The FINANCIAL — Samsung today announced the winners of the 2020 Best of Galaxy Store Awards to celebrate the contributions of app designers and developers to Galaxy Store. The awards recognize content developers for excellence in design, innovation, quality, and performance.
The 22 winners of the third edition of the Awards were revealed during a virtual 2020 Best of Galaxy Store Awards award ceremony. In addition to recognizing the best apps, games, watch faces, and smartphone themes, Samsung expanded the Awards to include Bixby.
Galaxy Store received a redesign this year, adding new features to give gamers more ways to discover unique gaming experiences and take advantage of exclusive benefits for Galaxy users. The new, streamlined layout coupled with its curated selection of the best games and gaming perks transformed Galaxy Store into the ultimate mobile destination for casual and hardcore gamers alike.
Galaxy Store continues to include themes and watch faces, allowing users to customize their Samsung devices to suit their moods and express their personality.
“The success of Galaxy Store is determined by the creativity and dedication of the Samsung Developers community,” said Jong Woo, Vice President and Head of Game Ecosystem. “We relaunched Galaxy Store to create a go-to place for mobile games and a vast array of content for users to personalize their Galaxy devices. This year’s winners truly represent the best across all categories.”
Here is a highlight of the winners from the 2020 Best of Galaxy Store Awards.
Best Themes Collection – butterfly-effected GmbH
Featuring dynamic animation effects and spectacular designs, butterfly-effected GmbH’s smartphone and watch themes take the mobile user experience to the next level. The German digital content provider has also partnered with some of the world’s most popular brands, including Minions, South Park, Hello Kitty, and more, to bring fans closer to their favorite characters.
“Since the average person interacts with their phone up to 300 times per day, we always ask ourselves how to make these interactions as pleasant as possible,” said Reiner Prohaska, CEO of butterfly-effected GmbH. “Themes are a perfect way for our partners to show their brand without annoying ads, for their fans to support them, and for us to inspire our customers with our creative, custom-build designs.”
Best Watch Face Collection – URARITY design studio
Design studio URARITY’s Terra Mechanica theme became an instant hit with Galaxy Watch users when it was released in early 2020. The development process saw the company build a physical watch with all the moving components to achieve the theme’s ultra-realistic watch faces.
URARITY has developed a rich portfolio of high-end digital and analogue watch faces over the years. As part of the Samsung Advisory Board—a group of top app, theme, and watch face developers—the studio has been working with Samsung to enhance the Galaxy mobile and smartwatch experience.
“Samsung has provided us an opportunity to turn our ideas into unique and high-quality content. Four years ago, we published our first animated watch face and we are so proud to have URARITY today recognized as the very best in Galaxy Store,” said Drazen Stojcic, founder of URARITY design studio.
Best Innovative Made for Samsung – NBA Top Shot for Samsung (Dapper Labs)
NBA Top Shot is a digital platform and game for basketball fans to collect, trade, and own some of the greatest moments in league history on blockchain. To access the game, fans simply visit Samsung’s Galaxy Store or the NBA Top Shot website. Once they log in, they can instantly access a variety of packs holding Top Shots of different scarcities and rarities. Packs include game-altering Buzzer Beaters, monster dunks in Throwdowns, and NBA Playoffs plays for fans to collect and own.
“We are honored that NBA Top Shot was chosen as Most Innovative App in the 2020 Best of Galaxy Store Awards,” said Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs.
“As the first app store to host a blockchain-backed game that gives users the ability to truly own their assets in a mobile environment, Samsung is leading the way in doing the right thing for consumers. Until now, blockchain-based applications have had to push users to the web for crypto payments and true ownership of digital goods. But no longer. Samsung Galaxy Store is the first experience where digital goods can be bought and sold on a real money peer to peer marketplace inside a mobile app—and we’re just getting started!”
Game of the Year – Fortnite (Epic Games)
Samsung Galaxy device owners can download the hit title from Epic Games, Fortnite, winner of the prestigious 2020 Best of Galaxy Store Award for “Game of the Year.” Users can enjoy super smooth game play as they squad up with friends and explore the world of Fortnite.
“We are grateful to receive the Galaxy Store Game of the Year award highlighting our partnership with Samsung to bring a high-end, premium Fortnite mobile experience to players around the world,” said Ryan Dixon, Head of Mobile and Platform Partnerships at Epic Games.“Thanks to all of our players and our partners at Samsung for their support.”
Bixby Capsule of the Year – Spotify
The Spotify Capsule enables Bixby to immediately act on voice commands like “Play my Discover Weekly” or “Play pop music,” giving you seamless access to all of your favorite music via Bixby.
“Everything we do at Spotify is driven by a commitment to bring the best in audio to more people, in more ways,” said Chris MacEwen, Senior Product Manager at Spotify.
“We’re honored to be recognized by Samsung for our Bixby Capsule integration, which allows Free & Premium Spotify users to use simple voice commands to ask Bixby to play and control their music wherever they are.”
