A slice of pizza, a bar of chocolate, a puzzle, a cookie and even the Taj Mahal. At first glance they appear to be objects chosen at random. However, they all appear transforming from a very specific way in the latest videos published by Samsunga campaign so cryptic that it barely offers information about the next foldable Galaxy, but that seems to hide a fairly clear message.
The company has emptied part of its social networks to replace them with a succession of ASMR aesthetic videos. There are barely any words. There is hardly any product. Just sounds of cuts, folds and transformations. And precisely for that reason it is worth analyzing them.
For years, Samsung introduced folding phones highlighting the hinge. The message was simple: a phone that opens to become a tablet or folds down to pocket size. But that idea no longer surprises anyone. After seven generations of Galaxy Fold, the fold is no longer a novelty.
The new campaign seems to indicate that Samsung wants to change the narrative: the objects that appear in the videos not only bend, they also change their meaning. A slice of pizza becomes another way of eating. One less piece in the puzzle changes the entire image and a chocolate bar breaks into new pieces. Everything revolves around the same idea: transformation. But there is another particularly interesting clue. In one of the videos, a strip of photo booth-style photographs appears with the word “Snapply” at the top. When you cut that strip, the message “Cut to what matters” is visible. The statement would not be accidental.
Samsung has been incorporating artificial intelligence functions for years capable of summarizing texts, removing objects from photographs or generating simplified versions of content. Maybe The real protagonist of the next Unpacked is not only the hardware. Perhaps the foldable wants to become the device where artificial intelligence decides what information deserves to occupy the screen.
It wouldn’t be strange if the phone not only changed size when opened, but also the way it organized content. The closest thing to the symbiosis of hardware and software that we experienced so far. The chosen objects themselves offer another clue. Neither the pizza, nor the chocolate, nor the photographs have the traditional elongated proportions of the Galaxy Fold. They are considerably wider figures.
That coincides with numerous rumors pointing to a major redesign of the next Galaxy Fold 8, with a larger external screen and a format much closer to that of a conventional telephone when closed. A response to the criticism that Samsung has received for years. When Some Chinese manufacturers opted for external screens almost identical to those of a traditional mobile phone, the Fold maintained a narrow format that forced the device to be opened more frequently. If the rumors are correct, Samsung could be correcting precisely that aspect.
Another curious detail is that Samsung has resorted to ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response), but in practice they are those videos whose sound turns out to be almost hypnotic. It might seem like an aesthetic choice, but in this case it would be something more tangible. While ASMR seeks to provoke a physical sensation of satisfaction through sounds, the new foldable from the Korean manufacturer would go for satisfaction in the sense of touch. No other smartphone relies as much on physical interaction as one that continually opens, closes and changes shape. The campaign seems to want to remember that a foldable is not only visible, its essence is based on touch and manipulation.
It is possible that the next Galaxy Unpacked simply presents another evolution of the Fold and the Flip. But The campaign gives the impression of wanting to prepare something different taking into account that it barely “talks” about technology and more about senses. Less of substance and more of form. And, if that interpretation is correct, the real protagonist of the next Unpacked (at the end of July) will not be the hinge, but the user and their interaction with the screen.