Originally Posted by HotHotHeat
From an innovation perspective, Samsung is proving to be a complete disaster. They were effective in catching Apple in terms the overall technology of a smartphone, but without a leash to holdon to they clearly don't know where to go next. The features this phone bring are the equivalent to Willy Wonka's flavor changing bubblegum. Cool feature, what's the benefit?
More broadly, the presentation shows Samsung's belief that they are strictly driven by what will make them the most money, and despite having directly stated it dozens of times during the keynote, have no idea what people want out of a phone beyond what they can pull from other industry leaders.
The BEST part of the keynote, however, was that they failed to involve a single partner company, despite the fact that the phone wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for Google's open sourced Android. Nope. All Samsung, all the time. Are you seeing the irony yet? What's the single largest criticism of an iPhone from Android users? Closed off experience, Apple telling you what you want. The entire 50 minute disaster I just witnessed was Samsung doing that the entire time, only with cheesy actors and an even worse script.
My point is that Samsung just made the final step in becoming the company they have spent $400 million in the last year trying to separate themselves from. If the reason Android is better than iOS is because of the tinkering and open-sourced OS, nothing Samsung is doing should make this phone attractive to people. Delayed software updates, bogged down Samsung apps that try to take the place of Google stock apps, and at every turn you'll have to explain to people what features the S4 has that made it a 'must own' device.
Remember the commercial earlier this year that made fun of Apple moving the headphone jack to the bottom of the iPhone? Why start that conversation if you know the next device you're releasing is virtually the same phone as the one a year ago?
The 440 PPI is an accomplishment, sure, but what's the benefit vs. a 300 PPI screen when you can't discern the pixels either way?
AC WiFi was a good step, but hardly a realistic advantage over N on a phone with LTE.
But hey, those are two things owners of the phone can use to win arguments against iPhone using friends as they decide where they want to move the clock widget to, or which Facebook album they want scrolling in the corner of their homescreen.
Apple users are too busy actually using their phones to notice, to be honest.
The Nexus line is increasingly becoming the only Android hardware worth owning. Google seems to have recognized hardware makers don't have the user experience at heart when designing phones, and good on them for it.
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