Galaxy Note 4 S Health can sense and track even more stuff

Your Note 4 can record your blood oxygen saturation and sunlight UV levels, in addition to other metrics

In the Galaxy S4, Samsung introduced a built-in pedometer and the S Health app. Earlier this year it followed up with a built-in heart rate sensor in the Galaxy S5. And now in the new Galaxy Note 4, the Korean manufacturer brings a couple more sensor capabilities into the mix. Read on for a quick look at S Health's new tricks.

The latest version of S Health on the Galaxy Note 4 comes with all the capabilities and features owners of the Galaxy S5 will be familiar with — an exercise tracker with built-in pedometer, and the ability to keep tabs on food, weight, sleep patterns (with a supported accessory), and your heart rate using the built-in sensor. On top of that, the phone can now sense your blood oxygen saturation (SpO₂) and the strength of ultraviolet light from the sun.
Both of these are measured using the Note 4's sensor module, which is once again situated below its rear camera. And it's grown a bit since we first saw it on the Galaxy S5.

Reading your SpO₂ level works the same as reading your heart rate — in fact, when you take a reading the former, the Note 4 will also report the latter. As we've seen on other Samsung phones like the Galaxy S5 Mini, taking readings using the rear-mounted sensors can be hit and miss, and on a couple of occasions the Note 4 demo units at IFA failed to take an SpO₂ reading even when our finger was right over the sensor. That said, we're still dealing with preproduction hardware and software in a noisy trade show environment.

According to Wikipedia, your SpO₂ level should generally be above 94 percent. Any lower than 85 percent and you'll have bigger problems than properly aligning your finger with a bunch of sensors on your smartphone.

Recording UV levels uses the same sensor. The Galaxy Note 4 asks you to point the back of the phone up towards the sun for a few seconds, then gives you a reading from low to high. We couldn't test this feature outside, but after a few seconds the Note 4 reassuringly told us that the UV levels under the artificial show floor lighting were indeed "low."
As with other health metrics, S Health keeps track historic readings of both SpO₂ and UV levels.

The S Health app itself has also undergone a minor redesign, with a refreshed overview page displaying your latest stats — SpO₂, steps, caloric intake, heart rate, stress and more.
So if you're into tracking all your vitals on your smartphone, the Galaxy Note 4 offers even more stuff to keep track of. How much of this will be of any value to the average user, however, remains to be seen.

S Health on Galaxy Note 4

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The difference between archiving and deleting in Gmail

Know what to do with everything you receive in Gmail

For most people, Gmail is one of the most important tools in their daily lives. The problem is that most get so many emails that it is hard to keep your inbox organized and not full of random, unnecessary emails. Gmail offers users multiple ways to organize and sort their emails into different folders, tabs, and tags but in a time where Google's search can scan millions of words per second why is it necessary to put so much effort into keeping your Gmail organized? Luckily, Gmail has an archiving tool that will help you clean up the interface without causing you to spend several days placing each email into a distinct folder.

What is archiving?

The act of archiving an email in Gmail is taking it and placing it in a folder where it will continue to exist but will no longer be cluttering your inbox. The best part about this is that it will still be accessible in the future if needed. Gmail handles this task fantastically as it allows users to quickly and easily archive their emails.

What is deleting?

When you decide to delete an email, it is sent to a trash folder. This folder acts as a backup just incase you did not mean to actually get rid of an email. Some people also use the trash folder as a dumping place for emails they do not view as important enough to have in their inbox. The problem with this is that Gmail automatically deletes mail placed in the trash after 30 days. So while using the trash folder as a tool to clean up your inbox might seem like a good idea, just know that you will most likely lose an email you that might need in the future.

Why you should archive your emails

Say you're having a conversation with someone and information like an address or phone number is exchanged. At that moment you are able to write down or save anything needed so you decide to delete the conversation as you do not see a point to have it cluttering up your inbox any longer.
Now imagine some amount of time in which you would have never needed to look back at that conversation or retrieve information from those emails but for some reason, now you do. If you deleted the email thread, you wouldn't be able to look back and easily find what you're looking for. If you archive an email, you will no longer have to see it sitting in your inbox but will also have the peace of mind knowing that if you need to, a quick search will bring it back to you.

Additionally, all of your archived emails are located in the "All Mail" folder which can be found in navigation drawer. Emails are not organized once archived but if you need quick access to a recently archived email, it will be near the top of the list.

How to archive an email in Gmail on Android

There are three quick and easy ways to archive your emails. Two of these methods are for archiving individual emails and the third is a way to select multiple emails and archive them for later use.

The quickest, easiest, and most accident-prone way to archive an email is to swipe it away while looking at the list view of all your emails in your inbox. Since most Android users are used to accessing the navigation drawer from swiping from the left edge of the screen, it is easy to accidentally send emails off to be archived. Luckily, right after swiping an email away, Gmail allows you to undo your action just by pressing an undo button that appears for several moments after archiving.
In Gmail's settings you can quickly turn this feature off if you do it a lot on accident or just do not have a need for the feature. To do this, open up the navigation drawer, scroll down to the bottom where settings is located, enter general settings, and the option second from the top will give you the choice to turn on or off "swipe to archive."

The second way to archive an email is while viewing an individual message thread. Once you have finished reading the contents of an email you are greeted with several options on the taskbar. One of the multiple icons waiting for you is one that appears to be a box with an arrow pointing downwards. This is the archive button. If you select this while viewing the email, you will be send back to your inbox and a status will appear at the bottom of your screen for several seconds telling you that the email was archived. If you did not mean to archive an email, again there is an undo button that you can select to bring your email back to its original location.

Finally, if you are going through your inbox and decide it is time to really clean it up, the last method will make this quick and easy to do. While looking at your inbox in the list view, you can click on the sender's image (normally a colored box with the first letter of the sender's name inside of it) or long press on an email to select it.
Continue the process of selecting more emails and once everything you want archived is selected, click on the same box icon with the downward facing arrow which is sitting in the taskbar. Just like the last method, right after archiving emails, a status will appear at the bottom of the screen informing you that you archiving numerous emails and gives you the option to undo your action.

If you are ever worried that you might accidentally archive or delete any emails by any of the above methods, Gmail allows you to turn on a feature that adds another step to archiving or deleting emails. This authorization adds a pop-up dialog box that appears when you attempt to delete or archive an email which will ask for a confirmation that you do in fact want to complete your chosen action.
To turn this on, open the navigation drawer, scroll down to settings, select general settings, and at the bottom of the menu there are two checkboxes to enable confirmation before deleting and archiving.

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With this new knowledge on archiving and deleting, you'll have your Gmail inbox cleaned up and running more efficiently, all while never getting rid of information that you may need some day.

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Best innovation of IFA 2014: PhoneArena Awards

The Samsung Galaxy Alpha is shaping up as more than just a good-looking smartphone. It is regarded as the company's answer to the phone which Apple is expected to launch in the very near future – the iPhone 6, or whatever it ends up being called. And we'll definitely pit the two against each other as soon as we get the chance, but until then, here's a comparison between the Galaxy Alpha and the iPhone 5s.

Design

At long last, Samsung has crafted a truly premium Galaxy smartphone. The Galaxy Alpha sports a metal frame with chamfered edges, which gives it a nice, solid feel. On the back we find a plastic cover treated to a delicate, cross stitch pattern. Add the fact that the Galaxy Alpha is Samsung's slimmest Android phone to date and you end up with a handset really worthy of attention. But the iPhone 5s does not lag behind. In fact, some might find its premium construction even more appealing. The iPhone's frame and back are made of metal, with glass elements spicing things up. 

When held, the iPhone 5s fits nicely in the palm thanks to its compact size and low weight. The Samsung Galaxy Alpha is a tad bigger, yet still very comfortable to handle and fit into any pocket. 

Fingerprint scanners come embedded in the home buttons of both handsets, but while the one on the iPhone 5s works with only a touch and at any angle, the one on the Alpha reads fingerprints only with a vertical swipe. This could make it somewhat less convenient to use. 

The sensor that you see next to the Galaxy Alpha's camera is actually a heart-rate monitor. Yup, it can be used for pulse measuring, either while exercising, or whenever you feel like it. Naturally, the lack of one on the iPhone 5s isn't too big of a deal as it is something only a small fraction of users would use regularly. 

Display

One of the biggest assets in the Samsung Galaxy Alpha's portfolio is its 4.7-inch Super AMOLED display. It has a resolution of 720 by 1280 pixels, which results in a pixel density of around 312 PPI. On the iPhone 5s we find a significantly smaller, 4-inch LCD display. It is usable, of course, but some might find the Alpha's 4.7-incher much more convenient, especially when the actual size difference between the two phones isn't too major. Folks who go with the iPhone will be enjoying a display resolution of 640 by 1136 pixels, which produces a very similar, 326 PPI pixel density figure. Both screens are in the same category when it comes to detail reproduction – not industry-leading, but still more than enough.

As we already stated, the Galaxy Alpha is equipped with a Super AMOLED display, while the iPhone has an IPS LCD panel. The former is likely to be superior when it comes to contrast and its colors are probably going to "pop out" more, but the latter will probably produce more accurate colors and should be easier to read outdoors. That's what we could deduct after looking at the two screens side by side, but only a proper screen test will show whether that's the case.

Interface

Samsung will ship the Galaxy Alpha with Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box – an OS known for its openness, customization flexibility, and huge selection of free applications. Samsung's TouchWiz user interface will be layered on top, adding a ton of goodies, including Multi Window, Ultra Power Saving Mode, S Health, Kid Mode, and much more. The iPhone 5s, on the other hand, will be updated to iOS 8 in the very near future. Apple's OS is simpler, easier to get the hand of, and more reliable as a whole, not to mention the huge selection of high-quality applications available on it. And with the newest iOS update, the platform will become more customizable than ever, with its support for third-party widgets and on-screen keyboards. 

Processor and memory

You'd be wrong if you assume that a phone as design-focused as the Samsung Galaxy Alpha would be underpowered. Under its hood ticks an octa-core Exynos chip comprised of four high-performance, 1.8GHz cores and four power-efficient 1.3GHz cores. 2GB of RAM are also on board for minimal delays while switching between apps. To no surprise, we did not encounter any performance issues during our hands-on time with the Galaxy Alpha. Inside the iPhone 5s we find a 64-bit A7 SoC and 1GB of RAM. Inferior? Well, not really. When it comes to real-world performance, the iPhone delivers a top-notch experience, with no lags and no choppy transitions. 

Neither of the two phones lets you add extra storage as they both lack a microSD card slot. With the Samsung Galaxy Alpha, however, you get a generous 32GB of storage space, while a 32GB iPhone 5s costs $100 more than the 16GB one. 

Camera

With the Samsung Galaxy Alpha you get a very promising 12MP camera. It sports one of Samsung's new ISOCELL sensors which support extras like real-time HDR preview and super-fast phase-detection focusing. But we have a feeling that the iPhone 5s will be a worthy rival in the camera department even though it has only 8MP at its disposal. The iPhone's camera takes great images, as we know from experience, and its ease of use would be considered an advantage for many. Plus, the iPhone 5s has a two-tone LED light, which produces more natural light when fired. 

Expectations

Of course, we can't draw any final conclusions at this time as we have not spent enough time with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. But we're happy with what we've seen so far, and we'd say that Samsung's offering is shaping up as a worthy competitor to Apple's highly-acclaimed smartphone. Choosing a Galaxy Alpha over an iPhone gets you a significantly larger screen, an eye-catching design, and a very promising camera. Still, if you don't demand a screen any larger than the iPhones, you won't be missing out on much.

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Google Play Movies can now download movies on iOS

JC Torres

Google might have its own platform and services ecosystem, but it isn't shutting out others from the party. At least not all of them. As a gesture of good will, Google is updating its Play Movies app from iTunes to include one very important feature: the ability to download movies for offline viewing.

Google Play Movies on iOS might sound a bit strange, especially considering Apple has its own preferred iTunes Store for that. But those that straddle both Apple's and Google's worlds will very much appreciate the availability of Google's video service on both platforms. Previously, using Play Movies on an iPhone or iPad would require an Internet connection, and a good one at that, because it only supported streaming videos. Now, however, iOS users can also enjoy untethered (from the Internet) watching that those on Android have been enjoying for some time now.
The update also brings some other improvements, particularly in the accessibility of the app as well as fixes for bugs. But really, the highlight of this update is all about offline viewing.
Google Play Movies for iOS, now at version 1.2.0, is now up on iTunes App Store, ready for the taking. It is compatible with both iPhones and iPads as long as they are running iOS 6.0 or higher. Those with Chromecast dongles also in their possession will also be glad to know that they can also throw (virtually, not literally) their movies to Chromecast for watching on a bigger screen.
SOURCE: +Google

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Alleged Apple iPhone 6 specs revealed by China Mobile

Less than a day before the official announcement, the alleged specs of the Apple iPhone 6 leaked out. The information was posted online by China Mobile – the largest wireless carrier in the world.

Curiously, the leaked specs of the hotly anticipated smartphone differ from past leaks. Purportedly, iPhone 6 will feature an Apple A8 chipset with quad-core CPU and 4.7” display with the rather unimpressive resolution of 1134 x 750 pixels, covered by sapphire glass.
According to China Mobile’s sign-up page, the iPhone 6 will pack an 8MP main camera and a 2.1MP front-facing unit. The device will be available in versions with 16, 32, 64, and 128GB of built-in memory.
Physical measures of the iPhone 6 are listed to be 138mm x 67mm x 7mm. Curiously, the Chinese carrier lists the device as being water and dust resistant.
China Mobile has listed only the specs of the 4.7” iPhone 6 model. Information on the 5.5” model is not displayed.
Overall, should the above specs turn out to be the real deal, iPhone 6 will have its work cut out against the competition. Thankfully, we don’t have to wait long to find out all about the device. In the meantime, you can check out a roundup of all past leaks over here.
Source (in Chinese) | Via

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