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Samsung Focusing On Phone Software

Posted by Unknown on from the gee-whiz-everyone-loves-touchwhiz dept.

itwbennett writes "With the much-acclaimed Galaxy SIII in its pocket, don't think that Samsung is looking at Amazon's success with the Kindle and Apple's success with its iOS devices and saying to themselves, 'No, we'd rather not have that kind of diverse revenue, we'll stick to razor-thin hardware margins,' writes blogger Kevin Purdy. And that's not the only reason that Samsung might decide the time is right to maintain its own OS, or at least an Android fork: There's also the looming spectre of Google-Motorola."

88 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Fork that. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Another android fork just what we need.

  2. bada by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Samsung already has their own OS, bada, and it's crap.

    1. Re:bada by simplexion · · Score: 5, Funny

      They should do a deal with Microsoft. Then they could have Badabing.

    2. Re:bada by assassinator42 · · Score: 3, Funny

      They already screw up Android enough as well.

      Semi-related comment from the kernel source of my phone: /*This is a temporary piece of crappy code that I was forced to write as I did not figure
      out how to properly use the SPI driver in the system. Please resist the temptation of ever using
      this code in a good Samsung phone. I will remove this code as soon as I figure out the correct
      way of using the SPI driver*/

      (That code actually works correctly though, unlike some of the other stuff)

    3. Re:bada by c0lo · · Score: 1

      They should do a deal with Microsoft. Then they could have Badabing.

      Yes, and... to increase the chances for the deal, they should feature more their co-national Boom in their ads.

      --
      Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
    4. Re:bada by ackthpt · · Score: 1

      They should do a deal with Microsoft. Then they could have Badabing.

      Yes, and... to increase the chances for the deal, they should feature more their co-national Boom in their ads.

      Nah, just need one of those great battery suppliers - phone/tablet go BOOM and then they gets all kinds free press! 8^)

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    5. Re:bada by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      it may be crap, but it's still there. the fucking stupid summary and article....

      anyhow, it's still selling more than windows phone.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    6. Re:bada by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1

      The general perception within the Android community of Samsung is "Awesome hardware, crap software".

      Samsung's profit levels show that they have enough hardware differentiation to avoid razor-thin hardware margins, although the Galaxy S III may be a change... The S3 offers little hardware-wise that the Galaxy Note doesn't (the extra two CPU cores are rarely used) - all it has to offer are a bunch of software gimmicks that so far tend to piss people off that use them.

      If Samsung tries to shift focus from hardware to software, they are going to fail on a grand scale...

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  3. Fork Meego! by simplexion · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Forking Meego would be cool.

    1. Re:Fork Meego! by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      Nemo Mobile, part of Mer which also targets KDE (Plasma Active) and Hildon (Cordia)

    2. Re:Fork Meego! by Tellarin · · Score: 2

      I definitely agree with this. Having more focus, Meego would get great pretty quickly. If Nokia's N9 progress from PR1 to the current version is any indication... And it was only half-Meego.

      --
      -- SouNerd.com
  4. Meego v2? by gbjbaanb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So Samsung has the rump of Meego in the form of Tizen... surely 3rd time lucky will give us the phone OS that will take mobile computing a huge step forward this time?

    Mind you, they might just push Bada as well, and end up being the new Nokia.

    1. Re:Meego v2? by iluvcapra · · Score: 1

      surely 3rd time lucky will give us the phone OS that will take mobile computing a huge step forward this time?

      They aren't looking for the step forward, they're just looking for the thing that Works and takes them off of Google's update schedule and in a better position to compete strategically with the iOS ecosystem. It's also quite possible they just want to have a loaded gun pointed at Google, ready to fire if they ever got the whiff that Google was using Android on Motorola to attack their handset business.

      90% of bringing a viable mobile ecosystem to market is having a Facebook and Twitter app, a way to buy songs and a way to stream Netflix, a mapping system and some sandbox you can run HTML5 apps in. That's not hard to deliver, webOS was just that and had a great reputation -- the toughest part is picking your networks and partners and making sure you get the good end of the deal.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
    2. Re:Meego v2? by davester666 · · Score: 1

      They just don't want to be Zuned by either Microsoft or Google...

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    3. Re:Meego v2? by Microlith · · Score: 4, Informative

      Samsung has the rump of Meego in the form of Tizen

      There's nothing MeeGo about Tizen. Some existing projects from Intel might make their way in, but nothing of MeeGo proper is present. As it stands, Tizen is just SLP made public with investment from Intel and more public than LiMo (albeit without any sort of community input that I can see.)

      Other than that, the current Tizen push to have no native software at all, focusing entirely on HTML5 software (which, in the face of Android and iOS support for native development is suicide.) As someone who attended the Tizen summit in San Francisco back in May, this has greatly discouraged me and sharply tempered my interest in the platform. I'll keep my ears open and fiddle with my reference unit, but it looks like I'm stuck with my N900 for yet more time until something drops that can actually replace it (hopefully giving me the option of root that I want.)

    4. Re:Meego v2? by Grishnakh · · Score: 1

      Trying to do WebOS (or something like it) at this point is rather dumb, IMO. There's only room for so many mobile OSes, and one of the main drivers is the apps. We already have iOS, Android, RIM/Blackberry (which is dying), Symbian (which is almost dead), and WindowsPhone7 (which isn't doing very well). App developers are naturally only going to target the most popular platforms, as many years of Windows (on the desktop) has shown us; trying to open up Yet Another Mobile App Store simply isn't going to go over very well, probably worse than WP7.

      However, I don't think it'd be all that hard to fork Android and customize it some more; heck, Android is already heavily customized by the handset makers; that's one of the reasons it's so attractive to OEMs. As long as the fork still has access to the Google Play store and can run Android apps (mainly by running Dalvik), it doesn't seem to be a big problem to me. Android is open-source, after all, so it seems to be much more sensible for an OEM that's already using Android to just stick with that and customize it even further, perhaps with a fork if they're having some problems with Google, than to abandon all that and go off on their own with an entirely different OS.

    5. Re:Meego v2? by ifiwereasculptor · · Score: 1

      Other than that, the current Tizen push to have no native software at all, focusing entirely on HTML5 software (which, in the face of Android and iOS support for native development is suicide.)

      I don't see other option, though. Once a platform is dominant, it gets a bit harder to end the vicious circle of no programs, therefore no users, therefore no programs... see Windows. RIM and Nokia were kings, Apple came and made a much, much better platform. Then iOS became quite ubiquitous, and Android was a genius move. If any one manufacturer came up with a new platform, it would have to be way, way better than iOS for users and developers to make a leap of faith together, agood enough to beat Apple on the hype game. Very unlikely. But as they all sort of united, then it became a very good idea to code for Android as its huge adoption was foreseeable. Now, to try and beat Android on user base, you could use HTML5 - code once for pretty much every device.

    6. Re:Meego v2? by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      true, you can just port Apache Cordova to every device, but that does pre-supposed an OS with hooks that can e accessed from that platform.

      One thing to note: I have an app on my Android system that shows ad networks, but will also show the dev tool used - and a very large number of the games I have are all using the NDK. I don't think that's coincidence, so a native system will be required, if not at first and if not for all apps.

      iOS started life running HTML and js, now it's native only. Anddroid started with Java, now it too has native. Windows phone 8 is rumoured to prefer native, but we'll see how that goes.

  5. post 1.0 by rzr · · Score: 1

    I am wondering if other phone vendors will adopt it ? like on recent intel x86 mobiles phones ?

    --
    -- http://rzr.online.fr/
  6. SuperAMOLED+ by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 3, Informative

    So long as Samsung continues to be the sole producer of phones with SuperAMOLED+ screens, they've got my dollar secured. I'd much rather have those deep blacks than a Retina screen.

    Of course if I was an Android user, I may be worried about Samsung creating their own fork which is almost guaranteed to be worse than vanilla. They may end up driving more users away with this than they'd gain.

    1. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by sanosuke001 · · Score: 1

      I have a Galaxy Nexus and the screen does look like (pentile is still noticeable when very close up) but unfortunately, burn-in is an issue. my old Droid X I had pandora playing with the screen auto-off disabled and had no problems; with the OLED screen on the galaxy nexus, pandora has burned in, unfortunately. Either fix that in the screens (and get rid of pentile), or I won't be getting another samsung phone.

      --
      -SaNo
    2. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 1

      SuperAMOLED+ (note the +) and SuperAMOLED HD+ screens are true RGB, not Pentile.

    3. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by linatux · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Having used Kies - I'm far from confident in their abilities. What a POS!

    4. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by JackAxe · · Score: 1, Troll

      Well, going by Apple's own marketing -- which is constantly changing -- the SuperAMOLED+ found on Android devices also have a Retina display.

      Since the new non-upgradeable MacBook Pros only have a 220 PPI screen and Apple has proudly labeled them Retina, pretty much every Android phone on the market -- including my old Nexus One -- and most BlackBerry phones are eligible for this Retina moniker that makes so many iPhone guys feel special.

      Even when Apple released the newer New newest iPad 3 ( Whatever it's called? ) with its 260 PPI screen, most other phones on the market now had a PPI high enough to be considered Retina happy. So when it comes down to it, many Android phones had Retina displays before Apple's own phones.

    5. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by exomondo · · Score: 1

      Sigh. Why do you trolls always ignore the distance thing. My laptop is a different distance from my face than my phone or a tablet...

      I'm not saying i agree with the guy you replied to but i tend to have them all at about the same distance. Do you really hold your phone closer to your face than a tablet? If your eyes are so bad that you need to do that then a retina display probably makes no difference anyway. If i'm sitting down with a tablet it sits about as far from my eyes as a laptop screen does when i'm using that.

    6. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by amRadioHed · · Score: 1

      Honestly, I'm curious why do you care about pentile display? My Galaxy Nexus looks absolutely fine for all uses. Maybe you can see a difference under a microscope but that's just going out of you way to find something to be unhappy about.

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
    7. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by JackAxe · · Score: 1

      I imagine you're currently festering in your own rage as you let your own biased and quite ignorant outlook on life skew the reality of things. How does that nerve feel that I hit? Or has the saliva that's frothed out of your mouth soothed it?

      Why don't you bother being more constructive on Slashdot instead resorting to name calling? Has your frontal lobe not developed yet? You do know that you can post without checking Anonymous Coward? Right?

      BTW, I'm from the Apple generation that came before the Think Different campaign. It's apparent that you're not. I'm going to assume that prior to being hyped about Retina displays by Apple's marketing machine, you didn't know jack about PPI, let alone DPI; and in this case, welcome to last century.

      As an Apple guy, I can recall a time I liked discussing various tech ( Apple, MS, whatever ) with other nerds; well I still do, but definitely not with this newer generation of Apple zealots that prior to iOS couldn't give one care about this fruity company; they tend to not offer anything constructive outside of what they've been taught to parrot.

    8. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by dudpixel · · Score: 1

      I wonder how many people would eagerly go for a non-pentile version and then complain that the battery life is not as good as the pentile version? or complain that the colours deteriorate over time (that was samsung's claim)?

      --
      This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
    9. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by Miamicanes · · Score: 4, Informative

      > Unless they hire a bunch of the top guys from XDA, their software will continue to be absolute shyte no one wants on their phone :(

      You mean, like the guy behind Cyanogen? He's been a Samsung employee for about a year now. It's not a coincidence that Samsung has suddenly become one of the first-ported platforms for new versions of Cyanogen. Hiring him was a brilliant move for Samsung, because it allowed them to outsource the long-term development of their phone operating system for EOL'ed phones to an army of highly-skilled unpaid volunteers. Since he's an official Samsung employee, they can even let him have access to sourcecode, SDKs, and datasheets that companies like Qualcomm won't allow them to release to the general public. Thus, when a new version of Android gets released, he can personally churn out a new kerneland kernel modules for everything Samsung has soucecode access to within a matter of days He doesn't have time to indiscriminately REWRITE much beyond a few carefully-chosen phone models, but for any task that mainly comes down to dropping in the new kernel source and running make, Samsung phones are literally weeks to months ahead of HTC phones now.

      That said, it's a good thing Samsung doesn't lock bootloaders and has Cyanogen's founder working for them, because their own in-house operating system development efforts have historically sucked donkey dick. Sprint's history of Samsung phones is littered with the corpses of unloved phones released with operating systems that were already considered old the PREVIOUS YEAR. The SPH-i300 shipped with PalmOS 3.5... when all the new apps at Palmgear needed 4. The SPH-i500 shipped with glorious 4.1, when all the new apps at Palmgear needed 5. Every phone had the potential to be great, but ended up getting ruined by arriving a year late and a few excessively value-engineered dollars short of tolerability.

    10. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by NorQue · · Score: 1

      That's because the subpixel density is high enough with the Galaxy Nexus. On my previous cellphone (Nexus One) and a friends Galaxy S the AMOLEDs Pentile matrix looked atrocious.

    11. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by Custard+Horse · · Score: 1

      On my previous cellphone (Nexus One) and a friends Galaxy S the AMOLEDs Pentile matrix looked atrocious.

      You say "atrocious" but is that an overstatement? The degree of variance between a selection of phones in the same class e.g. HTC Desire HD, Samsung Galaxy II, iPhone 4, is not that wide.

      There is merit in the argument over battery usage but berating one screen over another is nit-picking at best.

    12. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by Vintermann · · Score: 1

      Of course if I was an Android user, I may be worried about Samsung creating their own fork which is almost guaranteed to be worse than vanilla.

      It's a bit premature to worry about that, isn't it? Right now, Samsung is one of the better Android citizens. Let's punish them when/if they stop being that, not based on cynicism about what we think they will do.

      Choosing the tight margins on their (unquestionably superior) hardware, is akin to choosing the tight margins of open source software rather than lock-in of proprietary software. It's a brave choice to customers' benefit.

      --
      xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
    13. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Apple defines Retina based on average distance held relative to pixels. Retina for a bill board is different than retina for a phone.

      tan(a/s) = s/2d

      where d = distance from displace, s = spacing between pixels and a = viewing angle of pixels (the angle till you see overlap). To get to what Apple calls "Retina" you need to get "a" down to 1 arc minute.

      * = As an aside let me just point out that 1 arc minute is not correct in terms of the limits of human vision especially for kids. Likely we have to go through one more round of doubling to actually have "retina" displays.

    14. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by marsu_k · · Score: 1

      Same here - recently got a Galaxy S3 (a terrific phone, not so keen on the Samsung "enhancements" to ICS) which also has a pentile display with the same resolution as Galaxy Nexus (physically a bit larger, so the pixels are ever so slightly bigger). The fact that the display is pentile is only really evident when the text is so small it's pretty much illegible already. This seems to be very much on the font though, some look fine in tiny sizes.

    15. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1

      Steve working for Samsung has had almost zero benefit to the CM project - he is HEAVILY firewalled/NDAed.

      Samsung becoming the most-ported manufacturer for CM has nothing to do with Steve getting hired - it started long before that.

      It has two main components:
      1) Samsung has awesome hardware but crap software (this continues to this day), which provides more incentive for people to do a bringup
      2) Samsung has the most lenient bootloader-locking policies around, while HTC (the previous king of CM bringups) has shot themselves in the foot with aggressive bootloader-locking policies. Also, LG and Sony are actually way ahead of Samsung in terms of what portion of their product lines have solid CM bringups, it's just they don't get credit for this due to their significantly lower market share. Everyone's noticing the dominance of Samsung compared to HTC and Motorola in terms of CM bringups - this has nothing to do with Steve working for them and everything to do with HTC moving to heavy bootloader locking and Motorola staying with it, which pisses people off.

      A smaller contributor is that their flagship devices have a fairly decent amount of hardware similarity. The international Galaxy Note (GT-N7000) was (and still is) built off of the GT-I9100 kernel source tree, and recycles mostly blobs from the I9100. The GT-I9300 has enough similarities to the I9100 that it was easymode for codeworkx and xplodwild - Steve had ZERO involvement in the I9300 bringup. Its rapid bringup is all due to codeworkx/xplodwild having a long history of fixing Samsung breakage and the fully unlocked bootloader, with a little bit of the fact that a lot of I9300 stuff showed up in the I9100 ICS kernel source code drop.

      Remember - Cyanogenmod is a volunteer project. What devices get ported really depends on which devices are attractive to developers and not what Steve would like, and without providing any assistance to the development community, Samsung's bootloader policy alone is enough to put them way ahead of the pack. (And seriously - as a Cyanogenmod co-maintainer of two devices, the SGH-I777 and GT-N7000, I can tell you that we got ZERO help from Samsung in any way on either of these devices, and have frequently been fighting their noncooperation with the developer community, such as having to spend an entire day reverse engineering the I777's stupid microphone swapping and quite a bit of time reverse engineering their breakage of gps.h by adding an extra field to the SV status structures in their implementation.)

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    16. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1

      One thing - To give him credit, he's had a lot of influence in bringing up CM on carrier-mangled derpbeasts like the AT&T Note (completely different from the international version), the T989, and the Shitrocket. (All three of which share a lot of commonality internally).

      He hasn't had much involvement at all with the bringups of CM on Hummingbird (all of the original GalaxyS line) or Exynos (international S2, S3, and Note) devices - that has been more Teamhacksung (codeworkx, xplodwild, atinm, espenfjo, and others)

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    17. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by amRadioHed · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I'd say it's an overstatement. My previous phone was also a Nexus One. By no definition was the display atrocious looking. I don't have it convenient right now, but even when I had it side by side with my Galaxy Nexus no major problems with the display stood out. But I was just using my phone, I wasn't looking for flaws. I think the people who insist pentile is bad are looking for flaws, so naturally they see them.

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
    18. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by scot4875 · · Score: 2

      Apple defines Retina based on average distance held relative to pixels.

      Apple defines Retina in a way that benefits their advertising campaigns the most.

      --Jeremy

      --
      Jesus was a liberal
    19. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by sanosuke001 · · Score: 1

      It doesn't look horrible, I said it was noticeable if I was using it up close and added some artifacts. I still love my phone (aside from the burn-in).

      As for the burn-in, I noticed it after a 4-hour car drive. I don't know if it just got to a noticeable level at that point, or if it was really the first time I left it on the same screen but I had done that dozens of times (including 10-hour drives from NY to VA) and never had a problem on my Droid X.

      --
      -SaNo
    20. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by sanosuke001 · · Score: 1

      As stated in another post below, I've had my Nexus ~3 months after I noticed it and I initially noticed it after a 4-hour car drive. I don't know if it just got to a noticeable level at that point, or if it was really the first time I left it on the same screen but I had done that dozens of times (including 10-hour drives from NY to VA) and never had a problem on my Droid X.

      --
      -SaNo
    21. Re:SuperAMOLED+ by amRadioHed · · Score: 1

      Well, you included getting rid of the pentile display as a condition for buying another Samsung, so that makes it sound like you consider it a pretty serious problem.

      The burn-in can be a real problem though, that is true, but I only had minor burn in on my N1 after 2 years of heavy use. It was barely noticeable where the old white status bar was before Gingerbread made it black. I never left it on for long periods as often as you did though. I use Navigation all the time while driving, but haven't seen any burn in from that.

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
  7. Strange comments from the article by cpu6502 · · Score: 3, Informative

    - "Do you actually have anything of substance to write? This says 'slow news day by a lazy writer' all over the place to me."
    - "It's click bait, something to get his numbers up and make it seem like he is being productive."

    The article was interesting enough to make slashdot. (shrug)

    --
    My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
  8. Motorola-Google by thoughtspace · · Score: 1

    Not a threat if that means Motorola UI on Google hardware.

  9. ... Because ALL Geese Lay Golden Eggs. Right? by grcumb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Exec 1: Congratulations! Between you and Apple, you have utter dominance in the mobile market! You're also more profitable than every other Android manufacturer in the world!

    Exec 2: We are? Quick, stop what we're doing! Change everything! It's the only way we'll continue this success!

    --
    Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
    1. Re:... Because ALL Geese Lay Golden Eggs. Right? by lexman098 · · Score: 2

      That may seem like what's happening, but in the telecom business you need to keep innovating and changing up or you'll get left behind.

      RIM had utter dominance once.

    2. Re:... Because ALL Geese Lay Golden Eggs. Right? by rgbrenner · · Score: 2

      That is SO insightful. I'm glad the mods agreed with you.

      RIM used to be the most profitable, biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world.

      They followed your advice, and now they are even bigger than before.

      Oh wait...

    3. Re:... Because ALL Geese Lay Golden Eggs. Right? by grcumb · · Score: 1

      RIM used to be the most profitable, biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world.

      Look, I'll be the first person to admit that there's a lot of dynamism in this market and that change management is essential to the mid-term survival of any player. But what's being suggested here is that Samsung, who have succeeded with their Android phones, and who have better margins than any other Android handset maker, should fundamentally change their process simply because other companies have been successful with other approaches.

      I'm not arguing for complacence or stagnation, I'm saying that there's no real incentive for them to commit to fundamental changes in their processes at this point in time.

      --
      Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
    4. Re:... Because ALL Geese Lay Golden Eggs. Right? by rgbrenner · · Score: 1

      You're assuming that Samsung is full of retards. There's a chance that you are right, but more likely they: if they think their OS is any good, they will launch phones with their OS __ IN ADDITION TO __ their Android phones.

      If people like SamsungOS (fat chance.. but just go along with it).. Samsung will have 1 more advantage over other manufacturers. Right now they can only differentiate themselves using the hardware.. with their own OS they'll have hardware + software.

    5. Re:... Because ALL Geese Lay Golden Eggs. Right? by rgbrenner · · Score: 1

      and there's the lock-in part... if consumers prefer SamsungOS, they can't just go to another manufacturer like they can with Android.

    6. Re:... Because ALL Geese Lay Golden Eggs. Right? by hey! · · Score: 1

      The only thing that's more foolish than ignoring the past is expecting the past to repeat itself. Circumstances matter. Differences in capabilities matter. Timing matters. Why did Apple succeed with tablets where Microsoft failed? All three.

      You can find instances to support either end of this stick: companies who failed to get out of an eroding business in time, and those that neglected what they were good at and got lost in markets they weren't equipped to enter.

      Armchair strategists like to spin scenarios from very superficial knowledge of the facts, and so manage to produce "strategies" that are at once fanciful, yet unimaginative, like futurists of the late 19th C who thought in a hundred years people would commute to their jobs in the city by airship. Real strategy requires brain-cracking gymnastics where you sweat the details while tying to keep hold of the big picture.

      It seems to me that Samsung's strategic position is flexible. They're differentiating themselves on a software platform that is open. Their relationship to Google may sour after the Motorola deal, but they have the option of forking Android if need be. Meanwhile they're working on using software to differentiate their offerings from other hardware vendors, which positions them well to differentiate an Android fork or entirely new OS if that is in the cards. It won't be totally untested waters for them, they'll have valuable experience and maybe even customer loyalty if their offerings are good enough. But they don't *have* to burn their bridges yet (including customer access to Google's App marketplace).Dipping their toe into software gives them a stronger bargaining position with Google without forcing anyone's hand.

      So it seems to me they've taken a reasonable position in a very competitive market. Where they should go from here, I don't know and can't know. It is possible even Samsung is not entirely sure if we're talking two or three years out -- they'd need a crystal ball to tell them what their competitors and current allies are going to do. It would probably be prudent for them to be doing contingency planning and some preparation for the Google relationship going sour, but to do so quietly.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    7. Re:... Because ALL Geese Lay Golden Eggs. Right? by Patch86 · · Score: 1

      Samsung suffer from some serious product schizophrenia sometimes (in a similar way as do Google). They have a successful and highly entrenched Android division. They also have Tizen development under way, and they have their own smartphone OS, Bada, as well as proprietary no=name OS' for feature phones. They even used to develop for Symbian.

      Android is working for them; it would be suicide to abandon it for yet another new OS now, just as they've taken the lead.

    8. Re:... Because ALL Geese Lay Golden Eggs. Right? by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      I agree. The summary doesn't make sense. Razor-thin hardware margins? That's not Samsung, but the people that put together those phones for Samsung. No-one ever says the same about Apple, for example, while Apple also designs their own hardware.

      Samsung's margin should be better thanks to using Android. Must be far cheaper to maintain their own brand of Android than to maintain a complete mobile OS, plus they have access to the enormous existing app market. The profit is in the design and marketing of the device, and that's what Samsung is doing quite well. They're also designing and making their own chips, this is usually also a quite profitable business - simply because they own the design to those chips.

    9. Re:... Because ALL Geese Lay Golden Eggs. Right? by Vintermann · · Score: 1

      No, you need to jump on the bandwagons to stay in the lead! If Apple and Amazon are doing it, it must be right! /s

      --
      xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
    10. Re:... Because ALL Geese Lay Golden Eggs. Right? by rgbrenner · · Score: 1

      from samsungs point of view it's a huge problem. No lock in == low profit margins (or at least lowER).

  10. Let's hope not... by Nemyst · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now I can honestly say that I like Samsung's hardware a lot. I have a HDTV from them and I own a Nexus S. The build quality's always solid, the designs are nice and the phone screens are lavish.

    However, Samsung's never seemed to me to be even remotely competent with software. TouchWiz has been described as anything from mediocre to disastrous, especially now that Android's default UI (with ICS) is fairly sleek. Unless they have plans to entirely scrap that and hire a better software team, I don't see how they can expect to actually fork Android. They'd either lose on all the Google-provided updates or have to have an extensive integration process every time a new version comes out. This might work with revisions, but large changes (like say, the jump from Gingerbread/Honeycomb to ICS) would require tremendous amounts of work for little benefit, in the end. Not following the lead set by Google would mean trailing in API implementation, having to maintain their own development kits and tools, and probably fracturing the environment with them sticking out like a sore thumb. Android app devs already have enough of a headache supporting three concurrent OS versions.

    They're better off taking advantage of Google's platform. I doubt they'll change it much with the Motorola acquisition, which was in large part a land grab in the patent war. At worst, Samsung will lose their privileged Nexus maker status, which while important in terms of image doesn't translate into that many sales.

    1. Re:Let's hope not... by raster · · Score: 1

      tizen is worked on by a totally different software team - unrelated to android or bada. note though, it's still the same ui designers.

      --
      --------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------------
    2. Re:Let's hope not... by Nerdfest · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Didn't they hire the lead dev from CyanogenMod? One outstanding developer can go a very long way to improving your product.

    3. Re:Let's hope not... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Precisely... why have CyanogenMod on the team if you're not going to go full tilt into Android possibilities?

    4. Re:Let's hope not... by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      ..only if his changesets get pushed through..

      if it takes 20 meetings and 5 subcontractors to agree on it..

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    5. Re:Let's hope not... by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Informative

      However, Samsung's never seemed to me to be even remotely competent with software.

      This is an understatement. Samsung aren't only experts in pushing buggy software a lot of their results end up being blatant rip-offs of other software. They have three notable WTF-were-they-thinking moments:

      - Touchwiz: This has to be the least stable launcher I have every experienced on a phone. It was slow, jerky, used a lot of memory (By Samsung's own admission Touchwiz is why the the old Galaxy S won't get ICS because the hardware is underpowered... which is news to me since I already run ICS), and cloned much of the early elements from Apple.

      - Keis: A blatant rip-off attempt at iTunes which is slower (hard to believe I know) and is horrendously broken. I've never plugged a Samsung phone in and been able to apply an update without issue. The most recent attempt at upgrading a Galaxy S II resulted in an error message entirely written in Korean. The consensus seems to be that it's much safer to perform a firmware upgrade by hacking around with tarballs and a complicated flashing utility than it is to simply hit one button in the manufacturer's own software.

      - RFS (resulting in a horrendous Galaxy S experience): Let's take an old file system, attach a journal to it, put a second file allocation table in it for redundancy, and then name it RobustFS and claim it was specifically designed for NAND memory. Oh while we're at it we'll write the worlds slowest kernel driver for it too. This file system and its implementation resulted in Android actually force closing apps because the OS thought they took so long accessing the file system that they locked up. It was a problem in Android 2.1 and 2.2 ... AND 2.3 despite some hundreds of firmware releases around the world between these versions. Yet the xda-developers solved the issue in a really short time period and now searching "Lag-fix galaxy s" on Google returns some 600000 hits.

      Yeah I fully see Samsung having success with their own OS /sarcasm

    6. Re:Let's hope not... by RivenAleem · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but Cyanogen was all cool because you had to root your phone and load it up. You were rebelling and being all hipster. Now if Cyanogen is simply par for the course of a Samsung phone, everybody will lose interest.

    7. Re:Let's hope not... by BigZee · · Score: 1

      It doesn't make much sense to me that Samsung would want to produce their own phone OS. As far as I am aware, Samsung are in the phone game for broadly the same reason that Apple are - to sell hardware. Sure, Apple have managed to make software sell but this has largely been by using lock-in to force everyone to sell their s/w through Apple. Of course, Apple gets a nice cut for providing this service. Although I do appreciate that this is not a black and white issue, it still seems to me that Apple continue to be the hardware company they have always been. The difference now is that they produce various piece of s/w to make that hardware work, not only for the users but also for Apple by helping it to generate more revenue. Samsung aren't really any different. They are most definitely a hardware company but it's pretty clear they are also producing software. Smart TVs are smart because of built in software. A smartphone is no different. What I think Samsung should be doing is more in software to differentiate themselves from their competitors. S-Voice is clearly a rip off of Siri but it is a start. It would be nice for them to innovate or differentiate themselves more but this is the best area for them to work on.

    8. Re:Let's hope not... by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1

      Yeah... But his CM activities and his activities as a Samsung employee are pretty heavily separated.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    9. Re:Let's hope not... by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1

      This is a heavy contributor to the popularity of Cyanogenmod on their devices. "unbreak all the things", "blame samsung", and "wtf did they do this time?" are common things said by the Samsung device maintainer team in IRC...

      Personally - Due to their lack of cooperation with the developer community which lead to CM7 not being the most stable on the devices I owned, in the case of Gingerbread I stuck with maintaining kernels for Touchwizz firmware and porting I9100 firmwares to the I777.

      When ICS dropped for the I9100 and it proved to be pretty much a little taste of ICS with nearly everything good about ICS reverted to "gingerbread touchwizzisms" - That pissed off a lot of people, and combined with months of lessons about what really was and wasn't different betwen I777 and I9100, led to CM9 and other AOSP-based firmwares becoming VERY popular on the I777, and quite popular on the I9100 too.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    10. Re:Let's hope not... by Nemyst · · Score: 1

      True, I forgot about that, but I'm afraid you need a lot more than just a good leader. You need a change in the corporate culture and policies, and as much as I think CM is a very nice project, I doubt he can make that happen. There's just too much inertia.

      At best, Samsung would stop messing with things and use Cyanogenmod directly, with perhaps in-house testing before releasing official updates. That'd be an ideal and very unlikely situation though, because CM gives way too much power to the (average) end user.

  11. "Google-Motorola" by The+Archon+V2.0 · · Score: 1

    Is this gonna be another Wintel thing? Because I can't think of a good portmanteau. Gooola? Motogle? Androla? Mandroid? Motoroid? (Wow, that last one sounds horrific.)

    1. Re:"Google-Motorola" by siddesu · · Score: 1

      Googlerolla. The steamrolla that crushes everything.

    2. Re:"Google-Motorola" by The+Archon+V2.0 · · Score: 1

      Makes me think of motorized hemorrhoids, for some reason. Which seems like it would be incredibly painful.

    3. Re:"Google-Motorola" by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 1

      Googarolla.

    4. Re:"Google-Motorola" by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      GooMotor

  12. Really? by funkylovemonkey · · Score: 1

    I really don't understand. While other manufacturers like HTC have been working to reduce the footprint of their UI over Android, Samsung wants to increase it? I have a Galaxy Nexus and I absolutely love it. But I wouldn't have bought it if it had included their old Touchwiz UI which generally was considered the worst out of the three major manufacturers. Vanilla ICS is a great experience and leaps leaps over previous versions. However the new UI on the Galaxy III looks even more intrusive and has pretty much generated nothing but mocking on Android fan sites. It seems as if Samsung is taking a step back. And while the Google/Motorola thing might be on their minds, Google has done nothing but signal that the deal is about patents and Motorola won't be favored. Most recently this has been signaled by the fact that they want to open the Nexus program to all manufacturers rather then doing what they've done in the past and just picking one.

  13. Ah, that explains a bit. by Nethead · · Score: 1

    Now I know why I installed another 200 VoIP phones in Samsung's Bellevue, Washington offices.

    --
    -- I have a private email server in my basement.
  14. Makes no sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Samsung wants to make their own OS, which will be miles behind iOS, or Android, in applications. And this will be a hot seller, why? Consider windows, webos, blackberry playbook; all decent OSes, where are they now?

    The "razor thin hardware margins" makes no sense either. Samsung will not be able to sell their phones, or tablets, for more because they have a different OS (that has way less apps).

    Samsung will not even be able to avoid msft/apple patent trolling.

    1. Re:Makes no sense by ozmanjusri · · Score: 1

      Samsung wants to make their own OS, which will be miles behind iOS, or Android, in applications.

      Davlik is open source, reasonably compact and is being tested in the forges of patent law.

      Samsung could add it to their own OS to maintain compatibility with Android Apps.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  15. Moogle by swb · · Score: 1

    Easy to say and you can add extra 'O's for emphasis.

  16. Samsungs own fork eh? by AbRASiON · · Score: 1

    This is excellent news! I love my Galaxy S3 and I will be sure to put my dollars towards HTC in the future if this occurs. Ensuring a competitive marketplace.
    I have 0 interest in one manufacturers own fork, I'm done with that.

  17. First support your phones by MeNeXT · · Score: 3, Informative

    For some of us who have older S's (1.5 years) Samsung needs to support their phones like Apple does. Get us the updates.

    If you need to look at how well Samsung can fail in their own software look at Kies. Poor platform support apart from Windows. Poor older phone support. Come on Samusung get with the big boys. Not everyone can upgrade every year. remind us why we should be loyal.

    --
    DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
    1. Re:First support your phones by ifiwereasculptor · · Score: 1

      They really should. It's plain and simple laziness, since a GHz processor and 512Mb of RAM should handle ICS like a champ. Meanwhile, there's http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices/samsung-galaxy-s

      Not hard at all to install and better in every way than any official update - more configurability, less bloat, better defaults, less reliant on hacky apps to correct shit that should work properly in the first place (WiFi keep alive, call slider etc.)..

    2. Re:First support your phones by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      They really should. It's plain and simple laziness, since a GHz processor and 512Mb of RAM should handle ICS like a champ. Meanwhile, there's http://www.cyanogenmod.com/devices/samsung-galaxy-s

      Not hard at all to install and better in every way than any official update - more configurability, less bloat, better defaults, less reliant on hacky apps to correct shit that should work properly in the first place (WiFi keep alive, call slider etc.)..

      It's great and all, but it would seem to just perpetuate the whole "dump it on the community to support" thing. Release a phone, provide token updates, let the community bring the rest of it along. It's a great business model since support costs money (and the community will do it for free), but there'll be a tipping point where the community just can't support another phone.

      If you have a flagship, great, but the vast majority of Android phones are sold aren't flagships, but the cheap free phones (some with 2.2 on contract, even!). Especially since it seems every Samsung phone is a Galaxy S something or other.

    3. Re:First support your phones by ifiwereasculptor · · Score: 1

      Only that's not what they're doing. Dumping support on the community would be amazing. Release specs, open source the drivers and the community will be ecstatic. Porting new or making custom roms would then be trivial. What they do is withhold their crap. The community then makes an herculean effort to support a closed device. The sad thing is, and you can see it clearly on Cyanogen, that they manage to do a way better job then the manufacturer in the first place.

      By the way, I have a Optimus Hub and a ZTE Blade. Both are, by far, not flagships, and they are officially supported by CM.

    4. Re:First support your phones by creepynut · · Score: 1

      I'm torn on the issue.

      I think they should keep updating phones while they're continuing to sell them. The iPhone 3gs has iOS 5 because they're still selling it. This helps drive sales of older models (which may have higher margins as they age) because people are more likely to buy the comparable device with newer software & better features over the one with older software.

      It would certainly be nice if they kept updating software after they discontinue it. My issue is that people shouldn't be buying phones (or any other tech) based on what it "will do" and buy more for what it does. This will also help discourage manufacturers from releasing products knowingly that suck now but will not suck later.

      I applaud Samsung for this because if they don't want to keep the devices up to date then at least the community can. It would certainly be nice if they could keep the things up to date on their own, but I'd be willing to bet most of their share holders are interested in seeing their money go towards new products than old products that don't make money.

    5. Re:First support your phones by konohitowa · · Score: 1

      Exactly. I'm still running 3.2 on my 10.1 tablet with only vague generalizations as to when I *might* get ICS. Instead of futzing around with their own O/S, maybe they could make Android better? For example, I have to manually set my timezone when I travel with the 10.1 even though it has GPS; no option to have it automatically update. Yes, it's a minor nit, but it's that level of quality that I'm wanting and that they're currently not delivering with Android. If they can't manage that with someone else's O/S, then I really don't want to see what they would deliver via 100% of their own sweat.

  18. Unix Redux by NicknamesAreStupid · · Score: 2
    So, why is this not going to wind-up like Unix? Because, frankly, the parallels are amazing --

    OLD ------ NEW(???)

    AT&T ------ Google

    POSIX/C2 ------ SE Android

    IBM AIX, SunOS, DEC Ultrix, et al ------ Samsung Galaxy, LG Optimus, HTC EVO, et al

    BSD ------ BSDroid (no shit: http://bsdroid.org/

  19. webOS by HP-UX'er · · Score: 1

    Since HP has open sourced webOS (or in the works anyways), that would be a great platform for Samsung to build on, to piss off Google, Apple, and Microsoft...

  20. Why would samsung do this? by Cutting_Crew · · Score: 1

    everyone i know just wipes it and loads up the android stock Ice Cream Sandwich(currently) and loads the software they want.

  21. They Already Did by ryzvonusef · · Score: 1

    It's called Tizen, and Samsung and Intel are running it.

    --
    I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
  22. Oh of course... by wildstoo · · Score: 1

    So Samsung finally release a phone that hits all the marks, that reviewers and consumers go crazy for, that actually has decent software on it.

    So OBVIOUSLY to maintain this level of success they should go and fork Android and create a crappy customized version that nobody wants... yeah, that makes PERFECT sense.

    I think Samsung (and TFA's author) are seriously overestimating the appeal of Samsung's own apps. I've got an S3 (the first smartphone I've owned, because it's the first one I've ever really wanted) and the Samsung apps and features are just bloatware:

    • AllShare Play seems to be a cloud storage service for media files, with the curious limitation that it can only be used on the S3 and Windows computers. So in other words, it sucks. Dropbox or a similar service would seem to be a far better option.
    • ChatOn is one of the stronger apps that Samsung bundle with the S3. It's a chat/messaging service that works cross-platform (it's available for Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Phone) and it's actually not too bad at what it does. Still, there are lots of other communications apps out there, so it's not exactly a killer app.
    • S Memo is a simple note/sketch app with sync capabilities. It can sync up nicely with...
    • S Planner is a decent calendar app, and it can import/export and sync with most calendar sources (Exchange, Google, Samsung account, etc.). It's not too bad. Shame the default (perhaps only?) skin is a brown/beige colour scheme that really doesn't fit with the rest of the phone. Again, there are LOADS of good calendar/task planning apps out there.
    • S Suggest is like a social frontend to an app store. It integrates with Facebook (though I haven't tried that feature) and lets you see what apps your friends download and recommends new apps based on your preferences. I looked at a bunch of featured apps, and none of them had any comments whatsoever, so perhaps without FB integration enabled it's useless. I wouldn't go near this app, tbh.
    • I haven't used S Voice. It certainly looks like a ghetto Siri, but I don't know how functional it is. Personally, I think Siri on iOS is a gimmick, which would make this a knock-off of a gimmick. I have no desire to use it.

    What I actually love about the S3 is that it runs ICS like a dream, has a nice large, bright, vibrant screen, lots of connectivity options and a reasonable battery life. That, and the best content of the Google Play store are what attracted me, not Samsung's own apps which range in quality from "ok" to "why even bother?".

  23. Tizen can run Droid apps by UpnAtom · · Score: 1

    They've demoed Tizen running Android software.

    http://tablet-news.com/2012/05/13/first-tizen-tablet-runs-android-apps/