Such a blah !

I had enough of this brand war over the smart phones. Whats more ridiculous than the actual war is the dirty food fight between brand fans on the social media. Everybody has a right to have an opinion. I don't deny that. But why force it over others ?!

First things first, I am not a brand fanatic. Niether is this a pro-Apple blog.
This blog post is about my personal opinion on the ongoing smartphone wars and my perception about the two brands.

My respect for Apple Inc comes from what Apple has given the world. The 3 major breakthroughs.... Desktop Computers, Animation movies and MP3 Music Players. All of which have changed the world and the way we live today. And offcoarse the 4th one being the iPhone. I have not put that in the list yet , becasue thats what this blog is all about!

I really admire Samsung Corp for what it has achieved in the past decade. The growth has been exponential. Today its a leading brand in probably every consumer electronic product that we know of. Same holds true for Smart phones. The first time I heard good reviews about Samsung phones is almost 6-7 years back. It was my uncle, who was in the Business of cell phones, seemed impressed with Samsung . He always mentioned that they hardly got any customer complaints for Samsung products, unlike Nokia which at that time had a major share in Cellphone market. Last week Samsung ended Nokia's 14 year reign as the largest cellphone manufacturer ! One of the major factors for Nokia downfall was undoubtedly Samsung. The other reason being Nokia's inability to innovate, I presume.

Now that you know I am not biased, lets get to the point ! So what makes the iPhone one of the largest selling phones and one of the most popular products around the world?  What is about it that people are so crazy about ? Lets go 10 years back in time, when Apple's first portable MP3 player was released, which blew away everyone. In the age of discmans and cd players, Apple gave us iPod ! Somethign interesting to note is the fact that Apple was not the first one to make a portable MP3 player. There were few of them already. But Apple made the best! Just like Apple was not the first one to make a Desktop computer, but it made the Desktop computer for everyone ! It made the best Desktop Computer of that age !

I sutdied a subject called “User Interface Design” duirng my Engineering course. The subject delt mainly with Dos and Donts of User Interface Design for any electronic equipment/system meant to be opearted by humans. User interface almost determines the success or failure of a product. Years of research have proved that the products that are easier to use and learn are most likely to be succesful in market, over the others. Apple understands this very well and this can be seen in every product it has made so far. The ease of use ! Ipod had everything that one wanted from a music player. It was small/portable, it lasted long , it played great quality music and it was so easy to use ! The click wheel is what made the ipod an ipod !

Jobs qouted “Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they're really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.” on the design of the iPod, as quoted in Newsweek (14 October 2006) .

Each generation of Ipod just got better than the previous one. When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone in 2007, iPod already had a 100 Million fan customers ! What gave some billion people goosebumps is the fact that , the iPod was going to double as a phone !

I simply can't describe how iPhone was way ahead of all other phones at that age. You gotta see the following videos.

Look at the smartphones of that time. One probabaly had to take a course to learn how to use them. 

But not Apple. Steve Jobs once qouted "You‘ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology - not the other way around." If you watch few vidoes of the making of the Macintosh, or the early days of the animation company Next, or the launch of iPod, you will observe one comman trait in thier approch towards building any product. They always start the user interface, design and look of the end product and work thier way backwards into technology. The breakthroughs in the design, the software and the hardware were beacuse they were commited in making that visionary end product.

Remember, iPhone was not the first complete touch screen phone. There were already a couple of them. But iPhone was the best of the age and way ahead of others in terms of technological edge ! Apple filed more than 200 patent applications related to the touch screen, the OS , the designs and all the other breaktrough technologies that went behind making the iPhone. iPhone clearly redifined the term smartphone. It was magical !

Now coming to Samsung. Not that I say they didn't make great phones, but you gotta be kidding if you say that the Samsung phones were not copied from iPhone. Yes copied, not inspired.

Take a look at the following pictures of the timeline of the Samsung phones.

And the same goes for tablets.

“Samsung chose to copy Apple, not to innovate,” said Apple when it requested an injunction against the company’s Galaxy S 4G phone and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in July of 2011. “The message that Samsung conveys to consumers with its imitative smartphone design is simple: ‘It’s just like an iPhone.’ Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet sends a similar message: ‘It’s just like an iPad.’”

I don't deny the fact that today Samsung makes great smartphones today. The phone might be able to do a lot more than iPhone does. Its just that they dont have my respect ! Its just so wannabe. It is like it is for screaming for attention, saying “Hey look at me, I look just like an iPhone. I can do everything that an iPhone does and plus more ! I got a biggg screen. You can ditch your TV and hang me on the wall. And I am cheaper !” Infact even the commercial that Samsung that came up with recently, is so wannabe. It shows people queued up for iPhone5 and amongst them are few Samsung users who wasted hours in the queue just flaunt their phones..Soooo fucking Wannabe ! ( I couldn't help but notice that super gay touch-to-transffer feature ! Not cool !)

My point is why do you even show up there in front of the queue if you are so fucking happy with your phones ! Honestly we don't really care even if you can control a Mars rover with the Samsung/Android phone.

Okay that was little rude! Samsung ... boss... you make great phones... stop being a bitch and create your own fucking identity. You don't need to be better than an iPhone to be a good phone. When will you understand that ? And learn to give some credit to people who put so much into RnD of the original product, whom you blindly aped and now cashing tons of moolah !

Android, being open source, obviously has an edge over IOS. Things change quicker in a open source platform. I like open source platforms. In fact this blog post is being written using a open source doc editor on an open source OS Ubuntu. But ubuntu never claims it is faster then Windows, though it is way ahead of Windows in reality. Ubuntu competes with itself. It tries to be better than its previous version. Thats why it has our respect. Same goes with the iPhone.  iPhone5... they never started off to make a phone that is better than all the andorid phones in the market.

Today I watched another video where Jelly bean was being compared to IOS6.

The host had sadistic smile as he explained how IOS has not been flexible in terms of customization, adding features blah blah blah. I wonder if he has ever heard of jailbreaking. I use a jailbroken iPhone where you can pretty much customize everything and anything. I could go on and on.

One last thing. All the people who queue up in front of thousands of Apple stores everytime during the release of newer iPhone, they do it just for sheer love of it. I would do it if I got a chance. Not that we can't buy a cheaper (and bigger) Just-like-an-iPhone Samung phone !