Samsung Unpacked: The Samsung Jet

The huge Samsung Unpacked Billboard on Orchard Road

This week I was invited to the regional launch of the latest addition to the Samsung family – the Samsung Jet! It was a very classy (and purple) event that was sleek and funky at the same time. The decorations, venue, execution and FOOD was utterly superb! I believe Samsung spent a HUGE fortune on this event especially with it being held concurrently in Dubai and London.

My only picture of the interior (sorry was too obsessed with phone) – Media Registration Counter

The event was held at the Changi Exhibition Centre which as DK says, is out in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully they provided us with a shuttle service from City Hall to the venue, else I’d have given up trying to get my forgetful self there.

The presentation was truly a class of its own having the presenter interact with the projected animations rather than pressing clicks / mouse buttons to go through traditional presentation slides. I’m not sure what technology was used for the presentation but it really came across as holographic. The presenter looked like he was interacting with a semi-holographic projection making the whole event look very 3D and interactive.

My only decent presentation shot. As flash was not allowed, I couldn’t get any clear shots of the projected holographics

Ok enough with the boring stuff.. lets get to the phone. The phone has a LOT of cool nifty features but these are the ones that caught my attention (and which I would probably use the most).

The Samsung Jet

#1 The Technology – Speed
Samsung calls the Jet a phone that is smarter than a smartphone. The phone is designed to solve all the problems we hate about using smartphones, namely the SPEED. It comes with a 800Mhz processor which is actually a LOT for a tiny device, making it possible to multi-task numerous programs and watch high quality DVD videos without any lag.

One of their Korean executives gave me a demo of the phone loading 4 web pages in the background, running a game and then watching a movie. All ran concurrently without ANY lag. The response is extremely fast too, no more frustration from waiting 3 seconds before the phone responds to a press. Don’t believe me? Watch a video Claudia took of the video playing in action on the phone here… now only if the screen was bigger.
 

#2 The Dolfin Browser

The Dolfin Browser is one of the reasons why the Jet runs so smoothly when browsing the Internet. It is created by Samsung specially for their phones, making it possible to view 5 websites and switch between them without any lag. When I was trying it out, I could load multiple web pages including Facebook and flip among them without any problem. Not too sure whether JavaScript is a problem but DK said it has some bugs with Flash.

One last note on the browser: According to the website it is able to handle multiple downloads smoothly but I wasn’t able to test it due to Starhub’s slow 3G..
 

#3 One Finger Zoom

One Finger Zoom

Samsung went one step further and created a new convention for zooming photos and web pages by using only one finger. This way you can zoom in and out of photos and web pages using just one finger, maintaining your hand stance like how you would while SMSing. To get into and out of the zoom mode, you just have to hold your thumb on the screen for a little while, the zoom meter appears and you slide your finger up or down to zoom in and out. Took me just about 4 seconds to get used to it. I have to admit it is much more convenient than the 2 finger zooming convention which all smart phones are happily replicating today.
 

#4 The User Interface!

Dynamic User Interface

For starters, I’m VERY glad they created an interface of their own.. Windows Mobile is getting a little weak for smartphones in terms of performance. The image above shows the core interface with a little “tool box” on the left with links to applications, and a set of core functions in the bottom menu. What I really like is that you can hide the tool box at anytime to increase the amount of space to play with in the main area. Also, as this is a dynamic interface, you can drag and drop widgets from the toolbox onto the main area like a computer desktop. You can add new widgets as well when you download more applications.

The interface with the tool box hidden, BlueTooth and music player widgets

Before I end off, there is ONE FINAL feature which I totally love, lacking from all other smartphones I’ve experienced. It is the TASK manager. You know how sometimes you may have multiple apps running in the background, thought you closed them but they’re STILL RUNNING, wasting your precious battery power? Samsung added a cool nifty feature where you can easily access the task manager and close running applications. All you have to do is hold the cube button down and the task manager will show up in a very easy to use interface.

The super easy to use Task Manager

 

#5 Keyboard
Sorry there is ONE MORE feature I MUST highlight which is the keyboard. As usual, they are using a Qwerty keyboard that has keys smaller than your fingers. I hate the iPhone for not having a keypad interface as a keyboard. The Samsung Jet has both but when I tried their Qwerty keyboard, I was in total amazement. I could type VERY fast without much care and I had very little spelling errors. What’s happening here? Instead of detecting one key at a time, the keyboard detects a few (2-3 I believe) based on the area of your finger. Based on the combination of keys you typed in and the central area your finger touches the keyboard, it intelligently guesses the word you are trying to type and inputs it. Typing on it was so convenient I found myself typing web addresses more with the Qwerty than the Keypad. I have no idea why this is not highlighted on their website even though it is a big plus point.
 

Conclusion
On the overall, I really like the phone as it fixes almost everything I hate about smartphones – speed, small keyboard keys, invisible running applications, etc. It is definitely a smartphone, that is smarter than a smartphone. My only qualms with it is the User Interface.. it is very well designed… you can see that a lot of thought has been put into it especially in fixing major user interaction issues that are common in smartphones. However, I feel that there are some minor adjustments that could be done to make the phone even more thumb-friendly. And no, I’m not saying the iPhone’s interface is better.. the Jet beats the iPhone in terms of both technology and UI design. It is just that in a general sense, the UI design is not perfect yet.

And before I forget, app junkies will suffer from deprivation as there will probably not be less apps available for the Samsung Jet
 

Other random pictures from the event

Lucky draw machine.. I didn’t win! DK and Preetam did though

One of the many never-ending reception snacks

My dinner menu

The Starter – Poached Boston Lobster, Cauliflower and Truffle Puree, White Asparagus and Shellfish Sauce

Main Course – Pan Seared Sea Bass, Steamed Wa Wa Cabbage, Buttered Fondant Potato, Ginger Sauce

Dessert – Tahitian Vanilla and Manjari Chocolate Mousse, Crunchy Praline and Passion Fruit Ice Cream
 

Resources you might want to check out:
Official Samsung Unpacked webpage
Official Samsung Jet webpage (lots of useful information on the phone)
Unboxing the Samsung Jet

Ready for work in 5 mins!

This came in my mail early this morning. Cheered up my morning for work!

Get up, change clothes, eat breakfast and be ready for work in 5 minutes Perfect solution for sleepyheadzz!!

The Future of TV Stations

When was the last time I watched cable TV?
Many many years ago… when I flipped my cable TV on recently out of EXTREME boredom, I didn’t realize which channels were which anymore. The station had revised the channel numbers TWICE and I missed both iterations!

How do I use my TV now?
Hook up my laptop to my HD TV using a HDMI cable, stream/play video on my laptop, watch away on the nice, big clear screen.

Will I get Cable TV when I have my own home? Will my friends get Cable TV?
MOST PROBABLY NOT.

But why??!!
Isn’t it obvious?! We’re arrogant. We don’t arrange our schedules around television programs anymore.. waaay too troublesome. We’ve tried that in the past and have always ended up going “When did this guy die?? o_O??”.

A couple of weeks back my colleague Calvin and I were talking about how long it has been since we last watched TV.. I realized that all I remembered was that it was EONS ago… leaving my Cable TV to collect dust (and continue feeding the TV station subscription fees). The interesting thing is, we know it is happening to majority of youths now, we’re sure the TV stations know it too but we still see the usual “$XYZ per month for 100+ channels” packages being promoted all over. However, instead of laughing at the death of these stations, we embarked instead on a discussion of how TV stations would change their models in the near future.
 

Model 1: Pay Per Channel Collection model

Saying Pay Per Channel may be very misleading as there are Cable TV stations that allow you to pay according to the number of channels you subscribe to. Instead of saying channel to avoid confusion, I’m going to say Collection. Every TV Station now have their own line of series like AXN with CSI and House, Star World with American Idol, MTV with Punk’d, Sweet Sixteen and the list goes on. I love watching all these programs and I’m subscribed to all these channels! but I watch them online now.. all because they do not fit into my schedule.

Instead of making viewers pay for PROGRAMMED Television, why not give them UNPROGRAMMED Television? How it works is simple. I subscribe to the channel and I instantly get on-demand access to any show shown on that channel, whenever I want. The next question that came was, whether there should be ads for these shows.. Currently, we are paying for channels and am kind enough to tolerate the ads shown on them. This is a convention that has been in place for years and people have gotten used to it.. When it comes to paying for on-demand access however, we have gotten used to a no ad policy and will probably be really unhappy if we saw ads popping up here and there. It doesn’t help either that a large portion of a station’s revenue comes from ads, hence a subscription-based on-demand model might not work.
 

Model 2: iTunes, meet TV

How about we apply the iTunes system to TV programs instead? Pay per episode of a series you want to watch. I admit that I am unsure of how much cost actually goes into the creation of each series but my guess is each episode would not exceed $1 million? So assuming that the cost of producing an episode of a TV series like Prison Break is $1 million and we charge users, say, $3 per episode taking into consideration users are already willing to pay $1 for a 4-minute song, $3 for a 1-hour video should be well-received. Multiply $3 with the average number of viewers during its worst season, we have:

$3 x 5.3 million viewers = $15.9 million

This is a profit of $14.9 million per episode not taking in the in-movie advertising and endorsements by companies. Even if the cost of the episode was $10 million the profit would be $4.9 million for each episode..

Prison Break was a huge success, so lets take a lesser known TV series instead. Lets try Harpers Island. Their latest episode only managed to garner 3.62 million viewers. Assuming that as this is not a popular series, we have only 20% of these 3.62 million viewers willing to pay for the episode.

20% x 3.62 million viewers = 724,000 viewers
$3 x 724,000 viewers = $2.1 mil

This still covers the cost of $1 mil per episode.
 

Consequences of model
The model actually feeds into a trait of consumers becoming more and more selective. If we feed into that trait, that would mean we are giving consumers a free hand to pick whatever they wanna see.. which also equates to lesser known TV series and movies dying. Is this a bad thing? No because even today, bad TV series are being pulled out by stations very quickly except that with this model, it may be pulled out faster as there are no ads to reduce losses. The result will be an ever more competitive market leading to an increase in the quality of media produced.

But what about series which are actually good but fail to succeed due to bad marketing? What if consumers only stick to the few series they are only aware of and never give the other series a chance? To tell you the truth, I, as a consumer actually do pay attention to the little icons and animations that pop up at the corner of the screen every now and then advertising an upcoming new series. I look forward to those as they give me a guide of what to check out in the gazillion series to choose from out there. In other words, I don’t mind paying for episodes that have some little animations and bars appearing to promote an upcoming series that is currently being practiced by TV stations. I believe most consumers wouldn’t mind those unobtrusive elements either.
 

Conclusion
If TV stations want to continue operating, they have to move towards new models that feed into the traits of UNPROGRAMMED, on-demand televising. If they don’t change their models soon, they will start to see their finances dwindle until it is too late and we will all be left with nothing but old video archives on the internet to watch. Coming up with a “Support TV stations! Don’t let them die” campaign won’t work because the benefits of on-demand streaming online is just too good. Better change before it is too late for all of us! (and we’ll just stick with computer games and box office movies).
 

Note: This post was written from a consumer’s point of view. I am unfamiliar with the inner workings of the TV industry and as I couldn’t find much information of what elements of costing goes into the production of a TV series, my values were made based on estimations from costs of blockbuster movies