Samsung’s Galaxy S10 family of handsets are picking up critical acclaim as the reviews start to come out, and rightly so. The South Korean company has packed each handset with a wish list of features to keep the Galaxy brand name at the cutting edge of smartphone design, but that’s not without issue.
It’s worth nothing that Samsung’s designers did not go all-out on the handsets, there are compromises including slower RAM chips and of course the less expensive Galaxy S10e has more compromises than the Galaxy S10 Plus, and all the S10 units are missing on the flexible screen technology of the Galaxy Fold.
Let’s be honest, there is always something ‘better’ just around the corner. Living on the cutting edge means balancing the ‘brand new’ with ‘but it’s missing this little boost’. For example if you want your handset with the faster RAM, hold on a few months for the Galaxy Note 10. Also, if you want a phone with rock solid software, you might prefer a handset that has been tested by millions of people alongside the manufacturer’s testing laboratory.
Once any handset gets out into the real world, the massive increase in usage of production handsets (as opposed to a few thousand preproduction test units) will likely show up some flaws. Even more likely will be a software update to address these issues in the first month. HMD Global is working on one for the recently released Nokia 9 PureView, and I’ve no doubt that Samsung will address the high battery drain of the in-display fingerprint reader with an over the air update.
For consumers how want to be ‘first’ with a new handset, this is seen as a fine trade-off, but not everyone is comfortable. That’s why more manufactures are ensuring that features in the latest handsets are ‘back ported’ as much as possible to previous handsets. To stay with the Galaxy example, Samsung has ported the choice of wide/narrow angle selfies that is present in the Galaxy S10 software back to the Galaxy S9. These features will show up in over-the-air updates (along with the monthly security updates to the OS provided by Google).
That means that Galaxy S9 users are not forced into an upgrade to pick up the latest software features of the Galaxy S10. In a world where smartphones are updated yearly, but typical contracts run for two years, it’s not always about the latest hardware, it’s about a stable platform.
Of course you still need to get the hardware right, software is not going to fix a badly aligned camera lens, but as long as the construction and physical decisions are well-tested, software can deal with the rest. The key is to be open and honest about issues when they arrive, to communicate with customers the issues and proposed timetable of fixes,, and to promote a long and happy ice of software fixes and updates to project confidence in the long-term life of a smartphone.
Acknowledge the risk, support those who enjoy the risk in the first few weeks, and support updates and new features for as long as possible.
Ask yourself, does your smartphone manufacturer do that?
Now read about the secrets found inside the Galaxy S10 construction…
