Hasta La Gadget!

Samsung’s S10 lineup features a whopping four models: the S10e, the S10, the S10+ and the S10 5G. Unsurprisingly, one of the features that differentiates these models is the camera system. Gone are the days, after all, where one camera would suffice. Now, all the S10 models, except for the budget S10e, feature at least three rear cameras, and the high-end 5G model even goes for four — and all of them promise more AI smarts and better video stabilization.

All models get at least a standard 12MP rear wide-angle camera with a 77-degree field of view, a 16MP ultra-wide-angle camera for 123-degree shots and a 10MP selfie camera. The standard S10 then adds a 12MP telephoto lens to the rear camera setup and the S10+ gets an 8MP RGB-depth camera. The high-end S10 5G adds a hQVGA 3D-depth camera to both the front and rear setup.

The ultra-wide lens is a first for Samsung’s flagship S10 series, though it’s a bit late to the game here, given that others have already offered these kinds of lenses on their phones before. Still, if you are planning to get an S10, this new lens will come in handy for large group shots and landscape photos.

On the video front, Samsung promises better stabilization, UHD quality for both the rear and front cameras and HDR10+ support for the rear camera. That makes it the first phone to support HDR10+.

These days, though, it’s all about computational photography and, like its competitors, Samsung promises that its new cameras are also significantly smarter than its predecessors. Specifically, the company is pointing to its new scene optimizer for the S10 line, which uses the phone’s neural processing unit to recognize and process up to 30 different scenes and also offer shot suggestions to help you better frame the scene. Samsung says it analyzed more than 100 million professional photos to create the machine learning models to power this feature.

On the software side, Samsung now also offers a version of Adobe’s Premiere Rush, the company’s video editor that’s specifically geared toward editing on the go for YouTube. Oh, and the phones will also get a special Instagram mode.

Because we haven’t actually used the phones yet, though, it’s hard to say how much of a difference those AI smarts really make in day-to-day use.

After a seemingly endless stream of leaks over the past few weeks, there was essentially zero doubt that Samsung was announcing — amongst a bunch of other things — a new pair of wireless earbuds called the “Galaxy Buds” today.

Here they are.

Samsung says the Galaxy Buds should be able to pull around five hours of talk time, or six hours of music listening time. As with most of the other headliner devices Samsung has launched in recent years, sound tuning is handled by AKG (the acoustics brand Samsung bought alongside Harman in 2017).

The feature they’ll probably market the hardest, though, is the companion charging case. It plays friendly with the new PowerShare feature built into the just-announced Galaxy S10 line, allowing you to charge the case wirelessly by setting it on the rear side of the phone. It looks like this:

Samsung says the case should hold around seven additional hours of charge time, and can give the Buds about 1.5 hours’ worth of juice in roughly 15 minutes.

Samsung says the Galaxy Buds should cost $129.99, and should ship starting March 8th.

Story developing…

Reports of the headphone jack’s death are greatly exaggerated. Or more accurately, premature. All of the latest versions of Samsung’s Galaxy phones are equipped with a 3.5mm port, bucking the trend set by Apple and followed by Google. While the headphone jack might eventually die, right now, in 2019, it’s alive and could be a major selling point for the four versions of the Samsung Galaxy S10.

Apple ditched the 3.5mm jack back in 2016 with the introduction of the iPhone 7, and some of us still haven’t gotten over it. The port has been around for generations. The 3.5mm audio jack is universal and handy, allowing someone to grab a set of headphones, any headphones costing between $10 and $1,000, and connect it to their phone. But alas, Apple removed the port from the iPhone and several manufacturers, including Google, followed. But not Samsung.

While the rest of the industry turned its back on the 3.5mm jack, Samsung kept including it on its latest smartphones and started using it as an advertised feature. What was once standard to every phone became a selling point for Samsung. This isn’t the first time Samsung bucked trends and kept around legacy features to entice buyers.

Smartphones used to have expandable memory, but as flash storage size increased, manufacturers stopped including MicroSD card slots on its phones. Not Samsung. Expandable memory remains an option in the S10 announced today.

There’s a reason Samsung is the top smartphone maker in the world: It listens to its customers, and clearly its customers want the versatility of a 3.5mm headphone jack. I do.

Alas, the 3.5mm jack will not live forever. Eventually the industry will move past the analog connection once there’s a better solution. But that’s not right now. Today, in 2019, the headphone jack has a friend in Samsung.

Missed today’s Samsung Unpacked event in San Francisco? In all, we have five new phones — one of them a foldable — some new earbuds, a virtual assistant and a watch. Here’s everything you need to know.

Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, presented at Unpacked in San Francisco (Source: Samsung)

Samsung’s Galaxy Fold launches April 26, starting at $1,980

The last time we saw Samsung’s foldable onstage, it was, quite literally, shrouded in darkness. The company debuted a prototype of the upcoming device at a developer conference, showing its folding method and little else.

Samsung’s Galaxy S10 lineup arrives with four new models

For the 10th anniversary of the flagship line, Samsung is going all in on this thing. And with more information expected on Samsung’s upcoming foldable, well, that’s a lot of Samsungs.

Samsung’s ‘budget flagship’ the Galaxy S10e starts at $750

The S10e is the most interesting of the bunch — or at least the most interesting one that doesn’t sport 5G.

The Samsung S10 gets a 5G model

Never mind the fact that 5G is still a ways away in just about every market — Samsung’s taking an educated gamble that some percentage of its early adopting/cost is no object approach will get in early on the next generation of cellular technology.

Samsung’s Galaxy S10 has a built-in Instagram mode

A new partnership with Instagram will bring Stories directly to the camera app, without leaving Samsung’s default camera software.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 can wirelessly charge other phones

The feature relies on the S10’s large battery to charge other devices. The new feature should be compatible with all phones that charge via the Qi standard.

Samsung S10’s cameras get ultra-wide-angle lenses and more AI smarts

Unsurprisingly, one of the features that differentiates these models is the camera system. Gone are the days, after all, where one camera would suffice.

Here’s how all of Samsung’s new Galaxy S10’s compare

Want a quick at-a-glance breakdown of how they all compare? Here’s a handy chart so you know what to look for.

Samsung just announced a phone with 1TB of built-in storage

Three different storage options: 128GB, 512GB and 1 terabyte.

Samsung’s new Galaxy Watch Active tracks blood pressure

In the watch front, Samsung is embracing user health, much like the rest of the industry, including blood pressure tracking.

These are Samsung’s new Galaxy Buds

Wireless all the way. Samsung says the Galaxy Buds should be able to pull around five hours of talk time, or six hours of music listening time.

Samsung’s Bixby-powered Galaxy Home speaker will arrive ‘by April’

The product — as well as a rumored cheaper version — are a core part of Samsung’s push to make Bixby a key player in the smart home raise.

Samsung has sold 2 billion Galaxy phones

That’s a whole lot of Galaxy smartphones.

Want more? You can always watch a recording of today’s live stream.

If you’re doing ordinary photography and videography, there’s rarely any need to go beyond extreme wide-angle lenses — but why be ordinary? This absurd custom fisheye lens has a 270-degree field of view, meaning it can see behind the camera it’s mounted on — or rather the camera mounted on it.

It’s certainly a bit of fun from Lens Rentals, the outfit that put it together, but it’s definitely real and might even be useful. Their detailed documentation of how they put it together piece by piece is fascinating (at least I found it so) and gives an idea of how complex lens assemblies can be. Of course, this one’s not exactly standard, but still.

The C-4 Optics 4.9mm f/3.5 Hyperfisheye Prototype, as they call it (hereafter “the lens”) first appeared as what seemed at the time to be an April Fools’ joke, at best half-serious. “The Flying Saucer,” as they called it, AKA the Light Bender, AKA the Mother of all Fisheye Lenses, included a vaguely plausible optical diagram showing the path of light traveling from the far edge of its view, from about 45 degrees rearward of the camera.

Sure, why not? Because it’s ridiculous, that’s why not!

But the beautiful bastards did it anyway, and the results are as ridiculous as you’d imagine. There are lenses out there that produce past-180-degree images, but 270 is really quite beyond them. Here’s what the output looks like, raw on top and corrected below:

Naturally you wouldn’t want this for snapshots. It would be for very specific shots in high resolution that you would massage to get back to something resembling an ordinary field of view, or somehow incorporate into a VR or AR experience.

The camera has to mount in between the legs that support the lens, which is probably a rather fiddly process to undertake. The enormous lens cap, or “lens helmet,” doubles as an upside-down stand to ease the task.

It’s a fun project and adds one more weird thing (two, technically, since they built a second) to the world, so I support it wholeheartedly. Unfortunately because it’s a “passion project” it won’t be available for rent, so you’ll be stuck with something like the Nikon 6mm f/2.8, with its paltry 220-degree field of view. What’s even the point?