[0] https://www.diyphotography.net/huawei-passes-off-dslr-photos...
Nope. Literally can't get it to vibrate/alert when a notification comes through unless it's through Samsung's SPECIFIC applications. So my HipChat messages, Gmail inbox, etc have ZERO notifications even though it WILL show as a new notification on the watch face. Before anyone gives me crap saying "you screwed up the settings" - trust me, I didn't, and I've tried everything.
I learned my lesson - Samsung is a faceless company with zero attention to user experience, and customer support. It is of no surprise that they outright lie about their features - which is EXACTLY what using a DSLR stock photo for this marketing is. An outright lie.
I will stick with my Garmin devices from here on-out and am looking to switch ecosystems for my phone as I'm on an S8+ that disgusts me as a user (Bixby, bloatware blah blah).
ZERO trust for Samsung.
I've got a Samsung washer/dryer. They're fine. But the advertised smart features don't work without the app, the App basically doesn't work, and while they say they can be connected to the Wi-Fi, they can only be connected to Wi-Fi via WPS. If that was ever justified, it certainly wasn't justified in 2015/2016 when I bought them. Had I bought them for these features I'd have been furious.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/02/samsung-lg-...
Source: work in ad-tech and have personally worked with this kind of data from different firms.
These companies are putting spy bugs in citizens homes.
The biggest problem that I've found with them is that they're not available at your local store, so you pretty much have to just buy one sight-unseen and hope it looks good when it arrives.
I got the NEC E554 from Amazon, and left a 3-star review for it there.
EDIT: as a followup, I should mention that circa 2018 there aren't really any commercial/signage displays that have 4k resolution. There are lots of "4k signage solutions" but they are all groups of quad monitors. It appears there is not yet demand (or sufficient product dev) in 2018 for 4k signage monitors. It sort of makes sense given that a departures/arrivals screen doesn't really need 4k ...
No TV tuner, no WiFi, no ethernet, no loudspeakers. Just a great quality display with a few HDMIs please.
They reduce it, because having one do-it-all device increases units/SKU and decreases the contribution of fixed costs to the minimum unit cost needed to break even, and competition prevents charging excessive premiums across most commodity models.
It wasn't until everything went flat screen where "TVs", computer monitors, video monitors became so interchangeable. However, there's really not many 72" computer monitors to fill up the space in my living room.
If it's displaying anything from the internet, then I don't think it's still a "dumb TV".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_and_System_Information...
Get a receiver with HDMI passthrough so the sound comes out your hifi speakers and the video signal gets sent on to the TV. No need for bluetooth, splitters, optical input
* a beamer gives you a viewing angle as wide as you'd want to have in a cinema (wider than this is uncomfortable).
* therefore immersion in movies and games is about the strongest you can have for non-VR content in your home.
* cinema is (a) rarely showing what I want anymore and (b) incovenient now that we've got a small kid, so this solves that as well.
* a beamer on a cart is mobile - sometimes I just roll it to the end of our bed, lie down and play Zelda or whatever for half an hour to relax a bit.
* beamers are mostly still dumb, so there's not much to break that I cannot fix and not much to annoy me, like "go online to get the full experience (and our ads)" and all that crap.
* when we're done the beamer can be rolled out of sight, so you don't have a giant black hole in the middle of your living room, constantly telling you you should probably do something with it to make it worthwhile.
* setting up the beamer is a bit of an act, and that's good, so we do it about once every week and have enough activities in our life other than passive media viewing. with the cart it's still quick enough to not be very inconvenient, I can just plug in one power cable and push a couple of buttons and it's done.
When the bulbs break they're quite pricey to replace no?
It’s getting worse, we couldn’t even find a new fridge with the options we wanted that wasn’t ‘smart’. I wound up taking apart my LG fridge to disable the WiFi module after we bought it. Not connecting it to the WiFi wasn’t enough, the damn thing broadcasts it’s own wireless network and I got sick and tired of seeing it. Shocker, there was no way to turn it off.
Where do I get the Monoprice TVs?
I haven't yet found large OLED screens with none of the smart BS though, so if that's what you want, good luck.
Different video than I saw, but same explanation: https://youtu.be/0uDQaHiEfbA?t=29
If you want to learn more about the electrochemistry here, Google "Pourbaix Diagram"
On the materials side, When you connect dissimilar metals, their is a potential that forms between them (long topic). This drives redox reactions at the surfaces of the two metals, and the stable species depend on the pH of the water they are in. In this case the aluminum will preferentially dissolve into solution. If you must connect dissimilar metals, you want the surface area of the more Noble (i.e. SS) to be small, and the metal that corrodes large. This is because you actually care about current density (current/area) on the part that is corroding. Here you have a lot of surface area of stainless, which, in broad strokes, is probably not a good decision.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/11/8017771/samsung-smart-tvs...
I would not be so sure, they have a recall on a number of units:
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/man-saves-hom...
Do not trust the software on these things.
Lucky you!
Very high end (or commercial) appliances are the only ones left that don't have spyware/crapware/IoT so you really lucked out there ...
It was far easier to replace it, and I will not buy Samsung appliances again.
My first and last Samsung product.
The photo app had a hard coded button on top of my camera viewing area which linked a way to buy things via a samsung app. I was appalled. I also couldn't turn off the Bixby assistant without first making a new Samsung account.
From my understanding, the only flagship-level choices that aren't big hassles to to get are Samsung (Galaxy/Note), Google (Pixel), OnePlus, LG. Of those, LG seems to be the only one that's not constantly plagued by trust/privacy issues (although in my case, I wanted to try a different brand so I didn't end up going with it).
The slippery glass back and round sides kills me. (Ducttapped the back panel/sides as a decent fix, black tape nobody ever asks, probly just think I'm poor eh)
Not happy with the weight on my pinky either. (Two hands required.) Size similar issue, can't type with one hand like I could with the nexus 5. There is a screen shrink feature but it's awkward and the weight is the real issue.
Software being non stock is annoying but you get used to it quick enough.
Other than those issues it's pretty decent.
Enjoying the 4k video, wide angle photos and software stabilizer a lot.
The dual Sim or sim+ micro SD feature comes in handy for travel/video shooting.
I probably wouldn't recommend unless you have money to burn or really need the video.
Something cheaper probably has relatively same specs/features.
I was able to disable almost all the Sony apps with little difficulty, and the "What's new?" notification that appears every 2-3 months I just swipe away.
(Of flagship-level Android phones that aren't huge, i.e. fit in my pocket without bending even while cycling or sitting, the Sony ### Compacts have been the only choice for the last few years.)
I've settled on my iPhoneX for now.
The low end shows sometimes, but I am generally very satisfied. They also provide decent apps and not too much extra on top of stock Android. Upgrades could be better.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/canadian-police-obtained-black...
https://thenextweb.com/asia/2013/07/10/after-a-lengthy-battl...
https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/219661-blackberry-ceo-bla...
E-mail from Samsung support (I'm in the UK) simply said
> please be advised that updates are released in batches, release dates can also vary by region, network and device. As of the moment, if the updates are not yet showing on your device, then we may have to wait until it becomes available and we are unable to confirm when will that be.
Of course, there never was any update.
My first Android device, I was not impressed.
Nope - but it's something I would expect any smartwatch to do. It's just a dark pattern and they don't GAF for any actual use-case.
> I don't think however Samsung deliberately misled
Yea this is where we disagree. It's a dark pattern to force users to use their ecosystem fully. What about my corp. Outlook, HipChat, G-suite products, etc etc!? If it shows a notification on the phone - it should show a notification on the watch like my Garmin. Period.
You screwed up the settings. It defaults to only allowing a short list of (mostly Samsung) applications, but you can configure it. Galaxy Wearable > Settings > Notifications > Manage Notifications and enable those applications you want to see notifications from.
I'm getting Gmail, Telegram, Slack, and all sorts of other notifications just fine, and can reply to them.
So while their software sucks (unlike the hardware, their smartwatches are by far the bets ones out there), you did indeed fuck up your settings. Or you use an iPhone, which there is poor support for.
Also, while it's not a particularly trustworthy company, this specifically has nothing to do with trust.
I always have the watch on silent, so no notification tone. I have no Samsung apps short of the Gear app and Samsung Health.
Amazfit Bip owner
Not exculpating the mfgs or agencies just putting it out there that sometimes it’s some poor schlep who ends up holding the bag.
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-accused-of-ripping-off-famou...
This crap can happen to anyone, it's how they handle it what matters most. Apple apologized (and paid for it).
i.e you could check out a version of a Photoshop file, make some changes, commit it back. My understanding was the it was aware of layers/etc, so you could diff changes somehow.
You mean... if we paid employees properly, it might prevent fuck ups like this?!?!
The next time I buy a phone I'll probably be vacillating between several imperfect options and something like this could consciously or subconsciously tip a close decision towards picking a Pixel or LG phone.
Are they though? I obviously don't know this to be true, but I imagine most are actually somewhere on the ambivalence scale. Samsung makes a phone they want? They're going to buy it. People have a hard rnough time sticking to their guns on things that _really_ matter, and this doesn't.
The intersection of people who care enough to speak with their wallets and those who didn't already abandon Samsung for their insidious bloatware is, I imagine, rather small. You also have to weigh that against the number of people who they fooled with their marketing and will never know the truth.
Companies like Samsung, while they claim to have a "culture" are, at the end of the day nothing but a large group of ever changing people, whose responsibilities in what the company does is quite often nil even when they are the one making them on the company' behalf.
We can't deal with companies with tools nature equipped us with to deal with other humans.
If you're fortunate, the company you deal with as a customer or employee has a culture that rewards competence and high standards of behavior.
If you're not, you as an employee or customer or member of the public may suffer. Look at recent scandals involving Wells Fargo, Uber, police forces in certain cities, and others. Or companies that release crappy or copied products time after time. These aren't cases of "rogue employees" or "isolated cases." It's often a broken culture or one that encourages people to break rules, or even break the law. See https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/uber-workplace... about how this manifested itself with Uber.
Google is the perfect example of this, where while they remained at a reasonable size adhered to their cultural standards staunchly.
They've grown way past the point where that's sustainable and are now exhibiting the exact same predatory business attitude they swore they wouldn't ever (dragonfly, contracts for the military, systematic and all-encompassing spying on their customers, obvious anti-competitive practice in the android space, shameless support for a specific political party, etc...)
That doesn't mean there isn't still some pockets of folks somewhere in there that play by the old rules. It just these business practices can't be wrapped under the "Google culture" umbrella anymore.
Google's cultural shift is not just a byproduct of growth, it's a byproduct of the founders and early leadership stepping back and professional technology executives and MBAs taking over. Compare that to Apple, which followed a similar journey but boomeranged back under Steve Jobs Act II. Cook, himself an MBA, is more in the Jobs mold when it comes to corporate ethics; I think his stance on privacy and other issues is admirable. And it's one of the largest tech companies in the world.
As a contractor, I've worked for numerous large companies, sometimes more than once over a span of years. Corporate culture is a real thing, and survives changes of individuals, but is not random/organic unless you let it be, and even then, will often reflect the values baked into other principles. e.g. if you want to know where Amazon's so-called mercenary culture comes from, check out their leadership principles [0].
Your examples of "predatory business attitude" must all be signed off at the top - and most likely deeper executive involvement than many decisions.
I suspect that at that company size, you need to have a certain predatory attitude to compete - you definitely need to at least defend against your competitors' practices.
Google, Apple, and Microsoft are great examples of the how we do judge a company's culture.
You've just described a composite, changeable entity that's unable to keep an eye on honesty, and as such one that is very likely to do the same again.
In fact, TFA wrote the earlier article, which suggests a good rule for other companies thinking about doing this: before you buy the stock photo, check if the photographer has called other companies out on doing the exact same thing in the past :)
Of course, you might have other reasons to like Samsung's stuff (reviews, prior experience), and you might also be stuck trusting no one because all large companies have similar issues (so you're forced to buy from untrusted brands).
I won't buy a Samsung phone after what I read about its televisions spying on people.
I don't care that they're other people in other divisions. If everything is so blissfully separate, then don't have a single brand.
But, yes. It doesn't take much for me to keep a note in my head "these guys are dishonest". OK, I may not boycott the company entirely, but it drops their perceived ranking in my mind wayyy down... which is exactly the opposite of what marketing is supposed to do, right?
If you’re going to advertise your camera, and you do it by showing off a photo taken with anything other than the actual camera, that’s fraud.
If this was the first incident, then I would tend to agree with you. But this is just one of a long string of similar incidents that together form a pattern that reflect on the company values.
If it was from Samsung. This could have come down to a single decision by a very low-level person, or likely a contractor. Samsung's marketing execs dropped the ball in not supervising the campaign properly, but I'm not ready to fault Samsung generally because of a dozen poorly-managed publicity shots.
Instead, I judge them by how they react to this mistake. Do they pull the photos or not?
Even if it made sense in some light, it's still a bad approach, because it means people with power and money are never held accountable for things that happen on their watch.
People will judge a company or restaurant or whatever more favourably if they correct a mistake to their satisfaction, rather than not making mistakes at all.
It’s makes me wonder how many companies are hacking this. Don’t worry about quality past a certain point. Say everything works 95% of the time. After that, just offer a generous returns policy, eg just replace the whole thing. Probability that 2 things are broken is very small, and you just made the customer think you’re better than you are, and it’s cheaper than improving QC. Everyone perceives you to be better than the company with no mistakes. Profit.
Let's call it for what it really is, then: lying in your face, at scale.
> We hold them to account by not purchasing their products.
Totally agreed. That's one of few ways to send them feedback directly. Other ways would include lawsuits or voting for regulation change.
Given that signal here is roughly proportional to amount of lost market share, complaints in this thread are a fully legit, if indirect way, of getting more people to maybe buy less of their products.
299,995/300,000 behave well. 5 people misbehave. Bad culture!
Can you prove that? These guys were caught, does it mean the others just haven't been caught yet? What about the G7 battery explosions? What about the washing machines catching fire? What about last time Samsung faked images? What about when they faked benchmarks?
When I'm shopping for a phone, I don't trust any of the company's own marketing collateral, I seek out independent reviews.
Even if the photos were genuinely from the phone, they'll have combed through thousands of photos to pick the very best ones, which is nearly as bad as using a stock photo.
(But then again, I can't honestly exclude the possibility of buying a Samsung given the overall shitty state of Android smartphones. It's hard to find one that doesn't cause daily frustrations, and between various brands tried by me, my wife, family and friends, Samsung phones were so far the only ones that consistently didn't disappoint. So at this point I'm noting this incident as a bad mark on the brand, and I'll be reevaluating pros and cons when the time comes to buy a new phone.)
Also, RE Samsung vs. Samsung Malaysia, etc. - that's a flip side of having a brand. If you want various groups of people to inherit good reputation from the common pool of a brand, you should also expect they'll all inherit bad reputation too.
The car being advertised is then edited in over the top, using the recorded environment to ensure accurate lighting and colours.
How would they add a driver for an actual ad? I think cars are much easier than humans to do photo-realistically in CGI. Or do they just show the car in a way such that you can't see that there's no driver?
I don't know that it materially makes much of a difference or really matters for car ads... as long as the cars shown can accomplish/look like in reality what they appear as in the ads. Still yet I think the intent is to have the public believe that they are watching video of the actual vehicles, in which case, one could call this "lying" in some form (whether or not we want to ascribe any particular moral bent to the term)
-Thomas Jefferson