Samsung - THIS IS AWESOME

 

News Cover: So Samsung officially unveiled the Galaxy S21 lineup yesterday at the Unpacked Event. As expected the phones have Android 11 based on OneUI 3.0 which has already rolled out to many of Samsung's flagships but the Galaxy S21 lineup will be the first Samsung phones to get a really cool software feature called Object eraser. 

I guess a lot of people overlooked this at the Unpacked event, but Samsung has also showcased this feature called Object eraser which lets you delete people from the backgrounds of your images. After a photo is taken, you can simply tap on the people you want to remove, and AI will do the rest. 

This solution will be rolled out as part of the stock Photo Editor tool available inside Samsung’s Gallery app. Now, this would be similar to what Adobe does with its Content-Aware Fill tool in photoshop but I wonder if it's going to work as good as Samsung is showing in this video or even as good as Adobe's solution. 

I guess we'll know soon enough but it's totally possible since AI in the new 5nm chipsets has been greatly improved compared to last year. So if it works as advertised by Samsung then this is no small feat by any means. Also, Samsung caught a lot of people off guard when they announced the prices of the Galaxy S21 lineup. 

Rumors suggested we would see somewhere around $100 cheaper prices compared to last year but that wasn't the case. Samsung for the first time in many years has actually put some sense into pricing their handsets, I mean these are the official prices for the S21 lineup. The S21 Ultra is actually $200 cheaper than last year. 

To be exact, all the S21 models are $200 cheaper than last year's models which is appreciated especially during this time when the economy is still recovering. Just like Apple, Samsung's latest flagships don't have the charger and headphones in the box. Apple said they did it to save the environmental waste and Samsung is also doing the same. 

In a statement made during the Unpacked event, Samsung gave the reason for this move and I quote, "We believe that the gradual removal of charger plugs and earphones from our in-box device packaging can help address sustainable consumption issues and remove any pressure that consumers may feel towards continually receiving unnecessary charger accessories with new phones." 

So basically Samsung is saying they removed the charger and headphones from its flagship smartphone boxes because most Galaxy customers don’t need or use new accessories which honestly is I'm wondering what's bad! Removing the charger or this lame excuse? Because when people sell their phones, they sell them with their chargers and headphones intact otherwise the resale value goes down. So no, the majority of people don't have many chargers or earphones laying around so this excuse is just lame, in my opinion. 

By the way, charger and earphones aren't the only things they are removing from the S21, it will also not have MST, magnetic Secure Transmission feature of Samsung Pay. If you’re not familiar, MST is a very cool trick that allows Samsung phones to send out a magnetic pulse that made payment terminals think that you’d swiped a regular credit card. 

But for some weird reason, they removed it. Also, they have removed the MicroSD card slot from all the S21 variants, there's no support for 45W charging in either of the S21 models. 

I'm sure some people won't mind losing some of these features especially with the lower starting prices but you gotta admit, Samsung is losing the competitive edge they had with these features. Anyway, let me know what do you think about this down in the comments and as always I'll see you tomorrow...Peace out!