Samsung's Bespoke Studio for mobile devices is virtually gone. Well, almost. Some remnants of its existence remain at the Samsung online shop, and the Bespoke Design Studio for refrigerators is as fully-functional and alive as ever. But gone are the days when you could customize a Galaxy Watch or foldable Galaxy Z Flip through the Bespoke online tool.
Indeed, while customers in select markets can still mix and match their Bespoke fridge panels through the Design Studio tool, the last mobile devices that had access to this clever tool were the Galaxy Watch 5 and the Galaxy Z Flip 4. And the first Flip to debut with Bespoke colors was the Galaxy Z Flip 3, which means this wasn't a long-lived service.
Samsung appears to have unceremoniously shelved the Bespoke Studio project for mobile devices and wearables, and the sad part is that most Galaxy device customers don't even seem to have noticed or cared enough.
Story continues after the video
Why can't we have nice things?
I'm not sure why the Bespoke Studio for Galaxy mobile devices and wearables didn't catch on, but judging by the lack of interest in the tool after Samsung pulled the plug on it, I'm guessing that not many people used it or knew about it.
In case you're wondering, the Bespoke Studio was a virtual online tool that allowed Galaxy Watch and Z Flip buyers to customize their devices with unique color combinations and wrist strap designs before ordering them online.
As of this writing, some Bespoke Studio pages are still online but they no longer offer an option to buy any Galaxy devices. The most recent Galaxy devices that have had access to the Bespoke Studio were the Galaxy Watch 5 and the Galaxy Z Flip 4. Their Studio pages remain online (at least for now) and you can visit them if you know where to look. But the service has been decommissioned and it's a mere shell of its former self.
Is this a case of people asking for something they didn't really want? Mobile device users have always geeked out at the thought of having more color and customization options. And the Bespoke Studio had plenty to offer — at least, for the most part.
Perhaps Samsung didn't promote the tool enough or, at the very least, didn't make it available in enough markets to make a real difference. And where it did, maybe it didn't always offer the dozens upon dozens of color combinations promised at Galaxy Unpacked events.
The Bespoke Studio may have also become a logistics nightmare for Samsung. Keeping the Bespoke Studio operational for Galaxy phones and smartwatches might have been difficult.
Or it might be a combination of all these factors. Either way, it's kind of sad to see that these virtual customization studios are no longer usable in any practical sense.
As we're based outside the USA, and the Bespoke Studio had such a limited reach, we hardly came in contact with this feature. The closest we got to Bespoke Edition devices was at Galaxy Unpacked events (see the Galaxy Z Flip 3 hands-on video above).
In practice, most of us at SamMobile were always left with the option to buy Galaxy devices in standard colors. And now, it's far too late to hope for the Bespoke Studio to expand into more markets.
The good news is that, nowadays, Samsung is at least offering more color options for many of its Galaxy phones. Instead of Bespoke color combinations, mobile phone customers can pick from several standard and online-exclusive color options. Maybe this is for the better. It might be more practical and realistic for Samsung to sustain as a business model.
The Bespoke idea still seems to be working best for Samsung refrigerators. And who knows?! Samsung might eventually bring new Galaxy mobile devices to the Bespoke platform and try again in the future. We doubt it, but only time can tell.
