[ad_1]
Today Samsung will unveil the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21 Plus, and Galaxy S21 Ultra (I’ll take the Zune-inspired brown thanks). This is happening a few months earlier than usual for the S line of phones, but otherwise the script will remain the same.
Here is the script. Samsung will be the first major Android maker to come out the door with Qualcomm’s latest chips, this time with the Snapdragon 888. Samsung will use its incredibly huge marketing budget and long-standing relationships with carriers to ensure that it does. considered the default option if you want a premium Android phone – mostly if you make this purchase from a US carrier store.
Other parts of the script are not necessarily guaranteed but are safe bets. They’ll likely be great phones, well balanced and capable. Samsung will be making big claims about cameras that will require rigorous testing to be verified. And of course, the ever-moving pendulum of Samsung’s OneUI software will continue its current arc towards overload.
This last part of the script reminds me of one of the main recurring characters: Bixby. Samsung’s digital assistant launched in 2017 with the Galaxy S8. It was yet another digital assistant, but as Dan Seifert wrote at the time, it had a very clear and very good mandate that helped set it apart from Alexa, Siri, and Google. Samsung wasn’t trying to turn Bixby into a all-rounder, know-how-and-do assistant. This has focus:
Samsung knows it can’t compete with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others when it comes to raw machine-learning power and putting vast amounts of information at your fingertips, so it uses Bixby. to solve a simpler task, a task that these companies largely have. ignored. Bixby will not try to be the assistant of everything. Instead, it will be this “brilliant companion” that complements these other services. It’s a new user interface, not a new way to ask for the height of the Eiffel Tower.
Bixby was meant to be an interface, not a helper. Was this really a viable strategy? Who knows! Certainly not Samsung, which quickly did what Samsung tends to do with software: give in to feature creep. Over the past few years, Bixby has grown into what it was originally designed do not to be: a worse version of the Google Assistant.
Samsung tried to push Bixby. He created a dedicated button for it. He then ditched that button but assigned it to a long press on the power button. He built Bixby routines (which were tied to the original Bixby goal). But then he linked Bixby to a stream of content that lived to the left of the home screen. And he announced independent Bixby smart speakers that never actually shipped.
On The Vergecast, we have a common joke that Bixby is a dog that wears shoes and is also a butler. It’s well intentioned and eager to please, but ultimately stumbles a lot and doesn’t do a very good job serving drinks or answering the door because it’s a dog, wearing shoes.
Speaking of shoes, put yourself in Samsung’s. Why is he continuing to develop Bixby? I can only think of two reasons, a good and a bad one.
The good reason: coverage against Google and Android. There is always the possibility that Google will do something huge and Samsung will want to forgo services from Google (or even Android itself). It’s not a bad idea to have your own personal digital assistant percolating just in case. If nothing else, this could serve as a signal to Google that Samsung is, in fact, ready to step aside and make Tizen and Bixby in some negotiations.
It’s the right reason – or at least as close to a good reason as I can find – but I don’t know if it’s the real reason. I suspect the real reason is the same as the bad reason: Samsung is again, after all these years and after all of its successes, trying to be Apple.
Being Apple is a shortcut to having an end-to-end ecosystem where your users live and breathe your services and are thus locked into your products. If you want to have a holistic and holistic ecosystem, you have to cover all the bases, and therefore: Bixby.
And also: your own fitness department. And your own health app and ecosystem of connections. Your own family of bluetooth headphones. Your own tracking tag (before Apple even announces its tracking tag). Your own tablets. Your own music service. Your own news service. Etc.
All of these things are things that Samsung has tried or is actively trying to do now. Some of them are really successful! Samsung’s Galaxy Buds lineup today will feature three different variations of headphones, each with its own raison d’être and each quite good (assuming the new Galaxy Buds Pro don’t smell).
Samsung’s ambition has always been to create a whole world (or, uh, Galaxy) that its users can live in, just like Apple. The frustrating thing is that Samsung is very good at so many things and if it leaned a bit more into those things it could chart a more innovative and interesting path.
Take Samsung DeX, for just one example. This is what allows you to connect your phone to a larger screen like a TV or monitor and get a full desktop interface. It’s really cool but, I guess, more of a tech demo than an often used feature. But the Snapdragon 888 that will be in these S21 phones will be in many ways just as powerful as the chips that will run Arm-based Windows laptops this year.
There is untapped potential with DeX that Apple couldn’t match for years if Samsung could figure it out. Instead, it tries to get Tile-esque tracking tags out before Apple can.
If Samsung focused a little more on where it is already ahead and a little less on where it is terribly behind, it would create much more exciting products.
That’s why I call it: I got it with Bixby. If Samsung can’t either upgrade it with Siri (a low bar!), Or find a way to get it back to its more focused roots, it’s time to send it to the farm. Or at least give users the option to remap the power button on the Google Assistant (without the need for third-party hacks).
There is a small ray of hope. The Jimmy is Promo leak of Samsung’s newest version of OneUI version of Android shows that users will be able to choose between Google feed or Samsung Free feed on their homescreens.
Samsung’s user interface on Android has swung like a pendulum between two poles. It gets overloaded with features and a weird UI for a few years, then the pendulum hovers over there at the end of its arc before reverting to a cleaner, simpler UI. It is time for the pendulum to turn back. And that means it’s time to let go of Bixby.
The last of CES
Are all of these CES announcements technically or are some just adjacent to CES? When CES is all virtual, is it an event where things happen or just a mood, a state of mind? Do I use philosophical dilemma jokes as a smokescreen to cover up my inability to determine whether or not these things are technically part of CES or not?
Sometimes the questions don’t have answers. All we can really know in this world is that laser projectors are always really cool.
┏ Asus’ latte distributes movies instead of coffee and milk. I have an Anker / Nebula version of one of these mini projectors / speakers and it’s one of the best things I throw in my suitcase when I travel (uh, when I have traveled). You really need a dark room for this to be good, but you’d be surprised how much more convenient it is to just plug an HDMI cable into the projector you have rather than manage the TV. hotel or Airbnb. I might be interested in switching to this, as the Android TV version of Nebula is old, buggy, and poorly supported.
┏ LG’s latest 4K laser projector supports AirPlay 2 for $ 2,999.
┏ LG’s new bundle of gaming monitors includes 4K / 144Hz panel with HDMI 2.1.
┏ But wait, Asus has even more gaming monitors with HDMI 2.1 ports..
┏ Asus’ new CX9 Chromebook delivers military-grade durability.
┏ Asus 2021 laptop lineup includes two new dual-screen ZenBooks. A new member joins the Keyboard In The Front club!
If you’re new to the ZenBook Duo line, laptops have a primary display (the standard) as well as a secondary display (the ScreenPad Plus) that is integrated into the top half of the keyboard. It’s not really big enough to do anything, but you can load your distractions (Twitter, Discord, etc.) into it to keep them out of your main workspace. Some programs, including Adobe, also offer ScreenPad-specific interfaces.
┏ MSI 2021 gaming laptops get Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series mobile graphics cards and Wi-Fi 6E support. Monica chin
MSI showed off its line of gaming laptops in early 2021 at CES on Wednesday. The big news is that all new versions have been equipped with all new graphics cards in the GeForce RTX 3000 series from Nvidia. Along with improving frame rates and ray tracing, these chips will offer Nvidia’s latest features, including its resizable BAR technology. They also get support for Wi-Fi 6E.
┏ MSI’s New Creator 15 Comes With RTX 3000 Graphics. Monica chin
The Creator 15 is just the latest in gaming and designer-focused laptops to adopt Nvidia’s new RTX 3000 graphics, following their release at CES 2021. These laptops will use the third generation of Nvidia’s Max-Q design. , which is designed for laptops for gaming and content purposes The new GPUs also include new Dynamic Boost 2.0 technology that harnesses AI to balance power between CPU, GPU and GPU memory in real time.
┏ MSI’s New Tiamat GE76 Raider Dragon Edition is a tribute to an ancient goddess. I, 10, playing the 1st Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, would have lost it if he knew that someday there would be a Tiamat-themed gaming laptop.
┏ The best tech from CES 2020: where are they now?
More than The edge
┏ Chill imbibes: in the booming relaxing drink industry. Great feature from Liz Lopatto. I saw advertisements for these drinks all over the place and wondered what the real deal was. Here is the answer.
┏ Apple’s First Major Racial Stock Investments Include Detroit Development Center and HBCU Tech Center.
┏ Intel to replace CEO next month.
┏ Ring Adds End-to-End Encryption to Protect Your Video Streams.
┏ Google says fix for Android coronavirus tracking delays in progress.
┏ Nvidia and AMD Respond to Great GPU Shortage.
[ad_2]
Source link