Sorry, Samsung. Seems nobody is immune to peak smartphone Smartphones are experiencing their first ever recession, and Samsung is feeling the pain too. The electronics giant lowered its outlook for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 yesterday, citing "mounting macro uncertainties". It warned that revenue would be down 11 per cent and operating profit down 29 per cent year on year. …
Raising prices every year for the same tech.
Stupidly priced accessories and covers
Pure big company greed that has bitten the big boys in the ass.
Also, refusing warranty claims for tripping the Knox fuse hasn't gone down well either. I will certainly look elsewhere next time.
I haven't felt the need the root my Samsung, though occasionally I find out that some small function I would like to have (eg, stop charging automatically when the battery gets to 90%, an option Sony phones had) requires rooting. Now I want to make a warranty claim (OLED screen burn due to a particular app) I'm glad I've not rooted it. The burn in artifacts are only noticeable against bright areas of screen, but hey, it was a pricey phone and so it should be spot on. And I won't be using that app in bright sunlight for extended periods again to prevent a recurrence. I'm sold on OLED and I won't go back to screens that can't display properly black blacks.
Samsung's service under warranty procedure sounds fairly painless - I merely contact a nearby Samsung service centre in advance so that they have the parts, and then it'll be done in a few hours when I call in. There are some good pubs nearby. *If* it works out like that, it's definitely a plus point for Samsung over a Chinese competitor without the service network.
As regards this article, I bought an S8 ten months after its release from (not just fulfilled by) Amazon.co.uk for a few hundred quid less that it was priced at launch (making it much the same price as an inferior OnePlus 6T). It was still a lot of money, but my rationale was to take good care of it (buy waterproof phone, get good case, glass screen protector, don't let it get too hot, be respectful of the battery by at least trying to keep it between 40% and 90%) because I'm intending to keep it for a few years. Samsung may well get my money again, but it'll be in a few years time.
@Dave 126
Each to their own, but you're having to mollycoddle your phone, and if you keep it for a few more years it'll be worth zip secondhand. I used to do that. But some years back Sammy's relentless flagship price rises (even a year after launch) caused me to give up the battle of trying to buy and keep premium phones for years, and I moved to a Chinese brand, and haven't looked back.
Because Chinese phones generally tend to have larger batteries and more aggressive power management they don't need charging anything like as often as the Sammy and Apple devices, so battery longevity should be better, but even so I sell second hand after fourteen months and have a new one. The buyer gets a decent phone in great condition with a good few years life expectancy, I get a decent price, and I'm almost always running a current technology phone under retailer warranty. If I lose or break it then my losses are more limited than if I'm running a premium brand phone.
Give it a try when you do decide to trade out of your existing phone - I was very impressed by the value and build quality coming out from the better Chinese makers. Xiaomi's my current brand of choice, but as they've just established a European official presence they might be poor value soon - but if they make that mistake there's plenty of other competent makers to take their place. Curiously enough I've found UK based grey importers selling on Ebay to be more trustworthy than Amazon itself for these types of purchase.
My smart phone recently died and I've upgraded to the latest in 2G technology - a Doro clam phone for £45. Does everything I need and only needs charging once a week. I don't miss any of the bloatware or the poor battery life of the Android. As for accessing the internet etc, that's what my Linux PC with a big monitor is for.
I've upgraded to the latest in 2G technology - a Doro clam phone for £45. Does everything I need and only needs charging once a week.
My admittedly much more expensive £260 Xiaomi Pocophone offers a full fat smartphone experience, and is currently showing 40% remaining charge after running for 5 days and 17 hours, albeit being in flight mode during sleep hours. Last charge lasted 8 days and sixteen hours. Obviously I'm a very light user, but if you want a capable Android with a long battery life, it is just a case of buying carefully and avoiding the need to constantly fondle the blasted device..
I don't miss ......the poor battery life of the Android
You were saying?
I was very much in the vanguard of smart devices and loved having a new device every 12 months. However, when devices suddenly developed 24 month contracts that was it for me and i suspect many others. Whilst i looked at the new shiny it couldn't tempt me to part with all the extra moolah. It simply wasn't a good enough proposition.
I for one will definitely not be returning to the 12 month upgrade cycle whilst the cost of a handset is nigh on a thousand pounds. Thats a holiday where i live!!!
That coupled with the fact that my S7 edge does all i need it to means that an amazing device at a reasonable cost (12 months contract MAX) is what its going to take to get me back on board.
Any reason you go for phones on contract? Credit is available from companies other than network operators. With a SIM-Only rolling monthly contract you're not tied to the network operator beyond a month and can easily negotiate a better deal for data and calls. Buying the phone ourltrifht means you're protected by the Sales of Goods Act, so a handset suffering from poor workmanship or materials can be immediately exchanged for what you paid for it - no waiting a fortnight for it to be repaired on the behalf of the network operator.
I bought a Galaxy S8 outright when the S9 had been announced, saving about £350 from its original price.
most sales become replacement sales for elderly, dieing kit
Generally yes, but car makers in particular have got the practice of early and irrational replacement down to a fine art. Few new buyers purchase for cash and run the car for its reliable and economic service life*, with most preferring to pay (exorbitant) lease plan fees, and have a new car every one to four years, even though the technical improvements over that time period will be paltry.
I suspect many people are running sim-free handsets on airtime only contracts, and whilst they congratulate themselves for their financial wisdom there, they are happily paying out many hundreds of pounds a month for a car they'll never own, perpetually paying the asset owner's depreciation and margin in return for always having a car that isn't embarrassingly old - like more than three or four years. And the curious thing, this applies to cheap as well as expensive motors, and for dull, non-aspirational brands as much as premium ones. I'm sure Apple would like some of that motor industry secret sauce.
* Tightwads like me excepted. Buy new - always through a car broker - sell when I conclude that there's a credible risk I'll need to spend several thousand quid on multiple major parts, perhaps at 175,000 miles, depending how the car is running.
Not phones. The DRAM market is somewhat depressed now, but they should still be able to print a lot of cash with flash until all those huge Chinese fabs come online in a couple years and send prices plummeting (good for us, not good for Samsung)
Never mind the market. I'm depressed. The excitement of a new phone is no more. I remember unboxing my first ever Android phone and my first transition phone from the dying Nokia. It was the HTC Desire and it was awesome. Now its just another black candy bar phone after another, but where else can they go from that. All I really need now is a lot better battery life.
And a headphone jack. Don't forget the headphone jack. And a return to removable batteries would be nice - I've found I need a new battery more often than I've dropped my phone in two metres of water.
Also preferably not adding a whole new meaning to "we always listen to our customers", like Huawei.
Phones are "good enough" now. The problem is that batteries degrade. So last year I bought one of the last premium phones with a battery (and headphone jack!) - an LG V20. I even bought that used so it was very cheap, and bought a couple of new batteries for it. I now don't plan to change my phone for two or three years unless I break it, it fails or 5G becomes available, cheap and desirable. I'm now out of the new phone market for a while and I suspect many people are.
Three years? My main computer for work is 12 year sold and only now being replaced due to it becoming unreliable ( I suspect crack in motherboard). By phone is a S3 which is 6 years old and there is just one app I cannot get to work on it, and only now do I consider replacing it since one of the buttons are becoming unreliable. The last 5 years have been about massively promoted incremental changes and no major hardware changes, unless you count batteries no longer being replaceable.
The last 5 years have been about massively promoted incremental changes and no major hardware changes, unless you count batteries no longer being replaceable.
Cumulatively they do add up, though. A carefully chosen mid range phone now has a better screen than a two-generation old premium handset, it has an equivalent camera, far better battery life, should have the far more robust USB C connector, better bluetooth and faster wireless connection, good 4G speeds, be far more responsive, and have greater storage.
For the mid-range you'd be pushed to get water proofing, wireless charging, but it'll also be easier to avoid nasties like non micro SD slot, or no 3.5mm port.
Networks failed to deliver anything close to the true potential of 3G and 4G. Right now most users say that 5G download / upload speeds are no better than their old 4G LTE networks. Obviously the key attraction of 5G is capacity rather than speed.. because the capacity will be greater phone companies will be more able to meet their bandwidth demands, which they patently can't with 4G. But anyone who believes that throttling and metering won't return are naïve.
It's been a cycle of yo-yoing from metered to unlimited to metered over the last 15 years or so.. the promise of giving something I used to get for a fraction of the price if I buy a $1000 phone? Yeah.. right.
OK, what kind of a "nobody" is that? Does it apply also to those vendors who price a phone as working technology rather than a fashion statement?
Would be kind-of delicious if Huawei turned out to be eating their lunch. Though I'd settle for others like Moto, whose G has served me nicely for the last few years.
Register presents Apple as being lazy and greedy, but takes pity on Samsung. That is 180º wrong. The only innovations in this space are from high-end features. Thus we see the high-end new products attracting a high price. For Apple you can still buy the previous models. The truth is there is little innovation to be made in this space anymore. Apple did such a good job of innovation 10 years ago, that not much else could be done.
Along come Samsung and others. Samsung really is greedy and wants to take over the whole world. Samsung is lazy. It copies Apple. There are no famous names at Samsung, like at Apple and Microsoft, IBM, DEC, Burroughs, Unisys, etc. Samsung let others innovate and then copy. Register puts it down to Samsung not being dependent on phones, but they can cross-subsidise from other markets.
Anything based on Android is also subsidised by advertising. They collect the data on you and make you the product.
These indeed are concerning times for anyone involved in the IT industry. What should be very helpful to mankind is becoming a millstone around our neck.
Stopped at the Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini.
When you start putting back things like removable batteries, not terminating Android version upgrades a year after release, putting the headphone ports back in, and none of the ridiculous race-to-the-uncomfortably-thin/fragile/irreparable, then maybe we can talk. Oh, and stop changing the USB connector.
Oh, and make it a couple of hundred quid, rather than several week's wages.
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