It’s hard to go a full day without some big news regarding Samsung.
There’s a combination of news hits relating to the Galaxy Note 7, and none of it is good. Samsung Electronics released its earnings guidance (what it expects its numbers to look like) for Q3 2016, and both sales and operating profit are about flat from Q2 — that doesn’t bode well for its Q4, which is traditionally big thanks to the holiday buying season.
At the same time, U.S. carriers seem to be backing off from the Note 7, offering refunds and exchanges for customers no matter what the situation, even if they already own a new safe model. This story doesn’t seem to show any signs of slowing down, unfortunately.
Beyond that, a few other things happened in the world of Android today, including more LG V20 launch news, and a few points beyond that. Here’s what you need to know.
Samsung’s Q3 2016 earnings guidance points to profit drop
The preliminary earnings numbers show sales and profit are down slightly from Q2, but are actually up from Q3 2015. We’ll have to see the full earnings report — and particularly the Q4 report — to know how much of the effect is from the Note 7 recall.
U.S. carriers re-open Note 7 exchange programs
Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon will again take back your Note 7 for a refund or exchange, even if you’ve already replaced it once. The decisions come as stories about Note 7 malfunctions continue to come out, even as the recall process wraps up. More
Verizon has a big ad push lined up for the Google Pixels
Reuters reports that on top of Google’s own big ad buys, Verizon will be making its own push up to the holidays:
[Verizon] will make a significant investment of its own in TV, digital marketing and social media, from around the phone’s Oct 20 launch through the holiday season.
Sprint announces its LG V20 launch plans
Pre-orders will kick off on October 21 for a full launch on the 28th, which lines up with the launch date on T-Mobile and AT&T. Sprint hasn’t dropped pricing on us just yet, but we know you’ll get a free pair of B&O H3 headphones ($150 value) with your order.
Still using Prisma? It has an offline mode now
Prisma now features an offline mode, which lets you process the varying artsy filters with your device’s CPU rather than have it all done over the air. That’s great news for your data allowance and if you’re a frequent user of the app you won’t run into the “Prisma is over capacity” prompts that occur from time to time.
Offline mode will only be available on devices running Android 5.0 and above, though the company said it’s working on KitKat compatibility. There’s also a video conversion mode, as reported by TechCrunch, that’s coming soon to Android.
