Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch and its rumored Galaxy Glass device indicate that the company plans to rely heavily on experimentation as it innovates its way into the future. The true passion and excitement behind Samsung’s vision of the future is on full display in a concept video quietly released during the company’s most recent Analyst Day in Seoul, Korea.
“Display Centric World” (see video above) offers a glimpse at a world full of interactive displays in which nearly every surface, window and tabletop has the ability to show the user video content and context-specific data.
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One of the first concept devices to make an appearance is an interactive coffee cup embedded with a fingerprint scanner that enables the cup to display the drinker’s health information directly on the cup's surface via an imagined program called "My House Doctor." The wrap-around cup display includes a diagram of the human anatomy as well as a real-time heart monitor.
Next we’re shown display that takes up an entire wall designed to look as though it’s part of the user's real world environment. Shortly after, we see an ultra-thin translucent alarm clock about the height and width of an iPad that folds in half when the user turns off the alarm.
Of course, the use case for such a device might seem like something out of science fiction, that is, until you remember that Samsung has devoted a great deal of its resources toward delivering curved and foldable displays.
Perhaps one of the most immediately realizable concept devices shown in the video is a display-enabled kitchen cutting board that delivers information about the food the user is preparing right under her fingertips. While in use, the display can also be turned into a recipe display panel that lists the nutritional and caloric properties of all the ingredients currently being prepared.
In the area of mobile display concept solutions, the video then puts us inside a car in which the passenger has the ability to control various functions through the car’s interactive display. The window not only shows the current time and temperature, but it also allows direct manipulation of the vehicle’s heating and cooling system controls.
Later, the video puts us in the middle of the classroom of the future, where a teacher uses a transparent interactive blackboard display and children have the ability to play with each other from classrooms in two different remote locations.
Finally, back in the personal use arena, the concept video shows us what at first looks like a purse, but then the object folds out into a fully interactive display unit. That same user then uses her smart bracelet (which looks a lot like a Nike FuelBand) to interact with a nearby smart window display that does everything from show retail items for sale to allowing the wearer of the bracelet to call a family member.
These visions of a display-centric future might have been seen as overly ambitious just a few years ago, but as many of the evolution of display technology from Samsung and many others continues apace, videos like this one are increasingly looking more like a forecast rather than an optimistic prediction.