Samsung’s new Galaxy S10 range of devices are powered by intelligence. Intelligence at the design and component stages, to be sure, but also at a finalised, hardware-in-your-hand level. The Galaxy S10 and S10+ are Samsung’s smartest devices to date, dedicated to making your life as easy as possible with as little admin as possible. Really? Yes, really. Here’s how.
Something new to learn
Samsung’s new beauties benefit from a little something called Intelligent Performance Enhancer. Rather than making you learn the S10’s systems in order to improve efficiency, Intelligent Performance Enhancer learns how you use the device. It does this in order to speed up program loads and to anticipate your movements. After all, if you always open Twitter > Insta > Facebook > Imgur, it’s easy enough for Samsung to pre-load those apps for you.
Intelligent Performance Enhancer does more than just that, however. There are other, under-the-hood optimisations that you won’t necessarily see but which are still in place. Tweaking RAM, processor, GPU, and battery settings as needed are just a few, plus Samsung’s Adaptive Power Saving is still present and accounted for. Now it has friends to play with.
Pocket automation
The smarts inside the S10 also benefit from a human hand on the wheel. Decide what you want your smartphone to do and when, activating Night mode at a pre-set time of day or performing certain functions while you’re connected to your car’s Bluetooth connection. Bixby Routines also keeps a hold of your phone’s battery, if you somehow forgot to charge it overnight. Translation: You’ll still have battery power in the morning.
Windows to the soul
Bixby does more than just manage functions. It’ll read text via the S10 camera. But that wouldn’t do much on its own, so it’ll also translate from another language into one that you can read. Bixby Vision, that’s called.
But Samsung’s AI camera smarts don’t stop there. There’s the artificial intelligence-powered Scene Optimiser function, which runs in Samsung’s Camera app and ups the performance of already-impressive hardware. It’ll analyse what the S10 family see through the viewfinder and offer up the best preset for the job. You can also go hands-on with manual settings but for good, quick shots Scene Optimiser can’t be beaten. That’s the power of machine learning in action.
What is reality, really?
Bixby Vision comes with a couple of augmented reality (AR) functions in tow. Want to see what a room would look like with an additional appliance or two? Samsung is able to make that happen. But that’s not the only intelligent AR option on offer.
Samsung’s AR Emoji is a little personalised avatar of you, the Samsung S10 user. Rather than tasking you with fiddling with a long-winded character creator, AR Emoji asks for permission to snap your mug and then it uses its internal smarts to put together an Emoji Replicant that lives on your phone. Only this one won’t wander off and need Harrison Ford or Ryan Gosling to track ‘em down. Nope, this one will do what you tell it to – whether that’s starring in custom stickers or animating a little message to your mates.
But how is this possible?
We’ve got three words for you – Neural Processing Unit. New inside Samsung smartphones for 2019, the Galaxy S10 range is the home of the NPU. It’s a closely-guarded secret how it actually works but it’s got two cores controlled by a central control block – being a dedicated chip, Samsung’s NPU is very quick, very responsive, and very likely to make your life far, far easier. Because that’s the way that your life should be.
