Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event at CES revealed numerous new products, but one of the smaller announcements was quietly impressive. If you ever lose the TV remote, before you start searching under the cushions in the sofa, there are two other ways you can interact with the TV, apart from, heaven forbid, getting out of your chair to walk over and touch the buttons on the TV itself.
First of all, if your Samsung smartphone is to hand, it will automatically spot the Samsung TV is there and switch to remote control mode, thanks to a mode called Quick Remote.
But much cooler is how you can do things if you have a compatible Samsung Galaxy Watch. The accelerometer in the watch can read the movement of your hand and this means you can navigate the screen, across menus, for instance. Then, if you pinch your forefinger and thumb together, you can select an item onscreen.
If you change your mind, you can go back, by making a fist with your hand. Or if you want to go back to the home screen then you simply make a fist twice.
The watch is capable of doing this because it can sense the movements in your wrist and is therefore able to respond accordingly.
This is similar to the double-tap mechanic that Apple uses on the Apple Watch, though there it’s to invoke a different reaction on the watch screen. Here, it’s to control a separate device, a TV, which makes it an intriguing and exciting way to do things.
The new mechanism isn’t quite available yet. It will work initially with the 2025 series of TV releases and with watch models from the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 onwards. It’s expected to arrive on earlier TVs in due course.
Samsung has been the global leader in TV sales, the company says, for 18 years. Its Unpacked event in Las Vegas at CES showed off glare-free mini-LED screens, a super-bright OLED screen measuring 95 inches, and a QLED screen well over 100 inches.
Even so, it’s the smaller announcements that can be as appealing. And if you don’t care for them, get back to diving under the cushions.
