There are more signs of the global smartphone market righting the ship after a disastrous 2020. New figures from Gartner point to 26% increase in global sales year over year for the first quarter of 2021. The overall increase is an impressive one, though it comes after a couple of years of market slowdown, followed […]
With a long-standing history of working together on the mobile side, it’s always been a bit of a surprise that Samsung hasn’t had much patience for Google’s wearables play. The hardware giant had flirted with Android Wear in the past, but for the last several years, it’s been invested in building out its own version […]
For years, Wear OS has been, at best, something of a dark horse among Google operating systems. It’s certainly not for lack of partnership or investment, but for whatever reason, the company has never really stuck the landing with its wearable operating system. It’s a category in which Apple has been utterly dominant for some […]
Things have been a bit quiet on the foldables front of late, but plenty of parties are still bullish about the form factor’s future. Ahead of today’s big I/O kickoff, Samsung (undoubtedly the most bullish of the bunch) posted a bunch of metrics this morning, noting: The global outlook is just as impressive. This year […]
Upsie, a consumer warranty startup, has raised $18.2 million in a Series A round led by True Ventures. The financing brings the total raised for the St. Paul, Minnesota-based startup to $25 million since its 2015 inception. A large group of investors participated in the round, including Concrete Rose VC, Avanta Ventures, Kapor Capital, Samsung […]
Following the customary weeks of leaks, Samsung just announced a couple of new additions to its laptop line. The Galaxy Book Pro and Galaxy Book Pro 360 joined the hardware giant’s wide range of devices toward the high end — offering what can reasonably be categorized as the company’s take on the MacBook Pro. The […]
More good news from a smartphone market currently rebounding from the far-reaching impacts of the pandemic. New numbers from Canalys put global shipments for Q1 2021 at 27% above where they were the same time last year. The industry was hit early and hit hard by COVID-19. The first quarter saw the company running into […]
Blockchain developer platform Alchemy announced today it has raised $80 million in a Series B round of funding led by Coatue and Addition, Lee Fixel’s new fund. The company previously raised a total of $15.5 million, so the latest financing brings its total raised to $95.5 million since it launched in 2017. The latest round caught […]
Samsung announced Galaxy Upcycling a few years back, but has largely been quiet on that front, aside from some stage time at CES back in January. Today the company announced that Upcycling at Home is being opened to beta today for users in the U.S., Korea and the U.K. It’s a pretty novel program, in […]
Among other technology trends accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of contactless mobile payments boomed in 2020. According to a recent report by analyst firm eMarketer, in-store mobile payments usage grew 29% last year in the U.S., as the pandemic pushed consumers to swap out cash and credit cards for the presumably safer mobile […]