Pretty much all major hardware vendors selling into a performance space get caught in this kind of game. This certainly isn't new behavior, though it's the first time I've seen a handset vendor try it.
But as far as why people keep buying the products: sadly it's because they're better. I'm looking at the GS4 (i9505, not the Exynos one) right now vs. the HTC One and Xperia Z. On paper, they're all basically the same phone (2G quad core snapdragons with 1920x1080 screens). But all the tiebreakers (really, all of them) go to the Samsung phone. The GS4 is slightly smaller, thinner, and lighter yet its screen is slightly larger. It's CPU is clocked higher and its battery is larger. It's cameras are better (much more so than the HTC, slightly more so than the Sony). It has a removable battery where the others don't. It has a sdcard slot where the HTC doesn't. It supports the "T-Mobile" HSPA+-on-AWS-band frequencies. It has a thermometer, hygrometer and barometer built-in.
It's just a better phone on everything quantifiable. Not so much so as to kill the competition, but to anyone paying attention and recommending hardware to their friends, they're doing an awful lot right.
Every phone has its features. It's just at a point where a simple chart-by-chart comparison won't work for most people anymore. Practically every reviewer likes the One despite the fact that on paper it's a downgrade to the S4 in every way. Basically, it is like you said, the devil is in the details, but bigger is not necessarily better.
Personally, out of those three phones, I'd rather go with the HTC One only because I like the aluminum body chassis (along with how the screen looks) and the fact that their stock Android version is 50 dollars cheaper than Samsung's. The decently sized front speakers are also a plus. I very much dislike the look of the GS4 and TouchWiz which, in comparison with HTC's Sense, has less cooler whistles and doodads IMO. But ultimately I like stock Android the best.
I haven't given the Xperia Z much of a chance, but aside from the fact that it looks aesthetically pleasing to me and I can use it while showering, I don't see much of an advantage. The GS4 came out with a water and dust resistant version, but it's slightly bigger and the audio jack is off so it won't fit most S4 cases. The Z's overlay is much more stock Android (GS4 version is TouchWiz only). So I'll pick it over Samsung because of that.
Basically, I really don't like TouchWiz. For the most part it just feels cluttered and half baked and a pain to use.
All that is true. But "I like these other phones for personal taste reasons" is hardly a refutation to "people buy Samsung phones because they have features they want" either.
I'm not saying you couldn't possibly decide to buy an non-Samsung phone. I'm responding to a poster who claimed incredulity that someone could.
> I don't understand why people keep buying this company's god damn products. I mean, holy shit.
And you responeded that the SG4 had some better metrics than it's competition, but did no consider what made a better phone. Benchmark apps are one of those metrics that people consider, and has now shown to be misleading.
Even the higher CPU freq doesn't mean app performance is better, or even that general user experience is better.
It is only a better phone if you print out the specs and compare them side by side.
If you go by that method than the iPhone can also never win. But in reality the S4 is a horrible phone (in my opinion of course). I've got one here for development along side the Nexus 4 and HTC One. Out of the branded phones the HTC One is definitely the best. It does the things most people want out of a device very well. The S4 is a mishmash of poorly designed applications and features. Full of gimmicks and awful design decisions.
Could you elaborate on that? Is it just the visual part that you don't like?
I'm planning to get one soon, just seen one in a shop. The screen is beautiful and specs seem to be quite promising too. Can't wait to get my hands on it and code up some experiments.
The screen is a disgusting piece of shit. Colors are inaccurate, brightness is low, scrolling leaves artifacts because of Pentile subpixel arrangement.
Every other thing about this phone is also terrible. The way the phone sits on your hand, the material, the interface etc.
Woah. I have an S4, and I wouldn't say the screen is a piece of shit at all. The colors are very slightly off sometimes, but the brightness certainly isn't low and I keep my screen at a very very low brightness level. I haven't noticed any artifacts.
Yeah, I spent about 2 weeks trying to decide between the iPhone 5, HTC One and S4.
Ultimately, the closed ecosystem of the iPhone with a lot of random up charges for things like a second charger $30+, lockin through iTunes, lack of compatibility with PC and a much smaller screen steered me a way from the iPhone.
When it came down to the HTC One vs S4, the choice was pretty clear. I grabbed a waterproof S4 which is about the same size as the HTC one and the S4 has a replaceable battery.
To be honest, each phone has major pluses and minuses, and there is no perfect phone anymore. There are days I wish I had the iPhone, but, overall the S4 is a dramatic improvement over the S2 which is a dramatic improvement over the BlackBerry Torch, which is a dramatic improvement over the Windows Treo which is a dramatic improvement over the pocket PC (Don't even get me started about the pocket PC).
I think we can all be glad phone technology has gotten this good. Its really amazing. Any top of the line phone bought today is dramatically better than any phone bought even 3 years ago.
[added] For the comment below, I have been swimming with mine twice, I also like to take it out while I'm drinking and drop it in my beer to watch people's reactions. Doing so does make the bottom buttons stick for a few days, but the phone works.
Sealing it is difficult. You need to take about 2 min to make sure the back is on properly and it takes a bit more force than you are use to.
But, yes, mine is waterproof. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some defective models. Its not like people are writing reddit posts about all the cool stuff they do with their S4 actives.
You are right, and then it comes android over it, more of the same for them all, now for the average user that makes the business profitable, this means nothing... (so I'm with you)
so still why?
advertizing .... average user would look to the numbers and buy it (as somehow people have started to realize are the same...)
Right. Because a desire for a replaceable battery, removable sdcard or a slightly smaller enclosure is completely insane and something no one would ever make a product decision on.
And why would anyone choose a phone they could get coverage on from multiple carriers in the US? That's just "marketing" gibberish, right?
Anyone who's used a S3/S4 knows most of the S-"features" are pure gimmicks that a fairly competent engineer could implement in less than a week. HTC phones are much more sturdy and better designed, IMO.
I was vacationing in Hong Kong earlier this month, and the subway stations were just completely plastered with various 15-foot tall Galaxy posters. Some of the features they were promoting were just laughable - simultaneous photos with the front and back camera composed into a picture-in-picture result? Really?
Samsung galaxy s phones have generally good hardware compared to the competition as well as a few really important hardware features which their competitors don't have (all of the features at once, that is): 4g lte support, a removable battery, and (for me the deal(maker||breaker)) an SD card slot. Those aren't just gimmicks. They're real differences. Many people like me really care.
I couldn't care less about the default software - there are a wide range of roms which address most (unfortunately not all for super picky people like myself) issues you might have.
>> simultaneous photos with the front and back camera composed into a picture-in-picture result?
I really wanted this feature for a long time and wondered why phones that had 2 cameras did not allow it.
It was specially useful when taking photos of my 1 year old daughter. It helps capture our emotions at the same time we were capturing her. So now you can see photos where she is trying to learn walking and at the same time see my face that is at times smiling (when she walks couple of steps) and at times scared (when she is about to fall) in the photos.
While I agree that Samsung phones have quite a mishmash of features just for the heck of it, I think the picture in picture feature is quite nice and is something the competition (especially Apple) would heavily advertise had they come up with it themselves.
> I don't understand why people keep buying this company's god damn products. I mean, holy shit.
Hyperbole much?
Because they make very decent phones that can easily be made to run alternative Android operating systems that allow me to do whatever I like with my phone.
For example, you can't plug a USB Software Defined Radio (SDR) module into an iPhone to monitor and decode spectrum.
Well you can but you would have to jailbreak the iPhone first, but then its the same for the S4 too, isn't it? (That was an honest question, I don't follow the state of Samsung phones too closely)
Is a little extreme. This is what companies do in the computer biz. Nvidia, ATI have been doing this BS for decades now. As cscheid said it's quack.exe all over again.
If they just gave the user the option to enable this performance tweak for games, I wouldn't mind. The problem is it's only enabled for benchmarks.
Their marketing division might be shady, but they also make very solid devices. I've had my s3 for awhile and haven't felt the need to upgrade at all since it still performs super well.
As an Android developer I really appreciate what Samsung did in raising the bar for Android devices, and really bringing them to the mass market. High quality Android devices have been around for awhile, but it was far more common to see most people walking around with the low-mid tier Android phones. Samsung made it "cool" to own an S3, and now you can release and know that many of your users will actually own a solid Android device.
I promised myself not to buy samsung phone after they forked me with Omnia HD i8910 - the flagship phone they made on a Symbian which they abandoned after couple of months, without a single bugfix. But then, I also promised not to buy anything from Motorola after they abandoned a flagship XT720 (xenon flash, full HD video) without bigfixes, withou upgrades (stuck on Android 2.1 forever with washed out photos, jerky 720p and half the RAM (all reviewers said it had 512 to be unlocked with upgrade) and locked bootloader. THE ISSUE - as much as I would like to buy Nexus 7 2013, it is not sold in my country by Goog, it is coming maybe in October, November, and xda forums are full of people who exchanged theirs 2-3 times to find unit without dead pixels, erratic touch, random reboots or light bleed. So, I may have no other option, but to buy tab from Sammy, because I can touch it in any shop, exchange or return, etc... EndOfRant.
I don't condone lying in any sense, but I don't really care about the phone's benchmarks, and neither do most phone buyers.
In an era where patent trolling is rampant, an exaggerated benchmark of this nature is sadly, child's play. And it certainly would not have stopped me from buying the product if I was in market.
I don't understand why is Samsung so hellbend on doing such things. Copying designs, faking reviews, faking benchmarks... Its not like they are at the bottom of the barrel, infact they are the best in mobile space right now. Are they getting too greedy?
Copying and faking is the only thing Samsung can do. They're not good or creative, but also not stupid. They know what they can do and cannot, and where they are exceptional and sucks. So they're just keep doing what they're best - copying and faking.
Do you really think they can change suddenly? I don't think so. Copying and faking is internal system and philosophy of Samsung, can it won't be changed.
http://www.techspot.com/news/52274-samsung-admits-to-posting...
I don't understand why people keep buying this company's god damn products. I mean, holy shit.