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Samsung's review of its own Gear S concludes that it's 'awesome'

Samsung's review of its own Gear S concludes that it's 'awesome'

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Samsung Tomorrow is Samsung's version of Nokia Conversations: it serves as the official blog for the company and is managed by its Corporate Communications team. It is also, apparently, a technology review site.

Posted today, this Gear S analysis is the latest in a running series of Samsung Tomorrow "unofficial reviews" of the company's latest hardware. It tells the reader that "the UI of the Gear S is as intuitive as it gets" and "as much as this may sound biased, Gear S is awesome." What it doesn't disclose anywhere is whether the self-identified "most average editor" authoring the piece is employed by Samsung, or that he's writing for a website owned by Samsung. This leaves ample room for misinterpretation, as readers might stumble upon the review and believe it to be the work of a keen Samsung fan rather than a company employee. The actual content of the review is thinly veiled marketing copy, regurgitating the features of the Gear S and decorating them with a few flourishes of approving commentary.

As flawed as human reviews of electronic gear can be, the best way to make them useful for others is to identify any existing biases and try to mitigate them. Or at least try to be upfront and transparent about them. Samsung's only following in Nokia's footsteps here — after Nokia Conversations pioneered the concept of the meta hands-on and self-review — but the Korean company also promises to be "clear and transparent" in all of its communications on Samsung Tomorrow. These supposedly unofficial, yet thoroughly approving reviews are a breach of that pledge and the trust that Samsung asks of its readers. Communicating with fans is important for all brands, which is why it shouldn't be done in such a potentially misleading way.