First of all, let me clear up that headline right away. Samsung’s “new craziness” is meant as a compliment, not an insult. We need some craziness in the mobile technology world. Have you ever looked for a new phone on any of the carrier websites? They all look the same except with different pictures on the screens! Anyway, Samsung itself recognized the original Note smartphone as a bit crazy. Most reviewers derided it as being way too big and too difficult to use, but customers didn’t care what the reviewers thought and they bought it in droves anyway. Today, Samsung is taking some more risks with some new craziness, and I kind of like it! Also, be sure to check out Michael and Taylor’s coverage of these new Samsung devices in Berlin at IFA.
Samsung Gear VR
I’m going to start with the last thing to be announced by Samsung this morning, the Samsung Gear VR. This is an accessory for the Galaxy Note 4. Basically, these are virtual reality goggles made in partnership with Oculus Rift, except the screen and computing power come from your Galaxy Note 4 phone. You place the phone inside the goggles, and put the goggles on your head. You can wear wireless stereo headphones on your ears too if you want, and Samsung makes a hand-held controller as well. Back on the goggles, there is a track pad on the right side of the goggles as well as a back button. You can use the track pad to move within a virtual world while turning your head in different directions changes your view.
Disclaimer: I was only allowed a couple minutes to try this out. The first demo was an underwater world where fish and whales swam around me. The graphics weren’t terribly impressive. It looked like a 3D game from the 90s. Not terribly different from some of the 3D VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) worlds that I built myself almost 20 years ago. The second demo was more interactive. Pointing at menus happened by pointing my nose in the direction of the menu item and tapping the track pad on the side of the goggles. From there, I was able to open a chosen world with a monument in the middle. I could use the track pad to move through the world and look around from different positions. I couldn’t figure out how to walk up the ladder as moving towards it just made me walk right through the walls and end up on the other side.
Still, while the graphics weren’t terribly impressive, the motion smoothness and 3D immersion certainly was impressive. I would say, “Forget about Google Glass”, but you really shouldn’t be walking around in public wearing a Gear VR. Though some would say you shouldn’t be walking around in public wearing Google Glass either, so maybe that’s a good thing.
Note Edge
The Note Edge is not as crazy as a virtual reality headset for a phone, but it’s still very unique. Most of the screen is Samsung’s regular version of Android, but on the right edge, instead of a bezel, the screen takes a turn and goes down along the edge of the phone. This area of the screen has its own special interactive elements. You can swipe this edge area to switch between views of various types of ticker tape style data as well as access a series of shortcut icons for launching apps. It’s a pretty neat concept, and I like its uniqueness, but it sounds like something that would require a whole other set of APIs for third party developers to integrate with.
Note 4
The new Note 4 is probably the least crazy new device from Samsung. It still has the “S Pen” and it still has a giant screen, but now that everything else out there has such large screens, it doesn’t seem quite as unique. The S Pen’s Wacom digitizer has seen an upgrade though. It now supports 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity and a higher degree of tilt sensitivity. I know all about pressure sensitive computer input pens since the Wacom tablets have been my preferred computer interaction methods since 1997 when I was first able to afford one. The drawing capabilities on the Note 4 seem fantastic. Granted, as the disclaimer above says, I only had a very short time with this device, but it felt just like a high end Wacom Cintiq display. Unfortunately, I wasn’t terribly impressed with the software as I’m used to running things like Corel Painter, Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator beneath my Wacom stylus.
Conclusion
I have to say, I love the crazy Samsung brought out today. Time will tell whether these new innovations will be successful and have much staying power, but at least we have something interesting to write about.
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Originally published on Pocketnow on September 4, 2014. More from the Pocketnow archive.