Last year, I was whining a lot about travel and meetings. I wanted to stay home, take a backseat for a while, enjoy doing absolutely nothing.

Never in my wildest imagination had I thought that such a day would arrive. Now I miss being outdoors, checking out the latest tech that the world has, and of course talking to people face to face, and sharing experiences with my audience.

Luckily, technology make our survival a little easier. With 21st century technology at our disposal, it’s just so easy now to operate from home. And for those who think productivity is on the low working from home, well, I see it at an all-time high.

I can’t imagine living without my smartphone – all those long video calls, playing games or virtual meetings that have become essentials during the lockdown.

With my Galaxy S20 Plus, I spend hours away from work, playing multiplayer games with fellow journalists. That’s part of my new normal now, almost a daily routine!

Technology is what helped me conceive and start a new series where I conduct interviews with Galaxy S20 Plus of thought leaders across industries. I found the camera of the smartphone very easy to work with, and the results, of course, have been stunning.

The other aspect of this current situation for me was finding a sport that doesn’t involve too many people, and has social distancing built in. That sport was badminton. I am currently at the noob level, but I see myself getting better at it, thanks to all the online pro-level coaching I can get right on my smartphone.

So, as Earth reboots, and we move towards a technological evolution, our smartphones have become an inseparable appendage. They’ve helped us stay relevant, connected, productive, entertaining as well as be a life coach, all in one.

Hoping to see the outdoors again without restriction, and yes, if anyone is interested in a game of Badminton in the world of a new normal, you know where to find me!

[Siddhartha Sharma popularly known as SidnChips, is a Consulting Editor for Technology and Automobiles at Jagran New Media. He wrote this piece at the request of Samsung Newsroom India]

I’ve followed this saying over the last 57 days when we were locked inside our homes, with loads of time at hand.

My job requires me to spot interesting stories, shoot stuff and then go through multiple rounds of edits, before I can put it up on my channel.

Now, without the services of a dedicated camera person, I was at a loss through this period, and that is when I decided to turn this adversity into an opportunity. An opportunity to acquire a new skill.

Much to the chagrin of my videographer friend, I decided to don the role of the cameraperson, but the mighty DSLR isn’t easy to navigate. The ISO settings and ‘f’ values look like algebra to me.

That’s when the Galaxy S20+ came to the rescue.

Abhishek Telang: I decided to don the role of a cameraperson

Smartphones are handy, easy to use and you can download plenty of apps which are very helpful for ‘not so talented’ novices like me. And then, to make a good video or a vlog using a smartphone, all you need is a tripod, that’s it.

The smartphone’s features and the dozens of built-in AI tricks take care of everything else. No stress of figuring out the ISO or aperture settings. The auto setting on the camera app takes care of pretty much every other detail. What I loved most about the Galaxy S20+ is the almost magical audio recording.

The phone allows me to shoot videos in 4K resolution, and sometimes even in 8K, giving content creators like me a lot of freedom to experiment.

Through this lockdown, I have created 70 videos for my YouTube Channel, using my Galaxy S20+. The total DSLR videos I have shot so far are 21!

In fact there is one more video that I am already working on, about my latest hobby, of making kulfi at home. When Samsung Newsroom India first spoke to me to write the article, I planned to make a video about how to make kulfi at home in my Samsung refrigerator, but I gave up that idea as it became difficult to procure all the right ingredients to make the perfect kulfi for this summer, with all the right flavours. I promise to come back with my video on my kulfi making attempt soon. And I will use the Galaxy again.

I know my cameraperson friend isn’t going to like this. Sorry buddy, I have found new love, in my ‘cameraphone’. And I just can’t get over it right now.

[Abhishek Telang is a former Tech Editor turned YouTuber who has been covering technology since 2007. He wrote this piece at the request of Samsung Newsroom India]

Ershad Kaleebullah: My Galaxy S20 has kept me connected, informed and entertained

Video calling friends and family or discovering the chef within or letting out the photographer in me… never have I valued technology more. My smartphone has kept me connected, informed and entertained. As far as work is concerned, we’ve had to make rapid changes to how we do things.  And, at the forefront of it all has been the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra.

Shooting videos

Since a lot of our work revolves around making videos for the Mr. Phone YouTube channel from our studio, that’s taken a hit for now. Therefore, our homes have now been converted into makeshift studios. I use Galaxy S20 Ultra for all my video shoots. It is comfortable and sleek to carry around. Moreover, the compressed file sizes are smaller, which is important as it doesn’t take long for our video editor to download the footage and start work on it immediately. Subsequently, our timelines are not affected. The footage is crisp and stablised at 4K 60fps from the front camera, the primary shooter, and even the wide angle camera.

Gaming away to glory

No, I am not Jack – the “all work and no play boy.” I love gaming and that is another reason why I’ve been hooked to the S20 Ultra. I am a big Call of Duty fan and crunching through Team Deathmatches on the mobile version of the game. It is optimised for the Galaxy S20 series and the massive display on the S20 Ultra makes it perfect for shooters.

Capturing memories

Staying at home has also inspired my wife and I to whip up different dishes across a variety of cuisines. And, to document our food experiments, the S20 Ultra has once again come in handy. Just look at the gorgeous pictures I’ve managed to capture with the phone. But, that’s not it, I’ve managed to capture great pictures of the beautiful Gurugram sky using the phone thanks to the excellent dynamic range on offer.

Also, since there are no salons open, I had to trim my beard myself. Funny thing happened, though. Instead of trimming it, I ended up shaving the entire beard. My wife wanted me to wear a mask inside the house as well, since I look like a plucked chicken now.

Jokes apart, as you can tell, I have actually used the S20 Ultra extensively and it has made it easier for me to get through my daily tasks with ease despite the chaos that is associated with staying at home.

To round it all up, let’s take a look at the macro picture. The moment this forced isolation ends we are going to see a paradigm shift in the way the world functions outside our homes. I am fairly certain that technology will play a central role in facilitating that change. Remote working will be an active option for anyone who prefers it, and personal tech such as smartphones, laptops, and related peripherals will be more in demand. And when that happens, I am going to be around not just to witness it but also to document it. What will you be doing?

[Ershad Kaleebulah is the Editor-in-Chief of Mr Phone. He wrote this piece at the request of Samsung Newsroom India]

Varun Krishnan: I’ve always been a desktop person

I have been working from home for several years now, often interrupted by meetings, travel, phone calls and more. Now, with all travel and social interactions coming to a grinding halt, my productivity is at a record new high! It has been more than a month since we opened our office and FoneArena is embracing the fact that it is an online publication.

We do have our set of challenges, as we don’t have access to our studio and some other equipment but working from home is set to become the new normal and we are all geared up to come to terms with it.

Speaking about productivity, I have always been a desktop person when it comes to getting work done. I believe in a multi-monitor setup and recently moved to Dual Samsung 27-inch curved LED monitors which has been great not only for work but also for gaming. My work environment turns into a gaming setup when I think I need to relax a bit. I love travel and flying (in real) and to make up for not flying in recent times, I fly to my favourite destinations on my Flight Simulator or drive in a F1 game, considering I can’t take out my car right now.

Staying connected is more important than ever before and this means that our mobile phones are one of the most crucial gadgets in our lives today. We should handle our gadgets with extreme care as it is hard to repair or buy a new one, at this time. On a related note, there is an increase in cybercrime, including phishing, as a lot of us are spending more time online. It is important we stay alert and stay safe digitally and must try to educate everyone around us on this subject.

The lockdown has given me the much-needed time to work on some things I have been procrastinating – sorting my ever-growing collection of photos, backing up important files, organizing my data on the cloud. Guess what has become my favourite hobby: checking out some old gadgets I have lying around. I am brushing up my programming skills and trying to pick up a new language.

Aside from screens, instrumental music is something close to my heart and I’m getting back to playing a few instruments (Mridangam and Kanjira) I used to play in the past.

[Varun Krishnan is Founder and Editor-in-Chief at FoneArena.com and has been writing about gadgets since 2005. He wrote this piece at the request of Samsung Newsroom India]

The doodler within me is forever waiting to sprint to converse with a diverse set of ideas and convince them that they can also exist meaningfully as doodles. And so the lockdown phase finds me blogging in text, transforming ideas into little chunks of podcasts(they’re still waiting to reach out) and gliding the S-pen on the reasonably large Galaxy Note screen to draw, sketch, and paint.

Burst of Colours on my Note

‘Isn’t this difficult?’ asked a friend once, and added, ‘I erase more than I draw and the page usually wears and tears sooner than I expect.’

Hmmm… I told him that my page exists in the digital universe and is immortal in many ways, if this is what matters. I then added that though using one’s finger-tip is permissible, an artistic nirvana is possible only with the S-pen.

Artistic Nirvana with the S-Pen

Life, according to me, is what flows out of the tapering end of my S-pen… and in my hands it is what a wizard’s wand means to Harry Potter. My wand dives and brings up water colours, oil paints, chalks, charcoal, pencils, pens, markers, brushes, rollers, palette knives, tones, and textures. There are symmetries, strokes, and guides that pop up to help. All I need to do is to let my imagination and the technology of Galaxy Note merge seamlessly to create. ‘The power of technology,’ I said, ‘helps me bring my imagination to life.’

Let Life’s Imagination Run Wild

So far as my lockdown time-table is concerned, let me just say that I don’t have any. I have realized that flowing with the moment is probably the most immersive emotion that there is… and this is how I was able to convincingly say that the skies over Delhi are now clearer and bluer. One evening as I stood on my seventh floor terrace near Gole market in central Delhi, I aimed my camera in all directions and clicked a number of picture… and realized soon enough that a reasonable zoom had me staring at Qutub Minar that is around 14 km away as the crow flies. Astounding, isn’t it?

There is always one or the other immersive moment waiting to be beckoned and embraced. I believe it is the right time to hug as many varying tasks and skills as this may help us finally to discover what it is that we want to stay on in love with.

[Arvind Passey is the Editor of The Education Post and writes on a range of topics including technology, travel and environment. His short-stories and poetry have been published in several journals, anthologies, and magazines in UK and India. He wrote this piece at the request of Samsung Newsroom India]

My future, with filter and the Galaxy Z Flip

Thankfully, I have always been built for a ‘Work From Home’ culture, thanks in part to a commute that feels like time stood still and in part to my job as a media professional. On a daily basis, most media professionals can work from just about anywhere given they have internet access and a smartphone but for me specifically, home is where the work is.

As part of What Hi-Fi, a magazine the covers high-end home-theater and audio gear, part of my job includes watching movies and listening to music, both of which I prefer to do in the purpose-built in-home studio. So, besides the internet access and smartphone, you can even add popcorn to the list and my work essentials are sorted!

Indulgences aside, the quarantine period has been a time of self-discovery for many of us and served as an assessment tool for a lot of team leaders. Keeping discipline and motivation levels up is definitely a full-time job when you have to manage a team of professionals who are used to a high-strung life of events, reporting, meetings, commuting and the daily grind of ‘office’. Thanks to several apps that make it easier than ever to quickly get more than three co-workers on a call, the workflow itself isn’t hampered much. Add secure intranet server access, instant messaging apps, editing softwares, and Google Docs and the Stuff team is completely capable of churning out issues after issues remotely. The bigger problem is logistics and for a tech magazine, life without new products in hand will eventually come to a grinding halt, one way or the other.

Thankfully, just before #StayHome was imposed, I was lucky enough to get hold of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, which gave me a lot of insights (and entertainment) in isolation. The future of mobile phone form factor, the cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio screen becoming a norm and how technology always apes sci-fi are some of the matters, the Galaxy Z Flip made me think.

Read about the Galaxy Z Flip Here:  The Future Changes Shape: Express Yourself with Galaxy Z Flip

When I was done thinking, I realised that like every tech journalist these days, my house was littered with little nuggets of technology that begged for a deeper dive. Be it teaching my smart speaker new skills, realising that the vacuum cleaner does a better job than the house help or discovering an app that makes me sound like film stars for my Instagram videos.

There’s always something to explore and when you’re done with that, there’s also time left to introspect on how seriously helpful technology can be too. In a global crisis like this, the only reason why most of us have managed to remain sane in the safety of our home is because of technology. I am hoping that in the times to come, we all are a little more respectful of nature and a little more appreciative of the tech that drives us.

[Nishant Padhiar is Editor of two monthly technology and lifestyle magazines – Stuff India and What Hi-Fi India]

For one, I am now able to take time out for my passions – photography and music. That has helped me clear my mind, and think like never before, of course aided by the super fresh air that I get to breathe in my garden these days. With my dogs (14 of them).

Who wouldn’t want to write when your surroundings are blanketed in the wonders of Mother Nature, that too in Delhi. These days, my garden gets numerous visitors – pigeons (of course), parrots, and even peacocks!

With the world in an unfortunate lockdown, people are consuming more content, so there’s pressure to create more. The cool thing is that I’m managing to literally pen big articles. Many a times, I sit down to write an article on the laptop, and then switch to my phone so that I can roam around the house while I keep writing.

Since all my content is on a cloud, it’s easy for me to switch, and the large screen and precise haptic feedback on Galaxy S20 Ultra that I am using right now, is just perfect for writing. I am actually being more productive sometimes just using the phone as an idea goes from being a stream of consciousness to a fully fleshed editorial.

When I first entered the newsroom, I wasn’t an Android user. But then in 2011, the Galaxy SII happened to me, my first smartphone purchasedfrom my salary. The next was a Galaxy Nexus, despite it not being launched in India. Since then, Galaxy S has remained a big part of my growing up, personally and professionally.

However, smartphones aren’t my first memory of Samsung. My first memory is from the ‘90s at a shop in New Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar market. My dad had taken me along to buy a new TV and we ended up getting a Samsung TV which was used in the family till 2015. Since then, every TV that has been bought in my household has been a Samsung. That is long before I started my journey as a technology journalist in 2009.

Today, content isn’t limited to text. There are a lot of videos that we’ve been making at warpcore.live, but that was usually on a DSLR. At home, I gave it a shot on Galaxy S20 Plus, and the results have been amazing. I am shooting a lot of 4K videos, though it does help that the smartphone can shoot 8K as well.

The lockdown has given me time to do things I always wanted to, returning to old hobbies. I am a guitarist and I have taken this time to develop a DJ set. I tested it a couple of times and the feedback was rather encouraging.

I have also started to develop photography as a hobby. It is an extension of my job, as I am always clicking photographs while reviewing smartphones or cameras, but this time it is more deliberate. The capabilities of Galaxy S20 Plus and Galaxy S20 Ultra help me unlock my abilities. Using 50X zoom on Galaxy S20 Ultra, I can gaze at the Lotus Temple from my roof top.

My life is pretty normal but this lockdown can take its toll. New hobbies and new ways of working have helped me keep my sanity and productivity.

[Sahil Mohan Gupta is the Founder and Editor of warpcore.live and a Contributor to NewsX.com. He was formerly the India Editor for Gizmodo, PCMag and TechRadar. He wrote this piece at the request of Samsung Newsroom India]

My dad was the real techie in the family, responsible for us all developing a lifelong curiosity about technology. He would make sure that any new gadget invented soon found their way to our home as soon as they hit the mart – the first intercom, the first cassette recorder, the first cordless phone, and the list goes on. As a child, I more or less took tech innovations for granted – and that doesn’t seem to have changed.

But never at any point in life did I realise what precious companions our gadgets could be. Until one fine day we found ourselves firmly locked down hiding away from a nasty virus. I guess if there’s ever been a time for introspection, this is it.

Today, if I had to choose one gadget I can’t do without, it would be my smartphone. You could say it’s my one big window to the outside world. It is my way to connect with friends and family, and colleagues, and also with the neighbourhood mom-and-pop stores and chemist, who deliver those essentials when I give them a call. I am connected to my bank, I am paying all my bills to keep my WiFi, my TV, my electricity and even my cellular network going – all on my phone. I am talking to and chatting with my friends on it, I get news updates on social networking apps, and I am learning new languages through videos. It’s with me by my bedside, while I am working out, I am in the kitchen, and even when I am learning Belly Dance in front of my giant mirror. Now, I am revealing some of my secrets! More on that some other time.

But while I work from home in these difficult times, I’ve picked up a new way to use the phone. I have been working on digitising old photographs for some time now. While we used to have those scanners in the past, several apps on our phones are now able to do the job as well. I leave it you to choose your app. There are many you will find on the app stores. I am spending this time using my Galaxy Note10 to digitise a lot of old family photos. You get to see them once again, touch and feel the memories of yore, and bring them back to life.

Of all of my gadgets – there are so many around me – I rather like using the Galaxy Note10 because of its versatility. The S Pen makes it easier to navigate, scroll, and calligraph – another thing that I picked up from my dad. I like using the trace method of writing, which I can do easily with the Galaxy Note.

In the hustle bustle of life, we didn’t have the time and energy to look back. We all have a beautiful past. Despite the tough times, look at the positives of being home today. And create something nice for the future.

[Mala Bhargava is an Independent Technology Journalist and writes for The Hindu Business Line. She wrote this piece at the request of Samsung Newsroom India]