After accidentally leaking it on its own Finnish website, Samsung has now gone official with its latest rugged smartphone. Called the Galaxy XCover Pro, the phone is built like a tank and is primarily intended for field workers and enterprises. It will go on sale for $499 in the United States sometime in the first half of 2020. Individual customers will be able to buy the Galaxy XCover Pro as well from Samsung’s website for the same price.
Being a rugged device, the Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro’s headlining feature is its thick exterior that is designed to withstand falls (of up to 5 feet) and other damages a regular glass phone won’t likely survive. It is IP68 dust and water-resistant and also MIL-STD 810G certified which essentially means it won’t die on you in extreme environments of high temperatures, altitudes, and more.
The other highlight that helps the Galaxy XCover Pro stand out is its removable battery. You can swap out the phone’s hefty 4,050mAh battery for a new pack (that is sold separately) when you don’t have a charger or outlet around just like the good ol’ days. In addition, it supports 15W fast-charging over a USB Type-C port.
What’s more, the Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro features a set of pogo pins for directly plugging in a range of external accessories like card readers, scanners, and more. It’s EMV Level 1 certified allowing businesses to use it as a point-of-sale terminal for accepting payments from NFC-equipped credit cards, phones, and watches.
Under the hood, the Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro offers a standard set of mid-range specs. There’s a 6.3-inch 1080p screen (that you can operate with gloves as well as wet fingers), a 2GHz octa-core Samsung Exynos 9611 chipset, Android 10, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of onboard storage that can be expanded via a MicroSD card.
There are two cameras on the back — a primary 25-megapixel sensor and a secondary 8-megapixel shooter. On the front, you’ll find a 13-megapixel selfie camera as well. Plus, a fingerprint sensor is available on the side housed under the power key. The phone even comes equipped with two programmable hardware keys, none of which are bound by default to the company’s virtual assistant, Bixby.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.