“Samsung Electronics Co. will add a pressure-sensitive display and a new high-speed charging port [USB-C] to its coming line of flagship smartphones slated to be launched in March, according to people familiar with the matter,” Jonathan Cheng reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“The success of the new phone will be an early test for Samsung’s new mobile chief, D.J. Koh, whom Samsung recently promoted in hopes that new leadership can revive the fortunes of the world’s biggest smartphone maker after two years of disappointing sales,” Cheng reports. “As part of a broader annual reshuffle at Samsung earlier this month, Mr. Koh, Samsung’s former head of mobile research and development, took over from longtime mobile chief J.K. Shin, and will now oversee mobile R&D, product planning, design, manufacturing and sales and marketing.”
MacDailyNews Take: Samsung’s “mobile R&D and design” process: Buy Apple’s latest iPhones and fire up the copiers!
“Next year’s flagship will look largely similar to the Galaxy S6 and many of the new features take cues from other handsets already available on the market,” Cheng reports. “The pressure-sensitive display, for instance, will be similar to that offered by rival Apple Inc. on the iPhone 6s earlier this year. The responsive display allows the phone to interpret different taps and touches depending on how the user presses on the touch screen.”
Cheng reports, “The new devices will go on sale in the U.S. in mid-March, these people said, after its expected announcement on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona in late February.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Samsung. Perpetually behind™.
SEE ALSO:
Slavish Apple copier Samsung announces rose gold Galaxy Note 5 – October 15, 2015
Slavish copier Samsung races to knock off Apple’s ‘3D Touch’ in Galaxy S7 – October 13, 2015
Samsung’s Galaxy S6 design looks like another iPhone knockoff – February 4, 2015
Slavish copier Samsung in talks to launch Apple Pay knockoff – December 16, 2014
Samsung to knockoff Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint scanner on Galaxy S5, sources say – February 24, 2014
Shameless Samsung’s knockoff of Apple’s Passbook goes live on some Galaxy devices – August 9, 2013
Now slavish copycat Samsung attempts to knockoff Apple’s retail stores (with video) – August 23, 2012
Samsung: Shameless slavish copiers – August 13, 2012
Apple attorney: Instead of innovating, Samsung chose to copy iPhone and iPad – July 31, 2012
Apple: Google warned Samsung against slavishly copying our products – July 25, 2012
Now Samsung slavishly copies Apple’s Mac mini – June 1, 2012
Samsung Mobile chief ‘designer’ denies that Samsung’s instinct is to slavishly copy Apple – March 23, 2012
Slavish copier Samsung shamelessly steals Apple’s iPhone 3G design – again – January 3, 2012
Slavish copier Samsung uses girl actress from iPhone 4S ad for Galaxy Tab 8.9 spot (with video) – January 2, 2012
Now Samsung’s slavishly copying Apple’s iPad television ads (with videos) – December 30, 2011
Judge: Can you tell me which is iPad and which is yours? Samsung lawyer: ‘Not at this distance your honor’ – October 14, 2011
Why are Apple’s icons on the wall of Samsung’s store? – September 24, 2011
Apple to Samsung: ‘Blatant copying is wrong’ – April 18, 2011
Apple sues Samsung for attempting to copy look and feel of iPhone, iPad – April 18, 2011
Samsung’s ‘Instinct’ is obviously to make Apple iPhone knockoffs – April 1, 2008
How in the heck will adding a touch sensitive screen help if they don’t control the software stack? Apple has both and can make sure that at least for the system and for Apple’s own stuff, touch sensitivity does something.
And once Google adds this functionality, every phone manufacturer in China will add a touch screen to their “high end” phone.
Samsung will bolt a buggy, laggy proprietary software layer on top of Android to interpret pressure from the screen. But of course, without app developers being able to tailor their apps for it, its usefulness will be limited.
Is D.J. Koh related to Lucy?
Not all Asian Americans are related by virtue of the same last name, you retarded racist. I bet you’re the one who also says all African Americans look like each other.
I am and they do!
@DJPew, calling people out on bigotry (and rightfully so, here!) would be more effective if you didn’t use “retarded” as an insult.
@Macman: Bigot-themed jokes aren’t funny. They’re lazy and hacky.
I find it interesting that some people will look at a simple question and read bad things into it which weren’t there to begin with, and then accuse the questioner of what actually came from them.
The simple answer to the question is: I don’t think so. Did you have any reason to think so?
Come on, emmyache, you’re just playing devil’s advocate, right? You can’t really be that naive? Do you think there is any non-negligible chance that Macman thinks a person with a common 3-letter name who lives in the continental U.S. is related to someone running a company in Korea? In other words, the people responding to Macman understood exactly what he was saying, and responded as it deserved.
It’s not helpful to unfairly read negative intent into innocent comments/questions. It’s also not helpful to give someone extremely unreasonable benefit of the doubt and assume all people’s intentions are absolutely pure and innocent, despite very strong evidence to the contrary.
I mistyped your name – meant to type: emmayche
Bet ya’ they call it 4D Touch just to make it sound one better better than Apple.
Maybe the 4th ‘dimension’ is haptic feedback relative to the pressure being applied?
The high speed USB-C charger sounds interesting. To get a full day’s worth of charge in less than 30 minutes beats the iPhone. The iPhone is behind in battery life.
Oh, and Jony Ive has a drug problem. He must have been totally high to allow the fugly disaster of the hump case to see the light of day. Maybe Steve will resurrect himself from the grave and kick Jony in the nuts for allowing such horrid design show that Apple is losing its way.
Oh my god! Oh my god! The sky is falling. The sky is falling. Apple is doomed. The battery case looks less elegant than other Apple products. Tim Cook and Jony Ive must be fired!
You forgot the. /s. !!!!
🙂
I’m pretty sure such a fast charge rate will shorten the life of the battery. Also LiIon cells can be very dangerous if mistreated.
With current batter tech that may be true.. However I have been reading about research that coats the cathode with a single molecule layer of graphite that greatly reduces the damage a battery receives during a fast charge.. That was earlier this year it is entirely possible that there is now a new battery tech that can handle such fast recharge times with little difference in damage compared to the current normal charge rate.
The step from R&D to large scale production can be a very long one, fraught with many hurdles. A year is an enormously optimistic timescale. If the technology can be scaled it will be a number of years before it is even considered for production. I hope I’m wrong, since I’m a big user of rechargeable cells and would welcome any improvements. I just don’t expect anything significant in the near future. Again, I hope I’m wrong.
Agreed that most new battery tech does take time to scale up. The cathode covering is simply a small modification on existing battery tech that happens to have a big effect.. Since it is not a totally new battery I don’t think it would take very long to scale compared to other new battery tech research.
Let’s face it: There is virtually nothing that can’t be copied or mimicked in some way. We should know this by now, Mac users…
None of Apple’s rivals have managed to copy being a hugely profitable business. They have not even got close.
So far, Apple has led the way with profitable music players, desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets. I suspect that Apple’s watches might be the only profitable ones out there too, but there are no reliable figures for smart watch sales from Apple or others at the moment.
Many companies have tried to copy the hardware or software, but none have replicated the business success.
Anything Apple adds to the iPhone will almost immediately be adapted to groups of Android flagship smartphones. It’s not surprising and it should be expected by now. Even if Apple had a patent to protect them, Samsung would simply reverse engineer it to get it on their flagship. Apple can’t possibly stop Android manufacturers from copying them. If there is ever a features race, Samsung will beat Apple every time in having the longest list of features. Samsung mastered that strategy long before smartphones.
I’ve always figured Samsung has this huge team of designers who independently think up features and they’re implemented on products without much restriction. I’m not sure if that’s a great thing to do but it must work pretty well for Samsung’s large line of products.
Since most of Apple’s products receive high customer satisfaction, the products probably have a good mix of feature but not everything. I suppose it depends on what the user is looking for. Having a product with lots of features that are barely used isn’t very efficient and likely complicates usage.
Using the shotgun approach to ‘new’ features across their large lineup and then polling users that buy them to gauge users’ preferences may help them figure what to put in the higher end phones.
I’m not at all surprised Samsung is going to copy the 3D Touch, heck I predicted it. Can’t really blame them though, it is a seriously significant improvement to the touch screen interface that will likely be a common features on most mid to high end phones in a few years.
I just wonder if Samsung will screw it up as badly on their first rushed attempt as they did the fingerprint sensor on the S5.
Kinda hard to make that copy argument stick with Huawei having announcing their touch sensitive screen a week before Apple [http://www.idownloadblog.com/2015/09/02/huawei-force-touch-mate-s/] and a discussion about Android having getPressure() in its API since version 1.0 [http://pocketnow.com/2015/09/07/force-touch-android-has-had-that-for-years].
The step from R&D to large scale production can be a very long one, fraught with many hurdles. A year is an enormously optimistic timescale. If the technology can be scaled it will be a number of years before it is even considered for production. I hope I’m wrong, since I’m a big user of rechargeable cells and would welcome any improvements. I just don’t expect anything significant in the near future. Again, I hope I’m wrong.
Check out candlepowerforums.com. it’s a forum dedicated to flashlights and flashlight addiction and they have a section dedicated to battery technology. Yes, we flashaholics are weird, but we keep up on battery tech.
Despair Samsung.
Despair.
Looking forward to laughing at their version of the Apple Pencil. SameDung Pen?
Ahh been waiting for Samstupid to make this announcement. What a bunch of clowns.
Fandroids, pick an f’ing side.
3D touch is either “just a long tap – what’s the big deal!” or “No, we always understood how good it was. We were, uh, just saying that because, um, uh, 64-Bit iPhones suck! LOOK AT THE MONKEY!”
Fandroids regularly talk out their ass and retcon their own nonsense.
Found an article discussing sensing pressure on screens for Android devices from back in 2011.. One point that was brought up was the possibility that actual pressure was not being measured but rather calculated based on the surface area of the ‘press’. Anyone try experimenting on Force Touch to determine if it still works if the pressed surface area doesn’t change (e.g. a really solid stylus tip).
For anyone interested in that discussion: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5871685/how-well-supported-is-pressure-sensitivity-across-android-devices
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