Samsung knows the pandemic changed tech, so Galaxy phones are changing too

The COVID-19 pandemic required us to to work, attend school and socialize from home — meaning our tech reached a new level of importance in our lives. Although the lockdowns are over, the time we spent at home in 2020 gave Samsung plenty of ideas for how the smartphone experience could be improved.

Those takeaways will surface in One UI 4, Samsung’s next major software update, which rolls out Monday starting with the Galaxy S21 series. 

“We looked at preexisting features and understood what was receiving more usage because of the pandemic, and we reinforced that,” Hyesoon Sally Jeong, Samsung’s vice president and head of framework research and development, told CNET via a translator. 

The update largely focuses on improving areas like privacy, ease of use, personalization and communication, elements that Samsung noticed had become particularly important as many people began spending more time on their phones during the shutdown period. It’s another example of the broader shift that’s occurred across the tech industry as companies began tailoring their products to facilitate remote work and socialization.

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One such feature in Samsung’s update is the ability to record audio and video during conference calls, an addition that was inspired by remote learning. “We realized that our users might want to record the audio or video while they have remote interactions with their teachers or students,” Jeong said. “So teachers might want to record the audio or video conference to monitor the lessons or sessions they had taught to students.” 

But perhaps the biggest change that influenced Samsung’s strategy when designing One UI 4 was the increased amount of time we’ve spent on our smartphones. A recent study published in the JAMA Pediatrics Journal found that screen time doubled among teenagers during the pandemic, not including virtual learning. 

As such, Samsung is trying to make its smartphones easier to look at for long periods of time with cosmetic updates coming in One UI 4. “In terms of visual design, we made a lot of design-related decisions based on the key principle of comfort,” Hyun Kim, head of Samsung’s core user experience group, also said to CNET via a translator. “Because…