The New Galaxy Book Lineup for 2021!
The four new Galaxy Books just launched and, a lot has changed, more people are talking about them, and some pretty dope features were added. I have a lot of questions that I am hoping to get answered in this blog post. I even got in touch with some people over at Samsung to help answer these questions.
Changes:
The first change was a new chip. The Galaxy Book and Galaxy Book Pro both use the Intel Evo chip which is an upgrade from the i7 10 from last year. The Galaxy Book 360, which is a lot like the Galaxy Book Flex and Flex Alpha, is using either an I3 or I5. I do want to note that the Galaxy Book Flex Alpha ran the i7 from launch and Galaxy Book Flex did launch another model later on running an i7, so this might happen with the 360. The most impressive model is the Galaxy Book Odyssey which is running the RTX 3050 Ti from Nvidia with a second option of an 11th gen Tiger Processor.
The Galaxy Book that I am typing this post on is the Galaxy Book Flex Alpha with an i7 and QLED screen. This new generation is using a full OLED. Some will have the AMOLED and others will have OLED, it looks like the Quantum dot LCD screens are no longer being used. Storage options will be the similar to last Gen it looks like with the option of 512 GB but a new 1T option.
Software features look incredible with Samsung's own screen recording software which will integrate with the Samsung Studio (which I didn’t even know existed until the livestream 😂) Also, Live edits for video calls (kinda like OBS edits built in) and also features like you would find on Facetime or Duo (filters, emojis, and more). Another cool looking feature is the addition of a laptop version of Smart Things. There are a lot more changes including the option for a 5G SD card, new 65w USBC Thunderbolt Charging and more!
Questions:
I had a lot of questions about the software features; the main one being Will the software features be coming to older Galaxy Books? Given Samsung's phone line up previously only getting one update up until this year, I was pretty worried about the answer. I did reach out to Samsung and after a bit they redirected me to someone who said that there is no info at the moment. Here is what they sent:
I also asked on Reddit to see if someone knew a bit more and this response was from someone who seemed to know what they were talking about.
If they are right, then we’ll hopefully hear soon from Samsung.
I just heard back today 5/1/21, here is a screenshot of the response.
As you can see, SOME software features will be coming to older galaxy books.
I got a new response today (5/2/2021) also confirming that the features are coming to the other Galaxy Books. Thank goodness!
Another question you may have is: Why so many laptops this year??? Well, CNN says that Samsung made it up to a 2% Notebook Market share, and they were also pressured from the release of the M1 Macs. Another reason is that over this time, the PC market has grown by 5% which is the biggest growth in a decade!
The Event:
I was pretty interested in how Samsung did the livestream this time. The lighting effects and camera effects were pretty cool, even if they weren’t as good as the Apple Spring Loaded.
The strange thing about the event was the way the presented the information. They mentioned a lot of features that were on last year's Galaxy Book. Yes, I do understand why they have to do this from a marketing standpoint, but it’s just a bit weird.
Interestingly, the fingerprint reader on these new devices is optional (I only just realized that). Also, is it just me, or does the Galaxy Book (base model) look a lot like the M1 MacBook Air (really similar). Kinda odd funny. Actually, here are some photos:
They look so similar, right?
The most interesting thing of all (in my opinion), was that I don’t think they mentioned Samsung Dex. They are working with Microsoft a lot more now so maybe that was part of some agreement, but it seems odd that they were pushing YourPhone instead of Dex…
Conclusion:
Overall, I am very interested in these new devices (especially the software). I really hope that the new software is on its way to previous gen devices, but if not, there are rumors that an upcoming version of Windows will bring certain features for Cameras. We will see!
Thanks a ton for reading! All links are down below for where this info came from. My main blog is over on WordPress where I talked about the Google Photos editor updates from last week! You can check those out here.
https://digitalwondersandsmiles.wordpress.com/?p=1592
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-Digital Wonders & Smiles