Samsung’s Galaxy comes home at Galaxy UnPacked 2019

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2019

Val Quinn, Channel 7 Sunrise GadgetGuy was a guest of Samsung at its Galaxy UnPacked 2019 event in San Francisco. The news went live at 7.30 AM on 21 February (in Australia).

You can see the Sunrise session here.

There is good news and good news. The headphone jack lives – you don’t know how important that is to most of us, and there are not three but five models (if you include the Galaxy Foldable still to come) to sate our appetite for flagships.

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2019
7.3″ foldable looks really good

Plus, the Galaxy UnPacked event 2019 revealed a Galaxy Active fitness-oriented smartwatch with heart rate and blood pressure monitoring, two Galaxy Fit health bands and Galaxy buds turned by AKG (a Samsung owned company).

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2019
First smart watch with blood pressure monitor

I won’t repeat the details – GadgetGuy stayed up all night to bring them to you

By the way, Samsung’s Australian website for the Galaxy S10 is here. And if you are keen the Youtube video of the UnPacked event it is below – it is 2 hours and 22 minutes long – tune in at 33 minutes for the Galaxy Foldable, 56 minutes fro the Galaxy S10 and 1 hour 30 minutes for the wearables.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teInMZR8Z0o

Why is all this important?

Let’s focus on the Telstra announcement first.

Real, live, 5G and all the speed that entails is a reality before July 2019. The free upgrade takes the pain away from waiting to buy a 5G handset – you can be the first. Or if you find you don’t need the things 5G offers you have a great handset anyway.

We can’t speak for Telstra and its plans to accelerate 5G use, but I understand that it is a priority to rollout 5G widely after the major cities. It now has the bandwidth needed with 60 MHz of contiguous 5G spectrum in all major capital cities and between 50-80 MHz of contiguous 5G spectrum in regional areas. Around 200 sites (towers) have been upgraded to 5G.

Next the inherent quality and innovation of Samsung Galaxy.

You can be certain that it is the best of the best technology at that time. They are well made, have everything you need and are holding resale value very well too. Apart from a stylus – wait for the Note10 soon!

The new S10e is no slouch either. Looking at the specifications, it has all the S10/+ go fast bits with a smaller 5.8” flat AMOLED screen and dual camera instead of triple. It comes in at $1199, and I know how desperately Samsung tried to get it at $999 – our Aussie dollar at 70c to the USD is too weak to do that.

And if you want a terabyte of storage

Well $2399 is about the same price as Apple’s XS Max with only 512GB! That theme of about double the memory for the same price as other comparable Apple iPhones continues across the range. But to be fair, there is little iOS/Android swapping anymore and less Samsung to Apple than ever before. Both camps have amazing user satisfaction ratings.

Looking at the Galaxy S10 tech – it has everything you could expect of a 2019 flagship. I can’t wait to see what flows down to the mid-range and value Galaxy J and A series later this year.

Blood pressure is a life saver

The Galaxy Active Watch Blood Pressure Monitor is extraordinary and a most necessary feature for those with heart issues. You see, heart rate is a very small part of the story. Using Samsung’s My BP Lab app jointly developed with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the app keeps tabs on your blood pressure levels throughout the day, and help identify early signs of ill health.

As my cardiologist says, “I really don’t care that your smartwatch monitors heart rate – it’s blood pressure that tells if you have a healthy cardiovascular system” especially for those with high blood pressure.