The new Galaxy Note 3 is region-locked
gigaom.com
gigaom.com
1. Galaxy S 3 includes undeletable Pizza Hut bookmark http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1707047
2. Galaxy custom web browser allows random web sites to make links that wipe and reset the phone: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/117422-samsung-galaxy-s-3-re...
Along with #1 and this article, I'm seriously baffled that any company can be this incompetent.
Edit: "UPDATED 26 September: Samsung has told SlashGear that Galaxy S III users should ensure their phone is running the latest software as this resolves any issues:
'We would like to assure our customers that the recent security issue concerning the GALAXY S III has already been resolved through a software update. We recommend all GALAXY S III customers to download the latest software update, which can be done quickly and easily via the Over-The-Air (OTA) service.'
Question: Is this OTA Update depending on whether providers let those updates through?
(Kinda Suprise banned in the US)
Technically Kit-Kats aren't chocolate.
The Germans refer to vegetable fat-based cocoa mixes as glazed fat, the French mockingly call them brown margarine.
But under a controversial European Parliament ruling, vegetable fat mixes are permitted to be sold as family milk chocolate or house chocolate.
I guess so. I'm not sure they have as much leverage as Apple did with the iPhone. (Fun aside: Verizon was Apple's first choice for a launch carrier, but Verizon balked at the level of control they wanted over the device. Well, that and the cut of the monthly data plan fee.)
Carrier bundles also allow carriers to specify bookmarks to add to Safari, the idea being that users "might find useful" to have direct links to check their invoices or so. Such bookmarks are of course deletable.
Or the more general case of allowing carriers to mandate restrictions that Apple do certain things that provide a poorer experience? Of course.
It has the familiar smell of desperation to monetize everything. Unless of course Samsung is striving to be known as the Ryanair of consumer electronics.
Marketing people from major companies use a Samsung phone and sees the bookmark will think "I wish our brand was there. How do we reach out to the carrier or Samsung to put our brand there as well?"
a few weeks later in a meeting with a carrier or Samsung, "Yes, we can put a bookmark there for X dollars. However if you want it to be undeletable, you can pay 2X dollars" or "Pizza Hut is paying us 2X dollars for that and we don't want to put more than one there, so you need to outbid pizza hut for that spot."
next step.... money rolling in.
Apple was not paid by a third party to include it's own software features.
Game Center is like S Voice, a first part developed software that is billed as a "Feature".
Apple has no equivalent to "Pizza Hut" bookmarks that can't be deleted, because they control their carrier relationships better than Samsung who is willing to give their partners the freedom to install and screw up what they want.
Fortunately, Samsung is generally pretty good about letting us users have custom roms, which IMO trumps the Apple advantage for us power users. A custom rom > non-bloated default iOS, to me.
"Feature" is just semantics, then.
I'll take a pizza ad over Game Center opening up and asking me to make an account every time I play a game, thanks. But unlike the Apple die-hards, I can admit that both a utter crap.
I totally agree and Google's forced G+ integration with the newer G+ Games services is very frustarting too.
No G+ I do not want your crappy me-too social network attached to my gaming apps.
But as is generally the case, I imagine people will hate Apple and love Google for doing the same business practice...
For example, emergency calling functionality was broken for a long time and has been reverse engineered only recently [2].
[1] https://plus.google.com/101093310520661581786/posts/aoAGK5yo... [2] http://www.androidcentral.com/cyanogenmod-fixes-emergency-ca...
I'll point you to the Apple weather app with the prominent Yahoo! link at the bottom left. This would be more tolerable if the app itself wasn't terrible. I really wish I could delete Apple's apps, why not come with them installed and let you remove and re-add, say like podcasts.
Apple does not get paid by another company to load its default apps onto the phone.
E.g, a "Cosmopolitan App" that you can't delete and can use to only buy Cosmopolitan.
That is the proper analogy here.
That would transform PizzaHut from an obnoxious ad ("seller oriented") to a genuinely useful option I would probably use on occasion ("customer oriented").
I dislike intrusive ads (and spending good money on a physical gadget just to be met by "congratulations, and incidentally you've also bought into a lifelong relationship with this pizza vendor" is intrusive).
But I don't mind being told that "newspapers are here, food is over there"; I might even find it useful at some point.
I still think it would be nice if Apple would let me hide the non-deletable apps I don't use: Let me hide the newsstand icon, pop it up again if I ever decide to subcribe to a newspaper.
But the newsstand doesn't grate me the way a permanent link to any particular magazine would. Any particular magazine is unlikely to be my favorite, it might even be one I hate. That doesn't imply that I hate magazines, newsstands, pizza or food in general.
The only apps that should not be deletable are core apps like settings and the app store.
Even those should be deletable if it asks you to designate another app on your phone as the replacement for that core service. That replacement app should be API compatible with the data store of the phone itself.
I should be able to replace Apple Maps with Google Maps. Camera with any number of other Camera apps. Photos with any other local photo browsing app. Calendar with something like Fantastical. Weather with something like Yahoo Weather. etc. etc.
I mean, I knew Apple haters were dense but this is excessive.
Sigh.
Anyway, you completely missed the point of my comment :).
Moral of the story: don't live in the USA.
Here's a thought: when all you can do is rail against the "haters", you are in a bad state of mind.
Yes. This is quite real of me, I assure you. If I can't make it Go Away if I have no use for it, it's spam. As it happens, I've consolidated my reading. It isn't in Newsstand. It should not trouble me if I don't want it, and having a "junk" drawer is a sad non-solution.
Interesting how after your original argument (the difference between app and bookmark) was defeated you came up with a new one (percentage of people liking).
Spam is defined as whether it annoys the receiver, not the sender's intentions. And there's no 'unsubscribe' in iOS.
However bad you think Apple might be, Samsung is far, far worse, just much less successful and slick about it. I had thought the old adage about "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" was only believed by halfwits, apparently I was wrong.
Prepare to be educated. Yes a lot of it is a hack but on half the supported phones CM isn't too much different really. At least the whited00r releases are stable and have consistent feature support over obsolete handsets.
The carrier is who you should gripe for the firmware misfeatures which you don't like in their phones. But due to the monopoly situation, they don't have to care very much what their subscribers think.
Only place i really don't see bloatware is on my hacked HP touchpad. My only tablet until a month ago was a 32gb HP touchpad that I got from $199.
On day one I installed android on it and helped with some the kernel tweaks. Now i'm just running cyanogenmod9 there.
It is a blissful experience. Full control over browser. dumb webdeveloper used 8px and limited zoom? no problem, zoom anyway. dumb webdeveloper put in 1024px wide paragraph? no problem, zoom and double tab.
Even the more hardcore lack of control: publisher limited a game for a specific device (fishlabs and sony experia deals for example). no problem, edit build.props, say you are that device and download.
...Then, last month work forced to expend lots and lots of time on a latest Ipad and a galaxy tab3.
The galaxy tab is awful. shitty in every aspect. Only upside is that it have a IR blaster. I love those things. It is also pretty light. But then, the screen is crappier than anything i've ever used. just awful to look at. Then the ugly custom samsung skin just make it WORSE. they use twice the space for browser tabs for example. it's just idiotic. worst tablet experience in using a browser that one can have. Just do yourself a favor and get a generic chinese one instead. Also, it has the exact same performance as my old touchpad with one cpu for web rendering and movies. samsung really crapped all over this one.
The latest ipad (apple sucks on that, can't even refer it to a number because i can't see any number on the device case or software... is that an ipad3?) has the most awesome screen. But it's heavy as hell and the corners cut your hands if you are trying to hold it to watch netflix in bed. If feels fast, and will probably be for anyone not slightly multitasking. Multitask is so crap that, I kid you not, changing tabs in the browser, or going back one page, results in a full redraw of the page, and sometimes a refresh of that page. For example, go to reddit or hackernews... scroll the page as you do when reading the index. Click on a link or open it in another tab. read that link. Press back or close the tab. The index page REFRESHES because it was probably out of memory or something. now you are at the index page, at the TOP! your scroll information is lost. And probably the items changed in the mean time. Totally shitty experience. Changing apps is even worse. Several apps 'restart' when you multitask. So, it's the perfect device if you ever use one app at a time and have a fully linear, one tab, browser usage pattern.
I'm just very glad i have the touchpad. Wonder if a nexus tablet is as good... probably not.
I prefer my Nexus 7 over my Touchpad. It's a bit faster and much lighter. Touchpad has mostly been relegated to the Touchstone charging dock since I got the Nexus 7 last year. Also, no app compatibilities that the Touchpad had at times (mostly due to the 1024x768 screen). Also, the Touchpad is far from perfect when running Android 4.2 or later.
mostly browsing.
Also, i'm on CM9. which is android 4.0 something. The last thing that didn't work and was holding me on CM7 is the camera. It's working now. CM10, android 4.2 is coming and the reports are good, but it is a work in progress. That said. There is ZERO features i want from 4.2. OTH, CM7 and 9 have a feature where i can limit which permissions the APP is allowed to use at runtime. and other niceties such as render effects, etc. noted, all available on all androids, but not exposed as options to the user. because users are dumb or something and can't have options.
https://plus.google.com/104277415207525128383/posts/dv6tyqLV...
As of iOS 7, you can move the Newsstand rack into a folder.
http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57602683-285/with-ios-7-...
> Multitask [on iOS on iPad 4] is so crap that, I kid you not, changing tabs in the browser, or going back one page, results in a full redraw of the page, and sometimes a refresh of that page. [...] Changing apps is even worse. Several apps 'restart' when you multitask.
I suspect you haven’t upgraded to iOS 7.
http://www.macworld.com/article/2048935/get-to-know-ios-7-mu...
> Full control over browser. dumb webdeveloper used 8px and limited zoom? no problem, zoom anyway. dumb webdeveloper put in 1024px wide paragraph? no problem, zoom and double tab.
All possible on iOS. In Safari, use Reader or JavaScript bookmarklets. Or use one of the many third party browsers that have web dev tools.
> The latest ipad (apple sucks on that, can't even refer it to a number because i can't see any number on the device case or software... is that an ipad3?)
The latest 10" iPad can be referred to as iPad 4th Generation or iPad Late 2012.
you were right on the newstand thing. moved to the garbage folder.
Now the multitasking, all i've described is on IOS7.
The page refresh happens when reading hacker news, so i'm not sure it's a memory issue. It's just bad user experience based on some dumb assumption at design time probably.
Whether you think built-in iOS features are "crapware" is besides the point. Everything that ships with iOS is put there deliberately by Apple. Compare that to a Samsung device, where you will be getting stuff put there by Samsung (which you might agree with and want) plus random stuff put there by carriers (which you almost certainly don't want).
It only matters if you are interested in discussing the amount of control carriers are able to exert over manufacturers, and whether companies are willing to compromise their design vision to satisfy carriers.
The entire point of the OP is to that Samsung has a problem with crapware that is not under their control. Regardless of whether you think Apple's pre-installed apps are "crap", it is entirely under their control to remove them — meaning they are in a more flexible position than Samsung.
Again, not relevant to you as a consumer. Only relevant if you wish to take part in this discussion.
There's stuff wrong with iOS, sure, but Apple keeping the shit that carriers want to install off the phone is one thing they've done brillianty.
I own an S4 and if this policy stays it'll be the last Samsung phone I bought.
Optus in Australia adds a lot of extra crud - default homepage, bookmarks, contacts into the iPhone, special categories in settings....
Why can't Apple let iOS users use the underlying universal, open protocols directly to do file transfers (data export) without installing a hodgepodge of third party apps which barely do the job?
You could argue Pizza Hut is the only pizza that Galaxy users will ever need. You could also argue that posting to Facebook and Twitter are the only means of data export that iOS users will ever need. You could also make a fool of yourself by making such arguments.
Never had the second problem.
For Pizza Hut: (a) very odious, because it's pure marketing, irrelevant to the normal use of the device, and adds no useful functionality, since most users probably don't want a Pizza Hut bookmark, or could easily add one if they did; (b) requires switching completely to a new browser; (c) none, since a user is very unlikely to accidentally delete the bookmark and then be at a loss for how I get it back.
For Apple apps: (a) not much, since the apps are well designed and using Apple services with Apple's phone is a normal use case that applies to most users; (b) generally can be entirely avoided by moving to a folder, although it isn't always possible to replicate their functionality in third party apps, which is unfortunate (the previous inability to do so with Newsstand is essentially an implementation defect, since it was treated as a folder itself); (c) some, since although all apps ought to be redownloadable from the App Store, system apps are sort of a holdover from the original iPhone OS, and most new Apple apps have been put on the App Store, even things like iBooks.
Neither situation is great, but there's a big difference.
I had to flash it to accept a toner bought elsewhere.
It caught me off guard, my previous laser printer (also Samsung) happily accepted other cartridges (I would have bought Samsung, but they were out of stock).
I haven't turned it into a business model nor personal public initiative, yet, but I think we are to the point of needing to name and shame. And then conduct, or withhold, our business accordingly.
It's a byzantine mess that shifts every week or so. If you can solve this problem, you can also solve the problem of having consistent reviews for products.
If someone makes a business of hitting me with his Buick, I don't keep their company when they come around in their Oldsmobile.
In many areas, Apple doesn't exist (even with a different name). Worse, sometimes they exist, but only for a brief time as the company strip-mines the goodwill that a given product has to extract more profits and then fall back to "industry rest-state".
Customer preference to control manufacturers' behavior is a model that rarely works.
it practically makes it illegal to even change the battery of a device you bought if there is not an user accessible and labeled port to change said battery.
So i am guessing that fiddling with the DRM software on the printer also is a crime under such idiot law.
Buying a new printer including cartridges would have been considerably cheaper.
It may be scummy and short-sighted, but it doesn't implicate antitrust law.
There is a thin line between trying to integrate and optimize services and applications between them, and forcing unwanted applications down the throat of users.
It's close to impossible to introduce a phone without being tied to a carrier. That's exactly what monopoly looks like when dominant player (the one having a monopoly) controls one of the crucial parts of supply chain and can just cut you off if they wish (or if you don't comply).
Usual argument is that it's not a monopoly if you can shop around and choose different provider. Here you really can't without putting yourself in very unfavorable position comparing to players who do comply.
Back to bundling for a bit: it's a practice which is about always bad for a customer. Bonuses, paybacks, plans with phones, loyalty points at gas station. Every one of those reduces competition between providers/sellers by tying customers to them. If about every provider on the market uses the same bundling policy it becomes a monopoly from the point of view of manufacturers of bundled product - they will never be able to compete without bending backwards to meet the requirements of the monopoly owner(s). That was an idea behind lawsuit vs Microsoft (dominant player bundling their browser making competition (close to) impossible or even "unfair") and that's the exact same situation with carriers or cable providers. Them being a cartel of several instead of monolithic entity shouldn't cloud the issue here.
The nexus devices are generally good about this sort of thing. Most of Samsung's other carrier-partnered phones are loaded with absolute crap anyway, this is another good reason not to buy them.
T-Mobile is about the same as Sprint and AT&T, and all are sub-par to Verizon. But what's nice about T-Mobile is that you get unlimited data, whereas with Verizon, you'd better cash in your fleet of 777s to afford your bill.
Sheesh.
http://consumerist.com/2013/06/07/t-mobile-has-a-30-unlimite...
http://www.walmart.com/ip/T-Mobile-SIM-Kit/24099996
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Tmobile-30-Wireless-Airtime-Card/1...
Some have good reasons why (mainly coverage, tho TMO is getting better), others are forced to question their contract policy.
Right now I'm paying monthly at TMO what I paid on Verizon+AT&T for me and my wife - except I now get 3 other smartphones on the plan for the same price, all with their own 500M data pool.
Once the new phones are paid off (i.e. equipment loan), I'll be paying just a bit over what I did for just one of my lines for all five lines I'm paying today. And no other carrier in the US has HD Voice.
Doesn't change the fact that I wouldn't buy it, but I don't think it is something that is done for some evil reason as some will jump to.
Possible, but it would still work in the states with a European Sim... So any problems it'd give the FCC wouldn't go away...
It would only if the other manufacturers caved in to carrier demands. If this is true, more might well do so shortly, but it kind of makes sense -- Samsung is likely looking for every angle to gain share over the iPhone. One could imagine that a sweet deal with carriers could gain them more promotions, greater subsidies (yielding cheaper phones), etc. etc.
But, yes, you're right, it's all speculation.
Why would they want to do this? I could understand it in the case of a low-priced device intended for poor regions of the world, but this is a high-end phone that is presumably a similar (high) price everywhere it's sold.
Because of that local distributors make much less money - they have to price lower and they don't sell as much. And probably forced this onto Samsung, which couldn't care less I guess since they still sold the phone in the end.
Either way it might also be a purely legal thing, by having the sticker they indemnify themselves from the FCC saying you can't sell this for use in the US because it isn't certified.
People always jump to crazy conclusions when there are much simpler explanations that don't involve companies shooting themselves in the foot. Samsung as a brand is killing it in the world in general, they have no incentive to do something like this.
Heck, I can use just about every wifi device in 'EU' mode and operate outside of the limits of the US regulation, right?
I believe this is a dick move, nothing more.
But who can blame them? Of the $650 cost of a new iPhone, the user only pays $200, while the carrier pays $450. Apple knows where their bread is buttered.
IT IS NOT SUBSIDIZED, PEOPLE.
You may say, well I'm paying the same per month whether I take a new phone or not from the carrier, so... it's subsidized right? Nope, they're just gouging you when you're on an old phone. Taking the new phone just slightly reduces your disadvantage. Let's put it this way, if MVNOs can offer you piggybacked network rates at $X while traditional operators rates are $3X aren't you a bit surprised? It's not that the operators are going to sell to MVNOs for a loss, and not that MVNOs are going to sell to you for a loss.
They still front the money, then get it back from you over time. I'd say that qualifies as "subsidized", especially when the "over time" payments are not broken out separately.
Regardless of how it works out afterwards, the fact is that most American buyers prefer to pay $200 up front with a contract versus paying all $650 themselves. If Apple wants the carriers to keep putting up $450 in exchange for locking people into contracts, they have to cooperate at least a bit.
The phone qualifies as "subsidized" only if buying it from your mobile company turns out cheaper than if buying it separately. Generally it isn't.
Yeah, I pay a lot of money. I also get ~$450 back to help pay for my phone. That's a subsidy. The fact that my monthly bill is ~$65/month/person is irrelevant to that.
Interestingly, it seems that the US market is slowly moving toward the way you're saying. T-Mobile, for example, now offers cheaper service by default, and if you want a "subsidized" phone, they treat it as a loan that you pay back over time, and charge that amount separately. The other providers have introduced plans for people who want to upgrade every year rather than the standard every two years, which involves paying an extra monthly charge on top of the regular bill.
The cost of early termination + subsidized price is still quite a bit cheaper than the full price of the phone.
Not really "quite a bit cheaper".
On Tmobile when you bring your own device you can get a $50 everything plan - the equivalent plan is $100 on competing networks. Granted you could argue this isn't all subsidy and that Tmobile is also cheaper because their network is worse, but when you compare to international cell services this doesn't appear to be the case.
It's at least in part because the companies are near monopolies that don't need to compete (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R4xhwy-1oI).
My wife has about £100/month disposable income and pays about £30/month for her handset and contract. When her renewal comes around she can buy the handset for, say £400. Apart from to get that £400 she needs to go without beer and eating out and new shoes for 4 months (never going to happen). Or make do with less for, say, a year (very unlikely given she doesn't really care enough about handsets).
Her alternatives are to take the contract and handset bundle or to buy the handset on credit. Assuming she takes a SIM-only plan like mine (£13/month with limits I've never exceeded) that leaves her with £17/month to pay off the credit on £400. I've not done the figures but I'd say that probably works out at around two years - so it doesn't really give her any advantage beyond avoiding lock-in; which she'll only care about if we change country (remember she's not really bothered about handsets)
Which is all a long way of saying that many people's priorities aren't the same as ours (by which I mean frequenters of Hacker News) - which alters the equation and makes buying off-contract less appealing than getting everything up-front and paying for it over time.
Edit: typos
The contract worked out cheaper. That's a subsidy isn't it?
It could be all sorts of things (cheap credit, loss-leader etc.) but I doubt it ever qualifies as subsidy.
- Tethering
- FaceTime over 3G
- 3G, LTE, toggles to turn 3G or LTE on or off
- APN settings
And unlike on Android, where these features just get disabled on the phones locked to/distibuted by that carrier, even unlocked iPhones bought on another continent will lock these features when they see the carrier's SIM card.
Possibly the funniest part of the "you are the product" meme many Apple fans are fond of is how many of them fail to notice that they are the product that Apple has sold to a carrier.
As others have mentioned, don't for a second think the consumer isn't paying the full cost of the phone. They are and more -- but that subsidy doesn't differentiate any carrier from another. They all do it. So, once again, the consumer fails to see any differentiation based on carrier. As I discuss at length above, consumers are primarily buying the Apple experience and platform -- and the carrier is secondary.
This is absolutely untrue. Apple's business model is to sell $650 phones to carriers, who then turn around and sell them to consumers for the same price as $350 dollar phones. This is why they have fantastic margins. If the carrier model ever goes away it would be bad news for Apple, who would have to compete on price to a greater extent than they do today.
Secondly, Apple's profit is uniquely enriched because it has built the platfrom that it has -- again, no other phone manufacturer reaps the direct from consumer benefit Apple does.
Lastly, because Apple sells markets/sells to the consumer, the consumer picks Apple first and then the carrier -- many change carriers but continue to be loyal to Apple as a phone maker. This is definitely the culmination of a major sea change in the mobile industry. Apple may not the only phone maker that has ever had a consumer act this way, but they are the first to have it happen on a widespread basis.
But why Samsung? Why?
[1] Thankfully they did just recently release a stable version.
[2] I also made the same decision about Sony years ago when they released rootkits on their CD's.
At first sight, even though pricing differences exist between regions around the world, on this kind of products they are not that big, not to mention that that part of these price differences come from retailing alone...
So these differences must be big enough to justify alienating your early adopter userbase, thus endangering the whole adoption process, not to mention bad PR that will stick. When you try too hard to get every cent out of people and they start seeing it - and any locking of that kind screams "I'm going to get more juice out of this" - they generally don't like it.
http://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-note-3-region-lock-s...
Usually the trade-off is device thickness. If you add another element to the antenna array you can make it work on both 700Mhz and 750Mhz. But if you try to tune for 725Mhz you'll get crap performance in all countries.
The leaflet is just a leaflet, the issue here is that Samsung have added software intentionally designed to block cross-region usage.
If so, why would Samsung do something so blatantly anti-consumer? They're a major corporation, they don't get jollies off this, where do they profit?
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2457964&pag...
Most people don't travel internationally very frequently, and region locking is not something that's marketed, so they only discover it when they actually travel, and then they're forced to buy another phone!
Forget region locking, can't they inflate their profits further at their customers' expense if they just use GPS or tower location to deactivate the phone when the user gets 200 miles from home? That would increase your market from international travelers to domestic travelers...
The smarter folks buy a cheap $30 GSM/CDMA phone before the trip, the even smarter ones have a world phone and confirm it's capable of taking foreign sims (though having a fallback $30 GSM phone isn't a bad idea).
Especially if you need to use SMS two-factor authentication on your normal home number. Trying to make a bank transfer when the code is sent to SIM A and the data plan is on SIM B is otherwise an interesting challenge. (That's the voice of experience.)
I think we need to hold judgement until all the facts are in. It's very possible that they will create an unlocked international version of the Note III as well. From the outcry, it sounds like it would sell well. Only question is if it will have the same limitation as the international Note II: no LTE.
A side... Sprint Iphones SIM SLOT are technically unlockable by Sprint but only to regions/carriers not the US.
Are sim cards more common now (or is this the one place where Americans has an edge on Canadians? ;-)
To everyone else an AT&T phone is an AT&T phone, not a GSM phone, and no-one ever opens them up to pull out the SIM cards.
Whenever I've purchased a SIM card, I've gone to an AT&T store, and convinced the employee to look around for them. They always have them both pre and post-pay, but even AT&T employees don't necessarily know that till they look them up on the computer.
Can't want to have it rooted and remove as much of touchwiz as I can while I wait for cyanogen to get ported.
Welcome to the real world!
Time to grab bag of popcorn and watch Samsung trying to save it's face ...
(US price ~$740 in AUD, Aus ~$880)
It's just that Samsung lacks focus and is incompetent at communicating with its customers and non Korean employees.
Probably some idiot manager in Europe decided to put this sticker on the case and they don't know about it (or didn't understand this) in their headquarter.