Galaxy S3: Did Samsung just out-iPhone Apple? | Hacker News Reader

Galaxy S3: Did Samsung just out-iPhone Apple?

extremetech.com

25 points11031a29 comments

Based on the touchwiz look and feel and the annoying nature of Kies, I'm skeptical of samsung's ability to deliver great software. The screen sharing feature really is an application where current iOS really beats out android, so if they did this well, it will be a good step forward.

Probably not: my Galaxy Nexus started out promising enough with only a few annoying issues but in the 4 1/2 months I've owned it, I've watched it become almost as much of an unresponsive brick as my late Droid G1. And while we're at, they have yet to release ICS for my Samsung Galaxy 10.1. Google/Samsung/I don't really care anymore are all falling flat on their faces pretending to support these devices and that's their real downfall.

I've had my GNexus since January. Still fast and responsive here.

I wonder if certain usage profiles of varying demographics degrades a phone over time analagous to Windows XP needing a reformat every now and then. If unresponsiveness is your only problem I wonder if a factory reset would do it any good ?

I could certainly do just that and when I find the time to do so I will (around the same time I jailbreak my 10.1 to install CM once the camera support works). But this is a consumer device, not some sort of hacker's toy and that means (IMO of course) that different rules apply here. And that's where Apple gets it right: my fiancee's 2 year-old IPhone is as responsive as the day she got it.

PS A factory reset on my G1 last year restored its responsiveness for a day or two. Sigh...

Yes, mostly the same experience here with the GNex. Beautiful screen and I dare say a superior web browsing experience to my iphone 4S (if for no other reason than the extra pixels), but lots of random rebooting and other annoyances. Also, I missed visual voicemail and being able to buy songs right on the phone (not many options in Canada, and none that work on Android).

I agree that extremetech is pretty link baitey but if they are accurate in their assessment that Samsung has decided to invest in a usability features, then it would be a big step toward a more useful device.

Of all the Android Phone manufacturers, Samsung and Motorola Mobility have been the most active in 'enhancing' the Android experience. Sometimes that enhancement is in the form of ways to lock you into their gear (custom app stores, capabilities, Etc) but the capability is there to generally improve the user experience.

One might ask why Google isn't at the forefront of this sort of change but I think they have their hands full at the moment. All in all it looks like an improvement in the marketplace.

Judging from the photo, iphone looks too thick compared to Galaxy S3. And the roundness makes it unlike the iPhone, which means the designs now diverge away.

Yeah, that picture is misleading-- the two devices aren't on the same scale at all.

Yea, I was going to try and scale it accurately, but the S3 is in the foreground, so there's perspective to deal with as well -- so I decided to just leave it as-is. Maybe I should've put 'image is for illustration purpose only' at the bottom...

Perspective? That doesn't even begin to explain it. That picture looked odd to me before, but after looking at the specs it simply can not happen. That sort of arrangement could distort the apparent difference in thickness and mask the difference in width. But it would exacerbate the difference in length.

You can't possibly put the Galaxy S3 in front of the iPhone and create that scene. That picture is a mess.

iPhone 4/4S: 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3mm

Galaxy S3: 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm

Whenever a headline asks a question, the answer is always no.

How many times have we heard that the next Android phone is the real iPhone killer, for real this time, really seriously for real this time? Come on. What does "out-iPhoning" Apple even mean?

Pundits. Grr.

It means that pundits are morons for the most part that repackage and regurgitate the content of press releases and make grandiose statements about products based on a couple hours of use.

Kind of like financial analysts and their amusing predictions about tech stock prices based on what the voices told them last night.

Another embarrassingly bad extremetech article.

Would anyone care to explain the downvote? Did you miss the egregious misspell of "renaissance"?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/renascence

/insert snide remark here/

As much as I'd love to spell it "renaissance", it's an American site, so I have to write in American English :)

God save the Queen!

That’s the en-US for renaissance‽ You live and learn.

Yeah, it matches up with how Americans pronounce it, too. British English speakers (like me) pronounce it 'ren AY sonce', while Americans pronounce it 'ren uh sonce'.

Etymologically, the word comes from the French for rebirth, which is spelled 'renaissance'. Normally, it's prudent to take a live-and-let-live approach to the development of language as that's how language evolves, but in this instance the Americanised spelling is downright barbarous and not holding with the origins or spirit of the word. In this case, I'd argue that the American spelling isn't different in the way color or aluminum are, it's just wrong.

At least with aluminium the US spelling is the original spelling, it was just anglicised with an -ium ending to fit in with the other elements.

Is this "regional American English"? I've never seen renaissance written as "renascence" in the midwest, northeast, or California.

Growing up in the US in the '70s and '80s, I'd never seen it this way, either, and a little googling shows that it's a very obscure variant, with fewer than 60K uses, compared to renaissance with over 13M uses. I think someone saw it mentioned as an American variant and became confused into thinking that it was a common American variant.

Hrm, interesting.

Maybe I can go back to using the proper version, then!

That's actually an archaic spelling as far as I know. Standard american English spells and pronounces it as the French loan word it is "reh-neh-ZONCE".

Your comment didn't add anything to the discussion. HN doesn't appreciate pure opinion like "This is good/bad".

You get upvotes for things which have additional information "This is bad because it contains mispellings, gets technical information wrong, and the author once slept with my mother."

You get downvotes for "lol irrelevant" because it's just noise.

I agree that this is a good rule of thumb, but I have a hard time accepting that extremetech deserves any such discussion. They're a linkbait farm.

More to the point, the fact that their low quality consumer tech linkbait hits the front page of HN far more than, say, Technology Review or The Verge or the legion of far more reputable blogs is a failure for a semi-curated news site. Their stories rarely merit mention on Techmeme or a prolonged stay on /r/technology, but here they are alongside deep technical discussions? It sure looks like HN is being gamed.

Then flag it and move on. From the site guidelines:

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

Samsung and their phones fill an important role in cell phone sales for both the telcos and the salespeople at their retail stores.

If a non-technical buyer walks into a Verizon store and wants to buy an iPhone, but for whatever reason (sales kick-back, slow inventory, late deliveries) the store or the telco don't want to or can't sell them an iPhone, they want an almost-iPhone to give them.

Nevermind that the technology in all of these phones is copied and borrowed left and right (like the iOS 5 notification system). Samsung's design and marketing is a gauche copy of Apple's because it needs to be to ride on Apple's brand recognition.

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