If there’s one thing that’s missed more than anything else in today’s smartphones, it might be the hardware keyboard. Once a staple on every smartphone produced, the physical keyboard has all but disappeared, showing up on a handful of BlackBerry devices that no one actually buys. Some companies, like the Ryan Seacrest-backed Typo, have tried to bring the hardware keyboard to modern phones, but without much success.

Never content to sit on the sidelines, Samsung is now trying its hand at blending yesterday’s hardware keyboard with today’s modern, slab-style phones. A new accessory for the just-announced Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Edge+ brings back those tactile keys that so many people have long forgotten.

Unlike the Typo keyboard, which communicated with the iPhone over Bluetooth and extended the length of the device to unwieldy proportions, Samsung’s keyboard case snaps on top of the phone’s display, effectively blocking half of the screen. The phone recognizes the keyboard and adjusts its user interface accordingly, shrinking everything to the top half of the screen. Keypresses are sensed by the screen underneath, eliminating the need for any batteries or Bluetooth pairing hassles in the keyboard itself. You can pop the keyboard on and off pretty easily, and if you want the full glory of an unobstructed display, you can snap it to the backside of the phone for storage.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd unveiled a new Galaxy Note phablet and a larger version of its curved-screen S6 edge smartphone on Thursday, marking a fresh bid by the South Korean company to revive momentum in its handset business. Samsung is the world's top smartphone maker but its market share fell in the second quarter when the company released its critically acclaimed S6 models, squeezed by Apple Inc's upscale iPhones and cheaper offerings from Chinese rivals such as Huawei Technologies Co Ltd The manufacturer responded with S6 price cuts and moving up the Note unveiling from its usual early September spot, ahead of the latest iPhone launch expected in September.

The event announcing the new gadgets was attended by more than 1,000 people, almost filling the Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York. Samsung has made several hardware changes for the new devices, including a faster processor for the Galaxy Note 5 and increasing the screen size of the S6 edge+ to 5.7 inches from 5.1 inches on the S6 edge. Samsung has high hopes for the Note. "Each new version has been more popular than the last," said Justin Denison, vice president of product strategy and marketing for Samsung Electronics America. Both are powered by Samsung's Exynos chips, the company said. The phones will go on sale on Aug. 21 in the United States and Canada.

They will be available on the four major carriers: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. One expert said he was not sure how well the phones would help Samsung's efforts in the competitive smartphone market. The phones were not different enough, said Jonathan Roubini, editor-in-chief of Lab Reviews, "So that's why it's very hard for them to gain that market share from Apple." Roubini said that they may frustrate Android users. "The phone looks very cool, but you cannot change the battery, and you cannot add memory to it."
Samsung also said its mobile payment service Samsung Pay will launch on Aug. 20 in South Korea and Sept. 28 in the United States. Samsung Pay lets users make payments by having phones send signals to existing magnetic stripe card readers, offering greater store coverage than Apple's Apple Pay service which requires retailers to install compatible equipment. The payments service will expand to the United Kingdom, Spain and China, the company said, without giving dates

How to Spot a Fake iPhone

Apple won’t discuss the issue, despite repeated requests for information. Anti-counterfeiting watchdog groups say the problem is big, but they don’t have numbers.

But the anecdotal evidence is there: There was the recent seizure of more than 40,000 counterfeit iPhones in China.  Sales of the fakes are not uncommon overseas. Among those who have been caught peddling fake phones stateside recently are a father-son duo in Orange County, Calif.; a teen in Utah; and two stores in a Maryland mall.

The hardest ones to spot are the phones that contain real Apple parts and run iOS but were actually assembled from smuggled parts or from scrapped phones that had been sent out usually to China for recycling. There, unscrupulous companies take motherboards from scrapped phones and put them into cases from other scrapped phones or into new cases made to look like real iPhones.

Superficially, such fakes can look remarkably legit. But there are a couple of telltale signs.

First, in trying out the phone, you might notice that the software response feels sluggish. That’s because the motherboard is from an older model.

But there’s another way to tell that’s more certain: When you look on the back of an iPhone 6, you’ll see the phone’s electronic serial number known as the IMEI (international mobile equipment station identity)  engraved in tiny print just under the iPhone logo.

This is a unique serial number that identifies the specific phone. That number is also available if you go to Settings > General > About. If those numbers don’t match up, you’ve got a fake.

(Note that this same number should also appear on the bottom of the box the phone came in. If the one on the box doesn’t match the one on the phone or in Settings, that doesn’t necessarily mean the phone is fake; it could just be a mix-up by the store; if it is, you should insist on getting a phone that matches its box.)

Android in disguise..

The cable, part of a just-released Indiegogo campaign, is available either in USB 2.0 or 3.0 versions and comes with a variety of storage options, from 16GB to 128GB.

The cable comes with an app that helps you easily sync your phone's data straight to the backup drive that's built in as part of the USB side of the cord. The app lets you play videos straight from the drive; access and move your photos and music; and automatically back up the photos you post to Facebook and Instagram, as well as back up your calendar and contacts. It also allows you to automatically sync the activity that takes place on the drive to Dropbox and Google Drive.

The new Apple Watch can, among other things, measure the wearer’s heart rate. But how accurate are its measurements?

To find out, an engineer named Brad Larson measured his heart rate readings on the Apple Watch against his heart rate readings using a Mio Alpha, an incredibly accurate device. You can see the comparison, which Larson tweeted out, below:

That’s…pretty accurate! Of course, this is only one trial, and not a comprehensive test. But those are encouraging tests for those who want to use the Apple Watch to check their heart rate as they exercise. And it’s even more encouraging considering how poorly fitness trackers have been shown to measure certain other movements.

yahootech

The Apple Watch is fueling the emerging smartwatch market and is expected to be the top seller in the segment for next few years, a market research report showed Wednesday.The IHS Technology report said the smartwatch market will grow to 101 million units by 2020 from just 3.6 million last year.
Apple Watch shipments this year will hit 19 million units, or 56 percent of the total smartwatch market.
Over time, IHS said Apple's share of the market will fall to 38 percent in 2020 with Android vendors and others slowly increasing their share.
Apple however will remain the single largest vendor through 2020, according to the study.
"The smartwatch will become an important accessory device offered by most leading smartphone manufacturers," said Antonios Maroulis, analyst at IHS Technology.
IHS said that by 2020, one of every 20 smartphone users will also have a smartwatch, compared with one in 500 in 2014.
Apple, which began selling the watch last month, is likely to lift the market by raising consumer awareness of the category and by explaining the benefits of the wearable tech accessory, IHS said.
"Should Apple stumble with its foray into smartwatches, the smartwatch market will suffer similarly," said IHS analyst Ian Fogg.
"Smartwatches could then follow the fate of Google Glass. Without Apple and its marketing strength, the smartwatch category need greater marketing spend from other smartwatch makers to overcome damage to consumer perceptions. Apple's smartwatch competitors need Apple Watch to succeed."
But the report said the high cost of the Apple Watch which starts at $349 (roughly Rs. 21,000) and requires a newer-model iPhone leaves a huge market for other vendors with lower-cost devices.
"Delivering a wide range of apps will be critical to success," Maroulis said.
"Apple's and Google's success with existing smartphone application stores will give them an invaluable head start over challengers."
Leveraging Android base
The report said that in the next five years, Google's Android Wear will account for 96 million units, leveraging the large Android smartphone base. That would give the Android platform slightly more than 20 percent of the market by 2020.
But if Google adds iPhone support, as some media have reported, it could boost its market share, IHS added.
Some other operating systems, such as Samsung-backed Tizen, will also see gains, but those could be limited by a smaller ecosystem of applications, according to the report.
The Apple Watch made its global debut last month in a launch aimed at making the California giant the overnight leader in wearable technology. Apple has not released any figures on sales, but some reports said the company is having difficulty meeting demand.