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Samsung Announces New Flagship Galaxy S 4 Competitor to Apple's iPhone
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Smoking something? The iPhone 5's hardware is 2x the performance of the 4S... it wasn't a minor spec bump. Not to mention the bigger screen, higher color saturation, 4G LTE (that's a big one), better wifi, etc.
I upgraded my 4S to the 5 and the speed difference is very noticeable.
We can shake hands once more then, I couldn't agree more.
I still hope that Apple will come up with a monster product, new mac pro?, in a positive way that is. There is no reason to doubt if Apple would be able to just do that because they do have first class engineers, designers, 'thinkers' and young folks to pull it off once more. A lot of them are still working for Apple. But, i..m.h.o., they need to be focused and determined as well, like you said, to succeed. I'm sure that a lot of Apple engineers are doing that as well, it's a huge company after all and nothing is black and white. But the PR should stop giving this message of worrying about the opponent by constantly bringing them to court and by calling the opponent products bad products. It's just waste of time. It was Steve Jobs who said that you sometimes make mistakes when you innovate and that it's best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
As a creative company you should erase the phrase: "we are there" from the philosophy guidebook of the company. Apple should be never 'there', in the glory days with Steve Jobs they where dominating the market and changing it with new devices and a new way of dealing within the category of electronic consumer products.
I rather see Apple as a company stumble because 'new products' simply don't work as well as intended and forces Apple to re-think and come up with new products instead of thumbing due of waiting by thinking that products they have made are good enough. In this market, you should continue creating interesting new products.
Except that at 441 dpi this is way over the retina limit, unless you need to use the phone at less than 15cm from your face (inside the near point of vision) then you are not going to see any meaningful difference with the new screen size apart from being able to say you run full 1080P.
Seriously, this is the sort of thing that Apple tries to get across to people. It is not the raw specifications that actually matter, it is about balanced and meaningful performance. The retina display makes sense. People can actually perceive the difference. But going to a dpi 50% higher again is going to do what?
What next, 1000dpi screens. Yeah, that will be SO much better. And 16 cores. Yeah, because they are SO well utilised even on desktop machines today. Imagine how well Android (or even iOS) and the Apps made for smart phones will use all those cores. They won't sit there idling at all!
Geez!
Wait, are you now trusting estimations by analysts???
Edit: Just to make sure, are you talking about the iPhone series of phones being the best selling series of phones or the iPhone 5 being the best selling phone?
I was talking about iPhone overall. But since the ASP didn't change much one could reasonably say iPhone 5 sales comprised a large number of sales last quarter. Anyway I'd like to know what this lot market share is. Is there some place Apple had high market share and lost it because they don't care what the customers want?
Apple needs to make a 4,7" screen on the next iPhone. I have a iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3 and I use the Galaxy S3 mostly because of the bigger screen. Do not get me wrong about this, I love Apple products, but they have to rethink how big a phone should be to day! 
Do you mean the one that got no recognition in any country in the world except the US? Or was that another case? There are so many cases between them that I admit I haven't got them all covered. However, I hadn't heard of a case when they said S4 was copying anything from the iP5, which was my question.
In the end, it came down to this: Apple set the hardware upgrade standard from the iPhone 4S to 5 too low. I mean, except for the supposedly "larger" display screen, faster internals and 3GPP LTE support, it's essentially like catching up with the Samsung Galaxy S II model in terms of hardware. Meanwhile, Samsung has marched way ahead with the Galaxy S 4, which will be out at the end of April 2013.
He does have a point. I've been using an S3 for a few weeks now and overall I love the way it integrates with the Google ecosystem however in terms of the phones UI performance it does lag quite often. Eg if in chrome or an app and you hit home the it looks like it's trying to do it smoothly but can't and the transition ends up looking really choppy. And sometimes I don't see everything on the home screen at once, the time widget loads up last and you get the general impression the phone struggles with this kind of thing. Not sure technically what this is down to, poor coding or implementation but given it's a quad core with 1GB RAM I would expect better. My old iPhone 4 did not even do this.
Writing as a long-time Apple user (it's been 10 years now)... it's been interesting to see how far Apple has come and the competition it finds itself in now.
I got the iPhone 5 when it came out and it's possibly the most underwhelming Apple product I've ever owned.
For the first time ever I've found myself with a "wandering eye" - going onto Android websites and reading all I could about the upcoming S4 and now it's out, I have to say it looks very compelling. Almost equally so, the HTC One - which looks gorgeous and from what I've read, has plenty behind the facade to back up the pretty looks.
I like that Samsung has a fire about them and while it almost feels as though they are throwing everything at the wall in order to see what sticks (in their approach to innovation and features), at least they are innovating. I can't help but look at Apple and think of them as being left behind, pushing out incremental updates in order to fleece its customers with technology the other companies have already been touting for 2-3 years.
I think Apple are going to remain dominant for a while yet because their customer loyalty/brand is so strong but I don't see them maintaining it if they keep on their current trajectory - resting on their laurels, so to speak....
Never thought this day would come where I start to eye up Apple's competitors! Apple always produced the products (well, phones) I wanted to own, had to have... not so anymore. I really have doubts that my next phone will be an iPhone, unless Apple really step up to the plate.
I got the iPhone 5 when it came out and it's possibly the most underwhelming Apple product I've ever owned.
For the first time ever I've found myself with a "wandering eye" - going onto Android websites and reading all I could about the upcoming S4 and now it's out, I have to say it looks very compelling. Almost equally so, the HTC One - which looks gorgeous and from what I've read, has plenty behind the facade to back up the pretty looks.
I like that Samsung has a fire about them and while it almost feels as though they are throwing everything at the wall in order to see what sticks (in their approach to innovation and features), at least they are innovating. I can't help but look at Apple and think of them as being left behind, pushing out incremental updates in order to fleece its customers with technology the other companies have already been touting for 2-3 years.
I think Apple are going to remain dominant for a while yet because their customer loyalty/brand is so strong but I don't see them maintaining it if they keep on their current trajectory - resting on their laurels, so to speak....
Never thought this day would come where I start to eye up Apple's competitors! Apple always produced the products (well, phones) I wanted to own, had to have... not so anymore. I really have doubts that my next phone will be an iPhone, unless Apple really step up to the plate.
Holy Non-sequitur Batman!
Whaaa? (Does Samsung make Macs?) I didn't even mention Samsung in the post. I'm glad you love my logic...you don't seem to have any based on your response to me vis a vis the post you are responding to.
But truly, no big CE company in the world cares about any customer on a personal level. We are all tiny data points and can't influence their bottom line to the red or black. Ever heard of "churn"? It's a cost of business and expected.
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Agreed I've still got an iPhone 4s, a Galaxy S3 and a Galaxy Note. Out of the two Android devices the Note didn't lag at all where as the S3 was very laggy particularly with power saving features turned up.
It wasn't until an OS update that most of the lag issues with the S3 were addressed. After searching through the Android boards it appeared the issue is fragmentation and despite all the power of the S3 hardware the OS wasn't optimised to take advantage of it.
All three are still great devices, fragmentation is an issue for Android due to the larger range of varying hardware configurations. They have so many different phones running different versions of their OS. Apple have a much tighter hardware stack so it's easier for them to deliver lag free platforms.
Looking forward to my contract upgrade shortly for an iPhone 5 and then either an S4 or Note 3. I hope Apple don't go down the trend of basically turning smartphones into phablets which the S3/S4 effectively are.
If you can't notice anything above 326 ppi, then having a 1080p screen is actually worse since you need more power to generate the display. Kinda like how a graphics card has to work much harder to drive a game at higher resolutions. This means more lag and less battery life.
They should have kept the 720p and utilized the new processors for maximum effect since on a 5" display, you can't tell the difference anyway. Now all that power is wasted on driving a display we don't need. Same with the 13 megapixel camera. All it does is make the picture size much larger in MB while making it just slightly more clear.
Apple's engineers would never have allowed this.
They should have kept the 720p and utilized the new processors for maximum effect since on a 5" display, you can't tell the difference anyway. Now all that power is wasted on driving a display we don't need. Same with the 13 megapixel camera. All it does is make the picture size much larger in MB while making it just slightly more clear.
Apple's engineers would never have allowed this.
Yes I'm sort of in the same boat. My contract ends around the middle of the year so I will probably get an iPhone 5.
Every now and again I make the switch back to Android to see if the overall experience has improved. And it has... but overall you get a more refined package with Apple and that's something I can't see Android matching due to the variety of devices on the market.
These p1ssing competitions over who's got the most powerful specs are so childish.
When I got my MacBook there were cheaper computers with 1) better processors, 2) more ram.
Did any of them come even closer to the performance levels of my MacBook with half of the specs? No.
Would any of those computers still work like they did when they came out of the box after 6 years with only an RAM upgrade (2Gb->4Gb)? No.
At the same time I got this MacBook I also thought "hmm, the1st generation iPhone is too expensive so I'll just get a Samsung Omnia which has better specs". That phone was useless after one year: OS unresponsive and unbearable bugs.
Technology reached a point where it's not about the size anymore. It's about how you engineer your software and how do you optimise it to take the most out of the hardware you've got. I mean, what's the point on have a octo core, 4 gb of ram mobile phone on your pocket if the software isn't optimised to a point where it takes full advantage of all that processing power? Bottom line is, a phone with even more RAM than you require to run windows 7? What's the point? Making it look impressive on the spec sheet?
I'm not saying Apple is without guilt. While I don't believe we'll see a major GUI overhaul in iOS 7, I do think the company needs to set the bar higher again in terms of integration and innovatiom of features/services. Also, what would be the point of a major GUI overhaul? iOS may look dated but it's still one of most user friendly mobile operating systems out there.
When I got my MacBook there were cheaper computers with 1) better processors, 2) more ram.
Did any of them come even closer to the performance levels of my MacBook with half of the specs? No.
Would any of those computers still work like they did when they came out of the box after 6 years with only an RAM upgrade (2Gb->4Gb)? No.
At the same time I got this MacBook I also thought "hmm, the1st generation iPhone is too expensive so I'll just get a Samsung Omnia which has better specs". That phone was useless after one year: OS unresponsive and unbearable bugs.
Technology reached a point where it's not about the size anymore. It's about how you engineer your software and how do you optimise it to take the most out of the hardware you've got. I mean, what's the point on have a octo core, 4 gb of ram mobile phone on your pocket if the software isn't optimised to a point where it takes full advantage of all that processing power? Bottom line is, a phone with even more RAM than you require to run windows 7? What's the point? Making it look impressive on the spec sheet?
I'm not saying Apple is without guilt. While I don't believe we'll see a major GUI overhaul in iOS 7, I do think the company needs to set the bar higher again in terms of integration and innovatiom of features/services. Also, what would be the point of a major GUI overhaul? iOS may look dated but it's still one of most user friendly mobile operating systems out there.
If they would have put some decent materials into the S4 I would seriously consider it. The One X is super hot looking. I don't know why Samsung is so resistant to doing a higher quality design. That would make it a killer device!
APNG is not supported by Chrome (requires addon for that), not supported by Safari, not supported by IE.
Only Firefox and Opera have native support.
Even so, it doesn't make animated GIFs a good choice of format. Use a movie format. Or flash. Or a CSS3 Sprite animation (All WebKit based browsers support them, IDK about IE, Firefox, and Opera.)
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Hey! Samsung! You're gonna use up all the plastic in the world But all jokes aside, this phone doesn't appeal to me as a competitor to my iPhone 5. I have to admit that it really is one of the best Android phones out there.
But all jokes aside, this phone doesn't appeal to me as a competitor to my iPhone 5. I have to admit that it really is one of the best Android phones out there.