Is it me? Or am I just sick & tired of Samsung cloning Apple products?

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      pointblank on 25/08/2015 - 21:41

      +1

      I agree the Note 5 is a great phone. However I think that Samsung will still lose the long game. At the end of the day the Chinese can match or surpass the specs of Samsung phones and do it for cheaper.

      Samsung can pay for Messi, Ronaldo, Rooney etc to try to make themselves a "brand" like apple but I just don't think it will cut it. Chinese phones almost unashamedly don't care about their brand and just try to maximise consumer base based on tech stats. Also consider that consumers are becoming more "tech savvy" and will increasingly look to the stats of their phones. If one was, however, inclined to either a brand or an alternative to Android they'd go apple. Apart from those two routes I don't see any real alternative.

      HTC, Sony and just about every other non-Chinese or Samsung Android manufacturer have struggled to break even. Now Samsung will slip to join the others and the Chinese phone manufacturers will be the ones for Android making money. Apart from that Google and Microsoft earn a hell of a lot from their patents on Android handsets.

      Guys - at the end of the day it's about business. If Samsung COULD achieve the margins and brand reputation that apple has, Samsung without a shadow of a doubt would love to be in that position. They've been pushing hard for that but it's not working! Initially Samsung saw a market for high performance phones at a lower price than apple, they seized it and made a hell of a lot of money at the time. Now other people are doing the exact same thing, but cheaper.

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  hamwhisperer on 25/08/2015 - 19:50

  Totally agreed. I liked the old Samsung, copying Apple is a bad move.

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  Pacfox on 25/08/2015 - 22:50

  Hi Schezwon,

  I feel the same.

  I was a strong loyal Samsung customer.

  Never cared too much about the Galaxy S line, but love my Note 4, which is my powerhouse/my portable do (almost) anything computer replacement.

  I'm a strong believer in SD cards (roughly 100gb combined storage currently). I love that you can exchange them or go bigger.

  I think a battery replacement should be done after two years when the charge drops too fast and value the option to replace it. Many people buy (or bought) Samsung phones because of the massive after market batteries that can keep the phone going over a week on heavy use.

  Samsung has, in my opinion, given into greed and decided to make people buy a'prettier' phone more often (can't replace battery) and pay unreasonable upgrade costs for bigger storage (no sd card) as well as not produce the 128gb model, maybe to make people upgrade to bigger storage phone later as the demand for storage of data rises continuously.

  What value does Samsung have now that their phones are like eveybody elses? What makes them stand out from the competition? For me, what made a phone a Samsung, is gone now.

  Samsung has definately lost me with their decision. If my Note 4 ever dies, I will get another Note 4 or look towards companies like LG as they still offer these features.

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  auna on 25/08/2015 - 23:35

  +3

  I am sick of it too. They aren't even shipping a 64gb model of the Note 5 in Australia and "have no plans at this stage". The Note 1 I have could have way more onboard storage than the $1,099 Note 5.

  This is a grand departure from other Notes and lacking in countless areas. The glass back and front have terrible reviews and drop test ratings. The screen reportedly gets really dirty super quick unlike the Note 4 as well. Removing the IR Blaster for no reason really pushes my buttons. Logitech charge $200+ for similar functionality that a <$1 part they could of put in is able to do.

  The battery is not enough. More amazingly the OTG output is lower than the Note 4. You can't reliably use a portable hdd anymore. I believe this is something Samsung would have to put effort into to make worse, so I am just a gasp in this horror show that is the Note 5.

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  Tuttorix on 26/08/2015 - 08:15

  Samsung isn't "cloning" Apple products, although yes designs and creations are similar in appearance, the fact remains that due to the market change, it requires that sort of standardisation between their products. I mean after all, if anything Apple would have to be somewhat following Samsung, especially since they used a Samsung CPU for the very first iPhone itself.

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    scrimshaw on 26/08/2015 - 15:28

    +5

    The smartphone boom is over and Samsung needs to rethink it's strategies if they want to regain their market share position.

    For quite a while Samsung set the standard as to what people wanted — a phone loaded with usable features and was seen as a premium product with plenty of software support. People bought into Samsung because it established itself as the alternative to Apple and it was quite a bit cheaper too.

    But then a lot of other companies came in — Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi, all started developing a lot of flagships of their own but at a fraction of the price of a Samsung device. Sure most of them are not as cutting edge as a Samsung but nowadays smartphones are now seen as commodities.

    What does this mean?

    People are finding it very easy to switch from one brand to another because there are too many phones in the same price brackets that do the exact same things. Since you can't really differentiate a Samsung Galaxy S series from a LG G series or a Sony Xperia (they all have very similar specs, and have very similar software gimmicks) the average consumer simply just gets boggled by the technical specifications.

    In the end the sole differentiator becomes the price. That is why the China-phona producers are winning and the big giants are losing. Smartphones have become like laptops — all fighting on the same ground, but mostly winning either on the price to performance ratio or winning because of very unique features.

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      Tuttorix on 26/08/2015 - 19:01

      Was that meant to be in reply to me…? I feel like you're kind of just answering the post.

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  kryptoz on 27/08/2015 - 23:37

  Apple is well known for it's fascistic 'my-way-or-the-highway' approach to production and every design is driven by marketing. Samsung on the other hand, (like LGE, Sony, HTC, Huawei, Lenovo, Asus, Xiomei, Meizu, ZTE, OPPO, and countless others) make a broad range of phones to suit the global market with a diverse range of options — they make other models that include the features you miss like removable battery and memory slots — if there was sufficient consumer demand for a feature, they will bring it to you. For a long time Samsung has slavishly copied the iPhone's external design, but the current S6 is clearly the first one to depart from copying iPhone's physical aesthetic.
  The Galaxy S series is Samsung's premium / flagship series and is designed to compete with the likes of the iPhone, as such its feature set is geared precisely towards what the marketplace demands today. Manufacturers don't include every legacy feature to meet the desires of every customer — Two-Way Radio / Qwerty keyboard anyone, anyone ? — If they did focus on making the ultimate-deluxe-swiss-army-knife-phones, it would be unsustainable and limit future improvement, especially phone size, battery life, water/dust resistance, among other things.

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    ozhunter on 28/08/2015 - 00:19

    it would be unsustainable and limit future improvement,

    Agree on this. Same reason why Apple with all their resources won't just put everything in a phone.

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  Happy Bergin on 04/09/2015 - 15:01

  +1

  This year I went from an S5 to a trusty S3 ($177.50 like new on ebay).
  It does everything I need from a phone. With a 32gb card it's awesome.

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  Denaz on 08/09/2015 - 13:31

  Its got nothing to do with copying or whatever, we need to just put that aside and focus on the phone, and its features. They've both copied each other enough over the years that the point is pretty much moot lol
  The fact that they have removed the expandable memory has lost me and a whole lot of other people. Really stupid move on their part, as that was one of the biggest selling features for the phone. They can give me all the online storage they want, fact is I'll never use it.
  Was really excited about upgrading to the new Note, but now I'll be skipping it entirely, and possibly looking to switch to Sony, LG or one of the competitors… something I really don't want to do, but have no choice. Well not 'no choice', but my contract is up and I can't help upgrading my phone to a new model

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    eug on 08/09/2015 - 14:51

    The fact that they have removed the expandable memory has lost me and a whole lot of other people.

    Looking at how popular the iPhone is, it looks like expandable memory isn't a deal-breaker to many, many people.

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      Denaz on 08/09/2015 - 15:41

      What does people using Iphone have anything to do with samsung removing expandable memory?

      That has nothing to do with my post. As I said in my first line, its not about who is better, or whatever, its about samsungs desicion to remove the memory card and that is it. If you like apple, good for you, if 'many many' people like apple, good for them… doesn't matter a shit to me, only that samsung are removing the expandable memory from one of the few decent phones that have the option left. Judging from the posts in this thread, and all the others I've seen on the net, a lot of people do care abput that fact

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        eug on 08/09/2015 - 16:31

        +1

        Calm down and read my post again. You clearly missed my point.

        You said expandable memory is a deal-breaker for "a whole lot of other people".

        I'm saying there are a huge, huge number of people who don't mind NOT having expandable memory.

        Samsung didn't make a phone just for you. They made a phone for the majority of the market.

        And the majority of the market evidently don't care about expandable memory, as shown by how popular a certain phone is. If it was a deal-breaker then they wouldn't buy that certain phone.

        Judging from the posts in this thread, and all the others I've seen on the net, a lot of people do care abput that fact

        And that's where the problem is. You're basing your "a lot of people" on internet posts. The vast majority of phone users in this world do not post on forums.

        Complaining is a human trait. If someone is perfectly happy with their S6/Note5/etc internal memory, they're not likely going to start writing forum posts saying "I'm perfectly satisfied without a micro SD slot!"

        If they're NOT happy with something, they'd be more inclined to shout from the hills as loudly as they can expressing their dissatisfaction, making sure everybody knows about it.

        So naturally you'll see more complaints and rants online. What you're not seeing is the large number of people who are perfectly happy with their phone, because they have no reason to seek out an internet forum to tell everyone that their phone is fine and there's nothing to complain about.

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        [Deactivated] on 13/02/2016 - 09:23

        +1

        @eug:
        Seriously, people whinge so much about tech. Actually, make that men, not people. I don't think I've ever heard a woman whinge about tech. I read a lot of tech articals, and i just can't sometimes

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  [Deactivated] on 13/02/2016 - 09:18

  Lol, no just you. I'm sick and tired of people winging about inane things like this

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