I think the psychology is sound: carrot rather than stick, the 'team game' approach to invoke peer pressure. Still, I see this as little more than a PR stunt by a maker of smartphones. It's 'challenger brand' marketing. Samsung is doing something newsworthy to gain attention in the smartphone marketplace, while Apple is talking about the camera, and how you can choose between a screen that's slightly larger than the last version, or quite a bit larger than the last version.
If you really wanted not to be distracted by your phone, you'd turn it off... but Samsung is never going to encourage users to do that.
