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You lie on the bleached-white sand, staring out into the heaving expanse, the sound of grey waves crashing on nearby shoals, echoing off stark, surrounding cliffs. You remember the curve of the ship’s prow as it slipped, groaning beneath the waves, and the outline of the sunken hull, briefly illuminated in the glow of rupturing electrics.
You try to stand, but your muscles scream in protest, still exhausted from the swim to shore. You spy a bottle bobbing serenely in the waves. Inside is a Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom. You are a contestant in Samsung’s SOS-Island and you must compete to win challenges, while engaging with viewers through social media channels.
Welcome to SOS-Island, Samsung’s bizarre new scheme to maroon phone fans on a desert island with wilderness expert Les Stroud, in a bid to promote the features of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom and Galaxy NX cameras. I’m not making this up.
In the two-month-long contest, 16 contestants from around the world learn wilderness survival in Puerto Rico. After one week of training, eight survivalists will be marooned on a desert island for two weeks, competing in challenges that will be streamed live to Facebook and YouTube.
Viewers will have the chance to vote for their favourite castaway, with the winner receiving a $100,000 voucher for island real estate, which you could use to buy or rent a plot of tropical land.
“What would you do,” Stroud demands in the increasingly-baffling promo video embedded below, “if you were stranded on a tropical island with only a smart phone?”
On that point, we’re not sure how exactly the S4 Zoom — which looks like a phone but has a 10x optical zoom lens strapped to its rump — will prove helpful in island survival. But we have some ideas.
- Throw it at seagulls to kill them.
- Break lens, use shards to focus sunlight and cook seagulls.
- Swallow phone whole, ensuring a swifter demise than being eaten by crabs in the night.
- Use LED flash to stun, intimidate wild boars.
- Draw face on phone, christen phone ‘Eric McPhoneface’, become fast friends. Eventually drown saving Eric from a sealion.
SOS-Island will be broadcast from 30 September to 31 November. Will you be trying to take part in Samsung’s tropical social experiment? If you’re keen, you can apply here, or share your confusion in the comments or on our Facebook wall.
