Watch out, Apple. Samsung is ready to make a splash with its Galaxy S9 this month, and the smartphone will reportedly give Android fans an even better way to send silly emoji to their friends than what they’d find on the iPhone X.
As Korean publication ETNews reports, the Galaxy S9 will be Samsung’s first smartphone to come with stereo speakers. More importantly for those who love to pepper their texts with graphics, the smartphone will support 3D emoji. It’s unclear just what Samsung might call its own version of Apple’s Animoji, but ETNews maintains that Samsung’s animated faces will be an improvement over Apple’s implementation.
So far, all we know is that the basics for Samsung’s animated emoji will be similar to what you’d find on Apple’s iPhone X. The Galaxy S9 will be able to track your head’s movements in space and convert your actions to a three-dimensional, animated character. We don’t yet know what makes Samsung’s approach for animated faces better, but we’ll find out next week at Mobile World Congress.
When Samsung announced its new Exynos 9 Series 9810 processor in early January, it called out the chip’s facial-recognition features:
“By utilizing both hardware and software, hybrid face detection enables realistic face-tracking filters as well as stronger security when unlocking a device with one’s face,” reads Samsung’s January announcement.
Additionally, Samsung Korea recently posted teasers on its YouTube channel that hint at some of the Galaxy S9’s features: a super-slow-motion camera setting, improved low-light photography, and the aforementioned animated emoji.
At first glance, it almost appears as if Samsung is cooking up a method to allow users to create cartoon versions of their own faces rather than having to pick from pre-selected characters to animate. However, this could also just be something special Samsung created for its marketing campaign.
