I must say, i'm fully converted from the iPhone club to my Galaxy S2. I can't imagine at the moment what else I could possibly want from a handset, other than slightly better battery life.
I've yet to really find anything I can't do with the handset. It's a light, fast, open, beautiful piece of hardware. I'm already seeing a lot of other people converting over after they see the difference that openness can bring. Want to play a random video file? Just drop it onto the phone and hit play.
While I love my Galaxy S, I wish things wouldn't change quite so fast. It seems like every time I get a gadget, the new version comes out 3 months later and tempts me to spend more money.
Thankfully, my Galaxy S is still doing everything I want, so it's not -too- tempting.
As soon as GS II came out, I bought a Galaxy S, the first version -- that's how I like my phones, kick-ass and cheap.
I'll probably change it anyway in a year or two, so why bother paying more for the newer version. I also have an iPhone 3GS, and as long as the battery doesn't die on me and as long the latest iOS works, I won't upgrade.
Apple users (myself included) can be certain to a high degree of accuracy that when buying a newly released Apple iDevice, it'll be "the best on the market" (the market here being defined as Apple iDevices from the same family) until about a year later. As opposed to the Android world where you know that something better will be coming in a few weeks, and you don't have the shiniest, newest thing.
So I'm happy to forego the incremental one-ups from the Android world and know that I have the best device, and that if I want to get the new one next year, that'll be the newest and shiniest for a whole year too.*
If you're happy living in an iWorld, you get a clear step function where you know what step you're standing on and about when the next step will come. This doesn't result in slower progress (in my opinion), it's just a different shape than the more smooth sloped progression in the Android world.
* And sometimes, as with the iPad/iPad 2, I'm happy with what I have and don't feel compelled to have the latest and greatest.
I have a Galaxy S and find Android to be very buggy and slow. This is my first touch screen phone so maybe I'm just not used to how they are, but my old blackberry rarely had these issues.
Are you still on Froyo? Gingerbread for the Galaxy made things a lot smoother. (even the first update to the original release firmware made a noticeable difference. See which version you've got.)
Android is buggy and slow by nature, but 2.3 Gingerbread has significantly improved performance over 2.2 Froyo. I hope they clean up all the bugs and performance problems for 4.0 instead of piling on features.
That bugs the hell out of me too. Also, on the new OS you can't go to vibrate or silent just from the side, it goes right to silent and I have to hold it down to get to vibrate mode. Very dumb. Also, when I receive an email I would say it doesn't vibrate or make a noise 50% of the time.
Samsung has been learning a lot from Apple, not only on their smartphones but also on their laptops (with the release of the Macbook Air sort of clone, Samsung Series 9) and on their tablets (even though they have different sizes, they are all under the same name, Galaxy Tab). They are now focusing on having less choices but better ones. I really like this new approach.
imo Samsung is the one (non-Apple) tech product company that gets it. The 9, GS2, and even new galaxy tab are just plain great, polished products. For too long, product development at all these non-Apple places was basically to mindlessly copy Apple. Samsung is there now, and I think Lenovo is also getting there slowly. And don't get me started on Sony.
Here here. The 9 is a sexy beast that even a die hard Apple fan must admit looks good. Glad to see someone non-Apple take up the design challenge. Sony seems to have dropped the ball over a decade ago. Dell and HP seem to be running a race to the bottom.
I bought one of these in Australia, ridiculously overpriced ($2500), but I got it on sale for close to US RRP. although I'm mostly happy with it, I think I would have waited or bought something else if I had the chance. It has some strange quirks, like the system not registering holding down the power button during a kernel panic. The solution seems to be putting a paper clip in a pinhole on the bottom while it is unplugged (otherwise it stays on). Then it will turn off and refuse to boot until you plug it back into the power. In all other circumstances holding down the power button works perfectly. The fact that they put the pinhole there seems to infer it was intentional or that they knew about it long before the design work was finished.
There has also been a lot of talk about how the broadcom wireless has bad performance, both in linux and windows. It is a half-size mini pcie card, and I have yet to find a good one to replace it.
Am I the only one tat disagrees with this? I really wanted to like the Galaxy Tab that I got from Google I/O and at first glance it was awesome, but after actually using it during a complete day I noticed several, extremely annoying software-related problems; The gmail app stopped accepting scrolling events, I had to reboot the tablet several times and the OpenGL drivers were, let me say this, pure crap. As far as the Samsung Series 9, a pure spec to spec comparisson without seeing the system from a holistic point of view (software + hardware) is a must in this consumer market. We are not in 1997 anymore, having to put a paperclip through a pinhole to make the power management work should be considered a FAIL for the entire system, sorry.
Have you upgraded the tablet to 3.1 yet? The upgrade became available for I/O tablets as of last Friday. I had the same issues you talk about with mine, specifically the Gmail scrolling issues and some really infuriating rendering & touch event bugs in the browser.
But that seems to be an issue with whatever cobbled together version of Android 3.0 that was on the pre-release devices. The difference under 3.1 is like night and day in terms of stability. I find the device extremely usable now and I enjoy it more than I do my iPad.
If I had realised this kind of stuff before I bought it, I wouldn't have got it. I don't run the windows that comes with it, but I've read that the software is a bit flaky and not many updates have arrived yet.
How has your experience with Linux been? Any X crashes or bad wireless performance? If you have had these problems, what version of the kernel were you running?
The wireless performance and connectivity is really horrible. I blame the proprietary driver for that, tough.
Since I followed the workaround described here [0], I'm not getting any more Xorg crashes. However, I suffered from very high graphics-related latencies, which required another workaround described in [1].
The only, but very nasty, issue left are very random complete system freezes. The power button continues to work, but I have no idea where they come from.
Right now, I'm running 2.8.38 again. I tried some .39 releases, but had various issues with them. The 3.0 release candidates did either reboot immediately due to some known UEFI bug or the touch pad and keyboard did not work.
Did you end up getting EFI to work? I tried, but the efivars module wasn't creating the right sysfs devices. Then I couldn't get lilo working on GPT, so I had to reformat to MBR.
I never had anything like that in the links you gave. I had X freezes, where I could usually hit the power button once, and the computer would shutdown normally. If magic sysrq keys worked correctly, I could just use raw mode (the reboot magic combination never seemed to work). I also had many kernel oops from Divide Error, which would cause ksoftirqd to go 100% cpu until the computer froze a few minutes later. So if things seem laggy, I have a habit of checking to see if this is occurring, then I can restart normally before the crash.
All of these crashes haven't happened recently, however. The strangest thing I am seeing at the moment is Battery acpi signals, when there is no reason for why they should be triggered.
I also just ordered an atheros ar9382 to replace the wireless card. I may lose bluetooth, but I don't even have the relevant programs installed at the moment. I would say the wireless was okay while I had signal, but would go horrible when it got a little distance away.
The installation with Ubuntu Natty was as painless as it could be. Grub2 with EFI support worked right away. What distribution/kernel combination are you using?
I had a few strange kernel oopses with 2.6.39 kernels, that seemed to be SATA related. That's why I downgraded back to 2.6.38.
Could you let me know whether your wireless replacement worked or not? Right now the bad wireless connectivity is the biggest issue I'm having.
I'm running Gentoo and 2.6.39. I tried elilo, but efibootmgr wanted a different sysfs structure to what was there from the efivars module. As for grub2 efi, I followed a few online tutorials but couldn't get it working. The wireless card will take a few weeks to get here, but it will work, just a new card.
When I first realised that it wouldn't respond to the power button, I did what I would normally do on any other device - search for a pinhole. At first I didn't find one, but a later investigation found it. I don't know if it is a good or bad thing that consumer electronics have taught me the 'search for pinhole' behaviour.
If it interests anyone, it is located on the button, near the right flip-out port.
I never ran it with windows, so I only know about linux. At first I had quite a few graphics crashes (although, not full kernel panics, so I was able to still use the power button). These seem to be because sandybridge is still so new.
About a week after getting it I noticed a dead red subpixel, luckily samsung have a 14 day zero dead pixel warranty, so I was able to get it replaced from the store I bought it from. I haven't had many crashes since then, but I also updated the kernel to 39 around the same time, so I'm not too sure what caused it to get better (I used the same linux installation from my old laptop).
The touch pad is a pleasure to use, unlike the ones on previous laptops I've used. Battery life would be 3-5 hours depending on load. The keyboard backlight seems to stay on when the lid is closed, I haven't looked into ways to control it on linux yet. The mini-hdmi plug will be a bit annoying, especially because the one adapter I bought doesn't fit (need to get out the metal file, make the adapter slimer). I'm also not sure where I'd get another ethernet adapter (seems to be a custom job).
Don't forget the matte screen on the Samsung Series 9 laptops. And keep in mind the rumours about a refresh of the MBAs on the upcoming days/weeks with sandy bridge (thus i5?).
Edit: And I forgot the screen resolution which is better on the MBA (1440x900 against 1366x768, the same as seen on MBA 11").
Funny I did the same comparison last night, but concluded the Air was superior. 1440x900 screen is the big differentiator. Samsung also makes an 11" model, but it's a first gen i3, which doesn't have the graphics oomph to compete with a NV 320M. (Samsung claims Sandy Bridge and HD3000, but the part number listed is wrong.)
I work for a telco, and have never seen interest in a prerealease phone like that for the Galaxy S 2, other than for the iPhone obviously. They made an excellent name with the original Galaxy S, and are following it up strongly.
Here's my Samsung story, some of the details might not be 100% accurate, on account of how long ago it happened. One summer, I was working at a computer repair shop as a technician. I was in college, so this was about 1995. A customer brought a Samsung laptop in, and it was suffering symptoms of bad CMOS battery (RTC was resetting or somesuch). Anyway, I was having trouble trying to figure out how to locate the battery to order a replacement. As a last resort I decided to call the support hot-line printed on the bottom of the laptop. I was dreading this step, because I had become very accustomed to having to wait upwards of an hour whenever I called a tech support number. I was absolutely blown away when the phone range like twice, and a guy answered the phone (i.e. no 10 level deep phone tree; no please-press-1-for-sales...). Anyway, I start to tell my story, hoping that this receptionist will point me to someone who knows something, instead of just shunting me off onto hold, waiting for me to give up and hang up. We'll lo and behold, this wasn't a receptionist, it was a technician, who appeared to know something. I gave him the model number of the laptop, and he knew what to do, without even having to look anything up in the computer. He directed me to the place where I had to stick a paper clip to pop off the keyboard, and I was done within 60 seconds, They were shipping me a replacement battery next day. That has been the best example of customer service that I have ever experienced. I remember it 16 years later, and I have been a happy Samsung owner with many different appliances since. And I've never had to call tech-support for any of the hardware I've owned over the years.
My Galaxy Tab replaced my laptop at home. It's a ten inch ipad killer, open as your mother's arms, and makes phone calls. It's both wifi AND 3G. Costs sub-$300 in Australia. Fits snuggly in my jacket pocket and plays flash (when i absolutely need it)
Yesterday my mother wanted to buy a LED TV, so I looked for the reviews at the consumers organization magazine and found the best ones in all categories to be Samsung.
They also bought liquavista and have very good OLED screens for the future 5 years.
Given that Nokia is years away from launching a phone and they have to start over from scratch, it is going to be hard from them to get market share.
Semi-related I've had mixed experiences with Samsung computer monitors. I long time ago I purchased a 17 inch desktop monitor. Picture and durability seem right up there, I still use it at home. What's wacky about it is the drivers, which gave me a fair bit of trouble. I got another monitor, this time a HD TV/Monitor combo model. New driver problems, I can't bump the resolution over X by 1080 on my desktop (although I can in games). I've been so happy with the quality otherwise, I'm loathe to swear off the brand. Unfortunately if the next monitor I buy doesn't work as expected I'm returning it and looking elsewhere.
Yes, but in the last years the shipping of many Nokia smartphones has been delayed by months. So it's questionable whether Windows Phones will be available by the end of this year.
There are so many metrics to measure with concerning product standing (you've got raw volume measurement, usability, trend factor, and on and on). To me both Apple and Samsung have probably honed in on the few metrics that matter (to consumers) which surprise, give both companies a better bottom line! Oh yeah, and consumers benefit too by having good gear that works.
My question is when will it become the data plans which start to limit this 'hand-held device revolution' and when will we do something about it?
Samsung is combining the true openness of Android with Apple-grade hardware, and keeping it affordable. No one else can compete currently at this level.
The Software Advantage:
Samsung sent a Galaxy S II and sources to the CyanogenMod developers. They are learning very fast -- the home mod community made very significant improvements to the original Galaxy S, and in direct contrast to Apple (and Apple's hate-and-steal technique of 'innovation': denying feature importance and then stealing said feature from jailbreak devs), Samsung is involving those talented devs directly, at practically no cost to Samsung.
With this move they have cemented sales among several thousand android devs/enthusiasts -- a small percentage of total sales, but more importantly Samsung is gaining invaluable software improvements and beta testers at the cost of a device or two. It also means they're avoiding the bad press that many Android handset manufacturers (HTC, Motorola in particular) have gotten in the past for staying locked-down and not releasing sources.
The Hardware Advantage
There is a very important detail the article skims over:
"We’ll bring the chips, thank you. Unlike Nokia, Samsung
designs its own smartphone processors, just as Apple began
to do with the A4 chip it brought to the iPhone 3GS."
Samsung manufactures that A4 iPhone core chip and the Galaxy's Cortex-A8 is its brother. If anything, the A4 is a stripped-down version of Samsung's S5 [1]. Samsung again gets to learn and implement tech improvements (this time from Apple) at little or no cost. The Galaxy Tab shares tech with the iPad, and the Series 9 (Macbook Air competitor) mentioned in another comment here [2] is the next example.
Also not mentioned is the breadth of Samsung's display advantages. Now that the screen is the most obvious selling (or dick-measuring) point for smartphones, imho their AMOLED is the one to beat. They have such a long advantage in this field [3] it is almost impossible for competitors to compete on price for display tech.
They have solid worldwide distribution and can basically sell the same handset in every market. My hope right now is this continues as long as possible! I'm already lamenting the sale of Samsung's HDD division to Seagate.
Which part of the 'true openness' of Android killed Samsung's deal with Skyhook? Was it the part when Android boss Andy Rubin said Samsung couldn't ship if they used Skyhook?
edit: confused "stop ship" of Motorola with Samsung. Same idea for both deals though. Don't get me wrong Android much more open then iOS but it's farm from the promised land google fanboys claim it is.
"Apple-grade hardware, and keeping it affordable.."
In case you didn't notice, Apple's iPad has been somewhat competitive on price and phones too. Apple and HTC are both more profitable unitwise then Samsung, I don't know where you get off saying "no one else can compete at this level"
Your Software Advantage is "cemented sales among several thousand android devs/enthusiasts." Is that seriously their software advantage? I think Apple, Microsoft and other companies that actually sell software by the billions might take issue with Samsung having an advantage here.
Your Hardware Advantage is that they make their own chips. Which are apparently so awesome they're running NVIDIA chips in their flagship tablet.
Their screens are excellent but there is plenty of competition. Google "best smartphone display" and a bunch of iphone 4 links pop up.
Which part of the 'true openness' of Android killed Samsung's deal with Skyhook?
No - that was great PR on behalf of Skyhook, but don't fall for it. Google had no problem with Samsung (or Motorola) shipping Skyhook. The problem was that Skyhook demanded exclusive access to the WiFi access point data (ie, if they shipped Skyhook they couldn't let Google get the same data).
Among those other issues was the provision limiting data collection to Skyhook. Motorola asked Skyhook to waive that restriction, so as to enable Motorola to comply with its obligations to Google with respect to GMS. Skyhook refused to do so, proposing instead that Motorola disable the data collection functions of GMS on its devices, which Skyhook contended would not affect performance of other functions of GMS. Motorola responded that it could not proceed in that manner without violating its obligations to Google and its carriers, and that it was
therefore absolved of its obligations under the Skyhook contract. [1]
To quote Wikipedia:
In December 2010 a judge denied Skyhook's motion for preliminary injunction, saying that Google had not closed off the possibility of accepting a revised version of Skyhook's XPS service, and that Motorola had terminated their contract with Skyhook because Skyhook wanted to disable Google's location data collection functions on Motorola's devices, which would have violated Motorola's obligations to Google and its carriers. [2]
no one will take you seriously if you make claims like this
Why?
Google has a huge problem with missing out on the location data (ie, Skyhook having an exclusive deal).
But Google very plainly doesn't have a problem with other people getting that data as well. There are numerous apps in the Android Market that do similar things, and many manufactures ship apps that dial home with location data (eg, anything that includes ads).
Because of the numerous direct quotes from internal Google emails talking about what a disaster it would be and how they quickly sabotaged the skyhook deals with their compatibility club. It's impossible even on a cursory read of what happened to takeaway that Google didn't have a problem with handset makers shipping Skyhook.
They talk about what a disaster it would be for Google to miss out on the data, not that it would be bad for Skyhook to get the data.
If you have "numerous direct quotes" then please provide them. In their absence I'd direct you to the footnotes I provided earlier.
(Also, I'd note that the quote compatibility club was from an email referring to shipping LogMeIn, not Skyhook, although Skyhook included in their case documents)
You are misunderstanding the situation. Google cared deeply about their service being missing from the phones. The exclusivity clause in Skyhook's contract was what was stopping that.
Skyhook didn't ship because their contract with Motorola (and I assume Samsung) required exclusivity. Google cared deeply about that, and Motorola notified Skyhook that their contract was invalid because of that exclusivity clause.
Skyhook didn't ship because they no longer had a contract. If they had found a way to get a new contract then they could have shipped it. Unfortunately for Skyhook, Google managed to prove that their service gave just as good results as Skyhook, and Skyhook couldn't show any additional value so manufactures were no longer interested.
(It's worth noting that apparently the manufactures were paying for Skyhook, but didn't have to pay for Google's service.)
... They were upset because Skyhook wanted exclusivity.
Google wanted in on the data, was willing to share with Skyhook.
Skyhook wanted exclusive access to the data, which Google wasn't willing to sacrifice so they muscled them out.
How can we make this more obvious to you? (Oh wait, a glance at your comment history explains why you don't seem to get what anyone here is saying. You have an obvious bias and it's apparently affecting your ability to comprehend or something).
Motorola can ship whatever they want. Do you really not understand how MIT/GPL work? Just because Android's open doesn't mean that Google has to sell/give their GoogleApps to anyone that wants or demands them. Google's mobile applications are completely isolated from the openness of Android. Sure, this works nicely for Google, seeing as very few vendors have had the balls to ship Android devices without Google's Market, but that's just a missed opportunity by potential competitors if you ask me.
"a glance at your comment history ... an obvious bias and it's apparently affecting your ability to comprehend or something)."
I could say the same for yours. Let's be clear since I'm being accused of being some sort of one dimensional Android hater:
I like Google. I like Android. I like the openness of Android. I also and sometimes especially like several of the non-Open parts of Android (Maps and Gmail are the gold standard in mobile, Marketplace needs work but they iterate fast, Music and Movies look great and have probably sold me on an Android tablet if/when I get one). I have no problem with Google's location services, as far as I know they are the best in the world. I have no problem with them muscling out Skyhook, that's how business works. I have no problem with Google using compatibility as a club, and as in the case of timely updates they need a bigger club (they know this and are iterating quickly as usual).
Here's the difference: what I have a problem with is claiming that all of Android is this free and open promised land while you're muscling people out at the same time. That's just willful ignorance of what Google and Android (in its totality) are.
You can claim that "Android in it's entirety" is just the open source pieces but at that point we're just talking past each other and should agree to disagree. Is Honeycomb not Android? Would not every review point out that you don't get "the full Android" from a device lacking Google's suite of non-Open Source apps from a device shipping without "Android compatibility"? Since you continually question my reading comprehension use your superior skills and tell me what this quote from Android's wikipedia means: "device manufacturers can not use Google's Android trademark unless Google certifies that the device complies with their Compatibility Definition Document (CDD)"
So we're at this point in the conversation already. I guess we've really been in it sometime, as you continue to drag Gapps and Skyhook around like they support your point and now apparently we're involving trademarks too. Oh well, here it goes:
Mozilla owns the Firefox trademark and controls who can use it. Google does that with Android. Surely you're not suggesting that anyone should be able to use trademarked names of other products just because their source is GPL/MIT licensed...
As for everything else, it's just you talking past me or over me: I'll repeat it, Android and Google Apps are two completely different products. Your attempts to use Google Apps to discredit Android's openness is dishonest, disingenuous and just weak. Android is free and open and Google muscled them out of Skyhook by threatening to withold Google Apps. Android is free and open; still, completely regardless of that statement. Gmail is not part of Android. Calendar is not part of Android. They're irrelevant at this point in this discussion. Dude, I even granted that the Market missing would be detrimental to the sale of any Android device, but that's STILL completely ancillary to Android's openness.
Android is all MIT and GPL. RedHat does development behind closed doors. So does Canonical. Hey, guess what Novell does? Does that make their core Linux product any less "open"? Certainly not by any technical standard. Does Canonical operating a paid channel in the Ubuntu Software Center mean Ubuntu is no longer open?
Heh, as for my comments, the first two pages don't even touch Android, there's a complaint about WebGL in iOS, but Android doesn't even have WebGL at this point, so it's not like it was fan-based by any means. I like Android but think Google is screwing themselves in about 5 different ways and I think we'll look back at WebOS as damn near visionary. I won't lie and say that I like iOS, because I don't, I can't stand the user experience, but the quality of the app store and the graphics are smoother than I've seen in any pre-mid-2010 Android phone. I'm a big fan of competition, but I'm also a huge fan of OSS and I just don't understand the need for people to try to cut down Android and make it seem like Google's little prized possession (not to say that it isn't, by any means), but if that's bad... what does it mean for Apple/iOS?
The level I'm speaking of is open-source involvement, with great smartphone hardware, world-compatible, at an affordable price. It is difficult to find a phone with two of those qualities, much less all four.
My first hardware advantage was that they make Apple's chips, learn from Apple, and they save by letting Apple take much of the R&D cost. Apple is concerned about this and will likely be taking their chip production elsewhere. [1]
Let's be realistic: Apple hardware is always more expensive. I'm not talking single-unit profit, Apple is well-known for their high markups. I'm talking overall market dominance. The Galaxy S II is already outselling the iPhone 4 in the UK. [2] The preorders in Korea for the Galaxy S II are much higher than the iPhone 4 release. [3] The first Galaxy S is outselling the iPhone 4 in Japan! [4]
Software sales are not the software advantage, involving quality devs from the community is the advantage. Samsung doesn't need to spend as much on marketing and software dev because the community is already helping them. Just look at the ridiculous amount of free press that one move has given them, and the CM port isn't even to beta yet! [5]
My second hardware advantage is absolutely their AMOLED tech. They are by far the leaders in OLED, Sony is the only other major player and they are looking at combining with Toshiba's LCD division in order to keep up. [6] If you are a consumer who prefers an OLED smartphone (as I do), the Galaxy S is the only choice. Again, Samsung manufacturers their own screens, simplifying the process. Googling 'best smartphone display' does not reflect any advantage besides Apple's giant marketing machine.
If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd love to read it! But I think Samsung is the clear winner.
Samsung manufactures that A4 iPhone core chip and the Galaxy's Cortex-A8 is its brother. If anything, the A4 is a stripped-down version of Samsung's S5 [1]. Samsung again gets to learn and implement tech improvements (this time from Apple) at little or no cost.
So let me get this straight. Samsung designs the S5, essentially assuming the bulk of the risk bringing the design to market, both for themselves and their clients (Apple). Apple licenses the design and then finds out that Samsung has been using these clever guys at Intrinsity to juice the Cortex-A8 in the design. Apple buys Intrinsity lock-stock-and-barrel, denying Samsung said cleverness for upcoming Cortex-A9 designs. And of course it's quite likely at this point that they'll be losing their biggest external customer for future SoCs (Apple).
And this is something other than a disaster for Samsung? Honestly, they've been completely outmaneuvered.
Some sources say that Apple paid for the initial design of the A4 and Samsung also became interested, splitting the cost. [1]
They are still getting paid by Apple to manufacture Intrinsity's chips, and Apple is clearly worried that Samsung has been learning from that. [2]
Apple's acquisition of Intrinsity was expensive, and the rumor is that they will keep the design to themselves, not making any money off of licensing. [1]
Samsung's choice of chips for the Galaxy S II blow away the competition with performance, losing the Intrinsity design is clearly not a problem. [3]
Again, Apple is taking the expensive route with anti-competitive practices, whereas Samsung is learning from others and using its flexibility to overcome obstacles at lower cost.
They are still getting paid by Apple to manufacture Intrinsity's chips, and Apple is clearly worried that Samsung has been learning from that. [2]
Apple's acquisition of Intrinsity was expensive, and the rumor is that they will keep the design to themselves, not making any money off of licensing. [1]
Sorry - I'm kind of chuckling to myself at how hard you're trying to think of this as a good thing for Samsung. Either Apple keeps the technology to themselves or they license it to others and risk others learning from it. This much you seem to understand - but you don't seem to acknowledge that these are the only two choices! Let's put it another way - either Samsung has to pay Apple lots of money to make a SoC to match the iPhone 5's performance, or they lag behind in the benchmarks race.
Samsung's choice of chips for the Galaxy S II blow away the competition with performance, losing the Intrinsity design is clearly not a problem. [3]
Jesus man - you sound like the Iraqi minister of information.
It wasn't Samsung that made the Hummingbird what it was - it was Intrinsity. It was Intrinsity's design innovation that set Samsung and Apple so far above their Cortex-A8 contemporaries. And now they don't have that. The S II has a fast chip in it. Faster than what Apple will have soon? No one knows, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Again, Apple is taking the expensive route with anti-competitive practices, whereas Samsung is learning from others and using its flexibility to overcome obstacles at lower cost.
The unfortunate truth is that all of the lawsuits that are being thrown around in mobile right now are dirt-cheap compared to the cost of building a new SoC. They're also dirt-cheap compared to income on those chips and handsets that the big players enjoy.
So, Samsung "Bada" devices have outsold Windows Phone 7 devices. I'd never even heard of Bada before reading this article. Windows Phone 7 is even worse off than I'd realized (and I already thought it was a market failure).
You would think so, but I guess MS are trying to play a long game. I was talking to some friends who work in corp./enterprise IT the other day; they were saying that the sysadmins and CIO's that they talk to are all very excited to be able to roll out WP7 within companies that are already using MS infrastructure as an iPhone/BB replacement.
MS may be late to the consumer party, but they could still take the board room - or if the execs won't give up their iPhones, the rest of the company.
I think this is what everyone is forgetting. MS can attack the cooperate market. Its not sexy but there is a truckload of cash there.
I always thought it would be a good move for Oracle to buy RIM. They could then offer an end to end solution for businesses, from hardware (sun), OS (solaris), database (oracle), language (java), all the middle ware software through to the phone. I could see a lot of big companies jumping on that platform in a heartbeat.
I haven't forgotten it. I've actually mentioned it several times in HN threads on the subject, suggesting that the only sane way forward for Microsoft in the mobile market is to hit the enterprise market extremely hard and take the place of Blackberry (which has only just recently lost the crown in the business world).
Apple has never known how to provide for the enterprise effectively. Hell, it was several months before iPhones could be locked, for crying out loud, which is one of the big reasons adoption was extremely slow in the enterprise...at least at the companies I know who allowed employees to choose their own phone, but disallowed iPhone (Google among them). And, Google and the Android makers haven't really tried to tackle the enterprise market in any notable way, though the openness of the platform allows bigger businesses to do what they need to do, regardless of vendor support...which is pretty powerful, too.
If IT guys are choosing, I'd be surprised if they don't choose Open Source stuff more often than something from MS. But, I have biases from my own days as an IT guy.
Alas IT guys rarely get to make the choice in any large organization.
To be honest if I was in that situation, I would want an end to end solution too. Im not aware of any end to end corporate solution for android phones out there actually. Perhaps that's a business opportunity for someone with enough capitol to start it.
I wouldn't dismiss them as copycats since Samsung has good technology. They're also closer to the manufacturing side than Apple. However, they're also spread across all kinds of products. They'll eventually fall into the same trap as Japan. Korean demographics is in a good place right now too, right before low fertility rears its ugly head. They are trying to avoid Japanese mistakes but it's hard to outclass your inspiration or really invent something revolutionary.
This is what makes smartphone exciting, the race to advance technology for high stakes.
I got turned off Samsung a few years ago because of one of their low-end phones: felt cheap, was slow, and the UI sucked. The GS2 has me rethinking that in ways I didn't think it could.
I want to know more about the "smartphone" market in 1996. If I recall correctly, the smartest thing a phone had in 1996 was a contact list. Perhaps they mean mobile telephones?
What's the development experience like on the Samsung phones? I've been doing iOS since 2008 but have been considering getting into Android for a few months. The only thing that deters me is the few rants I've come across saying how much better the iOS development experience is.
I've yet to really find anything I can't do with the handset. It's a light, fast, open, beautiful piece of hardware. I'm already seeing a lot of other people converting over after they see the difference that openness can bring. Want to play a random video file? Just drop it onto the phone and hit play.