Episode 72 - Samsung’s Winter 2024 Unpacked Event

Most groups of friends have their go-to inside jokes… the things you know will get a rise out of someone because, frankly, they just know you that well… my inner circle is no different: for some its a favorite sports team not performing well, others its pointing out the oh-so-specific OCD’s that make us “tick”, and for me, well, anyone who knows me well enough can walk up on any given day, ask me how many phones I’m carry, and prepare for a good chuckle at my well-deserved-expense…

My love of gadgets is, literally, very well documented at this point… and one of my favorite sub-genres is the smartphone. These roots go so much deeper than just the “modern” era ushered in by the iPhone, Nexus One, and Galaxy Note… I still have the fondest of memories for my HTC “Star Trek”, BlackBerry Curve, and even the “giant” Nokia 1520… 

So in the here-and-now, the smartphone space has indeed “matured” to the point of, dare some say, getting “boring”? They all look… pretty much the same. They are all… pretty much just as fast. And the cameras are all… well, creating just about as many pixels as they’re actually capturing anymore. But I still love them…

Until someone actually cracks the “next big thing” in consumer electronics, the metal & glass slab in your pocket will remain one of the most valuable touch-points in our everyday computing experience. 

So, much like the clockwork it is, Samsung brought us their Winter “Unpacked” event this last week and with it three new phones that sure look familiar, talked up AI advances that might be hit-or-miss at best, and even teased an upcoming wearable that might actually shake things up a bit… Sound like business as usual? It surely does, and I still love every last second of it… let’s dive in…