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More than two years after Samsung announced its original Dex dock, Plugable designed a competitor that can work with virtually any USB-C device. The Cube is a tiny hub that connects to your device through an external cable and acts as a dock to link it to USB peripherals, a monitor, and even an external network.
With One UI, Samsung introduced a system-wide night mode for its Android Pie devices. The new feature darkens the manufacturer's proprietary software such as the Calculator and Messages apps and also alters the overall menus and interface colors, but still requires you to manually enable dark mode in other applications like Messenger or Slack. Android Auto, on the other hand, happily receives this setting and defaults to it, no matter the time of the day.
After releasing Android 9 Pie for the American Galaxy S9, S9+, and Note 9, Samsung is now rolling out the new software to the US variants of the Galaxy S8, S8+, and Note 8. People in other countries, such as the UK, India, and Korea, were already able to participate in the beta program, and it only made sense for the 2017 handsets to follow in their siblings' footsteps.
So, the Galaxy Note 9 is official, and it's going to be very expensive. If you want a phone with a stylus and paying $1,000 for it isn't an option, there's always the Galaxy Note 8. that phone is on sale today for $685.99 on eBay. This is an unlocked device with 128GB of storage, not 64GB like the US carrier models.
Samsung is going to announce a new version of the Galaxy Note in a few weeks, but that phone is probably going to cost around $1,000. You can get last year's Note phone for barely half of that. The dual-SIM Note 8 is on sale for a mere $539.99 today, which is the cheapest we've seen so far.
Samsung DeX allows your phone to project a desktop-like UI onto a larger screen, but the first generation Station that debuted last year had a rather clunky dock. There's a new version of the DeX hardware that's lighter, and you can get the "DeX Pad" free when you purchase a Galaxy S9 right now.
Unlocked Android phones typically receive faster updates, as they are not subject to carrier update testing. Despite this, unlocked Samsung phones in the US are almost always updated after the carrier models, and this time is no exception.
It doesn't matter how careful you are. It doesn't matter how much you baby your phone, how rugged a case you keep it in, or how religious you are about avoiding accidental drops. Despite your very best efforts, accidents can still damage your phone. When the worst happens, we want to get our devices back on their feet as quickly as possible. Now Samsung's working to streamline that recovery process for Galaxy users, as it partners with uBreakiFix to bring authorized Samsung Care repairs to over 300 uBreakiFix locations across the U.S.
Samsung hasn't seen fit to offer a discount on its unlocked Note 8 yet—you'll still pat $950 for that device. However, you can get a nice little bonus today only. Purchase the unlocked Note 8, and you get a free Galaxy Tab A 8.0 tablet. It's not as capable as the Note 8, but free is free.The Galaxy Tab A 8.0 retails for $200 from Samsung, but you can find it a little cheaper online. It has a quad-core Exynos SoC, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and an 8-inch 1024 x 768 screen. The tablet shipped with Lollipop but has since been updated to Nougat. It's nothing special, but the Tab A 8.0 seems like a good value with 4.4 stars on Amazon with more than 2,000 reviews.
The Galaxy Note 8 is a pretty phone, but those of us in the US were stuck picking between the "Midnight Black" and "Orchid Gray" versions. The true looker in Samsung's lineup was the "Deepsea Blue" color variant, which was only sold in other markets. That changes today with news that Samsung is bringing this color to the US. It won't be available everywhere, though.
Samsung launched Bixby on the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus earlier this year, but the presence of a physical button on the phone for Bixby has rubbed some users the wrong way. There have been a few methods to block or redirect the Bixby button to other apps, but Samsung has insisted that the Bixby button is for Bixby. In a new update, you can finally disable the button, but you can't point it to another app.
Samsung's latest phone is a spendy piece of hardware. While it's essentially a Galaxy S8 Plus with a stylus, that still means it's a great phone. The phone is available unlocked and from all the major US carriers, and everyone is offering deals to entice you—the deals are important when the phone costs almost $1,000. So, let's break it all down so you can figure out how many piggy banks you'll have to bust open to gather the necessary funds.
After spending some time with the new Note, I can tell you it is exactly the phone we would all expect Samsung to build using the Galaxy S8 and S8+ as a starting point. It is the most undifferentiated Note device relative to its S siblings yet, and predictable to a fault. Were the Note7 disaster to never have happened, I have little doubt the Note8 would look just as it does today. Anyone spinning a comeback narrative here is probably seeing things that don't exist.
Samsung's phones have usually cost a bit more than the competition, but it's sort of thrown caution to the wind lately. The Galaxy S8 Plus retails for around $850, which is a lot of money even when you break it out over two years. A rumor from Evan Blass at Venture Beat suggests the Galaxy Note 8 could take things even further with a €999 price tag.
When a new year begins, sometimes you just want to forget the mistakes of yesteryear. After the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, some of us thought that Samsung would, or should, ditch the Note brand to avoid any future distrust in the consumer market. Well, it would appear that the electronics giant is not going to do that.