Ads for the Samsung Galaxy S4

samsung galaxy s4 With the North American debut of Samsung’s new flagship phone — the Galaxy S4 — coming soon, the advertisements can’t be far off. Stefan Constantinescu has been continually searching YouTube for any Galaxy S4 promos and found some in Samsung’s official YouTube channel for the Netherlands; he links to them over at Android Beat, and I’ve posted them below.

Each of three videos he found focus on one Samsung-specific software feature:

Sound shot: a feature that lets you record the surrounding sounds as you take a photo, so you can do things like take a photo of a busy downtown square and include the sounds of the traffic and people.
S Translator: lets you speak one language into the Galaxy S4, hit a button, and have the S4 repeat what you said in another language. It reminds me of the idea behind the “Mandarax” in Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos.
Group Play: links together several S4s so that they play the same song, in sync. I’m not sure how useful this is, but I can see some potentially interesting uses for flash mobs or group activities.

There are a couple of notable things about these ads:

There’s no mention of or poking fun at the iPhone or its dedicated fanbase. Keep in mind that these ads are “international” ones; they may yet go with the iOS-bashing tack with the ads for North America.
These ads show people enjoying the Galaxy S4 user experience. Each ad basically says “Hey, look at this feature: here’s what it does, and here’s how people are enjoying it”. Rather than simply listing features or showing off specs (which are useful to most people), the ads tell a story.

Here are the ads: