Samsung Focus: rumored BlackBerry Hub-ish interface for the Galaxy Note 6

BlackBerry's been struggling in recent years to resonate with modern smartphone users, but ask a few who stuck around and actually used the company's recent handsets and you'll probably find them all singing the praises of the same thing: the all-your-communication-in-one-spot BlackBerry Hub. Now a new rumor suggests that a very similar feature could soon be coming to Samsung phones.

Reportedly, we could see Samsung introduce this feature later this year with the debut of the Galaxy Note 6, where it looks set to arrive under the name Samsung Focus.

Samsung Focus is tipped to bring email from multiple sources together under one roof, offering a unified inbox that sounds perfect for busy users juggling a bunch of different accounts. Beyond that, we're supposed to see calendar access, contacts, and memos all popping up. We're not sure if that's a complete list of stuff that Focus will help streamline the way users access, but it looks like a solid start.

Viewing options could expand past standard temporal sorting to also include contextual groupings, letting users see all items related to specific tasks on their to-do lists, for example.

Maybe the most interesting thing about this rumor isn't the Hub-like feature set for Focus, but the design decisions Samsung's making in crafting the app: this might be one of the least Samsung-looking apps from the company ever. Instead, it could be a by-the-books Material Design UI with little in the way of extra flourishes distracting the user or complicating navigation.

While Samsung Focus is tipped to launch alongside the Galaxy Note 6, Samsung may not withhold the feature from earlier phones to emphasize it as a selling point for the GN6 and future Galaxy models, and it sounds possible we'll see it arrive as an update for current handsets like the Galaxy S7.

source: SamMobile