Tag Archives | Samsung

Samsung’s Fake Real People Remind Me of Microsoft’s Real Fake People

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 26, 2011 at 4:27 pm

AppleInsider’s Daniel Eran Dilger has posted a follow-up to my story of Samsung’s “true-life” Galaxy Tab fans who happen to be actors. To put things in perspective, he mentions Lauren, the star of a 2009 Microsoft “real person” ad who also had acting experience. (To be fair to Microsoft, the same ad campaign included other ads with non-thespian real people.) He also goes way back to a 2002 item on Microsoft’s site that seemed to be a true-life story of a Mac user being lured to Windows XP, but was really done by a freelance writer and illustrated with a stock photo.

But my favorite you-can’t-be-serious example of Microsoft marketing–and one which reminds me of the vibe of Samsung’s video–is the 2009 video explaining how to hold a Windows 7 launch party at your home. I don’t think Microsoft intended anyone to believe that its Windows 7 fans were anything but paid performers, but I’m pretty sure that Samsung’s Joan Hess and Joe Kolinski live the same planned community as these people…

No comments

Samsung’s Fake Galaxy Tab Interviews: Hey, Those Words Sound Familiar!

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 26, 2011 at 10:15 am

When I watched the video interviews with three “true-life” Galaxy Tab users that Samsung showed at its CTIA event, I was observant enough to figure out (with the help of about six minutes of Google research) that two of the users were actors and the other one works for a film-production company that counts Samsung among its clients. But I didn’t notice or detail every oddity about  them. Folks who are discussing my story on all this, both in the comments and elsewhere on the Web, are having fun pointing out other curious things about the interviews, such as the fact that “leading New York real-estate CEO Joseph Kolinski” raves about the 8.9″ Galaxy Tab even though the only 8.9″ Tabs that Samsung itself had on hand at CTIA were non-working models.

Continue Reading →

32 comments

Is Samsung’s New Galaxy Tab Fibbing About Its Figure? And About Those Galaxy Tab Fans…

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 25, 2011 at 11:47 am

At CTIA Wireless earlier this week, Samsung announced a new 10.1″ Galaxy Tab tablet–one with specs that made it thinner and lighter than the iPad 2, with the same starting price of $499. After the press event, I scurried over to the Samsung booth in hopes of getting some hands-on time with the new Tab.

When I got there, I found that the 10.1″ Tabs out on tables were the older, relatively portly version announced last month at Mobile World Congress. The new 10.1-incher (and its 8.9″ sibling) were inside glass cases, and they weren’t powered on. I also discovered that my friend Fritz Nelson of InformationWeek had beat me to the booth–and he told me that he was trying to get Samsung to give him a Tab he could hold and judge.

Continue Reading →

73 comments

Samsung’s New Galaxy Tabs: The iPad 2 Gets Well-Priced Competition

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 22, 2011 at 8:58 am

Greetings from the CTIA Wireless show in Orlando, where Samsung just announced two new Galaxy Tab tablets running Google’s Android 3.0 Honeycomb. The new version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has a 10.1″ display at 1280 by 800, a 1-GHz dual-core CPU, dual-antenna Wi-Fi, a 3-megapixel camera in the back and a 2-megapixel one up front. And at 8.6mm and 595 grams, it’s slightly thinner and slightly lighter than the surprisingly thin and light iPad 2. The Galaxy Tab 8.9 is a similar tablet with a screen that’s a bit smaller than the one on the iPad 2 rather than a bit larger.

Both Tabs will run a custom version of Honeycomb topped off with a new tablet-specific edition of Samsung’s TouchWiz interface and a bunch of Samsung services–and as usual with modified versions of Android, I wanna try it in person before I come to any conclusions about whether it makes the experience better or worse.

The most interesting thing about these new Tabs aren’t the specs–which look like what you might expect from a thoroughly modern Android-based tablet–but the pricing. The 10.1 will be available in a 16GB version for $499 and a 32GB one for $599 and will be available on June 8th; the 8.9″ will cost $469 for 16GB and $569 for 32GB and will arrive in “early summer.” Assuming no price cuts from Apple in the interim, the Tabs will provide the iPad 2 with real competition at similar price points for the first time. It’ll be fascinating to see how an Android tablet competes when the discussion is all about software, services, hardware, and the integration thereof, rather than about pricetags.

 

 

7 comments

Dear Samsung: Enough With the Tablet Teasers Already

Posted by Jared Newman on March 16, 2011 at 12:23 pm

Oh Samsung, you’re such a tease.

For a couple of weeks, you’ve been hinting at an 8.9 inch tablet, first with a press event invitation, and now with a YouTube video of some dimly-lit, stylized renderings. Just one problem: Nobody cares.

Admittedly, it was cool when you teased the original Galaxy Tab late last year. Back then, Apple’s iPad didn’t have any legitimate contenders. Even if the 7-inch tablet was a bit of a let-down — picture a steroided smartphone OS with a tablet app deficiency — you gave us something to talk about while we waited in line at the Apple Store.

Continue Reading →

3 comments

Samsung and LG Bicker Over Lie-Down 3D, Miss the Point

Posted by Jared Newman on March 11, 2011 at 2:33 pm

The Wall Street Journal brings us an amusing story about the battle between LG and Samsung over 3D TV standards. Although the heart of the debate — whether active shutter systems are superior to polarized displays, or vice versa — is perfectly legitimate, the two companies are busy having a silly argument about whether you can watch 3D TV while lying down.

LG started it. A company advertisement in Korean reads, “Finally, you will have a comfortable way to watch 3-D.” But Samsung says this isn’t possible without inducing dizziness and nausea. LG says lying sideways merely diminishes the 3D effect. The Journal steps in and says the 3D effect nearly disappears when viewing a polarized display horizontally, but with active shutter glasses the picture goes completely black.

Missing from the debate is one key point: Why would you want to watch 3D TV lying down in the first place?

I understand that, for a lot of people, lying down in front of the tube is the natural way of things. But 3D TV isn’t natural. It tricks your brain and creates a 3D illusion that’s best-viewed in short sittings — say, the length of a movie. Put another way, 3D TV is an event. It’s meant for action movies and sports, not sitcoms and the nightly news. If you’re lying down to watch Avatar’s alien beasts pop out of the screen, you’re doing it wrong.

3 comments

Honesty is the Best Samsung Policy

Posted by Harry McCracken on March 4, 2011 at 10:37 am

The last time a Samsung executive was quoted saying something surprisingly forthright, it involved sales of the 7″ Galaxy Tab being “quite small“–but Samsung later said it was all a misunderstanding and the exec has said they were “quite smooth.” Now VP Lee Don-Joo has been quoted calling parts of the upcoming 10.1″ Galaxy Tab “inadequate” in the wake of the iPad 2. I wonder if there’ll be any backpedaling this time?

(Footnote: This IntoMobile post has the audio from the “quite small/smooth” sound bite…and it does sound like “smooth” to me–even though Steve Jobs took delight in quoting the “small” version at the iPad 2 launch.)

No comments

CES 2011: Samsung Previews Slider Tablet, Air-like Ultraportable

Posted by Jacqueline Emigh on January 6, 2011 at 7:19 am

Samsung's TX100 Slider PC

With so many mobile PCs hitting the market, hardware makers are doing all they can to differentiate their products, a trend particularly evident right now among tablets vying to unseat Apple’s iPad. Samsung is differentiating to the hilt with two Windows 7 mobile PCs unveiled on the eve of CES: a new “slider” tablet PC, and a slimline ultraportable notebook.

Samsung previewed both the TX100 — also referred to as the Slider PC 7–and the Notebook PC 9 at a news conference during CES Press Day on Wednesday in Las Vegas, amid a flurry of Samsung TV announcements.

Continue Reading →

No comments

Last Gadget Standing: The Ten Finalists

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 28, 2010 at 4:44 pm

Dozens of companies that will be demonstrating their products at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show nominated themselves for the Last Gadget Standing competition. We judges whittled the contenders down to 25 semi-finalists. And now we’ve cut down that list to ten finalists who will get to show their stuff at our event at CES in Las Vegas next week. One of them will be…the last gadget standing.

Continue Reading →

16 comments