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Samsung’s Odyssey G9 continues to establish itself as a leading gaming monitor, having received accolades from leading industry media for its cutting-edge design, display, and unbeatable specifications, and been named the best gaming monitor in the 2021 edition of the prestigious European Hardware Awards.
 
Unveiled at CES 2020, Samsung’s latest ultra-wide curved gaming monitor combines unparalleled depth with HDR 1000 and premium design, all to offer gamers an incomparable experience. Several leading consumer technology publications and design awards across the U.S. and Europe have subsequently awarded the Odyssey G9 some of their top distinctions, highlighting the monitor’s standout picture quality, 1ms response time, 240Hz refresh rate, and design innovation.
 
“Our 2020 Odyssey G9 monitor is an example of Samsung’s industry expertise in providing unbeatable image quality for gamers,” said Hyesung Ha, Senior Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “These awards are testament to our hard work in delivering the world’s best monitors for consumers, which continue to innovate and entertain.”
 
Read on to learn the reasons why the Odyssey G9 continues to win awards.
 

 
For more information on Samsung’s award-winning Odyssey G9 gaming monitor, please visit: https://displaysolutions.samsung.com/monitor/detail/1644/C49G95T
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Spring is here and it’s a good time to clean house in your digital world. From your design process to Galaxy Store presence, it’s important to revisit past work to make sure it’s in top shape. To help you get started, members of the Samsung Developers community have been sharing advice on how they’ve successfully refined their processes and maintained a strong Galaxy Store presence.
We conclude our ‘Refresh for Success’ series with Olga Gabay from Zeru Studio, known for their beautiful themes, wallpapers and Always-On Displays. Read on to find out how Olga maintains design quality in her portfolio.
When and why did you start designing themes?
I started designing themes over three years ago, without any prior experience in this field. However, being a Graphic Designer for 26 years, I already had a process that could take me from an initial inspiration to an end product. First, I make a quick sketch with my tablet, search for the matching stock material, then create a series of 3-4 quick drafts that will represent the home screen, lock screen, messenger and dial pad backgrounds. These images may vary from modified stock photos to complex digital art that may take many hours to complete. Once I’m satisfied with my design, I finalize it in Galaxy Themes Studio.
In my first year, I was trying to figure out the market demand and create various seasonal products. Then I discovered promotional events are better for building demand than following popular topics. So, in my second year I put a lot of effort into chasing the upcoming events calendar. It wasn’t until the middle of my third year that I gave up following common requests. I decided to come up with designs based on my current mood and whatever comes to mind. Also, I stopped thinking about how many sales this or that theme can make.

Theme Designs by Zeru Studio
How often do you revisit your old designs and update them?
From time to time, as long as refreshing the given binary is still available. Whenever I need to update a theme for a new Samsung device, I run through all the major screens and give them a fresh look. I almost always end up fixing at least a few colors, addressing visibility issues, and updating keyboard buttons or some other UI graphic elements. It might take a tremendous amount of time, but there is still value in prioritizing these updates over creating brand new themes during the active updating season, typically at the end/start of a year.
If there is a new feature being rolled out with a scheduled One UI update, I will go through all my old themes and decide which ones to update. Recently, I added video call screen backgrounds to over 25 of my existing themes, despite it not having any sales or promotional value. It's my way of showing appreciation to those who still use my products and it gives me a sense of professional satisfaction.
When new platforms are released, do you check to make sure all designs are working?
It's way too time consuming and not even possible on the newer devices to re-check all old binaries. Instead, I prefer reacting to user feedback. Sometimes, I will check for certain issues (most often contrast or icon/text visibility) to make sure everything is okay after the latest One UI updates. I rely on the Remote Test Lab (RTL) on a regular basis to check designs, because I don’t keep old Galaxy devices.
Are there any specific files you would recommend to always keep handy?
Keep literally everything! Extra disk or cloud space is not that expensive nowadays. It's very important to keep all source files like vector formats, PSDs, hi-resolution images and videos. Image fonts, icons, buttons and backgrounds tend to change in size and proportion with every new device, and that's when old files become handy. Also, source files are often needed to create promotional materials.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give a designer about organizing their work to keep it fresh?
It’s difficult to give advice that’s helpful to every type of designer. Some bigger companies who are producing thousands of designs might want to be very organized, but smaller operations might be more comfortable in a system that looks a bit chaotic from the outside. The best advice I can give is to find what works for you so organizing is easy and doesn’t feel like a chore.
Thanks to Olga for sharing helpful advice on improving the design process and refreshing old themes to maintain their quality. You can connect with Olga and Zeru Studio on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You can also check out Zeru Studio’s full collection of themes in Galaxy Store.
We hope you found our ‘Refresh for Success’ series helpful in getting your digital refresh started. Remember, making Galaxy Store updates is key to keeping your seller account active. You need two activities every three months that trigger an app review by the seller portal team. An activity takes many forms, and can be anything from uploading a new app, to updating a current app, hanging the description or adding/updating photos. However, changing the price of an app does not count.
Follow us on Twitter at @samsung_dev for more developer interviews and tips for designing Themes, Watch Faces, and more for Galaxy Store.
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Start Date Dec 09, 2020
Location YouTube
The excitement has begun! Planning is underway for this year’s Best of Galaxy Store Awards, a ceremony that honors developers and designers who publish content in Galaxy Store. This is Samsung Developers' third year of recognizing excellence in design, innovation, and quality.
We’re adding exciting new features to our awards ceremony and expanded our awards to include Bixby capsules. Join us as we reveal and celebrate this year's winners!
When: December 9th, 5pm PST
Where: Hosted virtually on YouTube
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Two of the things I really like about game developers are their constant drive for innovation and seemingly endless energy. And that cannot be more obvious than participating in an event like the IndieCade International Festival of Independent Games. For 15-plus years, IndieCade has been the premiere stand-alone gathering and showcase for indie games worldwide.
This year, the festival had to completely rethink itself to accommodate our new global reality, and I am so happy to say that the organizers absolutely nailed their “Anywhere and Everywhere” motto. For nine days, the Samsung Developers team were immersed in game presentations and awards, networking events, game slams, and social media madness.
Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of the event and my general musings about the games and participants.
As an event sponsor, we had the privilege to collaborate with the IndieCade audience in several ways:
Attending multiple live presentations Presenting the renewed Samsung Galaxy Store Creating a virtual Samsung Developers booth Watching the nominated games and the highly-anticipated award winners The Samsung Galaxy Store Presentation: Where Indie Games Get Discovered
For obvious reasons, the biggest point of the event for me was to lead the presentation that introduced the new game-focused experience of Galaxy Store. Available in more than 180 countries with more than 400M month active users, Galaxy Store is a great place for developers to publish their game and get discovered. With the help of my colleague, Shelley Wu, we showcased the different opportunities that game developers have to promote and market their games, gave a hands-on walkthrough of the Games tab in the store, and showed how its design promotes discovery of new games.
Additionally, I gave a live step-by-step demonstration on how to create a Seller Portal account, how to request commercial seller status, and the different steps an indie developer should follow to publish their first game.
This presentation is filled with helpful information and tips, and I recommend you watch it.
Live Presentations
Pre-selected game developers were able to showcase their games and particate in the conference chat on IndieCade’s Twitch channel. It is hard to pick just a few games, but these will give you a pretty good idea of what you could expect:
- Aria
Aria is a story-based VR experience where you are placed in a pod to escape a catastrophic explosion on your spaceship. Watch Aria's stream
- Endlight
This one is more like a psychedelic, fast-paced experience. Watch Endlight's stream
- Lost Words
This one is a highly praised puzzle game that is set in the pages of a young girl’s diary, and you have to use words to advance the story. Watch Lost Words' stream
- Thousand Year Old Vampire
This one is for the fans of table top games. It is incredibly innovative and, unlike most TTRPGs, is a solo experience that allows you to create the story of the titular vampire. Watch Thousand Year Old Vampire's stream
Nominees and Winners
This year, IndieCade nominated over 50 games and in the end, there were 12 award winners. As a game designer myself, I particularly enjoyed reading the comments from the jury.
If you'd like to dig more into IndieCade 2020, check out the awards video or the event round-up
We love to chat with mobile game developers and help you as you develop, publish, and market your own games. Galaxy Store is a great place to publish your game and get discovered. If you are a game developer and want to request a quick chat with us, just fill out this form.
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Start Date Nov 17, 2020
Location Online
Samsung is proud to sponsor and speak at Wacom's Connected Ink 2020 conference. Samsung's Catarina Cho will speak on a panel discussing "New Work and the Future of Digital Eduction". You can also partake in the digital drawing experience on Android. After the conference, be sure to check out the Galaxy S Pen Remote SDK.
Connected Ink is an open innovation platform which takes you on a journey of creativity, art and music combined with the latest developments of digital transformation and ink technology. It is a hybrid online- and offline event which let‘s you connect and expand your network, to explore and discover unexpected creative sparks. Join Wacom in making the world a more creative place with future technologies.
Connected Ink is a 24 hour online event, freely accessible from around the globe to you or in a live experience in Tokyo.
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