“Last week our HTC One vs Samsung Galaxy S4 head-to-head concluded that Samsung no longer makes the best Android phone. But after developments this week, I wonder whether Google wants Samsung to continue making Android phones at all.” Yup.
“Last week our HTC One vs Samsung Galaxy S4 head-to-head concluded that Samsung no longer makes the best Android phone. But after developments this week, I wonder whether Google wants Samsung to continue making Android phones at all.” Yup.
Speaking of the HTC One, I saw this article today:
http://www.androidcentral.com/htc-one-two-months
This guy’s phone is already scratched and dented after 2 months of use, and he’s still praising HTC’s build quality. So HTC One owners, be sure and put a plastic case on that beautiful phone. Too many people brainwashed into thinking that aluminum is a ‘premium’ material, when it really isn’t.
I remember in the old days, when Android used to be about practicality and customization, and not about people’s phones being a fashion accessory, and people treating them like jewelry. I guess we have Apple to think for that
Did you even look at the picture before you wrote this comment? Those are miniscule scratches, something that happens with every other phone, too.
You only seem to associate “premium” with indestructibility, whereas “premium” for quite a few people may mean things like looks and how it feels to touch — I personally do consider alumium a premium material when it comes to smartphones simply because it looks and feels so much more pleasant than the various kinds of plastics that are commonly used.
Anything that gains enough popularity will sooner or later do the same thing as long as it’s physically possible.
Doesn’t aluminium feel to you unpleasantly cold to the touch? (especially in cold Finland…)
Aluminium costs <$2/kg. They use it to make disposable packaging. How premium is that?
Well, all phones (and almost all everything, for that matter) use an aluminium alloy of some sort, so it depends. HTC didn’t (afaik) disclose the alloy of aluminium used, so it could well be slightly more “premium” than those used in other phones. Who knows.
Aluminium/alloy can be as premium (motorsport) or as cheap-ass (smartphones) as you want to make them.
Edited 2013-05-13 08:21 UTC
Costs have more to do than the raw materials.
The constituents of carbon fibre are usually fairly cheap, it’s the process of weaving it that makes it expensive.
You have to factor in many variables; ease of handing and manufacture, assembly, further processing such as brushing etc…
… and silicon is dirt, literally, cheap. And yet some high end chips cost thousands of bucks.
Edited 2013-05-13 18:49 UTC
Yeah and a diamond is just a lump of coal /sarc.
Aluminium cost a mere $2/kg in the refined, ready to use state. It is actually cheaper than many so called “cheap” polymers.
And diamond itself is also quite cheap to synthesize industrially if you don’t need high-purity or large crystals. That’s why diamond cutting tools cost only a few bucks.
I think the OP’s point is that aluminum is not as cheap to process as plastics. Don’t know if it’s true, though.
Edited 2013-05-14 08:00 UTC
Redirects to an osnews 404 page… rather than http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/samsung-is-hurting-android
Another Fairsearch spin-off anti-Android article. All in, Samsung kills Android, Android is fragmented, Google anti-trust, Amazon, Tizen, etc. Boring.
Edited 2013-05-13 06:17 UTC
In regard to Samsung hurting Android, I believe that Google is doing more to hurt Android than Samsung ever did. For instance:
– Discouraging people from buying genuine Nexus Android phones by gimping the storage options and leaving off other features, such as LTE, and treating Nexus owners as unpaid beta testers, thereby leading folks to buy fake Android phones like the S4 instead.
– Trying to release Nexus devices as cheaply as possible. This sounds good in theory, but has had negative consequences on Android tablets by forcing hardware vendors to compete with them on price. The result of this is that there’s about 8,000 Android tablets on the market, with only 2 or 3 of them arguably being better than the Nexus tablets. And the Nexus tablets (other than the display on the 10″ version) weren’t exactly high end to begin with. So in total, if you want anything above mid-range, you really have 4-5 Android tablets to choose from.
– Releasing some of their best apps on iOS, which solidifies to me that Google doesn’t really give two shitsa bout Android, as long as you’re using their services.
“Discouraging people from buying genuine Nexus Android phones by gimping the storage options and leaving off other features, such as LTE, and treating Nexus owners as unpaid beta testers, thereby leading folks to buy fake Android phones like the S4 instead.”
I could be wrong but one of the reasons it didn’t have LTE was cause then carriers themselves would wanted to modify the OS with their crap in it before it pushed to customers. Which any new OS update would been delayed months cause of it. Another reason for lack of storage was to keep its cost to end user down.
Edited 2013-05-13 00:15 UTC
I dunno… maybe Google should ask around and find out how Apple manages to release a stock phone with LTE, without any tampering from carriers. Apparently it CAN be done …
Apple has much more clout than Google does with carriers. Notice that iPhones aren’t plastered with stupid looking carrier logos either. Apple also enjoys much higher carrier subsidies for the iPhone.
Bullshit. They could have easily offered options for devices both with or without expandable storage. Android is about choice, right? So give me a damn choice or I’ll go somewhere else. It’s that simple.
The real reason is to lock users into the Google cloud ecosystem by limiting storage space.
Those point may be true, but i am suspecting people are right now actually buying the Samsung brand 1st and then Android. This would explain why somthing as good as the various HTC Ones have hardly had any impact in terms of sales.
Then real threat comes from Tizen.
When I bought my S3, I looked at the Motorola Atrix HD, the HTC One X, and the Sony Experia Ion. Locked bootloaders, lack of SD card support, and old versions of Android pretty much killed everything but the S3 for me.
I’m on AT&T– I know that they’ll stop updating phones long before the phone is unusable (or before the 2 year contract is up), so being able to update my phone myself is a requirement. Being able to put an SD card in means I can back up my entire phone easily. Being able to swap out the battery– well, that just means if I have to hard reset my phone, it’s easier.
The Experia looked nice, but it shipped with Gingerbread. Apparently, Android 4.1 for the Ion has leaked… TODAY.
The reason Samsung has such a strong position in the Android market, is because their competitors have never taken Android seriously (except HTC), and the flagship HTC phone last year was not what most Android users wanted.
In five years, there won’t be Android as we know it. Given the way it’s fragmenting, we’ll have GoogleOS, SamsungOS, HTC/OS, etc. As for Google trying to stop Samsung from making Android phones… well, good luck with that, Google. They made it open source, now they’re stuck with the consequences and the prime consequence is that they have no power to force Samsung to stop using their code. They could limit or cut off the Google apps, of course, but if they do that they only accelerate the fragmentation and the ultimate end of a cohesive Android platform as we know it.
The title of the article is biased, in my view; if you read the entire piece, a more neutral strapline would probably read “Google’s mercenary ways with Android come home to roost.”
But then again, Western media and South Korea together has never been a match made in heaven: having not long come back from the place, where according to the BBC even, my maekju sessions were in constant danger of being inconvenienced by nuclear strikes, I think I can attest to this.
However, two more serious points, one more related to this story than the other but both relevant.
The first is that there is already a fair degree of dislike of and distrust of Samsung overall amongst the SK population itself; it’s not hard to imagine that niche tech-geek grumblings about Apple’s walled garden may be nothing compared to the eventual storm of protest worldwide against the walled fortress of Samsung on the part of lesser-mortal consumers if the company ends up replicating its local reputation in other markets.
Secondly, Samsung is huge and highly, succesfully diversified. Google, big though it is, is ‘just’ a tech company-despite rumours of a Google Car I don’t see that Google is really lining up other major irons in the fire in any substantial way. This is important, and Samsung has the kind of portfolio which means that it may be the corporation that develops the cure for cancer in 10-15 years. Even if Samsung’s strategy in this market segment were to fail utterly through disenchanting consumers in the way I have also suggested, Samsung won’t (in this sense, it’s company history is remarkably similar to Nokia’s).
Google’s risks here are far, far higher, especially in light of not having entirely succeeded in pulling off an Apple with a range of hardware that across the eco-system piece is surpringly indifferent, whereas, as even this rather negative article admits, Samsung is there, or beyond, already.
Orf
“maekju” is “beer” in Korean.
he might have meant somaek (soju + maekju, where you pour shots of soju in your beer to make it wilder and stronger and give you gaping memory holes and unexplained scratches, the next day)
Sessions involved both ^^. I do now suffer from Gaping Memory Hole Syndrome…
Samsung hasn’t removed anything for anyone; ITV has. Samsung doesn’t make ITVplayer, Samsung has no controlling interest in ITV and it’s really not Samsung’s fault that ITV makes stupid business decisions.
Yeah, I lost interest in the article when they made it sound like Samsung make ITV make the app “incompatible” with “other versions” of Android. It’s called an exclusivity agreement, it’s not a technical limitation. Just like Microsoft got Pandora to remove ads only on Windows phones. Stuff like this happens all the time.
I really wonder if the point of the article is to stir up infighting. Just look at all the Samsung fans going after HTC phones in this thread.
It seem like Samsung has worked hard to improve their update schedule, pushing out newer versions of Android. That used to be the biggest problem with Android. Now it turns out aluminum is the only thing that really maters. I think most people get used to the feeling of their phone after a couple days and don’t even notice it anymore, so once you rule out premium feel as a crucial factor, Samsung may still have the best phones form most people. They certainly have the most options, so it’s no surprise they’d satisfy more people. Is there any phone with better stylus support than the note? Any phone other than the Beam that has a projector? If you want a replaceable battery, you won’t get that with HTC. The tech press is obsessed with the idea that one phone (or at least, one per OS) should be perfect for everyone, that’s why Samsung is out of favor these days – because they believe the opposite.