back to article New Samsung chief: I want SOFTWARE

Samsung is going to have to do better in software if it wants to stay up near the top of the tech industry, its new CEO said today. "Samsung needs to improve its competitiveness in software, and is now at a crossroads. To become the top global technology company, we need to challenge and innovate continuously. I will give more …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They'll be fine...

    ...once they figure out whose software they want to copy.

    1. g e
      FAIL

      Re: They'll be fine...

      Oh yeah cos Apple 'innovate', we all forgot that one, if that's what you call rearranging other people's innovations in a different order and charging 30% on it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: They'll be fine...

        There I fixed it for you:

        "Oh yeah cos Apple 'innovate', we all forgot that one, if that's what you call rearranging other people's innovations _so that they work_ and charging 30% on it."

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: They'll be fine...

        Was the original iPhone OS not innovative then?

        I suggest you have a look at the competition back then.

        Before iPhone 1:

        1. Symbian phones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson, mostly non touch screen keypad phones. Clunky UI. Touchscreen phones used menus and stylus input.

        2. Windows Mobile and Smartphone. Two platforms, WM was stylus orientated and used the Start Menu design paradigm. Smartphone was similar to Symbian S60.

        3. Blackberry. Similar to Symbian. Button based.

        4. Android was not around, but prototypes were looking like Blackberry phones.

        After iPhone:

        Android - multitouch UI

        WebOS - multitouch UI

        WP7 - multitouch UI

        etc.

        How can a phone OS that drastically changes the smartphone industry not be innovative?

  2. g e
    Mushroom

    They also need

    To make the fecking homescreen(s) on the S3 rotate when the phone's held in portrait mode.

    You know, like IN A CAR IN A WINDSCREEN MOUNT!

    Jeepers you'd think they'd have nailed that one by now. Tried a bunch of other launchers (had one on the Desire HD that did this) but didn't like them or they displayed stuff a bit oddly, and I actually quite like Touchwiz.

    1. David Hicks
      FAIL

      Re: They also need

      Yeah, the Note does this too. It's a bit weird, when most of the apps seem to be able to handle it fine, but you have to deal with a sideways home screen.

      Andoid is very slick now, but the multi-tasking interfaces do seem a little like a step backward from Maemo.

      If they're looking for a backup OS, maybe they could get more fully behind Tizen? I know, I know, that's just wishful thinking....

    2. chris 27

      Re: They also need

      Check out some of the screen rotate apps on the market that will rotate the home screen for you. I use one by sugarmintcandy, not the greatest app in the world, but mighty useful and really simple.

      My landscape dock for my galaxy nexus now rotates the home screen automatically when inserted after the update to 4.0.4, it could be the same bug if you have 4.0.3 or 4.0.2 on the S3.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Hey @g e

      It's open source, why don't you do it yourself?

      The cheek of some people these days..

  3. Nick Ryan Silver badge

    Easy!

    1) Shoot, with prejudice, every one of the designers and management involved with Samsung Kies.

    2) Release software updates for all phones last manufactured in the last (arbitrary number) 5 years. If this gets expensive to support then it should teach them to keep things simple and to not produce so many damn phones that are often indistinguishable from each other.

    3) Sync everything online and/or to a local computer. Yes, this may require a replacement to Kies but with the previous team dead it'd be hard to do a worse job.

    1. Anonymous Coward 101
      FAIL

      Re: Easy!

      I was going to say something about Kies but you beat me. I particularly love the badly translated dialogue box warnings. Is Samsung a major multinational conglomerate or a Chinese crapware vendor?

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: Easy!

        Kies... it's like SonicStage Redux

    2. I'm Brian and so's my wife

      Re: Easy!

      I have a strong dislike of Kies & I couldn't agree more with your comment.

      Does anyone else suffering weird window re-sizing problems? Of all of my installed applications, this is the only one that does such strange things when I try to resize it.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Getting Tomatoes off Eyes Could Help

    I once offered a software technology of mine to Samsung, Apple and a few other companies by email. From most of them I got zero reply whatsoever.

    I got a reply from the Apple CTO who wrote that my tech was kind of interesting, but that it would not fit nicely into their technology architecture. He even took the time to respond to some more emails regarding related tech.

    I also got a reply from Samsung who told me that "we are a Korean company and therefore have our own R&D department, so we don't need your tech". They did not write anything substantial like Apple did, just their assertion of allmightyness.

    So, a bunch of complacent muppets, it seems.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Getting Tomatoes off Eyes Could Help

      Sounds like your tech was not as amazing as you thought it was since no one was interested.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Getting Tomatoes off Eyes Could Help

        Well, I am of course not the right person to judge the quality of my invention, but I find it interesting that the CTO of Apple responded at all to a little guy like me. I take it as an indication that my technology was not entirely useless or duplicate.

        1. Justin Clements
          Thumb Up

          Re: Getting Tomatoes off Eyes Could Help

          Good on ya Handle!

          So AC, what interesting presentations have you made to the likes of Apple and Samsung recently? Any? Ever? Of course not, because you're a dull little keyboard warrior with a job in security, night security at a mall probably.

  5. Alan Bourke

    Kies

    I'm with Nick Ryan. Kies is nearly as bad as Windows iTunes. We want tight, native code applications for phone sync not stupid, fat me-too Java abominations.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      Re: Kies

      Can't you do C++ with Bada ??

  6. Ian Johnston Silver badge
    FAIL

    I'll believe it when I see it.

    I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, which work bought for me in December. The hardware is lovely, but teh software is buggy as hell. The first thing it did, when switched on new and out of the box, was announce that Samsung Social Centre had crashed, with a notification which could only be removed by power-cycling. Despite promises at the time, Samsung seem to have decided not to port ICS to it. There was a Honeycomb OTA update in February, the most obvious effect of which was to reduce meantime between browser crashes from ten minutes to five minutes.

    Overall the software is so shite that I have relegated the Tab to use as an occasional picture frame (a six hundred quid picture frame) and bought a NOS Eee PC 901 instead. It's a quarter of the price and with Lubuntu does /everything/ better than the Tab.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: I'll believe it when I see it.

      Are you sure its not a hardware issue? My Tab 10.1 behaves itself. Sounds like you should get your money back since as you have described it, it is not fit for the purpose for which it was sold.

  7. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Well...

    Perhaps they could open up a European R&D centre, there should be a few people from Nokia in between jobs. Just make sure they don't hire anyone from Nokia's management.

  8. Tegne
    Thumb Down

    It's not just the smartphone software they need to fix

    There's a lot of shoddy software on their other hardware offerings like their SMART TV interfaces.

    1. David Kelly 2

      Re: It's not just the smartphone software they need to fix

      I have a Samsung 46C8000 3D LCD TV that was delivered new with a defective motherboard. Then they shipped the wrong replacement the first time. Guess it has worked as well as it is supposed to since no matter it is easy to crash in the Netflix app. Just fast forward to the end of a movie and hit PLAY, usually, not always the TV will crash and turn itself off.

  9. Dave 126 Silver badge
    Happy

    >fast forward to the end of a movie and hit PLAY

    Whilst I admire your exhaustive testing, under what circumstances would you do that?

  10. Ken Hagan Gold badge
    Linux

    Fallback position

    "Android was a winning operating system for Samsung's phones and tablets, but it makes sense for the company to make sure it has a fallback."

    If Android was truly FOSS, you wouldn't need a fallback because no-one could take Android away from you.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Some Samsung Whinges

    As someone currently working for a supplier and therefore for Samsung, I can honestly say that they are the most awkward PITA's to work for I have ever encountered. They have zero effective project management - I mean, they don't even have a list of features they want put in - you find out they want something about two days before some vital deadline so end up working 48 hours straight to get it to them. They their suppliers to do ALL the work on THEIR devices so that if it goes wrong, they have someone to blame, and the real reason it goes wrong is the utterly ineffectual management.

    The SS staff are permanently exhausted as they work ridiculous hours, and you hardly ever meet anyone who is actually competent as all the good ones are promoted to management, leaving a bunch of 25yr old's to deal with suppliers, and because of their lack of experience really don't do a good job.

    How this company came to be #1 in phones is beyond me, and yet, there they are! I guess this headless chicken approach works when you suppliers are so desperate for the job they work their employees to the grave, and firefight rather than plan.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Many have wondered?

    "Many have wondered if Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility will put it into the hardware game, which could change the stakes for its current hardware partners".

    The same people who don't ever wonder if MS sourcing its own hardware might cut into their own OEM channel.

    "Android is also fighting patent battles on many fronts through its various hardware partners, so it would be prudent to have the option to drop the operating system"

    I don't know any other industry where you can lean on your competitors customers and virtually extort revenue out of them for selling other peoples software - and it's perfectly legal.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Many have wondered?

      MS seems to be able to extort money from Android phone manufacturers on the basis of FAT file format support in Linux. The recent Oracle court decision re APIs has me wondering whether there is any longer any strength in that threat from MS.

  13. Alan Brown Silver badge

    FAT filesystems

    One question: WHY?

    Even winblows machines can read ext2/3 on the sd cards if necessary - and FAT is an abomination which should never have left 160k floppy disks.

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