Above: Samsung’s new Note 20 Ultra and Note 20. Photos courtesy Samsung.

Originally published in Newday’s BusinessDay for August 06, 2020

The message from Samsung at Wednesday’s Unpacked 2020 event was unequivocal; the company’s new devices are focused on helping users to personally empowered.

According to Samsung president TM Roh, the company set out to deliver devices that, “Work like a computer, play like a game console.”
Samsung launched five new devices at the virtual event, but there’s even more coming as it works with regulators and develops its software backend to enable more of the features it promised.

The new devices are new versions of the Galaxy smartwatch, now at version three, a second pass at new elegantly kidney-shaped, noise-cancelling earbuds that nestle into the well of the user’s ear and new tablet, Note and ZFold devices.

The entire line has been dipped in a new signature colour, a liquid bronze colour that Samsung calls Mystic Bronze. Alternate colours also get the Mystic moniker, but it’s unclear whether putting a glossy shine on black and white finishes will be as dramatic a departure.

The Note Ultra is the new top of the line device from Samsung, the regular Note now demoted to a flat screen and the slightly larger Ultra sporting the line’s wrapped infinity screen.

The finish is achieved in different ways on the Note 20, which is layered on polycarbonate, while the Ultra uses etched glass.
Both devices boast a tougher Gorilla glass screen, fast charge technology that will restore 50 per cent charge in 30 minutes and a doubling of the refresh rate of the screen from 60 to 120 mHz.

The difference in the faster screen redraw will be most obvious in video viewing and gaming.
The SPen, a ten-year-old innovation that made using a stylus part of the Note’s smartphone experience, gets another update with the new Note series as Samsung addressed latency, or lag issues with using the device by introducing AI-based point prediction, which guesses where the pen will go next on the screen to improve tracking.

Coupled with the faster screen refresh, Samsung claims to have dropped latency while using the SPen to nine milliseconds.
That new technology is also present on the new Galaxy Tab S7 and S7 Ultra, new tablet devices from the company that target the size, form factor and usability of Apple’s iPad Pro devices directly.

The new Tab devices get the crisp Super-Amoled screen technology that Samsung has been using on its smartphones for the last few generations and introduce a split-screen technology that allows three apps to run simultaneously on screen.

The Tab devices also link to Samsung’s recent smartphones to allow users to place and answer calls on a linked tablet.
An even more compelling device synergy was introduced by Microsoft’s Phillip McClure who announced the early fruits of a collaboration between the two companies launched at last year’s Unpacked event that knits Samsung’s smartphones and tablets together with Microsoft’s Windows.

Microsoft demonstrated a PC accessing not just data, but apps running on a Samsung smartphone that could be used on the PC natively

McClure demonstrated a PC accessing not just data (notes and reminder data appear in Outlook and Microsoft To Do), but apps running on a Samsung smartphone that could be used on the PC natively.
Microsoft’s XBox will also be available for Samsung devices later this year via cloud delivery and there is a new XBox controller with a clip sized for smartphones built into it.

The new version of the costly ZFold was also announced, but without a release date. Samsung took on the sometimes fierce comments of users and YouTube video bloggers directly with clear responses to the complaints that arose in the first version of the folding smartphone.

Sporting a Mystic Bronze finish, new foldable glass surface and re-engineered hinges and dust resistant brushes for the folding mechanism, the ZFold 2 was described as being “tougher in real world experience.”

The new Galaxy smartwatch is aggressively focused on health monitoring, shipping with blood pressure monitoring and electrocardiogram reading capabilities with blood oxygen reading to be introduced soon. Samsung has not issued specifications that support immersion, do it may not support swimming as an exercise.

These features are only available in countries in which the collection of such data is authorised. Samsung has announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted clearance for the device’s health monitoring functions.

Trinidad and Tobago’s data collection regulations do not specify limitations on medical data aggregation on a personal scale.

The new watch and earbuds go on sale from August 06 and the new Note for 5G and Tab 7 devices will be offered from August 21.
Samsung also noted that its devices will receive Android operating system updates for three generations.