A look inside Melbourne’s quietly-launched Samsung Experience Store

I took a trip today to Melbourne’s own – quietly launched – Samsung experience store. Yes, there’s a Melbourne Samsung Experience store and there has been for a few weeks now. No one really knew about it – heck, I didn’t even know until Samsung made a Facebook post about it today.

The store is neatly nestled into the upstairs of Telstra’s flagship T-Life store in Melbourne CBD. It sits idly by Androidland, which we have all been very excited about.

The store is very similar to the Sydney version albeit basically a mini-Experience Store. It has the same blue-topped employees helping you, the same T-Life styled display tables and the same blue signs. Except, this time it has the familiar Telstra feel to it.

The store also has some accessories for various Samsung products (that are sold at Telstra that is), but can be ported to other devices presumably.

Check out all the images of the cute little store below:

The bad part?

What? There’s a bad part?! Yes, unfortunately I must be the barer of bad news too. As this Samsung Experience Store is sponsored by Telstra (and, exists inside a Telstra store) they are only displaying products that are sold by Telstra.

So, there’s no Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and no Galaxy Note 10.1. Sad, I know. But at the end of the day the flagship Samsung phones are on display and that’s what most people are in fact after.

The store features the:

• Galaxy S III
• Galaxy Note
• Galaxy Tab 8.9 4G

The good part?

Well, I had quite an interesting conversation with one of the staffers at the Experience Store. It was about the Galaxy S III and more so, about the 4G version. The rep who is a channel representative of the Telecommunications Division said that the 4G LTE variant of the Galaxy S III IS coming to Australia. If you’ve been waiting for this then you should be excited. We unfortunately have no idea when, if it will be a beefed up version or what. But, the fact of the matter is that this beast is coming.

The store will be around for another 6 months, presumably while Samsung try and find the ‘perfect location’ for a fully-fledged Samsung Experience Store in Melbourne. Until that day, this is the best we have. For what the store offers it is very fun and enjoyable. There are many staff members milling around (you know, the ones in the Apple-y blue shirts) that are very friendly.

There’s also a Galaxy Note caricature artist on-board who did a lovely sketch of me (seen on right), as well as a couch and not much more.