Samsung internal doc: 125 iphone pic competitive analysis
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scribd.com
I want companies to be comfortable looking at and improving over their competitors, rather than being in constant fear of being sued.
But the bottom directives turn it into a PRD (requirements doc), and the directives themselves call for steps that make the devices much more similar.
Even the icons and color themes are the same on many screens. That by itself shows that Samsung copied Apple in prior product reviews as well. Kinda funny that they still had so many design discrepancies...
Sometimes the competition does it better but not necessarily the only right way, for example the email indicator on slide 20. In that case the directive suggests another way of improving the interface.
Whoever wrote this document did not want the devices to be too similar:
Strong impression that iPhone's icon concept was copied. Directions for improvement: Remove a feeling that iPhone's menu icons are copied by differentiating design. (last slide)
Wish they did that before putting the phone on the market...
I've not read the whole thing, but I've not seen any clear examples where they've had lots of choice in how to make things better without making things more similar to the iPhone. Now that's an impressive testament to the quality of Apple's UI design, but most of it is "obvious" - the problem isn't that it's hard to figure out that you'd like a "previous" button to go with a "next" button, but that it takes a lot of attention to detail to get this level of consistent quality throughout the product.
And Apple does that well, and Samsung at that stage clearly had not done all that great.
If Samsung had put in that attention to detail, the devices would likely have been a lot more similar from the outset.
Did you even see the document? The document clearly shows that they compared nearly every feature and what needs to be done to improve their feature to work like the competition. This is like when BMW would analyze a Mercedes and say "We need to exactly work and look like a BMW. Let's have a look what we need to do to work and look like a BMW".
This document isn't about the defacto standard. This is not about how users are working with their phones and what can be improved to get a better experience with a Samsung product. This is not about analyzing how you do against a strong competitor.
This is just: Let's copy the strongest competitor on the market and we are good to go. And this exact thing is a shame and it is even a bigger shame that no one wants to admit that there is something fishy going on here!
Just stop fucking copying and start developing own good products.
If I had a startup and would work on a great product and some company would just copy my ideas and would break records? I would go crazy.
The part that didn't look like a normal UX review was where every difference between the devices was followed with an instruction to eliminate that difference.
>What did you expect Samsung to do, sit around and wait for customers to realize it's not an iPhone?
would work just as well.
Even the evaluator determined that the layout of the home screen was too similar to iOS.
And NO I don't think they are aping it. Such analysis is everyday stuff ...
That said, I can get behind legal protections for consumers (not companies) to not be deceived. I’m not sure that’s the case here, though, and at any rate, Samsung’s phones now look sufficiently different as to not be confused with any Apple products.
2. This menu is really confusing because it has lots of entries in an arbitrary order. FooCorp's product has simpler, better structured menus. Suggested improvement: rationalize and simplify menu structure.
3. This dialog box is full of ugly scaled-up bitmap graphics. The corresponding thing in FooCorp's product does not. Suggested improvement: either provide carefully created bitmaps of the right size, or use vector graphics that scale nicely.
O NOES THEY COPIED FOOCORP AT EVERY POINT THE LOUSY PIRATES
Nonsense, right? But most of Samsung's document is like this. They've gone through their product and their leading competitor's, looking for places where the competitor provides a better user experience, and suggested ways to make their product better. Often that amounts to "do the same as the iPhone" because what happened is that they did something silly and Apple didn't. Which, sure, is good for Apple and bad for Samsung, but it's got nothing to do with patent infringement.
(And perhaps what they actually ended up doing really was just copying the iPhone everywhere. But this document doesn't say "copy the iPhone everywhere". It mostly says "here are lots of places where we did a bad job and Apple did a better one; learn from them", and there is nothing wrong with that.)
I'm not seeing any of that now, just the button you mentioned, which works.
Samsung should have shown other devices as well.
I imagine they would be much shorter, though...
- The document states it is highly confidential. Was it leaked? Otherwise, why does it state it is confidential?
- Samsung is a Korean company. Why is their internal document written in English rather than Korean? Is it common for multinationals to operate in English despite their country of origin?
- It is a translated document
- read page 133. It shows a signed Certificate of Translation.
However, when it comes to a court case you have document discovery and I presume this "confidential" document turned up. The judge gets to decide whether it can be used as evidence, and I presume the only thing he or she considers is whether it is relevant to the case - the "confidential" part is irrelevant.
The LOOK OF AN ICON is not worthy of a patent. This sort of UI is not worthy of a patent. So, case dismissed, imo.
There's little doubt that earlier versions of TouchWiz looked much more similar to iOS than any of the other manufacturers' UIs (or the Android default skin), which is part of the reason this lawsuit exists. Whether this amounted to outright copying or deceptive business tactics is what this case will hopefully settle for once and for all.
edit: it is a serious question - why does the word 'deceptive' apply? Can this not be another Android vs. Apple thing (I do not own either kind of phone)?
Another argument could be that, by selling inferior wares that look like Apple's stuff, consumers would start to think that Apple's phones are inferior. For example, you meet your friend and spot him with this black phone. In casual talk, he mentions that it isn't as good as it looks. A month later, you are looking for a new phone, and someone shows you an iPhone. Not having looked closely at your friend's phone, you may be steered away from buying an iPhone.
A third argument is that Apple spends a lot of effort and money to make their devices appear hip/cool/attractive. A clone-maker benefits from Apple's work. He does not need to advertise its wares as much as someone who makes original wares would.
Neither of these arguments are new; they are also used when people sell e.g. Bolex watches that look like those of that other brand.
Yes, that's what Apple are suggesting. FWIW I can offer you some anecdotal evidence. Shortly after the original Galaxy S (GT-I9000) was released, my partner (who was by then using Android) saw the advert for it and said "crikey, that's a bit close to the bone, isn't it?" refering to it's similarity to the iPhone. She said this before any of the brouha-ha had started. Again it's purely anecdotal so take it at face value.
Anyway, if you compare for e.g. a Galaxy Ace with an iPhone there is quite a lot of similarity in the size. shape, dimensions etc.
None of this is to say that Samsung was trying to 'deceive' anyone. What is worth considering is that iPhone was the trendsetter in the market and in a time when every new phone was being compared to iPhone a device which looks so similar is bound to raise questions of such nature.
In you look at the S in almost all cases where there was a decision point in the design process, the decision was duplicate what the iPhone did. When you have things like the corner ratios being substantially similar, the edging being substantially similar, even the power adaptor and cord being substantially similar then its well over the line "inspired by" line and into "we copied it" terrain.
Hence why one company is being sued for design patents and the other isn't.
The sad thing is with the Galaxy s3 Samsung have shown that they can produce a distinctive phone with its own design language. With the s1 it seems that they went out of their way not to do this.