South Korea indicts group for allegedly leaking Samsung flexible display tech to Chinese company

Prosecutors in South Korea have indicted the chief executive and eight other employees of Toptec Co for allegedly selling information about Samsung’s flexible OLED displays to a Chinese company. The charges detail that the company received more than $13.8 million for the information, Bloomberg reports.

Toptec, a Samsung supplier that manufactures display-related equipment, has denied the charges in a statement. “Our company has never provided Samsung Display’s industrial technology or business secrets to a Chinese client. Our company will fully cooperate with legal proceedings to find the truth in court.” The company’s share price is down 20 percent at the time of writing.

Samsung’s flexible display tech probably makes you think of their weird and yet-to-be-released foldable phone that they just showed off earlier this month. Samsung’s been deep in the flexible display business for a while though even if their bends have been less acute like the designs of much older handsets like the Galaxy S6 Edge.

The Chinese company was not named in the suit though there are a number of companies working to produce flexible displays for smartphones.

South Korea’s national interests are deeply intertwined with the business dealings of Samsung, and the threat of intellectual property theft to China is one which they seem to be taking very seriously. We have reached out to Samsung for comment.

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Google Fi now officially supports most Android devices and iPhones

Google is making a major move to expand the availability of its Fi wireless service.

It’s been a few years since Google launched Project Fi with the promise of doing things a bit differently than the large carriers. Because it could switch between the cell networks of multiple providers to give you the best signal, the service only ever officially supported a select number of handsets. You could always trick it by activating the service on a supported phone and then moving your SIM card to another (including an iPhone), but that was never supported.

That’s changing today, though. The company is opening up Fi — and renaming it to Google Fi — and officially expanding device support to most popular Android phones, as well as iPhones. Supported Android phones include devices from Samsung, LG, Motorola and OnePlus. iPhone support is currently in beta, and there are a few extra steps to set it up, but the Fi iOS app should now be available in the App Store.

One thing you might not get with many of the now-supported phones is the full Fi experience, with network switching and access to Google’s enhanced network features, including Google’s VPN network. For that, you’ll still need a Pixel phone, the Moto G6 or any other device that you can buy directly in the Fi store.

Fi on all phones comes with the usual features, like bill protection, free high-speed international roaming and support for group plans.

To sweeten the deal, Google is also launching a somewhat extraordinary promotion today: If you open a new Fi account — or if are an existing user — you can buy any phone in the Fi shop today and get your money back in the form of a travel gift card that you can use for a flight with Delta or Southwest, or lodging with Airbnb and Hotels.com. There’s some fine print, of course (you need to keep your account active for a few months, etc.), but if you were looking at getting Fi anyway, like to travel and want to get a Pixel 3 XL, that’s not a bad deal at all.

The fine print is below:

Travel on Fi with Any Device Purchase Promotion Terms (Google Fi)

Limited time, 24-hour offer applies to any qualifying device purchased from fi.google.com from 11/28/18 12:00 AM PT through 11/28/18 11:59 PM PT, or while supplies last. When you purchase a qualifying device on fi.google.com, you can redeem a travel gift card in the amount you paid for the device, excluding taxes (details below).

To qualify for this promotion, a device must be activated within 15 days of device shipment and remain active for 60 consecutive days within 75 days of device shipment. The device must be activated within the same plan that was used to purchase the device. Activation must be for full service (i.e., activation does not apply to a data-only SIM).

This offer is available for new Google Fi customers as of 11/28/18 12:00 AM PT and existing, active Google Fi customers. If the customer is new to Google Fi, the customer must transfer (port-in) their current personal number over to Google Fi during sign up. The number being transferred must be currently active and have been active with the previous carrier and the customer since 8/28/18 12:00 AM PT.

After the terms have been satisfied, the customer will receive an email from Google Fi (around 75 – 90 days after device activation) with instructions on how to obtain a gift card from Tango subject to Tango’s terms and conditions. The user can redeem gift card amounts with select travel partners: Airbnb, Delta Airlines, Hotels.com, and Southwest Airlines. Gift cards may also be subject to the terms of the travel partners.

If Fi service is paused for more than 7 days or cancelled within 120 days of activation, the value of the gift card will be charged to your Google Payments account to match the purchased price of the device. Limit one per person. This offer is only available for U.S. residents ages 18 and older, and requires Google Payments and Google Fi accounts. Unless otherwise stated, this offer cannot be combined with other offers. Offer and gift card redemption are not transferable, and are not valid for cash or cash equivalent. Void where prohibited.

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Last minute Cyber Monday deals

Listen, I know you’re tired of deals. I get it. You already woke up at 1AM on Black Friday to head to Best Buy in your pajama pants. But if we just stick together and follow the rules, we’ll get through the holiday gift season in one piece. We got this.

What follows is far from a comprehensive list of the deals you’ll be able to find online today, but should help you get started on your holiday shopping — or just pick up a little something for yourself, if you’re so inclined.

–Ring Video Doorbell 2 ($60 off) – As always, Amazon’s flooding Cyber Monday with deals on its own devices. At 30-percent, with a third-gen Echo Dot thrown in, the Ring doorbell just might be the best of the bunch.

–Buy a Samsung Galaxy, get an Echo Show free – Amazon’s also got some deep discounts on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9, S9 and S9+, with bundled Echo devices thrown in for good measure. Sorry Bixby.

–Apple iPad ($80 off) – Walmart’s got a bunch of deals on Apple products — while supplies last.

–Apple Watch Series 3 ($50 off) – Sure it’s not the latest version — but it’s still a solid deal for the holidays.

–Fitbit Ionic ($70 off) – The Versa is admittedly the better of Fitbit’s new smartwatches, but $70 off is a solid deal for the larger device. 

–GoPro Hero7 ($70 off) – A solid discount for the leading action cam. 

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Samsung apologizes, promises compensation for factory conditions

Weeks after reaching a settlement, Samsung issued an apology over factory conditions leading to the illness and death of workers. “We offer our sincere apology to our workers who have suffered with illnesses and their families,” executive Kinam Kim said during a press conference late last week.

The apology is the result of longstanding health complaints levied against the company’s LCD and chip manufacturing lines, resulting in dozens of employees suffering illnesses including brain tumors and leukemia, according to The Associated Press.

An advocacy group had been fighting on behalf of workers after the 2007 death of one employee from leukemia. In addition to the public apology, Samsung will pay up to ~$133,000 per employee, for illness contracted from working conditions, including miscarriages and cancers in workers’ children.

In its apology, Samsung called previous efforts “insufficient,” promising to improve working conditions going forward. The electronics giant has promised to issue compensation for workers by 2028.

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A closer look at Royole’s foldable display

You’d be forgiven if Royole doesn’t ring any bells. Even here China, it’s far from a household name. Still, the Shanghai-based startup recently secured an undisclosed Series E, vaulting its valuation to an apparent $5 billion, up from $3 billion in late 2016.

Founded in 2012, Royole’s best-known release was a wearable cinema display. That changed last month, however, when it surprised the industry by announcing the imminent arrival of the FlexPai, a flexible screen smartphone that appears on track to to beat the Samsung Galaxy X to market.

The FlexPai’s anticipated December release seemingly came out of nowhere. Like competitors, Royole had shown off its proprietary folding technology as part of a standalone demos, but it hadn’t teased the arrival of a smartphone until the device was ready to ship. It’s a far cry, certainly, from the not ready for prime time prototype Samsung marched out on stage last month.

At an event in Shenzhen, CEO Bill Liu told TechCrunch that the company was built around the desire to bring the technology to market. “We started from the flexible displays and flexible sensors,” he explained. “We started the company with a focus on the flexible displays and sensors. And then along the way, we realized this could be a huge application for the technology.”

A foldable smartphone was simply the first product that made sense for the underlying tech. With development dating back a half-dozen year, Royole was the first to achieved the industry’s long standing goal of delivering a foldable screen — beating even the massive Samsung to market.

Being first isn’t always a blessing in this industry, but it’s an impressive feat, nonetheless. The FlexPai is real. I can’t speak to the scalability of the product, until it actually starts shipping out next month, but I can attest to the fact that at least one of the things exists in the world. I held it in my hands. I folded it. It worked.

It’s a difficult problem and Royole solved it with in-house technologies. No one can take that away from the company. I can’t say my initial apprehensions were ultimately dissuaded, however. The FlexPai mostly works as desired, but the execution isn’t what ultimately the kind of premium product one would expect, given the ultra-premium price tag (around $1,300 American).

Liu happily dropped the phone a couple of times on stage, in an attempt to put to rest any durability question. While the display ultimately didn’t crack or scratch, the flexible material looks almost like cellophane and sports crinkles that catch the light — the clarity also leaves something to be desire.

As far as portability, it’s true that you can fold it up and stuff it in your pocket, though it’s pretty chunky when you do so. Ultimately, these are first generation products — and likely a result of a company pushing to be first to market, knowing full well that companies like Samsung were breathing down its neck.

Royole sees potential to license the technology out for other categories. “Right now for the smartphone industry, we haven’t done any licensing,” said Liu. “For industrial applications like automotive or media, we do have customers. We sell the licenses to them, and we’ve already sold a lot of licenses.”

The company will also be working with developers to create content for the new form factor, with a $30 million program it launched last month. The Chinese version is due out in December.

 

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MetaCert’s Cryptonite can catch phishing links in your email

MetaCert, founded by Paul Walsh, originally began as a way to watch chat rooms for fake Ethereum scams. Walsh, who was an early experimenter in cryptocurrencies, grew frustrated when he saw hackers dumping fake links into chat rooms, resulting in users regularly losing cash to scammers.

Now Walsh has expanded his software to email. A new product built for email will show little green or red shields next to links, confirming that a link is what it appears to be. A fake link would appear red while a real PayPal link, say, would appear green. The plugin works with Apple’s Mail app on the iPhone and is called Cryptonite.

“The system utilizes the MetaCert Protocol infrastructure/registry,” said Walsh. “It contains 10 billion classified URLs. This is at the core of all of MetaCert’s products and services. It’s a single API that’s used to protect over 1 million crypto people on Telegram via a security bot and it’s the same API that powers the integration that turned off phishing for the crypto world in 2017. Even when links are shortened? MetaCert unfurls them until it finds the real destination site, and then checks the Protocol to see if it’s verified, unknown or classified as phishing. It does all this in less that 300ms.”

Walsh is also working on a system to scan for Fake News in the wild using a similar technology to his anti-phishing solution. The company is raising currently and is working on a utility token.

Walsh sees his first customers as enterprise and expects IT shops to implement the software to show employees which links are allowed, i.e. company or partner links, and which ones are bad.

“It’s likely we will approach this top down and bottom up, which is unusual for enterprise security solutions. But ours is an enterprise service that anyone can install on their phone in less than a minute,” he said. “SMEs isn’t typically a target market for email security companies but we believe we can address this massive market with a solution that’s not scary to setup and expensive to support. More research is required though, to see if our hypothesis is right.”

“With MetaCert’s security, training is reduced to a single sentence ‘if it doesn’t have a green shield, assume it’s not safe,’ ” said Walsh.

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Samsung’s dual-screen folding phone is very strange and probably doomed

Let me just say that I love the idea of a folding phone/tablet device. I was a Courier fanboy when Microsoft floated that intriguing but abortive concept device, and I’m all for unique form factors and things that bend. But Samsung’s first real shot at a folding device is inexplicable and probably dead on arrival. I’d like to congratulate the company for trying something new, but this one needed a little more time in the oven.

I haven’t used it, of course, so this is just my uninformed opinion (provided for your edification). But this device is really weird, and not in a good way. It’s a really thick phone with big bezels around a small screen that opens up into a small tablet. No one wants that!

Think about it. Why do you want a big screen?

If it’s for media, like most people, consider that nearly all that media is widescreen now, either horizontal (YouTube and Netflix) or vertical (Instagram and Facebook). You can switch between these views at will extremely easily. Now consider that because of basic geometry, the “big” screen inside this device will likely not be able to show that media much, if any, larger than the screen on the front!

(Well, in this device’s case, maybe a little, but only because that front display’s bezel really is huge. Why do you think they turned the lights off? Look where the notification bar is!)

It’s like putting two of the tall screens next to each other. You end up with one twice as wide, but that’s pretty much what you get if you put the phone on its side. All you gain with the big screen is a whole lot of letterboxing or windowboxing. Oh, and probably about three quarters of an inch of thickness and half a pound of weight. This thing is going to be a beast.

Power users may also want a big screen for productivity: email and document handling and such is great on a big device like a Galaxy Note. Here then is opportunity for a folding tablet to excel (so to speak). You can just plain fit more words and charts and controls on there. Great! But if the phone is geared toward power users, why even have the small screen on the front anyway if any time that user wants to engage with the phone they will “open” it up? For quick responses or dismissing notifications, maybe, but who would really want that? That experience will always be inferior to the one the entire device is designed around.

I would welcome a phone that was only a book-style big internal screen, and I don’t think it would be a bother to flip it open when you want to use it. Lots of people with giant phones keep book-like covers on their devices anyway! It would be great to be able to use those square inches for the display rather than credit card slots or something.

The Courier had tons of great ideas on how to use two screens.

There are also creative ways to use the screen: left and right halves are different apps; top half is compose and bottom is keyboard; left half is inbox and right half is content; top half is media and bottom is controls and comments. Those sprang to mind faster than I could type them.

On the other hand, I can’t think of any way that a “front” display could meaningfully interact with or enhance a secondary (or is it primary?) display that will never be simultaneously visible. Presumably you’ll use one or the other at any given time, meaning you literally can’t engage the entire capability of the device.

You know what would be cool? A device like this that also used the bezel display we’ve seen on existing Galaxy devices. How cool would it be to have your phone closed like a book, but with an always-on notification strip (or two!) on the lip, telling you battery, messages and so on? And maybe if you tapped once the device would automatically pop open physically! That would be amazing! And Samsung is absolutely the company that I’d say would make it.

Instead, they made this thing.

It’s disappointing to me not just because I don’t like the device as they’ve designed it, but because I think the inevitable failure of the phone will cool industry ambition regarding unique devices like it. That’s wrong, though! People want cool new things. But they also want them to make sense.

I’m looking forward to how this technology plays out, and I fully expect to own a folding phone some time in the next few years. But this first device seems to me like a major misstep, and one that will set back that flexible future rather than advance it.

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Here’s what Samsung’s wacky folding phone looks like in action

As rumored, Samsung showed off a prototype of a folding display today. Folded, it’s a smartphone. Unfolded, it’s a tablet. Neat!

Less neat: The company sort of went out of its way to not really show very much. A prototype was onstage for about 45 seconds, and it was deliberately backlit to be intensely silhouetted. They “disguised the elements of the design” to keep secret whatever secret sauce they have.

Finding that clip of the prototype folding/unfolding means digging through Samsung’s two-hour developer keynote, so we went ahead and GIF’d it up for you.

Here’s what it looks like going from phone mode to tablet mode:

And from tablet mode back to a more pocket-friendly phone mode:

While this isn’t the first folding phone we’ve seen , it also won’t be the last. With Google officially adding support for folding displays into Android as of this morning, it sounds like they’ve got reason to think a number of manufacturers are dabbling with this concept — enough of them, at least, to make it worthwhile to wire these changes into the main Android codebase.

If you want to see the relevant bit of the Samsung keynote for yourself, it starts juuuust before the 1 hour and 25 minute mark in the stream embedded below:

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Samsung shares a glimpse of its folding ‘Infinity Flex Display’ smartphone

After hyping its unveil of its long-rumored folding smartphone, Samsung kind of delivered an announcement, revealing a dual-screen folding phone prototype.

“How can we make the screen bigger without actually increasing the size of the device itself?” a Samsung exec posited onstage.

The company showcased a prototype of its “Infinity Flex Display,” a device that can be unfolded. In a pitch black room, a company exec showcased the device, which was housed in a larger case to “obscure the form factor.” There’s a conventional outer display on the front with a fairly low screen-to-body ration, but when you unfold the phone, there’s a massive 7.3″ display on the inside.

It’s a bit surprising that the folding display is on the inside of the phone rather than the outside edge, though I’m sure it’s much easier for the company to build a reliable display if the actual folding part of the screen doesn’t have to account for the entire side of the phone.

When you open the phone, your open apps will move from the front display to the tablet-sized display, functionality only possible thanks to some updates to Android.

Google is adding Android support for foldable screens

It’s clear that despite hyping this “innovation,” Samsung isn’t quite ready to release a device of this type yet. The company says it will start mass production of the new display type in the coming months. The company teased more announcements surrounding the device at the next Samsung Unpacked event in 2019.

Whether this is the future of the phablet or not, it’s certainly an evolution of the smartphone form factor. Samsung believes that the folding display is the “foundation of the smartphone of tomorrow,” but whether there’s more beyond the gimmick certainly wasn’t clarified today.

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Google is adding Android support for foldable screens

Big day for developer events. As Samsung was on stage getting ready to talk about its upcoming foldable phone, Google spilled the beans a bit at its own Android Developer Summit. The company briefly detailed plans bake support for folding phones into the mobile operating system.

Support for the nascent technology is going to be tough, given what’s expected to be a variety of different form factors, so Google’s been working with hardware partners. It’s first, naturally, is  Samsung. The two companies have been working closely on a device it plans to launch “early next year,” according to Google. That device is expected to debut moments from now on Samsung’s own stage.

Google is referring to the category as “Foldables.”

We just announced support for foldables at #AndroidDevSummit, a new form factor coming next year from Android partners.

Android apps run seamlessly as the device folds, achieving this form factor's chief feature: screen continuity. pic.twitter.com/NAfOmCOY26

— Android Developers (@AndroidDev) November 7, 2018

“You can think of the device as both a phone and a tablet,” Android VP of Engineering Dave Burke explained. “Broadly, there are two variants – two-screen devices and one-screen devices. When folded, it looks like phone, fitting in your pocket or purse. The defining feature for this form factor is something we call screen continuity. ”

Among the addition here is the ability to flag app to respond to the screen as it folds and unfolds — the effect would likely be similar to response of applications as handsets switch between portrait and landscape modes.

While Samsung’s is the most prominent, the company company’s Foldable isn’t expected to be the first to market. That honor will like go to Royole’s FlexPai device, though that handset has already been knocked for build quality ahead of launch. Whatever the case, Samsung’s certainly not going to be alone here, but it will almost certainly be a market leader.

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Samsung opens its Bixby assistant to developers

Samsung has been suffering through a lot of catch-up in the voice assistant race, but at its annual developer conference the company placed a major emphasis on how it’s expanding the scale and effectiveness of its Bixby assistant.

The company announced that Bixby would be coming to more devices and more languages with third-party developers finally gaining access to building functionality for the AI assistant.

“For the first time we are opening Bixby to all of you, our developers,” Samsung EVP Eui-Suk Chung announced onstage.

The company is pledging to bring the assistant to watches, refrigerators, tablets, washing machines and more, and in the coming months will be adding support for five additional languages. While these promises seemed to sit a bit further down the line, the company was ready to talk about their Bixby developer kit during the keynote.

The company announced the release of the Bixby Developer Studio, a set of dev tools that’s “way ahead of the other guys,” Viv Labs CEO/ Siri co-founder Dag Kittlaus told the crowd. The company will also be introducing Bixby Marketplace, a home for users to discover the new functionality of their voice assistant.

Bixby may have a long road ahead to catch up with other companies, but third-party integrations are something that none of the major voice assistant platforms have nailed. If Samsung can continue to invest in the platform and court developers with sophisticated tools, they may have bette luck in gaining third-party integrations that feel more ancillary.

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Samsung’s social logo teases a folding phone ahead of announcement

All of the major players have held events over the past few months, but hardware season still has a few last gasps left. The Samsung Developer Conference happening this week in San Francisco isn’t likely to be a major launching pad for consumer electronics, but the company is expected to offer a glimpse into what’s to come.

Samsung’s long been a fan of teasing out big news ahead of launch, and all subtly has gone out the window with the folding logo the company’s adopted on social media. A report from Bloomberg later backed up by The Wall Street Journal has the company showing off a prototype of a phone with a foldable display this week.

The company is said to still be debating the specifics of the hardware at this late stage, and the product may only be glimpsed at in the form of an on-screen render or prototype. For Samsung, the key is showing the world that it’s continuing to innovate after a lukewarm critical reception on its last couple of devices.

The company likely won’t be first to market with the screen folding tech. That honor will likely go to the Royole Corporation’s FlexPai handset, which is due out before the end of the year. Though from the looks of it, it won’t leave the best first impression.

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Samsung’s Bixby may finally get more third-party integration soon

Poor Bixby. We admittedly haven’t had a lot of nice things to say about Samsung’s smart assistant since launch — but that’s not for lack of potential. The company has promised great things since day one, but has been slow to deliver on, well, just about everything.

Third-party integration was supposed to be one of Bixby’s biggest selling points, but in the year and a half since launch, Samsung hasn’t offered a lot on that front. According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, the hardware giant will shed more light on its plans at next week’s Samsung Developer Conference, with the launch of third-party “capsules.”

On the face of it, at least, the offerings sound fairly similar to the skills and actions we’ve seen on the competition, letting devs build their own custom responses. It’s something Samsung will really need to push if products like the upcoming Galaxy Home premium smart speaker are going to find any sort of market.

The HomePod competitor already looks like a tough sell as Samsung makes a steep climb further into the burgeoning smart home market, and high-profile partnerships are going to be an important key to breaking in. Speaking of tricky propositions, the Journal story also reconfirms previous rumors Samsung will be showing off a folding phone at next week’s event.

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