You can buy a Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition inside Best Buy stores this Friday, March 27th

After Samsung began allowing casuals to test drive the Gear VR at their local Best Buy, the virtual reality headset will officially make its retail debut this Friday, March 27th. That’s when the Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition — powered by Oculus — will hit more than 100 Best Buy retail locations across the US (with additional locations throughout the year), meaning you’ll officially be able to walk in, test it out, and walk out with a Gear VR if you like what you see.

If you’re still on the fence about the virtual reality craze, our own Kevin Krause was probably the biggest skeptic, but later raved about the Gear VR in his full review. The Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition is only compatible with the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 as of now (there are workarounds), but an official Galaxy S6 version is also expected sometime down the road. In case you missed it, we got a chance to play with that model during this year’s Mobile World Congress and were basically blow away.

The Gear VR simulates movement using your smartphone’s motion sensors and displays dual-images to each eye for an added 3D effect. While there isn’t too much VR content at the moment, the list is definitely growing. It was last week YouTube added support for 360-degree 3D videos via their Android app and Chrome, while Samsung has their own app for watching immersive 3D videos via the Milk VR app. Oh, and if “adult” entertainment is more your thing (we wont judge), we already got people are already working on that too.

The Gear VR IE is currently available online at BestBuy.com for 0 but if you’re interested in waiting until Friday, you can find a list of Best Buy locations where you can walk in and buy one right here.

SanDisk was able to stuff 200GB of storage space inside their latest microSD card

You thought SanDisk’s 128GB microSD cards were insane? The company has just announced another huge milestone — a whopping 200GB of data inside a chip smaller than the size of a nickle. It’s a UHS-1 Class 10 chip, which means it can transfer data at up to 90 megabytes per second.

So why not 256GB, the natural step up from 128GB? It’s likely SanDisk was unable to physically fit enough circuitry, doodads and whatever else makes these things tick inside such a compact form factor. It’s possible that could change with refined engineering techniques in the future, but for now this is as high as it gets.

You shouldn’t bat an eyelash at 200GB. It’s absolutely insane, and it’s even crazier to know that it can work in any device that supports microSDXC cards of 64GB or higher (which includes the newly-announced HTC One M9, but unfortunately not the just-as-fresh Samsung Galaxy S6).

Of course, you’d have to be willing to spend the 0 that this thing will cost to start so if you have that sort of money to throw around on micro storage chips you’ll likely be able to afford a smartphone that can utilize it. The chips are due Q2 2015.

[via SanDisk]

This is what the inside of a Samsung Galaxy S6 looks like

When you get you first look at the inside of a Samsung Galaxy S6 you might begin to understand why Samsung had to do away with a replaceable battery. Stuff is packed in their tight, so much so that even removing the battery looks like a giant pain.

MyFixGuide did the honors of providing the first teardown of the phone. As we suspected, the glass isn’t coming off the back plate easily without some hot air gun action, and just as we heard in Samsung’s manual there are a good deal of screws to deal with after the fact. Once inside you’ll be rewarded with a view of some impressive engineering work and a collection of quality components.

These teardown guides serve to show the process of getting into a phone’s inner bits for purposes of repair, but they’re not to be meant as guides for your average consumer. That is to say, you shouldn’t be trying to replicate the process at home — best to stick to a Samsung repair technician or anyone with a fair amount of experience and knowledge on assembling and taking apart smartphones. Head to the jump if you want to take a look at the full gamut.

[via MyFixGuide]

Google introduces cross-platform goo.gl URLs for deep linking inside of apps

Google is supercharging their goo.gl short URLs with the ability to deep link into apps. Developers that have taken advantage of Google’s new App Indexing — available on both Android and iOS — can create goo.gl URLs that take users to specific places inside their app, or by default, their website.

For instance, clicking on one of these new goo.gl URLs will auto-detect the specific platform (either Android or iOS) and whether or not they have a specific app installed. If the app is installed, the app will open directly to the content. If the app isn’t installed, the user will simply be directed to the website. Simple.

Google says the new feature actually works retroactively, so any old goo.gl URLs will still work by linking users to an app. To get started, developers will need to integrate Google’s new URL Shortener API into their app’s share flow. Here’s are the steps needed to set everything up.

Set up app deep linking on goo.gl:

1. Complete the necessary steps to participate in App Indexing for Android and iOS at g.co/AppIndexing. Note that goo.gl deep links are open to all iOS developers, unlike deep links from Search currently. After this step, existing goo.gl short links will start deep linking to your app.


2. Optionally integrate the URL Shortener API with your app’s share flow, your email campaigns, etc. to programmatically generate links that will deep link directly back to your app.

When opened, the link auto-detects the user’s platform and if they have Maps installed. If the user has the app installed, the short link opens the content directly in the Android or iOS Maps app. If the user doesn’t have the app installed or is on desktop, the short link opens the page on the Maps website.

[Google]