Samsung's new Galaxy F series smartphones, and more tech news today

Your tech news digest, by way of the DGiT Daily tech newsletter, for Thursday, 8 October 2020.

1. Samsung’s new Galaxy F series

Samsung is set to launch the Galaxy F41 today. The F-series is starting in India first as a mid-range option, and the expectation is that Samsung will focus on cameras.

• It’s reported that Samsung will differentiate the new series by focusing on cameras.
• Samsung’s event invite told us it would feature a good-sized 6,000mAh battery, a Super AMOLED Infinity-U display, and a triple camera with a 64-megapixel main camera, and be about 6.5-inches in size.
• In terms of the camera prowess, we may see Samsung pursue small but useful features not always seen on mid-range devices, like optical image stabilization, larger sensors, and more specialized lenses.
• An apparent benchmark was seen on GeekBench, showing it’ll run an Exynos 9611 SoC, have 6GB of RAM, and run on Android 10.
• The Exynos 9611 is a step or two down from the Snapdragon 730, and around the Snapdragon 665 level of performance.
• The already-launched Samsung Galaxy M31s specs seem to line up very closely with what we’re seeing with the F41, but a straight rebrand doesn’t really make sense, so we’re looking for additional features and improved camera tech.

From India to the world?

• Despite the fiercely competitive marketplace, Samsung has used India as a proving ground.
• The M-series first launched in the country before heading into other markets, including the recent M51 with a 7,000mAh battery.
• I’d again expect the F-series to be trialed in India before a wider release, if Samsung is able to clearly differentiate the device line and gain traction in the niche it’s trying to find.
• But at the same time, it’s not going to be easy.
• There’s so much competition in the mid-range and value-end, with Xiaomi/Redmi releasing a handful of new devices each month, Samsung’s own A and M series, OPPO, and many more.

2. Sony’s teardown of the PlayStation 5 showed some super industrial design touches. It’s well worth a watch to see how it lies flat, panels can be easily replaced, liquid metal cooling with giant heatsink, and dust catchers that let you vacuum out dust. Loads of good choices, but how liquid metal performs over time will be interesting, given it can dry out after two years or so. Also: faster Wi-Fi and USB ports than Xbox Series X.

3. Report: Qualcomm to develop its own premium gaming phones with ASUS (Android Authority).

4. Samsung Galaxy S20 FE review: “Don’t dismiss the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE as an also-ran. This superb value delivers on the all-important basics such as screen quality and performance” (Android Authority).

5. AMD’s Zen 3 event introducing Ryzen 5000 processors goes down today at 12PM ET. Watch on YouTube.

6. Facebook says it will block political ads after polls close on Election Day (Axios). Here’s a tweet: “…i’d feel super weird if i built a thing and the only times ppl agree we made positive contributions to society was when we disabled parts of the thing” (Charlie Warzel, Twitter).

7. Amazon wants to ‘win at games.’ So why hasn’t it? (Wired).

8. Valve’s latest Steam festival lets you try hundreds of PC games for free (The Verge).

9. Learn to type by copying literary masters (Gizmodo).

10. Swedish drone truck startup Einride unveils new driverless vehicles for autonomous freight hauling (The Verge).

11. SpaceX has launched enough satellites for Starlink’s upcoming public beta (Ars Technica).

12. Here’s what Boom launched: the XB-1 demonstrator supersonic jet (Engadget).

13. As is tradition: These are 2020’s worst Halloween costumes (Gizmodo).

13. “How do radio stations know how many people are tuning in?” (r/askscience).

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