From being just another gadget a few years ago, cutting edge and meaningful innovations have helped turn the smartphone into an integral part of our lives – an essential device that connects you with your loved ones. It aids your productivity, helps you keep up with news, listen to music, watch movies and much more. There’s hardly a thing that today’s smartphones cannot do!

In fact, smartphones help us stay connected, stay well, and even stay productive and entertained.

Stay Connected

At a time when social distancing is the new norm, your Galaxy phone is the window to the world, helping you connect seamlessly to your office colleagues, relatives and friends via calls (voice and video), texts and emails. Whether it’s about seeking a doctor’s advice or online classes for kids, the smartphone helps you accomplish so much without having to step out of your homes.

[QUICK TECH] My Smartphone, My Precious Companion: Mala Bhargava

Stay Healthy

The local gyms may have become temporarily inaccessible, but that should not come in the way of keeping yourself in shape. With a fitness app (such as Samsung Health), you can turn your smartphone into your gym trainer to easily track physical activity, nutrition, heart rate and sleep too.

Stay Productive

With remote working gaining popularity, it is important for you to stay on top of work via your home office. Thankfully, today’s smartphones can be really handy when it comes to checking emails, setting up video conferencing and even working on spreadsheets and presentations. With a simple USB cable, you can connect your Samsung device to your PC—and once connected, use Samsung DeX to drag and drop files from your phone to your PC.

Stay Informed & Entertained

News is important and available at your fingertips via your smartphone. And after a hard day of work, nothing is more soothing than to tune into soulful music on your smartphone. Gone are the days when families would fight for the TV remote. Today, more and more millennials and Gen Z use their smartphones to binge watch their favourite shows or play high-action games, collaborating with their friends. With screen sizes getting bigger and better, smartphones have become the hub of entertainment for a lot of people today.

Stay in Control

Smartphones help you navigate real world challenges from the safety of your own home. You can conduct financial transactions such as making payments and transferring money safely and securely through your phone. Moreover, you can order food and groceries online and pay for them with apps like Samsung Pay. With Samsung Knox, Samsung’s defence-grade security platform, you can be assured about the security of your Galaxy smartphone.

[We will bring you useful tips to use your Samsung Galaxy. Watch this space for more.]

In partnership with Samsung Networks, Jio has built the world’s largest green-field and all IP based 4G LTE network, which supports over 340 million LTE subscribers as of August 2019.

At the event, the two companies present new business opportunities using 5G NSA mode, with advanced 4G LTE and 5G technology used in combination as a dual-connected mode network. These will demonstrate how innovations from the latest technology can benefit consumers, enterprises and the society.

“The unprecedented data growth and the mobile internet adoption and revolution that Jio brought to India has fundamentally changed the life of every Indian,” said Mathew Oommen, President of Reliance Jio Infocomm. “We as Jio, working closely with key partners like Samsung will ensure that we continue to help India leapfrog traditional technologies by advancing the existing 4G all-IP infrastructure and leverage the end-to-end fiber, 5G, and IoT ecosystems towards a digital infrastructure platform. This digital platform will deliver on the aspirations of all Indians, our businesses, and the emerging digital society that is fundamental to accelerating the digital economy and ensuring digital freedom for India.”

“Having superior LTE networks is a key asset for operators in moving towards the 5G era, and Jio has reached that compelling competency,” said Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, Executive Vice President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung has been working in close cooperation with Jio to bring a digital transformation including the transition to 4G throughout India for over seven years. Samsung and Jio will continue to join forces in bringing next generation innovation across the country, harnessing the full 5G potential in driving further growth of a ‘Digital India’.”

5G Use Cases for Digital India

Samsung and Jio jointly highlight immersive and live applications of 5G that will demonstrate the value that 5G has to offer in India. The trial will feature solutions from Samsung Networks’ 5G product portfolio, including its 3.5GHz solution for 5G Massive MIMO Unit (MMU), its 28GHz Access Unit (AU) and CPE device, its virtualized radio access (vRAN) and core, and 5G mobile devices. Demonstrations will include:

• Virtual Classroom allows attendees to watch 360-degree virtual lecture taken from a classroom in Jio’s Reliance Corporate Park (RCP) in Mumbai.

• Massive Full High-Definition (HD) Content Streaming shows FHD video streaming on multiple smartphones (Galaxy S10 5G) simultaneously and 4K video streaming using multiple 5G tablets, which will showcase the unparalleled entertainment experience powered by 5G.

4G Use Cases for Public Safety Communications

Jio and Samsung will demonstrate a live “public safety network over LTE” featuring Mission-Critical-Push-To-X (MCPTX) communication. Conceptualized as “OneNet”, a potential India’s Emergency Communication Network, this will enable first responders to connect with each other using a broadband network in a controlled and “geo-fenced” manner.

Public Safety LTE (PS-LTE) using MCPTX goes beyond what was possible through legacy technologies in which they were limited to providing voice-oriented communications. By highlighting the use of LTE for real-time streaming of videos and high-definition images of scenes during emergencies, it enables multi-lateral communications to be connected at once to transfer video, images and voice simultaneously using multicast technology. As allowing the first responders and control towers to engage in highly effective communications, PS-LTE is enabled to make better decisions during time-critical situations.

As Jio has already built the largest and most advanced LTE network nationwide reaching every corner of Pan-India, MCPTX for PS-LTE is among the most effective ways to maximize the current LTE network to serve public safety for over 1.3 billion people.

Samsung is one of the first companies to launch a 5G commercial network in Korea and the U.S. in the first half of 2019 using its end-to-end 5G solutions ranging from chipsets, radios, core network solutions and smartphones for both mid-band and mmWave.

The deal showcases Samsung’s commitment to virtual personal assistants and is part of the company’s broader vision to deliver an AI-based open ecosystem across all of its devices and services. With Viv, Samsung will be able to unlock and offer new service experiences for its customers, including one that simplifies user interfaces, understands the context of the user and offers the user the most appropriate and convenient suggestions and recommendations.

Viv was founded by AI visionaries Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham. As part of the acquisition, the founding team will work closely with Samsung’s Mobile Communications business, but continue to operate independently under its existing leadership.

“Unlike other existing AI-based services, Viv has a sophisticated natural language understanding, machine learning capabilities and strategic partnerships that will enrich a broader service ecosystem,” said Injong Rhee, CTO of the Mobile Communications business at Samsung Electronics. “Viv was built with both consumers and developers in mind. This dual focus is also what attracted us to Viv as an ideal candidate to integrate with Samsung home appliances, wearables and more, as the paradigm of how we interact with technology shifts to intelligent interfaces and voice control.”

With the rise of AI, consumers now desire an interaction with technology that is conversational, personalized and contextual—an experience that fits seamlessly within their everyday lives. To achieve this, Viv has developed a new and proprietary platform that allows this interaction to scale.

Viv’s platform also allows developers to teach the system how to create new applications or to use existing applications, building an open ecosystem of intelligence that is greater than the sum of its parts and gets smarter every day. Viv’s superior platform combined with Samsung’s leading devices, services and global resources will help drive the next generation of AI solutions.

“At Viv, we’re building the simplest way for anyone to talk to devices and services everywhere. We see a future that is decidedly beyond apps—where you can get what you need quickly and easily no matter where you are, or what device you are near,” said Viv co-founder and CEO, Dag Kittlaus. “Samsung offers us a unique opportunity to deliver a single conversational interface to the world’s apps and services across a diverse range of products, at global scale.”

Samsung’s Global Innovation Center spearheaded the acquisition for Samsung’s Mobile Communications business. “At GIC we’re always looking for startups with a compelling vision and breakthrough experiences we can help build, grow and scale,” said Jacopo Lenzi, SVP of Business Development and Strategic Acquisitions. “We see great potential in the Viv AI software and platform, and we’re excited for Viv to reach our millions of users through Samsung’s global presence and distribution.”

About Viv Labs, Inc.

Viv radically simplifies the world by providing an intelligent interface to everything. Viv is an artificial intelligence platform that enables developers to distribute their products through an intelligent, conversational interface. It’s the simplest way for the world to interact with devices, services and things everywhere. Viv is taught by the world, knows more than it is taught, and learns every day. Learn more about Viv at viv.ai