Samsung launches Galaxy S9 with focus on social media (Video)

BARCELONA/SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd unveiled its flagship Galaxy S9 smartphone on Sunday with an emphasis on visual applications for social media, hoping to attract tech savvy young consumers to weather a market slowdown. With the global smartphone market set to stay flat or even shrink after meagre growth of one percent last year, vendors are focusing on features designed to encourage consumers to ditch their old phones earlier than they would have previously.

Samsung launched the S9 at the mobile gadget fair in Barcelona, attracting thousands of reporters to see how the world’s biggest smartphone maker could innovate in a category in which the big players are technologically closer than ever.

DJ Koh, Samsung’s president of IT and mobile communications, said the most important function of a phone today was “visual communication”, and the Galaxy S9 had been designed for the visual and social generation.

It features improved cameras, an artificial intelligence-powered voice tool, and social media functions that are easier to deploy than previous offerings.

New features include an automatic super-slow motion camera setting that looks primed to show up on Instagram feeds soon, and software that turns selfies into instant emojis.

Analyst Ben Wood from CCS Insight said the S9 and larger screened S9 Plus were all about incremental gains over the S8.