Does the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro support Windows Hello?

The Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro series is looking to be among the best laptops of 2022, and it’s no surprise considering last year’s models were already great. For this year, Samsung has upgraded its performance with new processors and more advanced configurations, but it’s kept the lightweight and thin design. Something that hasn’t changed with the Galaxy Book 2 Pro series, though, is Windows Hello support.

Just like last year’s models, the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro comes with Windows Hello support thanks to the fingerprint reader built into the power button. However, there’s no IR camera for facial recognition, which would have been a little more convenient. Still, all you need to do is tap your finger on the fingerprint reader to unlock your PC.

What is Windows Hello and how does it work on the Galaxy Book 2 Pro?

Windows Hello is a feature Microsoft added to Windows 10, and it’s been present ever since. It’s a way to build biometric authentication directly into Windows, the ability to unlock your PC or authorize purchases using your fingerprint or facial recognition, instead of typing in a password or PIN. Some solutions existed before, but they were custom-built and every implementation was different. Windows Hello is both secure and convenient. It’s easier than typing a password, and you also don’t risk having someone looking over your shoulder to see what that password is.

Windows Hello support can be complemented using a fingerprint reader, an infrared camera for facial recognition, or both. The fingerprint reader is the most common method for Windows Hello, and that’s what the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro uses. Having it built into the power button means you can turn on the laptop and it can immediately read your fingerprint. It takes a couple of seconds for your computer to get to the Windows login screen, but the laptop can read your fingerprint as soon as you press the button and save that information to log you in when the Windows lock screen shows up.

An infrared camera could add a bit more convenience to the process, because all you need to do is look at the camera and it signs you in. It’s not a huge difference, but it can be a bit better if you’re trying to authorize a purchase, so you don’t have to move your hand to touch the fingerprint reader. Samsung likely didn’t include this option because IR cameras take up a bit more space, and companies generally prefer having smaller bezels so laptops look more modern.

If you do want Windows Hello facial recognition, you can buy an external webcam with Windows Hello built-in. There are a few options out there, such as the Dell UltraSharp 4K webcam, or the Lenovo 500 Full HD webcam if you want something more affordable.

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If you’re not a big fan of fingerprint readers, we do have a list of the best laptops with Windows Hello facial recognition built-in, which may be a bit more interesting for you. Otherwise, we’ll have a link for you below when the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro is available to buy (pre-orders starts on March 18th). You can also check out the best lightweight laptops if you want to explore other options with great portability.

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What processors does the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 and Book 2 Pro come with?

Samsung introduced the Galaxy Book 2 Pro at MWC 2022, and it’s a follow-up to one of the best lightweight laptops of last year. It keeps the same thin and light design and the great Full HD AMOLED display, but there are some upgrades this time around. Most notably, of course, the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro comes with new processors from Intel.

Specifically, you can get the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro, as well as the Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360, with up to a 12th-generation Intel Core i7-1260P. That’s a powerful laptop processor with 28W of power, and it’s worth looking closer at what it brings to the table. There’s also an Intel Core i5 version available, at least for the clamshell model.

As for the regular Galaxy Book 2 360, which seems to be the only non-Pro model coming to the United States, it comes with up to an Intel Core i7-1255U, and there’s also a model with a Core i5-1235U.

Explaining the processors inside the Galaxy Book 2 and Book 2 Pro

Intel’s 12th-generation processors, also known by the codename Alder Lake, are pretty different from what we’ve seen in the past. First and foremost, they’re using a new hybrid architecture. Instead of having a few cores that are all the same, these new processors have a mix of performance (P) cores and efficient (E) cores. As the names suggest, that results in better overall performance, but also better battery life when that performance isn’t as necessary.

Intel’s 12th-generation mobile processor lineup

The Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro’s processors are noteworthy for even more reasons though. They come with the new Intel P-series, while last year, they were using U-series CPUs. The U series line has a 15W TDP, but the new P series goes up to 28W, and that results in significantly better performance (at the cost of some battery life). Meanwhile, the Galaxy Book 2 360 (non-Pro) is still using U-series processors, but they’re still 12th-generation models. Let’s take a closer look at them.

Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro CPUs

The Intel Core i7-1260P is a CPU with 12 cores – four P cores, and eight E cores – making for a total of 16 threads. P cores support hyperthreading so they have two threads per core, while E cores only have one. Additionally, it can reach speeds up to 4.7GHz on its P cores, and 3.4GHz on the E cores. The Intel Core i7-1260P also has integrated Iris Xe graphics with 96 execution units (EUs), and clock speeds up to 1.4GHz. Overall, that gives you plenty of performance for day-to-day tasks, and it could even handle some (very) light gaming.

If you opt for the lower-end Intel Core i5-1240P, you’re still getting 14 cores (4P+6E) and 16 threads, but speeds are a bit lower. It can hit 4.4GHz on the P cores and 3.3GHz on the E-cores, which is still far from bad. The bigger downgrade is in the integrated Iris Xe graphics, which only have 80 EUs and are clocked at 1.3GHz. It can still handle some light GPU tasks, but it’s naturally not as good as the Core i7.

Samsung tells us the Core i5-1240P processor will only be available in the clamshell version of the Galaxy Book 2 Pro, with the Book 2 Pro 360 only offering the Core i7 variant. However, the official spec sheets still mention Core i5 models for the convertible, so it could depend on what market you’re in.

Galaxy Book 2 CPUs

If you opt for the more mainstream Galaxy Book 2 360, the top-tier configuration comes with an Intel Core i7-1255U. As we’ve mentioned, this is a 15W processor, but it still has a hybrid architecture. It comes with 10 cores in total – two P cores and eight E cores – and it has 12 threads. The P cores can boost up to 4.7GHz, while the E cores can go up to 3.5GHz, though they’ll be a bit more constrained by their TDP during long periods of use. It also includes Intel Iris Xe graphics with 96 EUs and clock speeds up to 1.25GHz, which is a little slower than what you get on the P-series processors.

If you want, you can go with the cheaper Intel Core i5-1235U model. It also has 10 cores (2P+8E) and 12 threads, and it can boost up to 4.4GHz on the P cores and 3.3GHz on the E cores. Again, it includes Intel Iris Xe graphics, but only with 80 EUs and clocked at up to 1.2GHz.

Samsung Galaxy Book 2 360

Those are the only models known to be coming to the US, though Samsung has also mentioned Celeron, Pentium, and Core i3 models may come to other markets. We don’t know the specifics of those models, but one thing you can expect is that they won’t include Iris Xe graphics and they’ll have fewer and slower cores. They still have a hybrid architecture, though.

Samsung has also listed a typical clamshell version of the Galaxy Book 2 in some pages, but again, it doesn’t seem to be coming to the United States. Regardless, it should include the same CPUs as the convertible model.

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Those interested in buying the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro will have to wait at least until March 18th, which is when pre-orders open on Samsung’s website. General availability is planned for April 1st. If you don’t want to wait, you can check out the best Samsung laptops you can buy today, or stop by our list of the best laptops overall to see what other brands are offering.

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Spotify’s iOS-exclusive Swipe to Queue gesture finally rolls out on Android

The Spotify app on Android is finally getting the highly-requested Swipe to Queue gesture that iOS users have had for years. According to recent reports, the gesture seems to be available for a few users at the moment, but we expect it to roll out to more users over the next few days.

For the unaware, Spotify users on Android have been requesting the company to add support for the Swipe to Queue gesture ever since it rolled out on the iOS app over five years ago. Even though Spotify said that it didn’t have any plans to bring the feature over to Android last year, the company now seems to have had a change of heart. According to Reddit user u/Far-Contact-9369, the feature is now finally available on the Android app, allowing users to add tracks to the queue with a simple gesture. Check out the video embedded below to see the feature in action.

As mentioned earlier, the feature doesn’t seem to be available for all Android users at the moment. This suggests that Spotify is likely testing the feature with a small number of users before rolling it out widely. You can check whether the feature is available on your device or not by playing a song and then swiping right on another track. You should see an “Added to queue” pop-up if the gesture is live on your device.

Spotify is yet to make an official announcement regarding the rollout. We expect the company to share more details once the feature rolls out widely.

The gesture comes just a few weeks after Spotify open-sourced its Ruler tool to help app developers analyze their app sizes. You can learn more about the tool by heading over to our previous coverage.

Have you received the Swipe to Queue gesture on your device? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Source: Reddit

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Samsung is reportedly throttling the performance of 10,000 popular apps

A new finding suggests Samsung is throttling the performance of thousands of Android apps on Galaxy smartphones. The issue affects many popular apps, including Google and Samsung’s first-party apps.

Samsung has an app called Game Optimization Service that comes preinstalled on many Galaxy phones. Although the name suggests the app helps improve gaming performance, it’s apparently being used to limit the performance of non-gaming apps. Users on the Korean tech forum Meeco have posted a list of affected apps that are subject to performance throttling. The list includes 10,000 popular apps, including Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, Microsoft Office, Google Keep, Spotify, Snapchat, YouTube Music, and more. Samsung’s own apps such as Samsung Pay, Secure Folder, Bixby, and others are also on the list. Notably, there are no benchmark apps on this blacklist.

Samsung created an app called GOS and used the app to limit game performance, making the gaming experience worse. However, according to what the Korean community found out today, Samsung confirmed that it has put performance limits on more than 10,000 apps… pic.twitter.com/U58AreZZoo

— 한가련 (@GaryeonHan) March 2, 2022

A video posted by Korean YouTuber shows how blacklisted apps are subject to inferior performance while benchmark apps are given a free hand. In his test, the YouTuber changed the package name of the 3DMark benchmark app to Genshin Impact, one of the apps on the blacklist. The unmodified version of 3D Mark scored 2618 points in the Wild Life Extreme test. When he ran the same test with the spoofed version, there was a significant drop in the score — 1141 points. In other words, the spoofed version performed 56% worse than the unmodified version.

It’s not immediately clear if the Game Optimization Service app is installed on every Galaxy phone. Android Authority notes that they couldn’t find the app on their Galaxy S22 series units, Galaxy S20 FE and Galaxy S10s. Meanwhile, 9to5Google mentions it’s installed on their Galaxy S22 Plus unit. It’s possible Samsung may have pushed this app via a recent software update.

According to a post on Naver, it seems Samsung is aware of the issue and is conducting an internal investigation. While Samsung hasn’t clarified why it’s throttling Android apps, it’s likely in an attempt to improve battery life. OnePlus was caught doing something similar with the OnePlus 9 Pro last year. The company used an app called OnePlus Performance Service to throttle popular Android apps. The company later confirmed it had added the performance-limiting mechanism to improve the phone’s battery life and heat management.

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Source: Meeco forums (Korean), Naver
Via: Android Authority

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Galaxy A33 and Galaxy A13 4G design and key specifications revealed in a fresh leak

After launching the Galaxy S22 series, Samsung is now gearing up to refresh the affordable Galaxy A lineup. We have already seen several leaks of the Galaxy A53, Galaxy A73, Galaxy A33, and Galaxy A23 over the past months. Now we’re getting more details about the Galaxy A33 and the first look at another affordable entry in the lineup: the Galaxy A13.

Galaxy A33

Fresh renders of the Galaxy A33 published by WinFuture provide us our clearest look at the Galaxy A53’s “little brother.” The renders are in line with what we saw in earlier leaks. The Galaxy A33 does away with the seamless camera design and opts for the rectangular camera module, similar to the Galaxy A53 and Galaxy A73.

According to WinFuture, the Galaxy A33 will feature a 6.4-inch OLED FHD+ display with a 90Hz refresh rate, Exynos 1200 chipset, 6GB RAM, and 128GB flash storage, 5,000mAh battery, and 5G connectivity.

Galaxy A13

The Galaxy A13 is said to be a 4G variant of the Galaxy A13 5G that launched in the US last year. However, it doesn’t look even remotely close to its 5G sibling in terms of the design.

 

The Galaxy A13 features a 6.6-inch PLS LCD panel with Full HD+ resolution, a step up from the HD+ panel of the Galaxy A13 5G. The panel supports a 90Hz refresh rate and has a waterdrop notch cutout for the selfie camera.

The phone will reportedly be powered by Samsung’s in-house Exynos 850 SoC, paired with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. The quad-camera setup will be headlined by a 48MP primary shooter, accompanied by a 5MP ultra-wide camera and two 2MP depth and macro shooters. Finally, the phone will pack a 5,000mAh battery and charge via a 15W charger.

The Galaxy A13 is expected to be priced around €200 and launch first in Europe. Samsung has yet to reveal the launch timeline for the Galaxy A33 and Galaxy A13.

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Source: WinFuture

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Update your phone’s GPU drivers systemlessly using this tool, no root required

Smartphone-oriented websites tend to focus only on the latest devices, but a large chunk of users choose not to upgrade their phones for one reason or another. Barring hardware failure, many of these devices may still have years of use ahead of them because, to their owners, they still work just fine. While custom ROMs can keep legacy smartphones alive for ages, it can be a nightmare for the modders to keep things like the camera and graphics drivers up to date without official manufacturer support.

Updating GPU drivers on Android

Unlike the smartphone ecosystem, updating the graphics driver on your PC is something you can always think about. This is possible because of the modular architecture of PC hardware drivers, which allows power users to tinker with closed source driver packages, or even opt for open source drivers instead of OEM-provided binaries. In the case of Android, however, driver updates generally only come to your phone alongside larger OS updates.

Updatable GPU drivers can come in handy for fixing bugs, improving graphics performance, or adding new features from OpenGL or Vulkan APIs. Nowadays, smartphones are bigger and faster than ever, making them the perfect vehicle for gaming, hence porting the PC-esque driver design to them does make sense.

Matter of fact, in an effort to modularize Android via Project Treble, Google actually made it possible to wrap the graphics driver set for a particular platform as an app and update it through the Play Store. Since then, several mainstream Android OEMs collaborated with Google and major GPU vendors, including ARM and Qualcomm, to distribute updates for their phones’ GPU drivers independent of larger software releases.

Does the updatable graphics driver design reduce the fragmentation?

Yes, to some extent. Nonetheless, a few worrying questions are still left unanswered. First of all, Google’s mechanism doesn’t provide an easy way to substitute the closed-source vendor driver with a third-party open source offering. You can, of course, manually replace the driver package in the vendor partition of the target device, provided you have root access and somehow get your hands on the necessary files, but that’s not an ideal solution for many.

Next comes the stability-versus-enhancement paradox. Android maintains a hierarchical arrangement when it comes to loading the graphics driver. While one can switch between the factory-installed build and the newer updated release using Developer options => Graphics driver preferences on a per-app basis, it ultimately boils down to the OEM’s decision when to push the graphics driver update. As a result, an end user can’t utilize bleeding-edge driver builds directly from the SoC maker, as OEMs are still responsible for rolling out the updates.

Enter Adreno Tools

As mentioned earlier, updating GPU drivers is possible with root access, but nothing can beat a non-root method. Thanks to XDA Senior Member bylaws, we now have a genius solution named Adreno Tools that allows on-the-fly GPU driver modifications or replacements on Android — that too without root! The developer’s background of porting Android to the Nintendo Switch certainly played a crucial role in this venture, as the whole project has its origin in Skyline, an open source, work-in-progress Nintendo Switch emulator for Android.

Fellow Skyline developer Mark “Pixelylon” pitched the idea of runtime drive replacement to bylaws, which eventually materialized into Adreno Tools. Being a rootless library, Adreno Tools can help any regular app to load custom GPU drivers, deal with BCn textures, and redirect file operations for further complex modifications. It does so by hooking into system libraries and seamlessly swapping in the new driver. Notably, there is no support for Mali GPUs yet.

Since there is no limitation on the origin of the driver, enthusiasts can also load third-party drivers through Adreno Tools. This is particularly useful for those who want to try out Turnip — an open source Vulkan driver for Qualcomm Adreno graphics hardware that falls under the Freedreno umbrella. For example, AetherSX2, the PlayStation 2 emulator for Android already utilizes Adreno Tools to give end users the choice to opt for Turnip instead of the OEM driver for better performance.

Adreno Tools on GitHub

Given the alternatives for the Android GPU driver modding scene in the past, the Adreno Tools library is a fantastic step forward. We’re looking forward to seeing how the project grows and matures in the future. Be sure to give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments!

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Source: Esper
Featured image: Red Magic 6S Pro

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Does the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro support 5G?

Samsung recently announced the Galaxy Book 2 Pro family of Windows laptops, and it’s packing a few improvements, specifically upgrading to intel’s 12th-generation P-series processors. We were big fans of the Galaxy Book Pro 360 5G last year, but does the Galaxy Book Pro 2 also come with 5G support? Well, yes and no, depending on where you are and the size you want.

According to Samsung, the Galaxy Book Pro 2 will feature some configurations with 5G support, but only in the 15.6-inch model, and only in certain markets. And those markets don’t include the United States, unfortunately. As for the Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360, it doesn’t look like 5G is supported in any configuration. This is odd considering last year only the 360 model had 5G, but it looks like the opposite is happening this time.

Some Galaxy Book models still have 5G

If you need a laptop with 5G connectivity and you’re a big fan of Samsung’s devices, Samsung will continue to have some options available for you. You can still buy last year’s Galaxy Book Pro 360 5G, which is a fantastic device as you can read in our review. If you don’t need the super-premium specs, there’s also the Samsung Galaxy Book Go 5G, which is an Arm-powered laptop that also includes 5G support. It’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, so it’s still a solid experience. They’re some of the best Samsung laptops you can buy today.

Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 5G

The Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 5G has an 11th-generation Intel Core i5 processor and a Full HD AMOLED display, plus a premium lightweight design.

See at Samsung

Samsung Galaxy Book Go 5G

Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, the Samsung Galaxy Book Go 5G is one of the best 5G-enabled Windows laptops around.

See at Samsung

If you don’t need 5G speeds, Samsung also has the Galaxy Book 2 Business, a model specifically made for business users. This laptop comes with LTE support… as long as you’re in Europe. Indeed, it doesn’t look like Samsung is interested in giving US customers new cellular-enabled options this year. You’ll need to stick to last year’s models if you see value in that.

It’s certainly possible that Samsung will roll out 5G-enabled versions of its new laptops later in the year, but so far, that hasn’t been mentioned.

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If you still want to buy the Galaxy Book 2 Pro without 5G, you’ll have to wait a little longer until pre-orders open on March 18, and until April 1st for it to start shipping. If you do want a laptop with 5G support, check out our roundup of the best 5G laptops. Otherwise, you can take a look at the best laptops in general to see what else is out there.

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