The The US government says Apple is detaining smartphones. By using tactics that make its competitors look worse, rather than making its own phones better, Apple has unfairly hurt competitors like Samsung and Google, the Justice Department says. Regardless of whether the government is right or not, one thing is clear – Samsung has been making terrible software for years and they can’t blame Apple.
Among all the major smartphone makers, Samsung spotted the threat from Apple’s iPhone earlier than most. Among the biggest phone makers of the day (2007), Blackberry executives dismissed Apple as a consumer play, and Nokia clung to its outdated and unfriendly software. Only Samsung quickly changed course to meet the iPhone.
Unfortunately, Samsung thought the iPhone features. He never realized that the iPhone’s real breakthrough was making these features incredibly easy to use with intuitive software.
Samsung’s first competitor to the iPhone was the silly little Samsung Instinct, a feature phone with Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, a better-than-average web browser, music player, and even simple apps. It was terrible, especially compared to the iPhone. But it looked like an iPhone, if you squinted hard. It was a poor replacement, but it checked most of the same boxes.
Victory came with Android, but it was the wrong victory
Samsung’s first Android phones were just as terrible. Before the Galaxy appeared, we got Samsung Look, which was the worst smartphone I’ve ever used. It put that TouchWiz phone interface on top of Android. On the feature spreadsheet, the Behold could match the iPhone line for line, but actually using the phone was a terrible ordeal.
When the Samsung Galaxy phones appeared, they represented the first victory for Samsung, but this victory only steered the company even more strongly in the wrong direction. What made the original Galaxy phone great, especially compared to the iPhone, was the OLED display. Apple didn’t adopt OLED for its iPhone screens until iPhone X. Samsung’s OLED Galaxy phones gave the company a win on paper, and that’s the only win that matters to Samsung.
Why is OLED better? First of all, OLED looks fantastic, especially on a small screen where you can see the difference in contrast up close. Colors pop on the OLED screen, and since the black areas are completely dark, the contrast level approaches infinity. Second, OLED allows minimal battery savings, since the dark parts of the screen do not consume any energy. In practice, it’s a small advantage, maybe 5% per day, but it’s measurable.
Samsung wins in specs. It won with a feature that the iPhone wouldn’t have. It still used terrible software, still a version of the same terrible TouchWiz interface that it used on the Samsung Instinct phone. Even with hardware that could compete with the best, Samsung was held back by software that was born in the days when phones were plastic toys.
Fifteen years of spec improvements and bad software
Over the next 15 years, Samsung will follow the same pattern. It would like to beat Apple in terms of specifications and hardware features. It would win on paper. It would launch phones with more and more.
We got the first one phones with larger screens. We have a built-in stylus, even though we all knew that styluses were dead. Then we have more cameras, zoom cameras space cameras. Then we have curved glass folding glass. Features upon features. No software enhancements.
In all those years, Samsung never made their software better, not better than Apple. We’ve heard about every superlative spec, every clock-beating success, but as much as reviewers grumbled and complained about shoddy, confusing and overstuffed software, Samsung didn’t waver. It has never significantly improved.
Samsung managed to do away with shiny plastic phones, removable batteries, home buttons and everything else, just to beat the iPhone. Somehow he never cared enough to improve his software. Or, he never thought it was possible to beat Apple in software.
Maybe Apple wins because … it’s better?!
There are many reasons why Apple has the huge market share it claims and Samsung is far behind in the US. I would say that Apple simply makes a superior product. iPhone, I mean every iPhone from the smallest to the worst the best iPhoneis better than Samsung Galaxy S24. Unless you’re buying the absolute best Galaxy S24 Ultrayou are buying a worse phone.
The reason is the software. Apple’s iOS 17 software isn’t just better, it’s the whole experience. Features, hardware and software work together seamlessly. Sometimes that it works so well it can be scary.
Samsung’s Galaxy phones are good despite the software, barely. Its best Ultra phones are so packed with useful features that we have to forgive their terrible interface, cluttered menus and cluttered home screens. However, if you don’t find these features useful, or if you don’t find them at all, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra won’t be a phone you’ll enjoy, unlike the iPhone.
Whatever the Justice Department decides to do about Apple, I hope Samsung turns a blind eye, because its problems have nothing to do with Apple’s market power. Samsung has had the same problems for years, and if they expect sympathy for being so lagging, they need to fix their terrible software first.