Samsung faucets a former Mercedes-Benz designer to steer its cell design staff

Samsung’s cell division has a brand new design chief. On Friday, the corporate introduced the appointment of Hubert H. Lee to move up its Cell eXperience (MX) Design Staff, the unit chargeable for designing a few of Samsung’s most seen merchandise, together with its flagship Galaxy S sequence telephones. Lee joins the electronics big after a stint because the chief design officer of Mercedes-Benz China, a place that noticed him lead the automaker’s design groups in China and the US. “His distinctive and visionary perspective will assist form the feel and appear of Galaxy, constructing on the distinct design ethos that customers know and love,” Samsung mentioned.

It’ll in all probability be a minimum of a 12 months earlier than we see Lee begin to depart his mark on Samsung’s merchandise. Prelease leaks of the corporate’s subsequent Galaxy S sequence telephones recommend they’ll look so much like their Galaxy S22 predecessors. What’s extra, with the way in which smartphone improvement timelines work, Samsung has doubtless already settled on a design for its 2024 flagship. Even then, don’t count on dramatic modifications; from a design standpoint, cellphone corporations have performed it secure for greater than a decade. Nonetheless, Lee may push for small however significant tweaks to Samsung’s design system — very like Evans Hankey did at Apple after Jony Ive’s departure.