans to offer this feature with the stable version of Android 15, and Samsung enables it on its devices, it will open a whole new world of possibilities. For instance, a Galaxy phone or tablet will be able to charge Galaxy Buds or Galaxy SmartTag over NFC. Unfortunately, the current Galaxy SmartTag models don't have a rechargeable battery. So, Samsung cannot offer this feature on existing SmartTag models.

However, this feature could allow Galaxy smartphones/tablets without wireless charging to charge Galaxy Buds or Galaxy Watches. When  Samsung launches a SmartTag with a rechargeable battery, this technology will enable those Galaxy smartphones/tablets to charge that SmartTag as well.

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In December 2022, Samsung added the option to Good Lock to update all the modules at once. Well, the company is now improving that functionality.

Samsung is now rolling out a new update to Good Lock, and according to the changelog, it improves the ability of the app to update all the modules at once. Unfortunately, the company hasn’t mentioned what those improvements are. According to the changelog, the update also fixes “various” bugs. All in all, with the update, Good Lock should work better than before. With the update, the app’s version should change to 2.2.04.92. To update Good Lock, go to Galaxy Store » Menu » Updates.

Since last month, Samsung has updated multiple Good Lock modules, including Theme Park, LockStar, Home Up, ClockFace, Wonderland, and MultiStar to offer new features and fix bugs. You can check out information on those here. On a related note, it is worth mentioning that Samsung recently released One UI 6.1, which brings many new features, including Galaxy AI and Circle to Search (CtS) to a bunch of Galaxy smartphones and tablets. You can check out all those features in our video below.

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A couple of months after launching an M-series smartphone, Samsung usually introduces an F-series variant of that device. The company is doing the same with the recently launched Galaxy M55. Last month, the brand confirmed the existence of the Galaxy F55. Now, the tech giant has started getting the phone certified on various platforms.

91Mobiles has spotted the Galaxy F55 on Google Play Listing. It not only suggests that the F-series version of the Galaxy M55 is arriving soon but also reveals the key specifications of the upcoming smartphone. According to it, the Galaxy F55 has a display with Full HD+ resolution, Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chipset, 8GB RAM, and 5G connectivity, and the phone runs on Android 14, most likely with recently-released One 6.1.

These specifications suggest that the Galaxy F55 will be a rebranded variant of the Galaxy M55. Other features of the device could include a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED display, a triple-camera setup at the rear with a 50MP primary camera, an 8MP ultrawide sensor, and a 2MP macro lens, a 50MP front-facing camera, a 5,000mAh battery with 45W charging, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, and an under-display fingerprint scanner.

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