What was wrong with Samsung’s Galaxy S4 keynote? Everything.

March 15th, 2013

Samsung really screwed up with its Galaxy S4 presentation. It was absolutely horrible and full of bad taste to the point it was sad. If they’d learn one thing from Apple, that should be product keynotes. Clearly, they didn’t.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Keynote
Since the beginning the keynote was utterly bad. Sadly, the more it progressed the worse it got.

There was a lack of focus on product. Key features (eg: CPU) weren’t announced at all while the ones which actually did, were presented in a truly ambiguous fashion. It was all a big performance (tap dancing kid, really?)—only without substance. In certain parts it looked like the whole show was taken directly from the Jersey Shore series. Ouch.

Compared to the PS4 keynote, Samsung failed even by Sony’s standards. The phone got barely introduced and demoed in a meaningful way. (Forget Broadway for a moment, folks.)

Samsung showed its true (horrendous) culture today—that it has no culture, no passion for building great products and, of course, no taste. Brute force advertising won’t get you far in the long run, though.

Regarding the actual phone: I wasn’t amused. Nothing significant or exciting. (Hey, the early ‘00s called and want their infrared back.) After Samsung copied Apple’s industrial design, Samsung now copies Cupertino’s marketing, too. Yearly incremental updates. “Tick: Galaxy SIII, tock: Galaxy S4″—The Verge communicates it better.

Keeping this in mind, the last six months were indeed hard and raised reasonable concerns for Apple. I had my doubts (which spanned across more than 1,400 words.) But today, thanks to this keynote, I’m more sure than ever about Apple’s (and by extent, the iPhone’s) future. Thanks, Samsung, for showing your true self.

One more thing…

It’s important to point out that neither Google nor Android got mentioned even once during the keynote. It’s the start of The Great Android Cold War—manufacturers like Samsung and HTC want to differentiate from Google’s content and apps monopoly by creating their own stores and OS features and to ditch native Android ones. It wasn’t the first time ‘Android’ didn’t come up in a keynote; HTC called it first at their HTC One introduction. Don’t be surprised if Samsung and HTC build, eventually, their own OSs.

Steve looks down from his buddhist iCloud and laughs, laughs, laughs.

 

Comments

  1. did we see the same keynote? I thought it was very well done. Informative AND entertaining.

    I don’t agree with your review.

  2. The keynote barely even talked about the phone itself it was just a bunch of middle aged women doing skits that showed how sexist samsung is towards women. it was poor acting and poorly executed, but i guess this poor keynote suits a poor phone.

  3. I thought the keynote was downright offensive and degrading to women! It seriously wowed me how disconnect they are.
    What they did successfully do was instill an emotion while I watched the keynote, Rage.
    It seemed like they’ve added a bunch of features for the sake of new features. In reality how well they work , only time will tell.

    I Like their hardware , but would not support a company with the philosophy / culture displayed in the keynote.

  4. Disconnected from what? Western culture? Is their main market even the west?

    What might seem horribly tacky to you might be regular comedy to them, and vice versa.

    Geez, how ethnocentric are you?

  5. OMG PLS -.-
    IT WAS NOT SEXIST WITH WOMAN, IT WAS AN AD.
    IF U AINT GOT NICE THINGS TO SAY SHUT THE HELL UP!

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