The smartphone marketplace is pretty competitive, especially within the Android ecosystem. For many, it's iPhone or nothing, but for the rest of the world—and a large percentage of Americans, who don't want to be tied to the Apple ecosystem—the options are plentiful.
While Samsung takes second place in worldwide smartphone sales, it wants more. Specifically, it wants you to buy a Galaxy. Beyond the snarky commercials, Samsung actually has innovated a clever experience to convince you to buy one of their smartphones, called Try Galaxy. This web app "turns" your smartphone into a Galaxy, running a simulated One UI experience on your non-Galaxy phone.
Previously, Try Galaxy was only available for iPhones, likely because Samsung saw the greatest opportunity in steering iOS users away from the Apple ecosystem. Now it's going one step beyond, and letting other Android (but non-Galaxy) users give it a go. While One UI isn't totally different than other Android skins, it is a unique enough experience that Samsung thinks it can pull some users away from Google, OnePlus, and other popular Android smartphone platforms.
While that news is fun for anyone looking to simulate One UI, or even a foldable phone experience, on their Android, the reason this change is making headlines this morning is because Samsung has added its AI features from One UI 6.1 into Try Galaxy as well. The web app now includes experiences for Live Translate, Chat Assist, Note Assist, Photo Assist, and Circle to Search.
Before you get too excited, you can't actually try these features out like you would if you had a Galaxy phone running One UI 6.1. Instead, you can tap into each one from a widget on the home screen and watch a simulated experience on your screen. For example, Live Translate runs a phone call between a cab driver and a previous rider who left her phone in the cab driver's car. The rider speaks in English, and Live Translate translates into Spanish, and vice versa for the driver. Photo Assist shows you how features like Generative Edit and Erase reflection work, using curated photos and edits to demo the AI.
Other experiences, like Chat Assist, merely play a small video of the feature above a short description of what it can do. Still, it's a cool way to simulate what your experience might be like if you decided to pick up a new Galaxy phone, especially as all the other Try Galaxy features, like Fold Experience, Messages experience, and the simulated Camera app, are still here.
If you want to try it out for yourself, head to trygalaxy.com. (You'll need to use Safari for iOS, or Chrome for Android). On iOS, tap the share button, then tap Add to home screen. On Android, hit the three dots in the top right, then Install app. Then, just launch Try Galaxy from your Home Screen or app launcher.
