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Samsung says new features could come to mid-range phones before flagships
Flashy new features almost always arrive on the most expensive smartphones first, but Samsung may start taking a different approach. DJ Koh, head of Samsung's mobile division, tells CNBC that the company is now focused on differentiating mid-range phones ahead of flagship phones, as sales lag on higher-end models.
"In the past, I brought the new technology and differentiation to the flagship model and then moved to the mid-end. But I have changed my strategy from this year to bring technology and differentiation points starting from the mid-end," Koh told CNBC.
[...] Samsung hasn't avoided bringing higher-end features to mid-range phones — this year's Galaxy A series, for instance, included an 18:9 screen and dual front-facing cameras. But it was going up against phones that offered screens with notches, the clear symbol of a 2018 device. That kind of difference makes it harder to compete with companies like OnePlus, which are quicker to bring these features to mid-range phones.
That all said, Koh told CNBC the changes are really just about "focusing on millennials who cannot afford the flagship."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @06:42PM (2 children)
srsly.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Wednesday September 05 2018, @07:40PM (1 child)
And while actually improving the phones also allow us to get phones that actually fits in pockets. The pain threshold for this is between 4.3" and 4.7"
Oh, and make cellphones with a goddamned sidetone (or at least one set at 8% or higher).
Also, thicker phones are fine as long as it means more battery time.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday September 05 2018, @10:52PM
I have a Samsung Galaxy S7, which has a 5.1" screen, and that is big enough for me.
I did accidently purchase an LG V20 second hand from an auction site, and it really is a quite nice phone, except that the 6" screen seems too big.
Otherwise it ticks all the boxes:
Removable battery
Micro SD Card slot
32-bit DAC (which really does sound nice).
I don't care that it's 2 years old or whatever, it runs pretty well and does all the smartphoney sort of stuff I need to do.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 05 2018, @07:29PM (5 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Farkus888 on Wednesday September 05 2018, @07:43PM (2 children)
People who can afford to buy your $1000 phone more likely can afford to buy another companies $1000 phone. 2 months later because they couldn't live with that stupid bixby button. Then tell everyone they know how annoying your phone was and how they'll never go back and how happy they are with your competitor. That sounds oddly specific because it is. Search the internet for "bixby button" and that anecdote seems to scale to data just fine.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 05 2018, @08:47PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday September 06 2018, @03:15AM
Unusual overlap: big $ purchasers who are technical (and have time) enough to instal an app to fix a design problem.
Suspect this was actually a zero overlap, and the children/friends of big spender did the app installation.
Meanwhile, big spender is still whinging about that stupid design feature..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Wednesday September 05 2018, @10:46PM
I like my phone. Got it for $400 ages after it was released.
I don't need new wiz bang features.
This Samsung Galaxy 4 is good enough.
I have been through a lot of batteries though. Perhaps this non-removal battery phase is to get people on to support plans?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @12:59AM
From the article:
Translation: We have now raised the price on the 'flagship' phone so high that we've killed its sales volume potential. So instead we are going to try to pump of the sales volume on the mid-range phones where we make almost the same margin as on the flagship, but since we sell 20 mid-range for 1 flagship, there are far more profits to be had.
Alternate translation: We've discovered that going over $1,000 for a phone just kills the sales volume. When the price becomes four digits, too many people start thinking "I can't afford that much" for a phone.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday September 05 2018, @07:38PM
Where does it end?
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(Score: 3, Funny) by archfeld on Wednesday September 05 2018, @07:40PM (6 children)
We don't need no stinking notches. Now if it had been Nachos that would be a totally different thing.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 4, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday September 05 2018, @10:14PM (4 children)
> > But it was going up against phones that offered screens with notches, the clear symbol of a 2018 device.
Kill Kill Kill !!!
Kill notches. Kill 18:9 that isn't 2:1. Kill notches. Kill fragile useless glass backs. Kill phablets which don't fit in pockets and can't be used one-handed!
Kill gestures! Kill Hey Google and fucking Siri ! Kill 4k 5" screens !
Kill all the stupid marketing and design ideas, and make good practical phones, with updates, instead of fashion accessories!
I need a new phone soon, and everything is huge crap, either too big, never updated, or with too little RAM ! (or Sony lock-in crap)
Fuck the free market and all the marketers. I want to be a dictator and line them up against the wall, shooting them one by one until I get to the one with more than half a brain (before the bullet). And their customers and "influencers", too.
(Score: 4, Touché) by takyon on Wednesday September 05 2018, @10:18PM (1 child)
Or, give bob all of the above, with a fanny pack to hold his notched 6.2-inch 8K resolution Gorilla Glass phablet.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Wednesday September 05 2018, @10:37PM
It needs at least a 7.5" inch triple-notched screen, so it may have to save space by not including a headphone jack or a microSD card, but have six cameras on the back and four at the front.
And don't forget that the 8K screen will show 3 lines of text per page, because blank space.
Yup, gimme that fanny pack, if it's sturdy enough to strangle "designers" with, or at least to put rocks in it to crack skulls!
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday September 06 2018, @04:26PM (1 child)
Have a look at the ZTE Blade Spark. It's a cheap phone you can use while waiting on the perfect phone.
$80 carrier locked to At&t, $40 if you buy it from At&t.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday September 06 2018, @04:42PM
> 2GB of RAM
a bit short, at the rate that websites/browser are wasting. In two years, that will only hold ~4 tabs.
> 6.14 x 3.06 x 0.38 inches (156 x 77.7 x 9.7 mm)
While that's the new normal, that's also stupid big.
The much more reasonable 140 x 65 mm - 4GB range is sorely lacking players (Sony, Nokia if you want a bit of RAM and half an update policy)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @02:58AM
It is really sad the number of makers who just ape apple, as if because apple does it it must be right.
The notch was, is, and will always be, a stupid design flaw on the fruit phone. If Jobs had still been alive, I predict that there would have been no notch.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 05 2018, @08:04PM (5 children)
Is anyone else weary of smartphones, and ready for wearables to move to a better form? Smartphone zombies wandering the streets of New York, bumbling into lightposts, tripping over dog leashes, and stumbling into traffic are a meme that is just begging for young'uns to mock mercilessly.
Watch- or bracelet born VIs activated via disposable throat mike, and viewable via an after-market thin film you can affix to any sort of glasses would be a better way to go.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday September 05 2018, @09:02PM (2 children)
So, smartphone guts in the watch/bracelet, watch/bracelet is a touchpad that you don't look at constantly, and you only need to slightly lift your arms in front of you while walking in order to interact with it. And then you have AR glasses up top, accepting input from the watch/bracelet. I dunno, it might work. It gives you a worse experience for video viewing (small watch screen) unless the glasses can display video in a "VR mode".
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @10:42AM (1 child)
We could use kinematics to identify people who are dumbwalking using smart glasses. In the same vein as the phone's camera has to make a shutter noise by law in some countries (Japan springs to mind).
For example, to keep the screen on and/or the connection active, a user might have to walk with his knees making more exaggerated outward motions, or move his neck back and forward with each stride. That would work.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 06 2018, @11:03AM
Shutter noise laws are bullshit. If I want to take a picture of something in silence, I should be able to do that, whether it's a bird, a dog, a worm's eye view of a pair of panties, whatever.
There is no need to make smartglasses "dumbwalkers" identifiable. If they are looking up and forward, that is already better than a distracted smartphone user. If that's not enough, you could also use the camera system and speaker/vibration to alert the user if they are about to collide with an obstacle.
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(Score: 2) by vux984 on Thursday September 06 2018, @04:17PM
weary of phones? sure. ready for wearables? Nope. Not even on my radar as a thing to want.
Wearables. Disposable throat mics. People talking to themselves. Glasses they are looking at instead of through.
Wow... its like you took all the worst aspects of a jackass wearing a bluetooth headset and then cranked it up to 11. :)
And glasses? Do you know how much money people have collectively spent in order NOT to have to wear glasses? Do you know how irritating it is for people who need reading glasses to always have to put them on and take them off and keep them around -- nobody does that because it's an experience they enjoy. I can just see 40-50+ year olds looking for their glasses every time their smart watch vibrates.
Meanwhile, what does it even accomplish... instead of smartphone zombies we get AR zombies wandering around bumbling into lightposts, tripping over dog leashes, and stumbling into traffic? How is that better? If you think AR means people are paying attention to the world around them any better than if they were looking at a smartphonescreen... than I think you'd be wrong. Plus at least with a phone, you can put it away in a symbolic gesture of 'im only paying attention to you now'... a disposable throat mic and something stuck on your glasses is more difficult to put away... especially if you need the glasses to actually see.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday September 06 2018, @05:21PM
I can't wait for my BrainPal(tm) and the accompanying Smartblood(tm).
...Any other Scalzi fans?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @10:44AM
I'm going to open a vegetable stall, selling whole avocados for 80 cents.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday September 06 2018, @04:21PM
I can buy 10 Samsung Galaxy J3 phones for the price of a Galaxy 10.
It doesn't have NFC, the fingerprint sensor, or water resistance.
To me, that's not a huge tradeoff for saving a mortgage payment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 06 2018, @05:45PM
i'm not going to buy a new "smart" phone that hasn't the "groupel protocol", 'cauz my note2 and other "old" phones have wifi and Bluetooth, but still cannot talk to each other then via wifi or carrier network.
i am sure there are some people who have owned (or are still owning) 24 of those smart phones and putting them all side-by-side in a square and would form a YUGE keyboard (each displaying one letter) thanks to the "groupel-protocol", allowing them to act like-as one big display with dedicated sections with a dedicated processor, RAM and storage ...
you know, maybe it should be renamed "lego-protocol" ... cause with more "bricks" you can build more and different things ...