Damn it Samsung, you’ve duped me again.
I’ve been here before, I got all excited over the Samsung Ativ S ahead of its launch, blogged about how amazing it seemed and was then crushingly disappointed when the reality turned out to be very underwhelming indeed.
And now the same has happened with the Galaxy S5. I’ve long been sceptical of Samsung’s devices ahead of their launches, particularly the flagships as the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4 utterly failed to impress me on any level. But, with the rumour mill swirling in full force about the Galaxy S5, promising all kinds of wonderful-sounding stuff, I let my guard down, got all enthusiastic about the possibilities and produced another gushing blog post about how wonderful the future would be.
Fool me twice, shame on me, as the saying goes.
But if Samsung fudging the Ativ S was a storm in a tea cup for me (which it was, no-one else, not even Samsung, actually gave a stuff about that device), disappointing the rabid consumer-base at large with the Galaxy S5 might actually be batten down the hatches time for the South Korean tech giant.
Samsung really needed to step up to the plate this time because competition from the likes of Sony and LG is really hotting up in the Android space, not to mention the ever-looming spectre of Apple’s next flagship. It needed a substantial change.
There were a lot of rumours about the Galaxy S5’s design, an absolute boat-load in fact, because arguably this was the area in which the most change was expected and needed, and sadly the area in which the least change actually happened.
This is disappointing in and of itself, but it really becomes rather galling when you consider Samsung knew there was a desire for change. The Galaxy S4 was all too similar to the Galaxy S3, something which was commented about a lot at the time of launch.
But crucially, Samsung was apparently well aware of this, at least according to comments from Samsung’s executive vice president of its mobile business, Lee Young Hee, who spoke to Bloomberg in January.
“The Galaxy S4 may have fallen short of consumer expectations because its design was too similar to its S3 predecessor, Lee Young Hee said. The next handset likely will be different, she said without providing specifications, including screen size.”
That’s pulled from the report, but just as interesting is a direct quote from Hee herself published within:
“When we moved to S4 from S3, it’s partly true that consumers couldn’t really feel much difference between the two products from the physical perspective, so the market reaction wasn’t as big. For the S5, we will go back to the basics. Mostly, it’s about the display and the feel of the cover.”
Yeah, a dimple-effect back panel isn’t exactly what we had in mind.
This whole fiasco also highlights the absurdity of manufacturer silence during the rumour-phase. We’ve commented before on the site about how a simple “this rumour is false” from phone makers would be a massively beneficial part of the whole process – it would keep things in check and stop expectations running rampant.
Samsung isn’t alone in this regard, as we’ve said, Google could avoid a lot of flak simply by saying whether or not it’s working on a Nexus 10 successor, because right now there are a lot of angry Nexus 10 fans on the internet who were expecting a sequel by now, and many of the more vocal ones say they’ve gone over to Apple in disgust – surely that’s worth mitigating with a statement? It doesn’t matter if no-one believes it at the time either, at the very least it’s there for posterity and could, perhaps start a cultural shift in the industry away from Apple-mimicking muteness to a more open dialogue which would ultimately be more beneficial for everyone – manufacturer, journo and consumer alike.
Samsung remained silent while rumours said it would use metal, rumours which came from some of the most reliable sources on the web, the likes of SamMobile and @evleaks, sources which were also 100% correct about the fingerprint scanner and 16-megapixel camera. Samsung must be aware of what goes on in the rumour-sphere and that people trust these sources.
It remained silent while reports focused on that design patent for a new phone style, which it actually did file with the US Patent Office – it was real.
Which also begs the question of when, precisely, a funky new phone looking like this will see the light of day? That’s annoying on another level too – clearly the company is capable of coming up with something new and original, it just decided not to, for reasons which, like the JFK assassination and the Roswell Incident, will likely remain a mystery.
It remained silent when rumours and leaks suggested TouchWiz would receive a major overhaul – which it did not. The Galaxy S5 had a slight tweak to the notification bar just like every other major Android KitKat-based flagship, but the application shortcuts and other UI features remained much the same.
All of which sounds pretty daft when you think about it. I mean, while all these rumours were happening, was no-one, Lee Young Hee or otherwise, sitting in Samsung’s offices reading such reports and glancing at other staffers nervously thinking, “Oh dear, it’s nothing like that – perhaps we should say or do something?”
“Surely the problem would just go away,” was perhaps the conclusion. Well surprisingly enough it didn’t. Fans wanted a change.
Samsung is now faced with a large swathe of disappointed Galaxy fans. We’ve asked readers across our various social networking channels about the Galaxy S5 and the majority of responses express disappointment and a preference for Sony’s Xperia Z2. It’s bad enough that Samsung had the lack of foresight to update its Galaxy handset sufficiently, worse still that it actually seeded expectations with statements from its executives and utterly ridiculous that it did nothing in response to the flow of inaccurate rumours.
Change was expected, even promised, but not delivered. This, as Randy Marsh and any politician will tell you, is a recipe for disaster.
by pbriden via Featured Articles
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