MWC Related News Day 1 - Samsung Galaxy S5 and other news and non-news

Here are items I picked up from the news feeds from MWC Day 1. Note I am not at the event so I am only reporting from what is in the news.

Samsung Galaxy S5 is an incremental upgrade of Samsung's flagship on most relevant metrics but still feels somewhat hollow. Partly most of hte big news was already leaked or well guessed (waterproofing, fingerprint sensor, 16mp camera) or else didn't really capture our excitement (heartbeat monitor, barometer, IR transmitter to let the phone be used as TV remote control...) It has tons of software goodies and tidbits like the auto-focus on the camera is fastest of any cameraphone at 0.3 seconds. And the microSD memory card capacity is now the highest available at 128GB. Also for the fashionistas: the colors will include gold. It will ship in 150 countries by mid April. Its a very compelling flagship but it didn't really push the envelope. Not like how Sony's Xperia Z1 last year which matches most of the specs of the Galaxy S5 now (but selling 6 months later) yet Sony's older flagship has a significantly better camera (20 mp)

Sony also upgraded its flagship and it will be known as the Xperia Z2. Offers 4K video recording and boosts the screen size to 5.2 inches. Mostly otherwise similar to Z1.

Hey back to Sammy. Samsung did upgrade the Galaxy Gear and now offers two wearable smart watches which now run on... (our favorite dark horse new OS on this blog..) Tizen. So Tizen isn't exactly dead yet now is it? And the Tizen boss is promising there will be even a smart PHONE for sale later this year (by whom and when is anybody's guess haha)

Other smart watches out at MWC included ones by LG and Huawei. All that smartwatching doesn't convince me any further that there could be a significant sized mass market for smart watches. Its just not a compelling user case and proposition.

What else did they announce? Panasonic seems to regret abandoning smartphones and now returns with some rugged smartphones. (Following HP's sudden return, when is Dell following suit and admitting it was too hasty to quit smartphones, the future of computing?)

Obviously the big buzz was the three Nokia X series smartphones running Android. I wrote a separate blog about how crazy that is for Microsoft. Its like as if Sony would announce that the next Playstation will run on Nintendo's Wii platform. Or Apple's iPhone 6 would suddely be revealed to run on Blackberry OS haha... Yes, madness. But we've seen this movie before. Wherever Elop leads, madness follows. I can't wait for Elop to be back at Microsot and continue his demolition activities there haha... (for those new to this blog and who might not know the details, Elop was literally the worst CEO of any Fortune 500 sized company ever and acheived - yes - a world record - in corporate failure. Not just in phones or tech. In any globally competed industry of Fortune 500 sized companies. See all the facts here if you don't believe me)

There were some mid range phones by this and that brand, nothing really to write home about. There was some interesting news about smartphone loyalty, a global survey by WDS which found that Apple is again on top - no surprise. Apple's loyalty is so strong that 76% will buy another iPhone. Who is second? Samsung. 58% of Sammy owners want their next smartphone to also have a Samsung brand. No other brand hits 40% loyalty. They also asked about those who are planning to change to another brand what is their top choice. You'd think iPhone but the findings say Samsung is choice of 34% and iPhone only 24% of those planning to switch brands. Still it once again reinforces the fact that there are two giants and the rest of hte industry is lilliputs.

Mozilla promises smartphones on Firefox that will sell for 25 US dollars without subsidy. That may seem awefully cheap until you notice that there are already plenty of Android smartphones selling for under 40 dollars today. That 25 dollar level will soon be matched by low-end Androids. Might be even before Firefox based devices are manufactured and shipped to the market haha...

Lenovo updated its flagship the S which now has 5 inch screen and 13 mp camera but costs well below the Galaxy S5 or iPhone or Xperia at only 350 dollars unsubsidised price.

On the industry trends, Ericsson CEO spoke of a near future when smartphones will cost as little as US $10.00 unsubsidised. Haha that is MY forecast! Remember how radical it was back in 2010 when I made it but yes, we are well on track that by 2020 there will be fully touch-screen 3G WiFi GPS smartphones with good cameras that cost $10. And now I am not the only one saying so haha. Nice to hear Ericsson also doing the math and arriiving at the same level.

Comments

[corneliu]

Speaking of Elop, according to this
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/24/5444160/microsoft-management-shift-elop-larson-green-devices-services
He has been promoted and will be in charge of the entire games and hardware division (xbone, surface, phones, everything)
I love this move. I was a little bit disappointed when Satya beat him but this is not bad either. There is still hope that he will mess up much more than just the phones division. The day Microsoft will die, this world will be better. And Elop is the great knight in shiny armor that will help get it done.

[Kevin P]

I think the Lenovo news you mentioned is not from MWC. The flagship phone with 13 MPx camera and 5" screen you mentioned is the s960 / Vibe X, which was already released several months ago - it's already being heavily promoted along with their other flagship the 5.5" Vibe Z / k910. The best of the phones they launched yesterday was the s860, which apart from having a huge battery is below the s960 in terms of specs.

[Mike]

" IR transmitter to let the phone be used as TV remote control.."

I used to do this psiloc irremote and my nokia 6600 smartphone, 10 years ago, nearly 4 years before Apple even invented smartphones ;)

[Earendil Star]

Android is beating your boss (MS) on all fronts?

Hard to justify how your boss' market share is 1/20 of your hated competitor?

Easy, just fudge the Boring numbers. Start splitting the Android platform in 100 pieces, and then just say: hey, look, what did I tell you? WP is 5 times larger than Android. Easy peasy, plain vanilla propaganda 123.

Seriously speaking, Google now has a good ad campaign ready:
Google Android - So good that even MS adopted it. Or should they say "Elopted" it?

Finally, a comment on THTRH Elop. The promotion he got is just the paycheck for flawlessly executing MS' agenda while working "undercover" at Nokia. No other possible explanation, especially if one were to take Nokia's (pre MS) view of things.

Tomi, do not be fooled. Elop is not going back to MS. He actually never left.

[John Fischer]

On the industry trends, Ericsson CEO spoke of a near future when smartphones will cost as little as US $10.00 unsubsidised. Haha that is MY forecast

Sorry Tomi, any person here that comes from any tech industry related to pc, phones, microprocessors knew that, does it take much grey matter to know that by 2020 84-inch 4k ( or 16k...or whatever fashion at that moment) TV will cost a fraction of today's prices? Remember when calculators were expensive? In fact, Ericsson probably mentioned that price to get some free headlines.

Arthur Clarke called it newspad in his book 2001 back in the 60's ... That was amazing, today predicting flying phones that can tele transport your mother in law to a far far away galaxy is not.

[zlutor]

@Baron95: "every Nokia X/XL comes with Skype with FREE LANDLINE CALLING for one month. Boycott?"

I guess it will be free for end users but somebody pays for it - most probably M$ and less probably Nokia...
So, no boycott at all but warm welcome - for one month, at least... :-)

[RottenApple]

@Baron95:

"every Nokia X/XL comes with Skype with FREE LANDLINE CALLING for one month. Boycott?"

Ha ha, I can only concur with zlutor. Sure somebody has to pay for it - and we all know - if someone pays for it there will always people happily gobbling up that money but then make sure that Microsoft won't benefit from it.

It happened before, it will happen again. But when will they learn.

A fool who falls for that kind of stupid stuff.

As for the reaction to the Galaxy S5:

Yes, sure, it's certainly a bit disappointing but come on! Aren't you all a bit hypocritical here?
Wasn't the iPhone 5S also a mere incremental upgrade that barely offers anything substantial to its customers (heavy gamers excluded, maybe, because nothing else could possibly profit from the increased CPU performance.)

So if Apple is doing this thing, they get applauded, but when Samsung is doing the same, they get booed? Sorry, but this doesn't make much sense.

For me personally, neither of both devices warrants an upgrade from its predecessor. Let's wait until something truly new and exciting comes along. To me it seems that smartphones are starting to hit the saturation point not only in customer reach but also in available features.

[Maggan]

@RottenApple

When Apple releases a new phone, they always get slammed by portions of the internet for not adding anything new, for not changing the design enough to make it a "new" phone and for only making incremental updates.

Samsung even made an ad mocking Apple for selling a phone (iPhone 4s) that looked exactly like the previous (iPhone 4). And mocking the customers for buying it, to top it off.

So it makes perfect sense to now slam Samsung in the same way that Apple gets slammed at every release.

/M

[Gonzo]

@ Maggan, right and on spot, Apple gets slammed all the time

@rotten apple - It is clear now, you don't even read the reports about how hard and badly criticised is apple when they release a new phone, clearly you assume things, but if a 64 bit processor that got the whole industry with their plants down, a phenomenal camera ( don't fall for specs please), finger scan and a completely new OS are not enough for you… then I guess nothing will ever be.

@ John Fischer - Funny .

[cornelius]

I know this is off-topic, but apparently Nokia's Lumia phones use a certain operating system that leaks data to the US gouvernment.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2330753/nokia-is-accused-of-leaking-finnish-data-to-the-us

[tontridge]

The new galaxy S5 is the best new phone ever made, it is the fastest and best and has a heart beat monitor and I can use it to control my tv when im home and the air conditioning in the office when im there. Man what a great new phone, im lining up for april the eleventh right now. Its the greatest phone ever invented and its all android man. anyone that doesnt realize that samsung is the future and all other phone companies including micro soft is dead then bad luck. Samsung phones are the best in the world forever.man.

[RottenApple]

@Gonzo:

"It is clear now, you don't even read the reports about how hard and badly criticised is apple when they release a new phone, clearly you assume things, but if a 64 bit processor that got the whole industry with their plants down, a phenomenal camera ( don't fall for specs please), finger scan and a completely new OS are not enough for you… then I guess nothing will ever be. "

Nothing what's there is as great as it sounds. The 'new OS' is also available for the old phones, the 64 bit part of the CPU is close to useless for the time being - especially with a measly 1 GB of RAM - and the fingerprint scanner won't be a stand-out feature for much longer. So yeah, truly outstanding work by Apple to just put in the latest 'must have' developments that everybody else will put in, too.

The only advantage Apple has is that they release their phone three months before the competition because they are on a different cycle.

[WonTheLottery]

@Gonzo

When iPhones have > 4Gb of RAM I'll be impressed with their 64-bit processors. At this moment they have 1Gb of RAM and a gazillion 32-bit apps.

A 'phenomenal camera'? You really think so? You have very low expectations!

Given the way North American OS's are feeding data to the NSA I'm not sure I want my smartphone to be collecting biometric data either!

[WonTheLottery]

@Baron95
"Apple, on the other hand is only a few months from playing "the card that trumps all cards" - large screen size phones."

I think you're right that Apple will launch large screen iPhones soon. It must be thoroughly galling for an innovative company like Samsung to have their designs slavishly copied in that way.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi everybody

great comments please keep them coming!

cornelius - haha love that yes... At least the heyday of the hegemony of the Evil Empire is now past. Windows will continue to shrink. It will never gain the relevance on tablets and will never recover to the 12% it once had in smartphones. How long will it still rule notebooks depends on mostly Chrome but desktops they may hold till the end of the decade. By then desktops will be as relevant as mini computers are today haha

Kevin - thanks yeah probably true. For me it was news, I had been travelling in Africa past two weeks and have had very little online ability on reasonably fast and reliable connections so I was a bit behind on my monitoring of the industry.

Baron95 - I report on what data I can find. Android will all be lumped together into the foreseeable future.

Mike - yeah I remember it used to be possible with PDAs and early smartphones that had IR data transfer ability but as far as I know it didn't come out of the box, you had to do some coding or install some software to tweak the IR transmitter to talk to the TV. Now it seems - but I don't know for sure - that this is baked into Galaxy S5. Would be nice... but not exactly a killer app haha

Earendil - haha good term 'elopted it'.. about the going back. I still am 100% certain Microsoft didn't plan it this way. The Nokia Lumia disaster was Elop's private little fantasy that at some point got corrupted (come to the Dark Side, Luke) by his 25 million dollar bonus. But Microsoft ie Ballmer at the time would not have sanctioned this plan of how to wreck Nokia so badly that Microsoft has to come in and buy it. Microsoft would have preferred to have Nokia as an independent slave, taking 5% o 10% profit margins on the hardware and paying Microsoft massive royalties into perpetuity where they could make 30% to 50% profit margins on the software. So while Elop did act like a loyal Microsoftian, he was acting solo and this outcome has been 'bad' for Microsoft. Not the worst possible but bad. And Elop is not seen as a hero. Exhibit 1 he didn't get CEO job after very long search. If this was heroic behavior, Elop would have been named quickly as the new CEO. And what level compensation will he be getting? A downgrade after Nokia CEO job. What level of independence? He was exceptionally independent as CEO at Nokia but now he'll be scrutinized closely by a new CEO who doesn't trust Elop and may even fear Elop may try to undermine him. Elop will find all sorts of frustrations internally at Microsoft. And then he'll make his customary blunders and keep producing disappointing results and be replaced at Devices Head by someone more competent. That is when Elop decides to leave Microsoft for 'personal reasons'... He'll get a glowing public farewell but nobody will ever hire him for anything meaningful anymore

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Gonzo]

@ WonTheLottery

A 'phenomenal camera'? You really think so? You have very low expectations!

Tech talks, please enjoy the deepest tech analysis and review about each part of the iPhone 5S by

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review

I hope you have the same level of technical understanding to at least refute it and discuss the camera properly.

Simple, isn't it? Now prove Anand wrong, he would love to read your arguments demonstrating the low expectations about the camera.

[Gonzo]

@RottenApple
Nothing what's there is as great as it sounds. The 'new OS' is also available for the old phones, the 64 bit part of the CPU is close to useless for the time being - especially with a measly 1 GB of RAM - and the fingerprint scanner won't be a stand-out feature for much longer. So yeah, truly outstanding work by Apple to just put in the latest 'must have' developments that everybody else will put in, too.
The only advantage Apple has is that they release their phone three months before the competition because they are on a different cycle.
---------
Man ! Sometimes… is it jealousy?

1- The 'new OS' is also available for the old phones.

-YES ! Amazing, how does Kitkat work in a S3 ? What's the problem here, apple's durability is unique.

--------

2- the 64 bit part of the CPU is close to useless for the time being

-WOW, this one shines. The invention of the pocket PC first step and you can't see it, just like Ballmer laughing at the first iPhone lack of keyboard and being useless
Anandtech with you too, urgently .

---------

3- The only advantage Apple has is that they release their phone three months before the competition because they are on a different cycle.

-AMAZING and ABSURD.
So why Samsung doesn't release it first? Simple, they wait and then copycat… thanks for making it crystal clear.

And please be objective. September 15/2013 - iphone 5S …. April 15/2014 - S5

is it 7 months or I counted wrong?

-------

4- Apple to just put in the latest 'must have' developments that everybody else will put in, too.

-Please read your comment and think carefully… or rephrase to: Apple innovates and 7 months later others take those innovations and put in their innovative phones…. Exceptionally funny, this one tells it all

[John Fischer]

The camera is one of the reasons i upgraded to a 5s, it is a huge improvement from the predecessor, a superb camera, on its own or as phone camera.

Many people are easily fooled due to specifications, some others just plain hate of a particular company, it beats me, strange attitude.

In this case, when someone says that this is a bad camera for those who have low expectations it is clear to me that the person is either a troll or have no clue about photography.

A truck might come with 400 HP, but that doesn't mean is faster than a Porsche with 250 HP, specifications just tell a bit of the story, in the case of cameras, most people are easily fooled with megapixels... More is better, far, far, far from truth.

Say what you want about screen size or something else, you might be right, but not about this camera, one of the best out there, in the smartphone arena.

[RottenApple]

@Gonzo:

Bravo for regurgitating Apple's advertising blurb.

First, there's a downside to Apple's OS upgrades: planned obsolescence of older devices that can't be upgraded anymore. Apple users are basically forced to upgrade every 2 or 3 years or risk getting left out of the game completely. I still can use my by now 4 year old HTC Desire, even when running on Android 2.3 and still install most new apps - except for modern games, of course, because the hardware is simply too weak. With Apple practically insisting that developers use iOS 7 features in their apps, it's essentially bye-bye to the iPhone 3GS. OS version is not everything.

First, no matter how the Apple fanbois spin it, for current day smartphones 64 bit is a completely and utterly useless feature. There's nothing that even can make the slightest use of it.

Apple neither innovated nor invented here. The 64 bit specifications have been on the table for quite some time and instead of making a product that truly shows the benefits of 64 bit it was merely used as a marketing gimmick.

Third, it's strange. When Apple innovates and Samsung follows it's copycatting. But if Apple is forced to follow the rest of the industry it's a 'smart move'. Different release cycles inevitably mean that someone has to release a certain feature first. I'd say good for the competitor who can immediately catch up. Samsung can do it. Apple clearly can't as the booming phablet market shows. This was completely missed by them when Samsung innovated.
To sum it up: Action is good, instant reaction to the competition is essential. That's why Samsung is so successful.

Fourth, Apple did not innovate. It's not innovation to use some technology that's ready in a product. That's mere application. Innovation means to invent new usage scenarios. The original iPhone was innovative, all follow ups have merely been iterative, updating the product to the latest technology. The Samsung Galaxy Note was innovative because it found new usage scenarios for the things it perfectly combined. A fingerprint scanner is not innovative. Innovation would be to find some use for it outside the tried and true security applications.

And here's the biggest failing of the Apple crowd: You have no clue what 'innovation' actually means! Apple hasn't innovated for years now.

(Oh, and before anyone asks, no Samsung's Galaxy line is as far from being innovative as the iPhone line has been for half a decade now.)