SAN FRANCISCO – Samsung is working to generate developer interest by releasing a handful of new tools for health, smart home, AR/VR and wearables.
At the company’s developer conference Wednesday, Won-Pyo Hong, president of Samsung’s Media Solution Center, began the conversation focused on health care, which he said costs countries on average 5.3 percent of their GDP.
The new Samsung Digital Health platform is providing SDKs, APIs, algorithms, analytics, devices and services for developers. Platform partners include Nike, Aetna, Cigna, Humana and Merck.
In addition, Samsung rolled out the Simband, a reference design based on the Gear S and loaded with sensors in the band for gathering biometrics.
All that information coming in is part of a “new paradigm” that Samsung calls data driven development. To help facilitate that, Samsung has opened up to developers Samsung Architecture Multimodal Interactions (SAMI), allowing applications to pull data from any device and deliver it to another in real time.
Samsung also turned its attention to the connected home, specifically highlighting how its SmartThings acquisition is providing a cloud-based platform and a host of certified devices for developers to work with.
Next year, Samsung expects to begin bundling the SmartThings hub and platform with Samsung devices as well as third-party devices.
Alex Hawkinson, founder and CEO of SmartThings, revealed that every connected appliance from Samsung will eventually be integrated into the SmartThings platform.
More esoteric announcements included a sneak preview of Project Beyond, a 360-degree camera, with 16+1 HD lenses that capture entire surroundings in 3D video and can stream real time.
The product is the size of a large pancake and can work in tandem with Samsung’s Gear VR headset to create immersive environments.
Although Project Beyond has moved past the concept stage and is an actual working product, it’s not coming to market soon. But a developer addition of the Gear VR will available in early December and Samsung Wednesday opened up pre-registration for the goggles, which run exclusively for the time being off the Galaxy Note 4.
Samsung filled the keynote with a variety of software and development announcements. The company will be rolling out Tizen across its entire product platform portfolio in 2015 and the Tizen seller site is opening early next year for registration. Today also saw the release of a Tizen SDK for wearables.
New Advanced S Pen, double sensitivity, recognizes speed, title and rotation, advanced aditing capture and recogntioan, life-like strokes
Samsung also announced updates for its S Pen; a New Look SDK that opens up the Note Edge’s side screen to multitasking edge widgets and controls for full-screen apps. The company also extended an invitation to developers to begin working with Flow, Samsung’s multiple device workflow system, similar to Apple’s recently released Continuity.
