Google and Samsung team up to promote the Galaxy S23 Ultra

Google and Samsung have worked together from time to time, and now the two tech giants have teamed up to promote Samsung's top-of-the-line Galaxy S23 Ultra handset. This might seem a little odd since Google's Pixel 7 Pro could be considered a rival to Samsung's device. On social media platforms such as Reddit, you often read about a Pixel 7 Pro user switching to the Galaxy S23 Ultra and vice versa.

Both companies do have their fingers in each others' pies so to speak. The Google Tensor chipsets used to power Pixel devices are modified Exynos SoCs and roughly half the cost of materials needed to build the Pixel 7 Pro is paid to Samsung. Samsung's ISOCELL image sensors are used on the front and back of the Pixel 7 Pro models and the version of the phone that supports mmWave 5G uses a Samsung LTPO OLED display. Samsung also designed the phone's baseband, transceivers, and power trackers for sub-6GHz bands.

Google develops the Android operating system and some of the apps that are installed on the Galaxy S23 Ultra by default are Google apps including Google Maps, Google Lens, and the Google app.

To promote the Galaxy S23 Ultra, the two companies created television spots in various languages. The ad appears on the Android YouTube channel and starts with the voice-over announcer saying, "Do more with the new Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra." That's followed with comments about the 200MP image sensor that backs the primary rear camera, showing the use of Google Lens to discover the names of certain flowers, mentioning the low-light "nightography" capabilities of the phone, and stating that you can find "hidden gems" with Google Maps.

The tagline "More in your world" refers to the aforementioned features of the phone. But the end of the ad does sound a little awkward as the announcer says, "There's more in your world with the Samsung Galaxy S23 and all of Google." It doesn't exactly flow smoothly. And frankly, it does seem a little strange to see Google helping to promote a device that it is competing against.