SI was held in Frankfurt, at the end of February 2022, on primo European Samsung Summit. A meeting in which the Korean multinational talks about his innovations coming to market e share the guidelines which it intends to adopt for the near future. I am lots of news waiting to enter our homes in 2023. But even more interesting is the general vision that the company is adopting on the issues of sustainability and home automation.
The window on 2023
The real innovation for 2023, according to Samsung, is not individual products but the ecosystem that these will create inside our homes. Sure, on techgameworld.com we talk about home automation every day, but home automation according to the Korean giant doesn’t just mean putting appliances online, it means do it simply and organically.
He told us about it at the Summit Benjamin Brown, Samsung Europe Chief Marketing Officer. One of Samsung’s main objectives, explains Braun, is to equip all its household appliances with Wi-Fi connectivity by the end of 2023. In this way it will be possible to make home automation easier, because it will turn into a IoT ecosystem (Internet of Things or Internet of Things).
Having a house made of “connected things that talk to each other” allows you to adapt them to the environments we live in and improve the quality of our lives. Life that, according to Samsung, it should aim to be calmer thanks to the help of its connected appliances.
At the European Summit we want to celebrate the features of our new products and their ability to offer customers a connected and calm lifestyle.
And so here is that the television merges with the paintingthe lights become intelligent and adapt their intensity to the context and the oven bakes the biscuits without needing to be monitored.
The Frame. On is a television, off is a painting.
Innovation and sustainability
A more technological house it cannot and must not be a house that consumes more. Despite the large number of electronic devices, if these are coordinated in the right way, we can be able to consume less energy. For example, keeping only what you need on making use of Artificial Intelligence.
Samsung, come corporate, is very committed to sustainability. In fact, all of its appliances are designed to use the less amount of energy possible, or reduce minimum demand for water or dissipate as little heat as possible in the environment. The multinational’s goal is to make itself a zero impact (reduce CO2 emissions to zero) by 2030.
Samsung’s service that deals with measure the energy consumed from the appliances connected to the network it takes the name of SmartThings Energy. This, among other things, can trigger the AI Energy mode on refrigerators and washing machines to optimize its settings. The end result is an estimated reduction in energy consumption up to 15% for refrigerators and until 70% for washing machines. Furthermore, again for washing machines, with the “Less Microfiber” washing cycle, one is estimated reduction of up to 54% of the emission of microplastics.
Not just energy
As for sustainability, Samsung’s is the remote control of their televisions is emblematic. With the succession of generations the devices they have become more compact to decrease pollution. The latest version, in particular, is built with recycled materials recovered from marine environments and instead of using disposable batteries they recharge with sunlight.
Wanting to close the discussion, an important thing to remember when dealing with household appliances is that sustainability does not mean only consuming less but also not wasting resources. In the case of food, for example, the refrigerator could help us not to let its contents expire. This is the case with some models of the RS9000 series, which are able to understand their own content and suggest recipes that take into account expiration dates. Unfortunately, the model with which we were demonstrated at the Samsung Summit is not yet available for the Italian market.
And what about new products?
The Samsung Summit was the occasion for confirm a series of announcements that had been made at CES in Las Vegas adding technical details and important information what is the date of availability in our country. At the Summit there were many categories of household appliances but, as expected, televisions and monitors took the lion’s share.
The lineup of televisions for 2023
The new series of televisions, available in pre-order from March 2023extends the previous one by introducing in a more significant way i 8K panels and improving its connectivity. Indeed, for most of the new models no need to buy a dongle anymore separate.
Today, someone turns up their nose saying that it makes no sense to buy an 8K television due to the difficulty of finding content. For this very reason, Samsung implements on the models Neo QLED and 14-bit image processing it’s a upscaling technology based on artificial intelligence algorithms which, combined with Auto HDR Remasteringgenerate arealistic image in 8K even starting from content with a lower resolution. Model S95Cwhich is available up to 77 inchesInstead, he concentrates on brightness and color rendition making use of Quantum Dot technology and of a Neural Quantum Processor.
Of course, a good TV needs a good sound system. Unfortunately, due to the reduction of the thickness of the panelsit becomes difficult to get a cinematic sound with the built-in speakers. For this, better to combine a soundbar Samsung HW-Q990C o HW-Q610GC (2023) which, thanks to the system Q Symphonysupported by the whole new range of televisions, is capable of producing excellent sound.
And for gaming?
Already on the occasion of CES 2023 the new models of Odyssey, ViewFinity and Smart Monitor. At the Samsung Summit it was possible see and try Odyssey Neo G7 43 inch, Odyssey Ark 55-inch and the latest gaming TV, the 77-inch QD-OLED. These monitors, like all QLED and OLED TVs, can be easily connected to Samsung Gaming Hub: the game streaming platform compatible with the main services on the market.
A chat with Nathan Sheffield
Nathan Sheffield
During the Samsung Summit we had the opportunity to meet Nathan Sheffield, Samsung Europe’s Head of TV & Audio. We asked Nathan a few questions about his vision on the future of televisions and the ecosystem that revolves around them.
What is your opinion on the convergence between networks and television? Do you see a future of antenna-free television or will we continue to live in a hybrid situation?
This is quite a challenging question. I can’t predict a date, but what we can see today is a trend. In Europe, the average time spent by consumers enjoying paid streaming content is 55% or more of the total. The use of on-demand content surpassed that of classic content linear and we expect that this phenomenon is destined to accelerate. Surely we will come to a time when streaming content they will be 80 or 90% of the total. If we look at the broadcasting industry it’s definitely cheaper distribute content using the Internet rather than satellite or digital terrestrial.
When I talk to big networks in other countries, they have plans to distribute content solely through the Internet within a decade. And, in fact, they are already planning with this belief.
In your opinion, will television ever become a fully interactive device?
It depends on what we mean by the term “interaction”. We can interact with the TV via the remote control but also with the telephone and the voice, just to name a few. What we learned with our experiments was that physical interaction occurs only through the remote control and, otherwise, using the voice.
Personally, I don’t see a future where we’ll touch the screen. Rather, we will equip the television with one reactive intelligence to what is happening in the environment. For example, to make it turn on when someone enters in the room. I see this, and voice interaction.
So, we’re going in that direction but I predict one environmental interaction rather than a physical interaction on the TV panel.
The IoT ecosystem that we see here at the Summit is very interesting. But isn’t there the risk that the market will be divided on standards that are not compatible with each other?
Our aim is to facilitate the interconnection between devices. We are making great progress in this regard also thanks to 250 partners globally. Our platform adopts one open standard and we encourage any company to join our project, like as well as other global standards. This can be used for democratize the process and make it as open as possible. An attitude of this type, we hope, will succeed mitigate the risk of market fragmentation and to converge all producers on a single proposal from which the consumer can benefit.