• by Colin Kirkland , July 31, 2024

Samsung's foldable Galaxy Z Flip series smartphones double as police bodycams, according to the technology company, which says it is expanding its initial pilot program to 25 metro police departments across five states -- marking the first time a foldable mobile device has been used by police as a bodycam.

Two years ago, Missouri's Kimberling City Police and Indian Point Police took part in Samsung’s pilot program involving the Galaxy Z Flip smartphones, testing whether or not the devices could improve the forces' daily operations.

Samsung says this included using the phone “as a body-worn camera to promote transparency.”

Samsung says the six-month program was successful and has since allowed the company to expand it to additional police forces.

The phone series, according to the company, was chosen because of the foldable design and specific features such as extended battery life, durable construction, automated recording abilities and high-speed activations created in collaboration with Visual Labs, a body camera solution provider.

In addition, Visual Labs technology makes it possible for video data collected by the Galaxy Z Flip series to be stored in the cloud instantaneously, allowing footage to be livestreamed to the police force's command center and viewed in real time.

Attempting to further its marketing efforts around the phone as a suitable bodycam, Samsung also highlights the Flip's digital camera that can be used to take photos of crime scene evidence, the audio recorder for witness interviews, a personnel locator for tracking an officer’s location through GPS, and the support for agency-specific apps like computer-aided dispatch, criminal-justice database queries and the push-to-talk feature.

“These features provide police officers with additional methods to promptly begin recording their surroundings, enhancing their ability to capture critical events,” Samsung explained in a recent blog post, adding that its device is less expensive than other bodycams.

Samsung, however, is not the only tech company marketing smartphones as police bodycams. Visual Labs has also partnered with T-Mobile in an effort to provide Android smartphone bodycams to law enforcement in a similar deal. 

The news comes at a time when bodycam footage can provides crucial evidence in major cases involving alleged police brutality and civilian casualties at the hands of law enforcement.

But despite Samsung's promise of automatic cloud-based uploads, it has been proven that local police organizations in certain states and counties can prevent the release of the footage, according to last year’s report by ProPublica and The New York Times.