It's rare that a company ruins its own surprises at CES - but that's exactly what happened to Samsung today as the Korean branch of the company announced the new bezel-less Samsung Q950TS 8K QLED TV ahead of its unveiling at a Samsung US event that's being held Sunday, January 5 before the official start of CES 2020.
The new flagship 8K QLED TV sports Sansung’s new Infinity Screen that, according to a translated announcement post, is 99% screen on the front face.
The post says the new Q950TS is just 15mm deep despite utilizing a Full Array Local Dimming backlight, will be one of the first to offer deep-learning AI upscaling (a purported upgrade on last year’s AI upscaling algorithm) and offers a redesigned smart user experience that should make finding shows to watch even easier.
The nearly-bezel-less frame is something Samsung’s QLED TVs have been trending towards over the last few years - as have other manufacturers’ models - but now we’ve finally reached one of the smallest bezels possible on an LED-LCD TV.
Now your TV thinks you’re a couch potato, too
The last big upgrade to this year’s flagship is Samsung Health integration that tracks “key wellness metrics to help you manage your personal health”. Some of these metrics include time spent meditating, calories burned, weight, glucose levels and sleep patterns - plus, on the mobile app at least, Samsung Health allows you to chat with a board-certified physician if you have a question or need a prescription.
Apparently, watching TV can be good for your health.
While Samsung seems to be coming from a place of genuine good faith, having another platform that stores health information - especially one known to collect data from its users for third-party advertisers - feels like a bit of a misstep.
Sure, being able to quickly check your TV to see how stairs you climbed this afternoon or how many calories you burned at the gym could assuage your guilt as you binge-watch Netflix at night, but that could come at a steep price if hackers find a way to get that information from the TV’s software.
The silver lining here is that Samsung isn’t planning on rolling out the Samsung Health integration right away, thankfully, so it has ample time to install proper security protocols around that data.
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