Samsung’s edge of tomorrow

In Samsung’s vision of the future, you won’t have to battle mall traffic anymore. You won’t even need a driver. As Samsung Electronics South East Asia president and CEO Yong Sung Jeon pictures it, “On your way home, you use your smartphone to tell the car to come to you from its parking spot.”

Driverless cars may not be as far off as you think. Google has already announced an alliance with GM, Honda, Audi and Hyundai to install cutting-edge Android technology in its cars. And Samsung sees it all connected to that device in your pocket — preferably a Samsung device — that will even adjust your air conditioning and choose which music to listen to on the ride home.

It’s all under the banner of what Samsung calls “the Internet of Things” — or IoT — and it’s already started.

According to Jeon, “IoT gives everyday objects new meaning,” giving them new connections in the home, the office, and on the road. At Bangkok’s Impact Forum, Samsung held its Southeast Asian rollout of products, a kind of mini version of the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas last January. Tailored to Asian consumers, Samsung Forum 2015 focused on kitchen devices (a line of “smart” refs called The Chef Collection with input from Michelin star chefs like Elena Arzak), washing machines that combine the pre-soak step in the washer (the WA6700 Activ Dualwash model), better air conditioners, air purifiers and robot vacuum cleaners (the POWERbot VR9000 with “60 times more sucking power”).

In the IoT home of the very near future, televisions will be super connected through a system called Tizen, instantly streaming or playing content from your phone via Bluetooth, displayed on screens with the most vivid colors yet (the SUHDTV, upping the acronym ante with even better OLED screen technology). And with Samsung’s emphasis on curved displays — a recurring theme in phones, TVs and audio products at the forum — it’s all about keeping things flexible and edgy.

Like the Note Edge, a large-face smartphone that was introduced in Manila recently for the lucky 1,000 who want to preorder a P44,000 handset with a screen face that wraps around the right edge. (One drawback: some say the top-located “on” button forces your fingers to accidentally press buttons located on the right edge.)

Consider the Note Edge a tune-up, though, for Samsung’s Galaxy S6, set to launch March 1, a phone that company peeps say will be as exciting as “the transition from the S2 to the S3.” That’s about the time Samsung started claiming its own edge, grabbing the smartphone lead from a certain fruit-named competitor. Fast-forward a few Galaxy iterations, and Samsung now faces new challenges — from China’s cheaper handsets, plus yet another mega-selling personal pronoun-named phone from its US rival. Samsung has to make the S6 count, big-time. Expect something, well, “edgy.”

Back in Bangkok, we got a good glimpse of the edginess Samsung is striving for: its huge SUHDTV displays (88 inches will sell for about P1.2 million in Manila) are curved, offering an immersive viewing experience like never before. (We did notice a bit of glare around the curves if you watch from a non-central position, though.) No longer simply OLED (organic light-emitting diode)-driven to eliminate backlighting, the JS9500 uses nano-crystal display technology and its SUHD re-mastering engine to analyze images, delivering stunning, power-efficient contrast levels on your screen. Said to be three times brighter than conventional UHD TVs, the difference is visible in the deepest blacks as well as the tiniest highlights and details.

Of course, what we watched onscreen was limited to snippets of Hollywood movies like The Life of Pi and Exodus: Gods and Kings, and while the sight of bioluminescent whales and crashing Red Sea waves was amazing, I kind of wondered who’s going to step up and provide a full raft of content for SUHD users to enjoy.

Part of the answer came from Nicholas Wodtke, Samsung VP for Media Solutions and Product Innovation, SEA, Taiwan and Oceania, who led us through some of the changes. “We’re constantly in a race. Technology is advancing faster than the studios can keep up,” he told media. “Right now we’re still at the HD phase, (though) we’re starting to see more content developed at the Super HD phase.

“There are companies producing high-quality SHD content. One is Garage, we’re working closely with them. If you like outdoor footage, want to see people skiing off of cliffs and such, it is stunning footage, most of it shot on really high-end cameras, and that’s the kind of content we’re bringing to our televisions.”

Samsung provides the viewing screens, of course, but also acts as a “curator,” inking deals with production companies to stream packages of sports (Fox Sports in the Philippines and New Zealand’s ESL), games (Cirko), kids’ shows (Kidstime), series (Seasons, with a catalogue of TV shows now streamable in the Philippines), and others for their ubiquitous devices. But as for seeing the latest blockbuster movies on your 88-inch Samsung SUHD screen? It might take a while. “Like anything, technology is sometimes a couple steps ahead of content providers, so we’re trying to help bridge that gap,” Wodtke says.

Once people get a taste of UHD content though, it’s hard to go back. Samsung’s Tizen system allows televisions to access enhanced content through streaming. “The key thing is to get customers to start thinking about paid content, whereas in the past people would just buy DVDs,” adds Cris Concepcion, director of Content and Sales for Samsung Philippines. “It’s not really new in the Philippines, but with new partners, and Tizen in particular, there will be more compelling reasons to start enjoying legal streaming of this quality across all your devices.”

Looking back, it’s not so long ago that TV makers were struggling to convince content providers to think “high definition”; now, you can’t imagine watching Game of Thrones or Gotham in anything less. So ultra-high def Hollywood content may not be as futuristic as we think.

Not just TV screens, but computer monitors and audio speakers are getting edgy — and shapely. The curved 34-inch SE790C offers a 21:9 viewing perspective that “closely matches the curve of the eye.” Plus it’s probably really cool for playing Grand Theft Auto V.

Then there’s the Curved Soundbar 8500 series, with 48 to 78 inches of 9.1 channel audio to pair with your curved TVs. They function wirelessly (less wire fuss) and can stream music through Samsung’s multi-room functionality.

And if you like your sound to surround, there’s the WAM7500 and 6500, delivering a 360-degree audio experience in a squat device that resembles either an Ikea mortar launcher or a lava lamp.

Clearly, “curves” and “edges” are the go-to metaphors for Samsung this year, and you can bet the coming Galaxy S6 will continue this narrative, in a strong bid to recapture its somewhat flagging but still rapturous fan base. The question on some users’ minds is this: Why the edge screen? Does it point toward a new line of devices with wraparound screen technology, such as video cubes and the like? Will edged screens reimagine gaming technology for a new era? Or did Samsung just feel like showing off the new look on the Note Edge as a consumer pulse taker, simply because… they can? Samsung lets few cats out of bags; answers will come in short time.

We don’t know much about the S6, but you can bet it will have an edge.