Samsung

When we reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S5 last year, the handset made a surprisingly good impression, thanks to its blazing performance, outstanding battery life, and a stunning Super AMOLED screen. We liked its thin, light and water-resistant build too - but the plastics used in its construction weren't exactly pleasant.

Indeed, however capable the Galaxy S5 was, it always felt like there was some magic and sparkle missing from it. It didn't feel as high-end as an HTC One, or as effortlessly beautiful as an iPhone, or even as rock-solid as a flagship Lumia.

After our recent discovery that our Samsung TV was sending voice recognition data over the internet unencrypted, they sent the following response:

“Samsung takes consumer privacy very seriously and our products are designed with privacy in mind. Our latest Smart TV models are equipped with data encryption and a software update will soon be available for download on other models."

Following reports of a potential acquisition last year, LoopPay, makers of a popular mobile payments service and one of ApplePay's largest competitors, has officially been acquired by Samsung.

 Samsung on Wednesday posted its fifth consecutive year-over-year decline in quarterly operating profits. And a big reason for that drop was the poor performance of its mobile business.

The South Korean company's IT and mobile communications division recorded a 64 percent drop in fourth-quarter operating profit from the year-ago period, to 2 trillion won ($1.8 billion). Only 37 percent of Samsung's operating profits came from its IT and mobile communications business in the December quarter compared with two-thirds a year earlier.

BlackBerry has unveiled its new mobile-device management and security platform and struck wide-ranging partnerships to bolster its capabilities, sending its shares more than 6 per cent higher.

BlackBerry said it would team up with Samsung to provide a "highly secure mobility solution" for Samsung's Android phones. The system couples the Canadian company's device management capability with the KNOX software embedded on Samsung's Galaxy phones and tablets, and will be available in early 2015, the companies said.

Samsung has smacked down claims that a major vulnerability has been discovered in Samsung KNOX security for Android, just days after it received approval from the US Government.

Samsung KNOX is an Android-based solution specifically designed to enhance security of the current open source Android platform.

In a fresh patent suit for the tech world, Nvidia is launching a legal battle against Qualcomm and Samsung. The processor maker filed formal complaints over seven patents with the International Trade Commission as well as at the U.S. District Court in Delaware.

Nvidia is arguing that both Qualcomm and Samsung have been infringing upon its GPU patents covering programmable shading, unified shaders and multithreaded parallel processing technologies.

If you thought the Samsung Galaxy Round was peculiar, get ready for another whole level of quirk. According to a Korean supplier of Samsung parts, the company has begun testing three-sided displays for potential application on mobile devices.

The technology has been rumored for quite some time, but it finally seems to have gained some steam, with sources claiming that such a device could go into production by the end of this year.

At this point, it's hard to say exactly what's going on in Microsoft's patent contract dispute with Samsung. The two companies may just be fighting out their contract terms or it could be the first shot at Microsoft's Android patent portfolio.

Microsoft's heavily redacted lawsuit was filed on August 1st in the US District Court in the Southern District of New York. In a blog posting by David Howard, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, claimed that the two companies have "a fundamental disagreement as to the meaning of our contract."

On Wednesday, a report from Forbes left some security experts scratching their heads, when a contributor for the publication reported that Samsung was throwing in the towel on the Knox platform.

Forbes contributor Bob Egan, who is the executive adviser and founder of the Sepharim Group, Samsung is walking away from Knox; a platform for Android designed to create secured environments to split personal and professional data on Samsung devices such as those in the Galaxy series.