Samsung Software Developer Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

1. Online test in campus (1 question, 3hrs - 2018)/
2. Group discussion
3. In person campus interview

3 hr test 1 question

Q1. Leetcode medium and projects
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Q1. General hr question
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The aptitude test is about your basic knowledge in software developing.

Q1. What are the basic role of JAVA in the development of software?
Ans. 
JAVA is a versatile programming language used for developing various software applications.
• JAVA is platform-independent and can run on any operating system

• It is object-oriented and supports multithreading

• JAVA is widely used for developing web applications, mobile applications, and enterprise software

• It provides a vast library of pre-built classes and APIs for developers to use

• JAVA is also used for developing games, sci
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Round duration - 90 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

It was conducted on the cubes platform. We were given 2 coding questions to solve in 90 minutes.

I solved both the problems within 25 min and checked for different test cases manually for more than 15 mins. There were only two test cases were visible and the rest are hidden. Even After submission, they didn’t show us whether all test cases pass not. So, before submission doesn’t forget to check for corner cases manually. One needs to pass all test cases as low as time possible.

Q1. 
Next Greater Number Problem Statement
Given a string S which represents a number, determine the smallest number strictly greater than the original number composed of the same digits. Each digit's frequenc...read more
Ans. Greedy Implementation
• First of all, we shall consider some base cases before moving on to the actual solution.
  • If all the digits are sorted in ascending order, then just swap the last two digits, and return them, since it will give us the next greater number.
  • If all the digits are sorted in descending order, then return -1, since we will not have any greater number than the given number which may contain the same set of d...read more
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Q2. 
Check if Two Trees are Mirror
Given two arbitrary binary trees consisting of 'N' and 'M' number of nodes respectively, your task is to check whether the two trees are mirror images of each other or not.
...read more
Ans. Recursive Approach
Traverse the tree T in preorder fashion and treat every node of the given tree T as the root, treat it as a subtree and compare the corresponding subtree with the given subtree S for equality. For checking the equality, we can compare all the nodes of the two subtrees.
 
For two trees ‘S’ and ‘T’ to be mirror images, the following three conditions must be true:
1. Their root node’s data must be the sam...read more
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Round duration - 120 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was an online coding round where we had 3 questions to solve under 120 minutes. The questions were of medium to hard difficulty level.

Q1. 
Trapping Rain Water Problem Statement
You are given a long type array/list ARR of size N, representing an elevation map. The value ARR[i] denotes the elevation of the ith bar. Your task is to determine th...read more
Ans. 
Approach :

1) Create two lists or arrays, say, ‘leftMax’ and ‘rightMax’.
2) At every index in the ‘leftMax’ array store the information of the ‘leftMaxHeight’ for every elevation in the map.
3) Similarly, at every index in the ‘rightMax’ array store the information of the ‘rightMaxHeight' for every elevation in the map.
4) Iterate over the elevation map and find the units of water that can be stored at this location by get...read more
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Q2. 
Shortest Path in a Binary Matrix Problem Statement
Given a binary matrix of size N * M where each element is either 0 or 1, find the shortest path from a source cell to a destination cell, consisting only...read more
Ans. 
Approach (Using BFS) :

1) Create an empty queue and enqueue source cell and mark it as visited

2) Declare a ‘STEPS’ variable, to keep track of the length of the path so far

3) Loop in level order till the queue is not empty
3.1) Fetch the front cell from the queue
3.2) If the fetched cell is the destination cell, return ‘STEPS’
3.3) Else for each of the 4 adjacent cells of the current cell, we enqueue each valid cell into th...read more
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Q3. 
Count Leaf Nodes in a Binary Tree
Count the number of leaf nodes present in a given binary tree. A binary tree is a data structure where each node has at most two children, known as the left child and the...read more
Ans. 
Approach : 

1) Given a tree node ROOT, initialise a queue of nodes NODEQUEUE and COUNT by 0.

2) Push ROOT into NODEQUEUE.

3) While NODEQUEUE is not empty do:
3.1) Initialize node TEMP as NODEQUEUE.peek().
3.2) If TEMP.left is not NULL, push TEMP.left to NODEQUEUE.
3.3) If TEMP.right is not NULL, push TEMP.right to NODEQUEUE.
3.4) If TEMP.right and TEMP.left are both NULL, increase COUNT by 1.

4) Return COUNT

TC : O(N), whe
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

In this round I was first asked 2 questions related to DSA where I was expected to first explain my approach to the interviewer along with proper complexity analysis and then code the implementation in any of my preferred IDE. This was followed by some questions related to OOPS and C++.

Q1. 
Find The Repeating And Missing Number Problem Statement
You are provided with an array nums which contains the first N positive integers. In this array, one integer appears twice, and one integer is missi...read more
Ans. 
Approach 1 :

1) We use a count array to store the frequency.
2) We initialize the count array to zero for all the numbers.
3) Now, iterate through the array and increment the corresponding frequency count of the numbers.
4) Now, we iterate through the count (frequency) array.
5) The number with a frequency equal to zero is the missing number while the number with a frequency equal to two
is the repeating number.

TC : O(N), wh...read more
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Q2. 
Count Pairs with Given Sum
Given an integer array/list arr and an integer 'Sum', determine the total number of unique pairs in the array whose elements sum up to the given 'Sum'.
Input:
The first line c...read more
Ans. 
Approach : 

1) Create a hashmap/dictionary which will store the count of occurrences of each element and initially it will be empty.

2) Run a loop from i=0 to N-1 and for each i’th element its value is arr[i] and we need to find the number which is equal to Sum - arr[i]. So check if sum-arr[i] is present in the hashmap/dictionary. If it is present, the answer will be increased by the count of occurrence of sum-arr[i...read more
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Q3. What is the difference between a structure and a union, and what are the pros and cons of both?
Ans. 
Answer :

Structure : Structure is a user-defined data type in C programming language that combines logically related data
items of different data types together.
All the structure elements are stored at contiguous memory locations. Structure type variable can store more than
one data item of varying data types under one name.

Union : Union is a user-defined data type, just like a structure. Union combines objects of differe...read more
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Q4. How does C++ support polymorphism?
Ans. 
C++ is an Object-oriented programming language and it supports Polymorphism as well:

Compile Time Polymorphism: C++ supports compile-time polymorphism with the help of features like templates, function overloading, and default arguments.

Runtime Polymorphism: C++ supports Runtime polymorphism with the help of features like virtual functions. Virtual functions take the shape of the functions based on the type of object in
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round had 3 questions from DSA which I had to code under 60 minutes and then the interviewer asked some questions from Operating Systems and Android as I did a project in Mobile App Development.

Q1. 
Spiral Order Traversal of a Binary Tree
Given a binary tree with N nodes, your task is to output the Spiral Order traversal of the binary tree.
Input:
The input consists of a single line containing elem...read more
Ans. 
Approach : 

1) We will maintain two stacks, one for each direction i.e. leftToRight and rightToleft.

2) We will do a level order traversal of the given binary tree and push nodes of each level onto one of the stack according to the current direction of traversal.

3) After we’ve pushed all nodes of a level onto one stack, we’ll start popping those nodes. While popping the nodes we will push their children (if any) ont...read more
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Q2. 
Stack using Two Queues Problem Statement
Develop a Stack Data Structure to store integer values using two Queues internally.
Your stack implementation should provide these public functions:
Explanation:
...read more
Ans. 
Approach : A stack can be implemented using two queues. Let stack to be implemented be ‘s’ and queues used to implement be ‘q1’ and ‘q2’. Stack ‘s’ can be implemented in two ways :

Method 1 (push - O(1) , pop - O(n) ) :

1) push(s, x) operation :
i) Enqueue x to q1 (assuming size of q1 is unlimited).

2) pop(s) operation :
i) One by one dequeue everything except the last element from q1 and enqueue to q2.
ii) Dequeue the last ...read more
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Q3. 
Convert a Binary Tree to its Sum Tree
Given a binary tree of integers, convert it to a sum tree where each node is replaced by the sum of the values of its left and right subtrees. Set leaf nodes to zero.
...read more
Ans. 
Approach : 

1) Traverse a given binary tree.
2) While traversing the given binary tree, store the old value of the current node, recursively call for left and right subtrees.
3) Now change the value of the current node as the sum of the values returned by the recursive calls of left and right subtrees.
4) Finally, return the sum of the new value and value (which is the sum of values in the subtree rooted with this nod...read more
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Q4. What is meant by multitasking and multithreading in operating systems?
Ans. 
Answer :

Multitasking : It refers to the process in which a CPU happens to execute multiple tasks at any given time. CPU
switching occurs very often when multitasking between various tasks. This way, the users get to collaborate with
every program together at the same time. Since it involves rapid CPU switching, it requires some time. It is because
switching from one user to another might need some resources. The processes...read more
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Q5. What is Android?
Ans. 
Android is an open-sourced operating system that is used on mobile devices, such as mobiles and tablets. The Android application executes within its own process and its own instance of Dalvik Virtual Machine(DVM) or Android RunTime(ART).
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Round duration - 120 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was an online coding round where we had 3 questions to solve under 120 minutes. The questions were of medium to hard difficulty level.

Q1. 
Triplets with Given Sum Problem
Given an array or list ARR consisting of N integers, your task is to identify all distinct triplets within the array that sum up to a specified number K.
Explanation:
A t...read more
Ans. 
Approach : 

1) Sort the array in ascending order.

2) Now since we want triplets such that x + y + z = ‘K’, we have x+ y = ‘K’ - z and now we can fix z as arr[i]. So we want to find the sum of two numbers x and y as ‘K’ - arr[i] in the array.

3) We will use two pointers, one will start from i+1, and the other will start from the end of the array.

4) Let the two pointers be ‘FRONT’ and ‘BACK’, where ‘FRONT’ = i + 1 and ...read more
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Q2. 
Minimum Operation Needed to Convert to the Given String
You are given two strings str1 and str2. Determine the minimum number of operations required to transform str1 into str2.
Explanation:
An operatio...read more
Ans. 
Approach : I solved this problem using 2-pointer technique. 

1) Initialize the first pointer to the start of str1 and the second pointer to the start of the str2.

2) Now increase the first pointer till the character pointed by the first pointer in str1 matches the character at the second pointer in str2. And the number of character which did not match should be placed at the end of str1. Therefore increase our answe...read more
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Q3. 
Power of Two Problem Statement
Determine whether a given integer N is a power of two. Return true if it is, otherwise return false.
Explanation
An integer 'N' is considered a power of two if it can be e...read more
Ans. 
Approach : If a number N is power of 2 then bitwise & of N and N-1 will be zero. We can say N is a power of 2 or not based on the value of N&(N-1). The expression N&(N-1) will not work when N is 0.
So,handle that case separately.

TC : O(1)
SC : O(1)
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

Q1. 
Merge K Sorted Arrays Problem Statement
Given 'K' different arrays that are individually sorted in ascending order, merge all these arrays into a single array that is also sorted in ascending order.
Inpu...read more
Ans. 
Approach 1 (Brute Force) : 

Create an output array and and one by one copy all arrays to it. Finally, sort the output array using. This approach takes O(N Logn N) time where N is count of all elements.

Approach 2 (Using Min-Heap) :

1. Create an output array. 
2. Create a min heap of size k and insert 1st element in all the arrays into the heap 
3. Repeat following steps while priority queue is not empty. ...read more
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Q2. 
Spiral Order Traversal of a Binary Tree
Given a binary tree with N nodes, your task is to output the Spiral Order traversal of the binary tree.
Input:
The input consists of a single line containing elem...read more
Ans. 
Approach 1 (Using Level Order Traversal) : 

Steps : 
1) Initialize an array ‘spiral’ to store the result.
2) Initialize a variable ‘direction’ to keep track of traversing direction with 1(denoting left to right)
3) Find the height of the given tree and store it in a variable ‘height’.
4) Run a loop - level : 1 to height, to traverse through every level.
4.1) Find level order traversal in the current direction.and s...read more
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Q3. What is the difference between a structure and a union, and what are the pros and cons of each?
Ans. 
Answer : 

Structure : Structure is a user-defined data type in C programming language that combines logically related data items of different data types together.
All the structure elements are stored at contiguous memory locations. Structure type variable can store more than one data item of varying data types under one name.

Union : Union is a user-defined data type, just like a structure. Union combines objects of...read more
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round had 2 questions related to Trees and Graphs and some questions revolving around types of Operating Systems their pros and cons.

Q1. 
Binary Tree Diameter Problem Statement
You are given a Binary Tree, and you need to determine the length of the diameter of the tree.
The diameter of a binary tree is the length of the longest path betwe...read more
Ans. 
Approach 1 :

Steps : 

1) If the ‘root’ node is NULL, return 0. The diameter of an empty tree is 0.
2) Recur for the left subtree and store the diameter of the left subtree in a variable ‘leftDiameter’, i.e. 
‘leftDiameter’ = getDiameter(left child of the root node)
3) Similarly, recur for the right subtree and store the diameter of the right subtree in a variable 
‘rightDiameter’ i.e. ‘rightDiameter’ = getDiam...read more
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Q2. 
Shortest Path in a Binary Matrix Problem Statement
Given a binary matrix of size N * M where each element is either 0 or 1, find the shortest path from a source cell to a destination cell, consisting only...read more
Ans. 
Approach : I solved this problem using BFS.

Breadth-First-Search considers all the paths starting from the source and moves ahead one unit in all those paths at the same time. This makes sure that the first time when the destination is visited, it is the path with the shortest length.

Steps : 

1) Create an empty queue and enqueue source cell and mark it as visited
2) Declare a ‘STEPS’ variable, to keep track of the le...read more
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