In around a month, Samsung is launching the hugely anticipated Galaxy Note 20 series. As always, the premium smartphone series will round out Samsung’s traditional slate of flagships for the year.

By itself, this fact isn’t a big surprise. Unless plans change drastically, the company always releases the next Galaxy Note series in August. However, as the launch date draws near, what can we expect from the series this year?

Fortunately, several leaks and rumors have already revealed almost everything about the upcoming series. From its hardware inside to what it looks like, we have a good idea of what the Galaxy Note 20 will launch with. Let’s take a look at what we know about the series so far.

Three devices or two?

Earlier this year, Samsung launched three variants of the Galaxy S20 series: the usual one-two punch and an ultra-premium Galaxy S20 Ultra. Naturally, everyone asked whether the next launch will also have three variants.

In one of the first leaks regarding the Galaxy Note 20 series, Ross Young revealed only two variants: the Note 20 and the Note 20+. The series will not have a third Ultra variant. Further, Ice Universe approved the leaks, adding some legitimacy to the claim.

However, despite the affirmation, Ice Universe continues to refer to the second device as the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, especially in subsequent leaks. Are there actually three phones coming? If there are just two, what will they call the second phone — the Note 20+ or the Note 20 Ultra?

The return of 120Hz

As we mentioned, Young’s leaks are the first ones we know about the series. Besides revealing the number of variants, he also mentions the continuation of the 120Hz LTPO screen and a slight bump in size for both variants. The Note 20 will have a 6.42-inch 2345 x 1084 resolution, 404ppi screen. The Note 20+ will have a 6.87-inch, 3096 x 1444 resolution, 497ppi screen

The leaked detail holds a lot of promise for the two devices’ picture quality and energy optimization. With lower power needed, the series can look brilliant even in an always-on mode.

Samsung cat tells all

Naturally, as time went on, the weight of the leaks got even more substantial. Just a few weeks ago, Ice Universe leaked the most comprehensive rundown of the series’ hardware so far.

For one, the leaker confirmed the Note 20 Ultra’s larger screen. However, it’s not just the size. Samsung is also reducing the bezels by a fair bit. All four sides have narrowed down by a fraction of a millimeter. Further, the punch-hole camera’s diameter is reducing by a full millimeter. Given how thin bezels are today, the reduction will be clearly noticeable on the upcoming device.

Concurrently, the account also reveals more about the hardware inside. According to two tweets, the Note 20 Ultra will sport the unreleased Snapdragon 865 Plus processor. Based on a separate rumor, Qualcomm will reportedly launch the upgraded chipset later this month, making it in time for the Note 20’s launch in August. That said, the upcoming chip will also grace the remaining devices in Samsung’s flagship lineup this year.

Additional speculations

Rounding out this list, Ice Universe also hints at a new camera feature and a new S Pen. We don’t know much about the Note 20’s cameras yet. According to a few leaked designs (which we’ll get to later), the rear will likely have three cameras. However, the performance remains a mystery.

If anything, Samsung was working on impressive 150-megapixel and 250-megapixel cameras earlier this year. The source claims that the former is already set for a launch this year, potentially for the Note 20 series. Since the Galaxy S20 series tops out at a 108-megapixel camera, it’s not far-fetched to assume a 150-megapixel shooter on the Note 20 series.

On the other hand, we haven’t heard a lot about the upcoming S Pen functionalities. Ice Universe leaks that the stylus will have a considerably reduced latency at 9 milliseconds, making it extra responsive to a user’s writing. Of course, latency is different from functionality. What can the Note 20’s S Pen do?

Perhaps the most obscure speculation about the stylus comes from a leaked patent early last year. Samsung filed an enigmatic patent for an S Pen built with a camera inside. The rumored spy pen got nowhere fast especially last year. However, patents are finicky. You’ll never know when they’ll pop up. Is this the S Pen’s unknown feature this year? We doubt it, but who knows?

What does it look like?

The leaks surrounding the series’ design are contentious. Some got nowhere, while some were simply wrong.

The first design leak comes from the tandem of OnLeaks and Pigtou (who previously leaked a pop-up camera from Samsung earlier this year). The duo created renders of what they thought the series will look like, based on rumors. Though substantial, the renders were simply just third-party renders. The world still wanted more controversial leaks from supposedly insider sources.

They got what they wanted with Ice Universe’s leak at first. The aforementioned hardware leaks came with a depicted phone which were assumed to be the Note 20 Ultra. Unfortunately, a lot of people were wrong (including us, admittedly). In a follow-up tweet, the leaker revealed that they were actually just photos of the Note 10+ used for representation.

Dispelling all of this confusion, Samsung accidentally leaked the device’s design themselves. In a rare hiccup, the company’s Russian website mistakenly displayed the Note 20 Ultra in the pinkish Mystic Bronze color. In one go, Samsung destroyed all rumors and revealed so much about the upcoming device already, including the triple rear cameras and the sleek S Pen.

When is it coming?

To cap everything off, we turn to the very first time the Note 20 was ever mentioned. In an earnings report released earlier than Ross Young’s leaks, Samsung confirmed that the Note 20 series will still come as scheduled — that is, in August.

Further, a recent report confirms an impending launch window between August and October for three unreleased devices. As expected, August will host the Note 20 series. Meanwhile, September and October will debut the Galaxy Fold 2 and the Galaxy S20 Lite.

It won’t be long now before the Note 20 series launch. Though we know a lot about the series already, Samsung can still surprise us with a few tricks up its sleeve.

SEE ALSO: Samsung Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+ Review

Having long-lasting device is a must when you need to stay connected.  When Samsung proudly introduced the Galaxy M31 with a  6,000mAh battery, it’s like god heard my woes. No more reliance on power banks and hogging wall sockets!

But how long does a 6000mAh battery last, especially for someone who’s overly attached to his smartphone? To find the answer, we fully charged a Galaxy M31 to see if it will last more than my ex-flings (or a day, in this case).

Hour 00: Making you mine

It was 2:20 PM when I took the fully charged Galaxy M31 to finish setting it up, and personalize it as my new daily driver for god knows how long. If you’re familiar with Samsung’s One UI 2.0, navigating the phone is a breeze.

I installed my essential apps — particularly Spotify — and spent at least an hour and a half to finish personalizing the phone. It was almost four in the afternoon when I decided to take a nap, with the battery currently sitting at 96 percent.

Hour 02: Vibing with your quirks

Thirty minutes later, I woke up from incessant sweating caused by a vexatious, humid atmosphere. When I checked the phone, I wasn’t surprised to see it drop to 95 percent. After all, Spotify was still playing on the background. I started prepping up to take a bath while dancing to “Mamma Mia” (I do hope youngins still know this classic).

Most of my Sundays are usually spent doing different hobbies, but having to test a phone’s battery life derailed my perfectly laid up weekend plan.

In lieu of doing things that feed my soul, I watched The Half Of It on Netflix and played Mobile Legends: Bang Bang in between supper, hourly snacks, skincare, and prepping myself to sleep.

Hour 08: Quarter good

Even with an annoying notch, watching and playing on a Super AMOLED screen is still a treat. I’m accustomed to using flagship smartphones, but the Galaxy M31 packed a punch for a midrange phone.

It’s powered by an Exynos 9611 chipset (which caused some heating), and a 6B RAM, and 128GB internal storage. A hiccup-free experience is guaranteed!

It was 10:10 PM when I turned the Wi-Fi off so I can sleep peacefully. The battery currently sits at 76 percent.

Hour 15: Staying strong

My nights are constantly haunted by my crushing regrets. In between interrupted periods of sleep, the phone’s battery sat at 75 percent. I decided to get out of the bed around 5 in the morning, planning a full day ahead.

I started catching up with news while hydrating myself with lemon water. Afterward, I opened my favorite app — Nike Training Club — to perform morning stretches. It offers quick, guided workouts for different purposes: strength, endurance, mobility, and flexibility.

Before I start my workout, I brought along my Galaxy Buds and Galaxy Fit E. If you’re deep into Samsung’s ecosystem, you’ll be disappointed with the unavailability of Galaxy Buds’ plugin, so no wireless listening for you. Although, you can rely on the Galaxy M31’s loudspeakers. Thankfully, the phone still connects seamlessly with my Galaxy Fit E.

At 6:25 AM, the battery dropped to 70 percent after conducting my morning routine. Do note that Spotify is constantly playing, even when I’m not actively using my phone. (Life without music sucks.)

Hour 17: Picture-perfect memories

It was almost seven in the morning when I started shooting a friend’s baked goods. As I sung to Taylor Swift’s “Death by a Thousand Cuts”, I let myself have fun using the Galaxy M31’s quad-camera setup.

I wrapped up around 7:19 AM with a 67 percent battery life. I took a bath and drove to Starbucks to get my favorite cold brew. Along the way, I took some selfies and snaps and uploaded them to Instagram Stories.

Hour 20 to 28: The last hurrah

I was back at my desk around 10 AM and started my daily grind. The phone sat at 43 percent after heavy and constant usage. I pulled my laptop and started working. Even with a bigger screen, I still used my phone to respond to messages, moderate social media pages, and watch on Netflix while eating.

The phone’s battery dipped to 15 percent at 6:48 PM, when my shift was about to end. To my astonishment, the Galaxy M31 lasted more than 28 hours on a single charge.

I charged the device at 7:08 PM and left it while I had dinner, took a bath, and did some house chores. It took at least three hours to fully charge the device from 15 to 95 percent, using its 15W fast charging adapter via USB-C.

On a side note, the Galaxy M31’s battery is such a rocker when left on standby mode. On a Tuesday afternoon, I left a fully charged Galaxy M31 in a safe. I checked back Saturday afternoon, and I was surprised to see its battery dipped from 100 percent to 33 percent.

Is it your GadgetMatch?

Summing it up, the Galaxy M31 is a capable and dependable midrange smartphone. It offers reliable performance with a battery that can keep up with you for more than a day. If you’re a power user looking for an affordable handset with no bells and whistles, this one is for you.

The Galaxy M31 is currently available in Black and Blue and retails for PhP 13,990 (US$ 283). It’s online-exclusive and will be available for purchase at Samsung’s Online store.

Your smartphone is capable of gathering and collecting personal information. As such, malicious hackers are always looking for ways to break into your phone to gain that valuable information. Meanwhile, big tech companies and governments are actively developing discrete methods of tracking you through your smartphone.

Thus, it is important to protect your smartphone’s privacy and security. However, it can be daunting to do that if you don’t know where to begin. With many privacy and security guidelines out there, it can be confusing where to look for protection.

Luckily, it’s easy to make your phone more private and secure. These tips are easy to do, and can be accomplished in an hour. Remember though, that the level of protection varies for different people.

These tips aren’t intended for the privacy paranoid. Instead, they act as tips on ensuring that you have the baseline privacy and security protection for your smartphone.

1. Change your device’s privacy settings

“It starts with you,” so the saying goes. The same tip also applies to making your device more private and secure. You have to start by changing your device’s setting.

Unfortunately for you, some default settings actually harm your device’s privacy and security. For example, your device may have analytics turned on by default — this violates privacy by sending data to third-party companies without your consent.

Changing the default privacy settings in iOS is simple and intuitive. All you need to do is to head over to the Settings app and scroll to the Privacy menu down below. Here, you’ll see a lot of things that you can change.

On the Android side, you’ll usually find the privacy settings for your device on the list of menus under your phone’s settings app. Like in iOS, you’ll see a lot of things that you can change to make your device more private.

These include limiting or opting out of ad personalization, turning off analytics, and changing notifications to display only the app name.

2. Review individual app permissions

Most apps that you use every day ask for permissions. These act as barriers that stop apps from mindlessly retrieving sensitive data.

Treat permissions as a powerful tool for safeguarding your privacy and security. Likewise, most permissions are important enough that you need to be more mindful of what apps you’re allowing and not allowing.

Common permissions include access to the camera, microphone, contacts, SMS, and location. There’s no exact rule to determining what permission should be allowed for an app.

However, as a general rule of thumb, know first the advertised function of a certain app. A calculator app shouldn’t ask for your microphone if, in the first place, it doesn’t tout voice input as a function.

For messaging apps, you’ll obviously need to allow contacts and SMS access. These apps will also need the camera and microphone access for video calling purposes.

Social media apps commonly require access to contacts, camera, and location. Meanwhile, utility apps should have minimum permissions from the get-go.

3. Use a VPN

You may have heard about someone using a VPN to unblock shows from Netflix or view restricted websites. Basically, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) routes your connection to multiple servers around the world. As such, you also end up with an IP address that hides your real location.

This is a huge deal especially for some websites or services that hide content depending on a user’s location. It’s also a boon for your privacy and security.

VPNs also protect your privacy by feeding false location information to most advertisers on the web. Most websites today have ads that track users wherever they go. Companies have sophisticated methods of tracking and building user profiles. This violates users’ privacy and security.

There are a lot of VPN services to choose from in this day and age. However, some VPN services actually leak sensitive information. On top of that, some of them have monthly data allocation and speed caps.

Some of the reputable VPN services out there include ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access, TunnelBear, and NordVPN. It’s also worth checking out Mullvad, SurfShark, and IPVanish.

Configuring VPNs is easy. You just have to follow the instructions given by your selected VPN provider.

4. Install messaging apps with encryption.

We use messaging apps to stay connected with our friends and families. However, not all messaging apps are built equally.

Some messaging apps don’t implement end-to-end encryption (E2E encryption), allowing malicious hackers and third-party companies to access your valuable information without your permission.

End-to-end encryption protects your valuable data by making your messages hard to read for hackers and companies. That means that even if a company that owns a messaging app gets hacked, they will only see random blobs of data instead of other people’s messages.

By now, most messaging apps in the market use end-to-end encryption. However, most apps only encrypt your data while in transit, which means that your message is safe while it travels across servers.

The messages that reside in your device aren’t encrypted at all, so hackers and companies can retrieve any information using sophisticated methods such as apps that harvest data in the background.

There are quite a good number of messaging apps that offer full E2E encryption. One of the most popular is Signal — a messaging app used by the famous NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. You only use a mobile number to create a Signal account, mitigating the need for emails and passwords. It also has quite an extensive list of features that even rival Facebook Messenger.

Other apps that offer full E2E encryption includes ThreeMa, WhatsApp, and Wire. Telegram and Viber also offer E2E encryption by default.

5. Consider using a secure browser

Chances are, the browser that you’re using today is Google Chrome. Many people use Chrome since its fast, simple, and just works.

However, it’s also one of the worst browsers to use for safeguarding personal privacy and security. After all, it is owned by Google. It’s common knowledge by now that Google thrives on a business that doesn’t totally safeguard your privacy and security.

There are other browsers out there that offer a better private browsing mode. Among them is Mozilla Firefox, which offers tracking prevention by default. Firefox’s tracking prevention blocks ads and other web elements that try to gather personal information as you browse the web.

Other browsers that have tracking prevention includes Microsoft Edge and Brave Browser. Safari also blocks trackers now, and you’ll see privacy reports in the future as part of macOS Big Sur.

You may have also heard of Tor Browser. Using Tor Browser is recommended if you want your browsing activity to be more private and secure. Keep in mind though, that browsing is much slower since it routes your network connection to different servers all around the world.

6. Store passwords with a password manager.

In this day and age, you should be using a password manager to manage your website logins. After using one, you’ll wonder why you haven’t used one sooner.

Password managers are convenient. Most of them feature one-click autofill which automatically fills in your username and password in the corresponding field. You’ll no longer have to enter your information manually. On top of that, you protect your privacy against snoopers.

Most password managers can also generate strong passwords for you. You don’t have to think about what unique word you’ll use when asked for a password.

More importantly, you no longer have to reuse an old password which just increases the chances of a hacker gaining access to your accounts. Some even have a password monitor feature, which alerts you if the password you used was retrieved by hackers.

Some of the best password managers out there include LastPass, Dashlane, and Bitwarden.

BONUS: Don’t give your personal info in an instant

This sounds simple but it’s something that we need to share with everyone. Especially our loved ones who don’t know better about giving out their personal information.

This not only applies in the digital world but also in the real world. After all, someone is bound to mishandle or abuse your personal data. The best course of action is to always ask if sensitive information is needed at all.

In digital terms, that means checking out an app or a website’s privacy policy for any mention of what data is needed to gain access to their service. However, privacy policies tend to get long, so we might be lazy enough to know why a piece of data is needed.

As a rule of thumb, always exercise caution when giving out personal information. If possible, limit any personal information to your name, email address, mobile number, and approximate location.

Making your device more secure and private doesn’t have to be tedious. These simple tips are easy enough to follow but will ensure a more private experience for you and your device.

These tips, however, only scratch the surface. Ensuring your device is private and secure is a proactive approach that requires one to be cautious of their data at all times.