Bigger Screen
That's the latest design shift sweeping the phone industry. The bezel is that area outside of the screen on the front of the phone usually used to house a physical home button, cameras and sensors. Apple's 10th anniversary phone, due likely this fall, is rumored to have dramatically reduced bezels. Even Android creator Andy Rubin's upcoming stealthy startup, Essential, teased an image on Twitter of what appears to be a phone with nearly no bezels.
While Samsung hasn't been able to completely remove the bezels in the Galaxy S8 phones, it comes pretty close. Very narrow bezels are left on the top and bottom -- enough room for a row of cameras and sensors. With less bezel brings the remove of the home button. Samsung has placed the button under the screen.
The Galaxy S8 has a 5.8-inch screen, which is .7 inches more than the Galaxy S7, and the S8+ has a 6.2-inch screen. Samsung has elongated the display, giving the phones an 18:9 aspect ratio instead of the traditional 16:9 ratio. That will help make the viewing experience more "immersive," Samsung said.
It's hard to argue that ridding the phone of bezels is the most compelling shift happening in phones these days, but it's a nice move away from phones simply getting bigger and bigger. People are watching more video content all the time and more screen space is always needed.
Samsung has been a leader in other form factor shifts in the phone market. With the introduction of Samsung’s Note phones came the phablet form factor. It's unlikely Apple would have ever made a Plus version of its iPhones without Samsung testing the market’s appetite first. Of course Samsung isn't the first to see this trend in ever-shrinking bezels -- the upcoming LG G6 phone, for example, will also feature ultra-slim bezels, with a 5.7-inch display and 18:9 aspect ratio. But in today's smartphone market where all the sales volumes have centered around two players -- Apple and Samsung -- Samsung will make this trend a reality.
AI assistant wars
Last year, Google made its first major attempt at becoming a premium Android phone maker with the Pixel. Google tried to differentiate itself with the most advanced intelligent virtual assistant, Google Assistant. Instead of adapting Google's version, Samsung has chosen to risk doing it all themselves with its own assistant called Bixby. And just to show you how much Samsung is devoted to owning its own AI assistant, the company has installed a button on the side of Galaxy S8 phones -- on the left and below the volume buttons -- dedicated solely to the Bixby assistant. That button is a huge risk -- what if users end up not liking the feature? Then there's just a useless button hanging out on the side of their phone.
Pressing the button activates the assistant to start listening to voice commands. Samsung said users would be able to do everything in voice they could do with touch. A demo showed how users could do simple do simple interactions like rotate an image or set a timer. At the start, only native Samsung apps will work with Bixby, but Samsung is trying to get third-party developers to integrate their apps into Bixby. Bixby can also use the camera to recognize objects in front of it and pull up information. Looking at a wine bottle, for example, connects the user to a Wine seller that presents reviews and pricing for ordering online. Bixby will connect with other online services like Amazon. There's also a personalized home screen with Bixby that supposed to show recommended content, like YouTube videos.
On paper, Bixby sounds fine. But in practice, it may not work out. Samsung will have to overcome a history of mediocrity in developing its own software. In the past, Samsung has tried voice assistants with the features like the S Voice, a voice assistant introduced in 2012. S Voice was not a popular feature.
But perhaps luckily for Samsung, the company acquired a startup last year called Viv for more than $200 million to help it overcome this software weakness. Viv was founded by Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, who both created the Siri personal assistant, as well as Chris Brigham, an early Siri employee. Apple bought Siri in 2010 to incorporate the personal assistant into their products, but the three left soon after to create Viv in 2012. Viv had been building a personal assistant designed to openly connect with third-party developers to continuously add new features. So instead of having to move between different apps, users could simply interact with a single personal assistant on the phone.
Samsung said that Viv isn't present in Bixby at launch, but will start showing up in later versions. If Viv is all it's cracked up to be and Samsung successfully brings it to Bixby, Samsung could finally be a viable player in the AI assistant war.
“AI is going to be table stakes,” said Wayne Lam, a principal analyst at IHS Markit. “Folks like Google are building an AI-first future. It’s going to be something that everybody will need. It’s good for Samsung to be stepping out and doing their own AI. LG would happily take Google’s AI platform, but Samsung is a big enough company with big enough scale to do its own.”
Transforming the phone into a desktop computer
Lastly, Samsung is anticipating a world where all our personal computing needs will take place only on a phone. The company is introducing DeX, a docking station that connects the phone to a monitor, keyboard and mouse.
Phones transforming into desktops has been played around with a bit before. HP Inc. last year announced the Elite x3 phablet that also docks into an external monitor and keyboard. For a laptop experience, HP has a 12.5-inch diagonal high-definition display that folds up with a keyboard and trackpad. The HP phone runs Microsoft's Windows 10 Mobile operating system and takes advantage of Microsoft's Continuum feature, which lets developers make universal apps that run on any screen size.
It's likely we'll be seeing a lot more phones that morph into PC-like form factors in the future. Mobile processors are starting to get powerful enough that they can run desktop software. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 will support the full Windows 10 experience and run Windows apps using emulation. Apple has patented docking an iPhone or iPad into a dumb terminal that looks like a normal MacBook.
0 comments:
Post a Comment