Phandroid
Samsung’s Tizen plans suffer another setback with delayed smartphone
We have no doubt that Samsung hopes to eventually free themselves from the chains binding them to Android (the chains being money, because they make a crap ton as the top OEM by far), but it seems to have been a lot more difficult than they anticipated. Samsung has announced the delay of the launch of the Samsung Z, their first Tizen smartphone, in Russia. The delay is seemingly indefinite as Samsung had no new release date details to provide.
Samsung didn’t give any reasons for the delay, but their indefinite holdout leads us to believe either one of two things happened:
- Presales weren’t as strong as they’d hoped. It wouldn’t be the first time Samsung has pulled out on a Tizen launch due to sales — the company was originally forced to ix-nay on the Izen-tay last year when Japanese carrier partners decided they didn’t want anything to do with the phone.
- They encountered some production issues or experience-breaking bugs. It’s still a relatively new platform and we’re sure if has its fair share of growing pains to deal with. It wouldn’t be out of the question to suggest Samsung delayed the phone to address some things that could harm their brand.
Tizen is a smartphone operating system based on Meego (which was once being developed by Nokia and Intel), but it didn’t quite catch on in its early going and Android took a considerable lead for open source Linux-based operating systems. With much of the world leaving it for dead, Samsung seemed determine to turn one man’s trash into another’s treasure.
They’ve taken a few key steps to introducing Tizen to the market, the biggest of which being the shift from Android to Tizen on their Gear lineup of smart watches (the Android Wear-based Samsung Gear Live not included, mind you). Despite resistance from hardcore Android fans, the smartwatch experience with Tizen seems to provide considerable benefits compared to Android — better battery life and performance are two areas where Tizen is said to outshine Samsung’s bite-sized customization of Android.
The issue with Tizen comes from a lack of a real ecosystem and a platform unfamiliar to developers. This means apps and custom ROMs become more difficult to load up. That said, the out-of-box experience Samsung intended for you to have works just as well with Tizen, if not better, if that’s the route you prefer to go.
That could be just one of many reasons why Samsung has found it so difficult to get their phone onto the market. Whether that’s the cause of today’s delay is for them to know and for us to find out, but either way it isn’t looking too good if they hope to ween off the Android and move all their business over to Tizen in the near future.
Unlucky Samsung Galaxy S4 user whose phone burned up gets free One M8 from HTC
Too often have we heard stories of users from Samsung’s camp experiencing phones that spontaneously combust or overheat to the point where it looks like someone took a match to it. Here, here and here are just a handful of stories that we’ve covered in the past. But one particular case seems to have caught the interest of an HTC product manager who wants to help convert the user to #TeamHTC (their words). User JetLeigh on Reddit responded to one poster’s story with the following comment:
Looks like you’re in luck, buddy. I happen to be the HTC Product Manager on the AT&T account. I appreciate the feedback and civil discussion you’ve generated on reddit while avoiding the ‘bashing’. I think any OEM or company would appreciate that!
I would like to offer you a brand new HTC One M8. What do you say?
The deal is if Samsung does eventually figure out how to get you a new device or offers that you please donate that to charity or sell it and please donate the funds to an organization of your choice. Honors system here, and no way I can really know but just leaving that simple request here as these devices don’t grow on trees and are worth a good chunk of money even to the OEM who makes them!
Bottom line we want to move you over to #TeamHTC
It’s important to know the fully story. The original Reddit post from a month ago can be read here, but here’s the gist of it: the phone burned up, and Samsung said they’d be sending the user a new smartphone in a box. He would then ship the damaged smartphone back to them.
The issue is they never sent the phone in the first place and instead shipped him an empty box (according to his claims, anyway), and countless attempts to get in contact with Samsung about the lack of a replacement have gone largely ignored. Surely Samsung would have sent a replacement had he shipped his off, but for some people it’s not easy finding a replacement smartphone at a moment’s notice, and going without a smartphone for who knows how long could be pretty miserable (note: the smartphone still functioned fine so long as he could find a way to fit a USB cable into the deformed charging port).
And that nightmare of an experience is probably what moved this sympathetic HTC representative to reach out and offer a route of recourse. It’s a pretty noble move, though no doubt a play for positive press without having to spend much more than a dime. Also worth noting is the suggestion to donate a possible replacement phone from Samsung to charity. That ought to satisfy the army of folks who don’t fancy throwing away a perfectly good smartphone.
PS: Yes, claims of burnt smartphones have seen an uptick on Reddit since this episode. Whether they’re legit or not is up to you to decide, but we’d advise our lovely readership to steer clear of using false claims and reports or intentional damage to try and get a free smartphone. It’s not just dishonest, it’s stupid — there’s a good chance no one will give an owl’s hoot.
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