If you’re wondering why athletes take selfies on the medal podium at the Olympics, all with the same strange-looking smartphone, you’re not alone.
It’s an event that has raised questions among many spectators. An official hands a mysterious device to one of the medalists, often to their surprise, so that they can take a “victory selfie” of the gold, silver and bronze medalists.
This is the first time this has happened in the history of the Olympics… but why? And what is this little square phone they are using?
Well, to answer the second question, it is the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
It doesn’t look like a regular smartphone since it’s one of the company’s latest foldable smartphones. Athletes use it in the closed position and for good reason.
While there’s a screen inside, an additional “protective screen” on the outer half of the case can show you a live preview of your photo (see above). Because it’s next to the main cameras, you get a better quality image than with the internal camera: it’s 50MP versus 10MP.
It’s a cool feature and one of the many reasons why you should choose a foldable smartphone over the classic candy bar we’re used to.
The answer to the question “why?” is simple: it’s essentially product placement.
This is partly because athletes are generally not allowed to bring their personal belongings onto the field (or equivalent) to take photos.
If that were the case, you’d imagine that many iPhones would have been pulled out of their pockets to immortalize these moments. However, this year (as usual), Samsung is a major sponsor of the games and is taking this opportunity to promote its latest device.
“Victory selfies are offered during medal ceremonies to individual medallists and teams of up to two athletes, with each medallist informed how and when to capture their images on phones provided by Samsung,” the International Olympic Committee said.
Victory selfies are mapped and sorted by sport before uploading them to a cloud service called Athlete365 where athletes can save them and share them on social media.
Added to the equation is the fact that, as in some previous Olympic Games, all athletes received a special Olympic edition of the Galaxy Z Flip 6.
It’s gold, of course, and features logos on the back, including the iconic Olympic rings, and you may have seen plenty of people using them at the opening ceremony where the teams were introduced on boats sailing down the Seine.
Samsung has also equipped it with an eSIM that includes 100GB of 5G data, an unlimited access card for free public transport and several official Olympic apps.
Of course, you can’t buy this edition (unless you might find one on eBay soon), but the Galaxy Z Flip 6 is available right now starting at £1,049/$1,099.