Samsung R&D Bengaluru: Powering global innovation from India

SRI-B played a crucial role in developing several ground-breaking features in Galaxy Z Fold7 and Flip7 series.

Samsung Research & Development Institute India, Bengaluru (SRI-B), which was set up in 1996, started as a delivery hub with a small team of engineers. Now, it has become the largest R&D centre for the South Korean conglomerate outside its home country.

SRI-B's engineers have several patents to their name, specialising in wireless communications, computer vision, system software, and Internet of Things. They are making a major contribution to the company in developing world-class products.

To name a few, it has introduced mmWave (5G)-based mobile, nightography low-light camera solution, on-device Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine, and the Galaxy AI features such as Voice Focus and more with the launch of Galaxy S24.

The Voice Focus was an India-specific solution which manages to reduce the background noise to deliver a clear and crisp conversation experience during phone calls in public spaces such as airports and bus shelters. Impressed with consumer reception in India, Voice Focus was expanded to global markets.

Even in the recently launched premium foldable phones--Galaxy Z Fold7 and Flip7 series, SRI-B played a crucial role in developing several ground-breaking features. One of them was the camera sensors' auto transition feature, and it is said to be one of the most technically challenging works due to the complexity raised by the super-slim design language of the foldable phone.

"We had two major challenges in this particular phone. The first one is about the auto transition, the camera auto transition when we are zooming in the sensor has to switch over between the wide camera to the ultrawide camera. So we have to utilize the all the sensors available in the phone to come up with the software algorithm which is powered with the AI model to do this switch over very seamlessly to happen. Because of that nature of the Fold 7 and Flip 7, it was very challenging. It required very deeptechnology research to come up with meaningful algorithm without compromising the user experiences. We were able to make the breakthrough and then created the good experience to the auto transition feature, because the zoom and all is working very well," Mohan Rao Goli, managing director of SRI-B, said to Deccan Herald.

SRI-B, which works extensively on developing Galaxy AI features, faced challenges with slim Galaxy foldables (having limited battery capacity), but was able to deliver without compromising on battery life performance and meet the quality goals, Rao noted.

Samsung Galaxy AI's real-time language translation is one of the best in the market, but has very limited use in India, as it currently supports only Hindi and 20-plus International languages.

Given how language clashes are erupting now and then in India, it would be nice if SRI-B take up the challenge to expand real-time translation support to Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and other Indian languages.

How soon can we expect Galaxy AI's real-time translation feature to support more Indian languages?

To that, Goli said, " We have a little bit of challenges to create this…some of the named entities to handle the various dialects and then various things. So, the research at the moment it is going on. It is difficult for me to say the timelines at the moment, but the research is going on, and in the near future, you will hear about the same."

"We are also evaluating all the open source entities and whatever entities are available in the public… we are open to partner with anybody, but our focus is to create a meaningful experience for the consumers, like we are doing at the moment for other Indian regional languages also," Goli noted.

SRI-B will be celebrating its 30th anniversary next year, and we may expect more such cool Galaxy AI features, as Samsung pivots from smartphone to AI-centric Phone.

SRI-B's chief Mohan Rao Goli, who has majored in Electronics and Communication technology, has 70 patents to his name, filed globally in the field of communication networks, next-generation communication and AI in wireless technologies.

Goli noted that SRI-B is carefully laying the groundwork for a native AI platform and improvements to natural language Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) tech.

These innovations will eventually empower Samsung, one of the first OEMs, to transition from a conventional smartphone to a full-fledged AI Phone in the industry.

Future AI Phones will have minimal touch-based UI. Instead, there will be more of a conversational interface like the JARVIS AI assistant in the Iron Man movies.

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