Samsung revealed their next counter to Apple’s iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and Apple Pay. Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge are being decried by most people as shameless copies of the phones that have brought Apple so much success.
Hard to dispute that. After all, Samsung did ditch a number of features that helped distinguish their phones from Apple’s. Remember all those Samsung commercials that poked fun at the iPhone’s battery life and that quaint non-removable battery? Yup, Samsung saw the light, switched from plastic to metal and a non-removable battery. Along the way, they ditched another Samsung selling point, the removable SD card.
They’ve also improved their camera (adding the little bump that goes with it) and replaced the cheap plastic with Gorilla Glass 4, front and back, an effort to bring their hardware more in line with Apple’s.
What they’ve really done is scrub most of the originality from their product, making the safe move by simply following Apple. I say most of the originality because the S6 Edge does feature a screen that wraps around the edge of the phone, allowing the phone to flash for incoming phone calls, even if it is face down. Time will tell if that feature is an innovation or a nuisance. But I digress.
Perhaps the most significant feature in the new S6 is the improved (allegedly) fingerprint sensor. Samsung recently acquired LoopPay, a payment processing technology that mimics the magnetic strip on your credit card. They’ve also rolled out a new payment scheme called (wait for it) Samsung Pay that seems straight off the Apple Pay playbook. Getting the fingerprint sensor right is critical here.
From the New York Times Q&A on Samsung Pay:
Q. How secure is Samsung Pay?
Samsung Pay, like Apple Pay, promises to be more secure than plastic. With both services, the merchant gets a substitute 16-digit card number stored on the device. A verification code is created for each transaction, based in part on unique keys on the phone. Even if hackers get that substitute number, they need the actual phone for the verification code.
That said, LoopPay’s stand-alone technology uses the regular card number, and magnetic signals are easy to detect and replicate. Samsung is working with both Visa and MasterCard to make substitute numbers available with LoopPay on the phones to boost security. James Anderson, a senior vice president for mobile at MasterCard, says the bank issuing the card needs to participate. If they don’t, some card holders might not be able to make mobile payments, even with the right phone. Samsung says participating banks will include American Express, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and U.S. Bank.
LoopPay is interesting, but it is mired in the present, mimicking the magnetic strip already in everyone’s wallet. As to Samsung Pay, it’s simply a case of copy, copy, copy. The problem for Samsung is that they are on the same side of the fence as Google (being an Android phone), Xiaomi, and others. To succeed, they will have to stand out from the crowd. By jettisoning the features that make their phones unique, they’ve lost the ability to do so. Perhaps they will be satisfied with being the most Apple of all the Android phones.
To me, Samsung’s latest move is disappointing. Rather than push the ball forward, they’re back on their heels. Not chess so much. More like follow-the-leader.
Samsung really does annoy me, not for ‘copying’ (which, let’s be fair, is a pretty universal trait in tech anyway) but for failing to make the most of their manufacturing empire. They’re ideally suited to take a risk and produce something properly different and, in the process, establish their own style. And yet they seem content to follow rather than lead, at least when it comes to design.
This is the same thing that really annoyed me about PC makers in the 2000’s. A dozen huge companies all churning out black or beige desktops which were out-styled by the cardboard boxes they came in (literally in the case of Gateway, loved those cow boxes…). So frustrating that we’ve only really had Apple pushing design as a major selling point while everyone else focuses on shaving another buck or two off the price. Surely it’s worth someone funding a long term experiment to find and build a great design team?
There’s copying and then there’s copying. From a product standpoint, Samsung themselves are remarkable at engineering refinement but have very few fundamental product designs from scratch on their own. The new S6 follows design cues from a combination of Apple on one side and the Nexus 4 and Xiaomi’s new products on the other.
From what I’ve read (and heard in person), building a design team probably goes against Samsung’s corporate structure, which is strictly hierarchical, top-down and where Korea HQ dictates every decision and trusts no one outside of inner circles.
In this model, having an independent, empowered design group simply doesn’t happen. This is glaringly visible nowadays as they are really not a leader but a follower.
More Apple Killers!
Yawn. Wile E. Coyote has a better chance of catching Roadrunner.
Chess? I don’t think that the game they’re playing. Monkey See, Monkey Do is more like it.
Samsung is going back to their roots to try to recapture the glory days of the clone-ish Galaxy S3 when they hit their peak. Problem is, they’re not facing the same iPhone-deprived market anymore. Android in general and Samsung in particular perform well in markets that face iPhone deprivation by price, carrier, or region. Apple still leaves a big opening on price, not so much on carrier and region. Galaxy S6 could put Samsung back on the upswing, but it won’t put them back on top.
There’s bad news:
Samsung has become a sad, serial copier of everything Apple.
But, there’s good news:
Samsung will only continue to eat Apple’s dust.
“They’ve also improved their camera (adding the little bump that goes with it)”
Not quite. The Galaxy S series has had a camera bump since the S2. It became more pronounced in the S3, again on the S4, and the S5, and even more now on the S6.
What gets me is even after all this effort to mimic Apple’s hardware design, they still ship with that hideous UI. It has always reminded me of Windows XP.
Hey – Samsung’s an innovator! It’s paving the way with bold, new types of ugliness and dysfunction.
Samsung did not provide detail on the security of their fingerprint system. Let’s wait until the phones get in consumers’ hands next month and hackers get a chance to spoof or outright hack it.
Their payments system won’t be available until even later this year (summer?) and hinges to a great extent on how well the fingerprint system works. Even if it works as smoothly as they imply, I doubt ease-of-use will match Apple Pay. And that’s not considering how much easier Apple Pay will be with the Apple Watch.
Apple is playing chess. Samsung is playing tic tac toe.
Yes, just have a look!
http://samsungdesign.tumblr.com
Should have called it S-Pay.
No, because Apple dropped the ‘i’ branding and instead used the company name, Samsung must do the same. ‘S’ was like Samsung’s ‘i’ branding. If Apple Pay was instead called ‘iPay,’ you can bet that Samsung would have called it S-Pay.
Ditching features? Kind of like the NFC jokes made by Apple or the big phone sizes that were so wrong but now aren’t?
It’s so odd how such venom is spewed at others doing the same thing Apple does so often: follow.
There’s a difference between learning from others and changing your mind vs slavish copying.
NFC wasn’t a useful technology until now, not because it didn’t have potential, but because its limited range means you have to have devices within inches of one another making payments the most obvious use. However, there was no real impetus for most US retailers to move to NFC and without that there was no real use for NFC in the US.* The change in law about who is responsible for payment fraud that takes effect later this year alters that. Features can be useless one year but useful a few years later – after all, what impact did NFC in Android phones have in the US? Pretty much none.
As for phone size – Apple changed their mind and, I think, they were right to do so. Rather than denigrating it when people and companies show the flexibility to change, perhaps we should recognize it as a good thing when it comes from deliberation and some real thought (vs following fads or trying everything in hopes something will work).
Note that in neither instance did Apple slavishly copy anyone. That’s what’s being called out here – look at the bottom edge of an iPhone 6. Now look at the same edge on an S6…. the vents, power inlet and headphone jack are arranged and spaced identically. That doesn’t happen by accident.
*Apple, unlike some Android vendors, seems to feel that they need to sell the same models worldwide and so if a feature is a non-starter in a large market such as the US it’s just not added even if, as is the case with NFC, it could have been useful in other markets.
Regarding not pushing the ball forward:
– New HDD tech (TBD if it is better but considerable improvement on flash, they say)
– New screen tech (577 PPI; can argue the need but it is a push)
– Best in class wireless charging (Qi/PMA/WPC)
– Samsung Pay which will have the most reach of any provider (Apple Pay or Google Wallet)
– They lessened their bloatware so upgrades should be faster (major issue)
I think closing with “Rather than push the ball forward, they’re back on their heels” is toting the company line for the sake of doing so.
With that said, I’m not a big Samsung fan at all (anymore) so not fanboism here. I’m just calling a spade a spade.
Not useful until now? Are you serious? NFC payments have been in Google Wallet for quite a while. They bashed NFC file sharing in favor of AirPlay, which barely worked and didn’t w/ your laptop. I bet you get some form of NFC opened to devs soon (ios 9?) and guaranteed you’ll get file/contact sharing, etc. You should learn the uses of NFC beyond payments, they are plenty (see smart tags).
So everything is just “Apple changed their mind” and that’s cool. Samsung changed their mind on removable batteries because they finally have a beast of a battery (so they say) and they slavishly copied?
I have ZERO issue with you calling out the bottom but read Dave’s words. They’re ludicrous in light of how much following Apple does. Just look at your justifications for NFC and phone sizes. #smh
I don’t think Apple “changed their mind” about phone size. Ive stated that they worked on it for many years and found the compromises (weight, battery life, etc.) unacceptable to them. So they kept working on it until they could make the phone larger while keeping it light with good battery life.
It’s not much different than what they did with LTE, NFC, fingerprint scanner, etc: wait until the technology provided a great user experience. Others rushed to be “first” with various features or services and most consumers simply didn’t use them.
Exactly what I mean Drew. Apple always “perfectly waits” even when they’re late.
I remember way back how they claimed the Mac processor was so much faster than Intel. Then the next year they had Intel and the slide read how blazingly fast Intel was compared to last years model.
The same happened with HSPA+ and LTE. It was sooooo much faster than LTE until the next year when they had LTE and it was sooooo much faster than HSPA+.
Sometimes they’re not patient, they’re just slow or wrong.
You might be right. Even if they did change their mind, though, I don’t like that doing so is positioned as a negative. No one and no company is right all the time and if one does reverse themselves after consideration that’s not a problem.
Some people seem to want to cast things simplistically as ‘following’ without understanding that markets are much more dynamic and complex than a simple, linear, lead-follow model.
+1. Tell that to Dave.
Google Wallet made very little impact on the market. Yes, it existed, but it wasn’t used much so, yes, NFC was mostly useless in the real world (theoretical uses or ones that are highly specialized and niche don’t really count with me).
Airdrop should have worked between Mac and iOS long ago – no argument there. But NFC wasn’t going to be useful in that scenario due to range limits. I remember the ‘bump to transfer’ commercials from Samsung, but come on, how many people did that? Right.
Samsung isn’t just following here, they’re copying. You can call some of this changing their mind and I’d give you that (the battery especially) but when you look at each phone and have to look REALLY hard to tell them apart, that’s copying. Or are you really trying to say that designing a phone that looks different than an iPhone isn’t possible?
Interesting that Edge gets no marks for originality (not innovation of course).
I agree on Wallet traction. It wasn’t an issue of real world or not. It worked (still does) but it wasn’t marketed like Apple has pushed Pay. Yet again though you are limited in your view of NFC. Having to manually connect to devices is a terrible UX but you have to do it with an iPhone. Devices w/ NFC don’t. You’re missing the bigger picture here. iPhone’s will get broader NFC, inevitable at this point, and you’ll understand.
I can’t speak to how many people did bump to transfer but in my regular use back then, many. It was how people would share their info with me. The app Bump was bought for a nice chunk of change too.
No, it is definitely possible to design a phone not looking like an iPhone (look at Moto, HTC, Nokia, etc). I don’t think the 6 line looks that great anyway so not much to copy there. You’ll get no argument on hardware design copying from here. That bottom design is undeniable.
For clarity, my point isn’t about whether they copy it is about the ridiculous one-sided venom when Samsung does it but when Apple copies features or tech they were smart, patient, the industry wasn’t ready, there aren’t too many other ways to do it (think that was Gruber regarding Notification Center’s ripoff), or any number of positive excuses to give them a pass.
“…the bank issuing the card needs to participate. If they don’t, some card holders might not be able to make mobile payments, even with the right phone.”
To say that they will have the most reach of any provider needs to be followed by a sizable asterisk.
I will reword, to which an asterisk is not needed:
“They will have the most reach in terminals of any provider.”
Apple Pay isn’t available without bank support either, even though I question why since Visa allows tokenizaton already, but on an even playing field of banks (which is feasible) you will have more reach with Samsung Pay and Apple Pay. It’s just the tech used for each is different: NFC vs NFC+(the stripe simulated stuff they’re doing).
Yes, but if Samsung’s mobile payments system gets hacked, the only company who will get any press will be Apple. They’ll say “Samsung got hacked, so Apple is doomed!”
If the wind blows, they’ll say Apple is doomed.
LoopPay? Do you think they named it that just to get Jim’s goat?
troll harder, dude. you can do it.
as for big phones, Apple didn’t copy Samsung. they had big iPhones before it was an iPhone — as you must surely know the iPad began as a touch tablet, and they played with many sizes over the years. but when they last tried big phones it was the 4s era and Ive said they were too bulky, which is why they waited again until the 6. read the NYT article dude.
Google Wallet = useless niche footnote of the Internet.
they weren’t late — the non-big iPhones sold better than any other phones in history, bar none, period, end of story. the big iPhones did the same. thus, they didn’t wait too long at all.
they’ve been laughing all the way to the bank year after year, while you only get more and more butt hurt. get over it.
That’s what you never understand about me. I’m an Apple fan. I just don’t by into the ridiculous notion of them being perfect.
Profit isn’t the only measure to being late. They could’ve put out the T-Mobile G1 for the 5s and made billions. People by them no matter what.
There ya go. I knew my “you don’t agree with me so you’re a troll” shadow would show up eventually.
Ahhhh…ok. So having things in the labs now negates any copying. Interesting. I just don’t recall that same logic working when Samsung said the same thing about something they had in labs that Apple released first.
You’re a great skater though. 😉
You amuse me.
“Having to manually connect to devices is a terrible UX but you have to do it with an iPhone. “
Uh…. to transfer files? No I don’t. Airdrop works at range. If I’m out of range I’d uses email. messaging etc. Beacons, likewise, work at range. For things like that Bluetooth LE > NFC.
Apple Pay works well because it’s dead easy – bring the phone close to the terminal, press your thumb or finger on the TouchID sensor, done. No external app, nothing.
Look, if NFC was so awesome… why has it made next to no impact in the US before this? Android’s had the market share and we’ve been told for years NFC was a critical feature and yet no one in the wider market (outside of geeks), really cared or used it much. There was no cool, killer app with NFC.
you can make all the claims you want – but the evidence doesn’t support NFC’s usefulness.
No, sorry…I didn’t mean to phones. I was using the general “devices” term. Think speakers, etc. To mention email as a solution though is pretty funny. 🙂
Your view of NFC being for geeks only doesn’t fit what I see regularly. It’s a typical view though and there is nothing wrong w/ it. It just isn’t reality.
Until Apple Pay was released in the iPhone 6, I had never once seen anyone use NFC for anything in public. I think your reality might be skewed.
Also, your attempt to “laugh” at the ideas of others in an attempt to invalidate them simply proves that your argument cannot stand on its own. NFC might indeed become more prevalent in the future, if Apple makes it available to developers. But, there are almost zero daily use-cases for it that cannot already be met with BLE.
I would never say that NFC is dead (it still has excellent uses, even if they are not mainstream), but if my Android-fanboy friends can’t find uses for it (especially my Samsung Galaxy friend that is ALWAYS looking to show off any tech that makes his phone different from my iPhone), then I would argue that you are living in a tech circle that does not match the large majority of the world.
Our realities are what they are. In my world I see NFC in use regularly. You, apparently not.
I didn’t laugh at anyone. I simply said ‘I can email’ was funny. That’s like saying “I can open Walgreens.com and pay there’ as a response to no Apple Pay.
BTLE is great. I’m not pitting them against each other. They serve two different purposes. NFC can be a gateway to an easier bluetooth connection. Tap your phone, BTLE connection established. No hunting for Settings app, getting to Bluetooth, finding your device or waiting on a refresh, then connecting. Tap…done.
I work remote so my geek/tech friends aren’t who I’m referring to. It’s folks from church or family.
Tell your friend to get an NFC speaker: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_11?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=nfc%20speaker&sprefix=nfc+speaker%2Cmobile%2C150.
So show us cases where NFC is broadly used by people in the US. You stating a thing over and over does not make it true.
Email works – everyone has it and while it’s old school, it transfer files easily. Everything else from Dropbox to the various messaging apps suffers from the ‘hey do you have an X aaccount?” while email does not.
NFC is useless for file transfer past a foot or two. Don’t start on that as a solution.
Tell me where I said it was broadly used. You’re moving the goal posts.