Samsung: Two Android Phones This Year, Less Google Inside
Forbes sat down at CTIA with Samsung’s global phone guy, who says the electronics giant will release three Android phones this year. The first will be around June and released outside the U.S., probably in Europe. Two other Android phones will be released in the U.S. later this year on two different carriers, most likely T-Mobile and Sprint.
Samsung is taking longer on the two U.S. phones because they wanted to go less Google. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, since I feel one of the strengths of Android is the tight integration with the Google applications like Gmail. Samsung doesn’t see it this way, and they are not planning to release the Google-focused apps. Doesn’t that mean they are losing the primary thing that differentiates Android from the competition?
Samsung also wanted to put its own spin on Android. Hong drew a distinction between devices built on the Android platform and “Google Experience” devices, which not only use Android but are also Google-centric, packed with the search giant’s own applications. “Our commitment is more to the Android phone than the Google Experience device,” Hong said. In other words, Samsung is doing plenty of customization work on top of the Android platform to make operators happy.
I’d agree that it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for Samsung to do this. Wasn’t one of the “value propositions” of Android (vs. other OSes) that it’s cheaper for device manufacturers? If they then end up putting a ton of customizations on top of it, those savings would be lost or reduced. Plus, will it mean different Android phones look/feel/behave differently?
Wow, talk about missing the point of Android!
I was hopeful for this device but without the Google integration it’s not even worth the time.
Glad you shared this.
In the US Samsung’s Android phones will sell about as well as their previous smartphones.
…like the BlackJack and BlackJack II? Those sold extremely well. The Omnia is selling pretty well too.
one of the potential letdowns of android, was that it apparently needed a google accont to access basic functions. or at least thats how i understood some of the early news of the G1 launch.
@turn.self.off thank god my iPhone didn’t need any kind of Apple account. Say, iTunes….
and what makes you think im a iphone fan?
Android as it currently stands is a dumb idea for Google. There is no money in it. Since it’s free and open source, the carriers will remove all Google products and replace with their own, Microsoft’s or Yahoo’s. In the worst case, Google will have to pay to be the featured search service. How stupid is that?
i think it’s fine and good that the “google” can be decoupled from android, but if these companies are just duplicating efforts with their crapware, or make it hard or impossible to restore the “google,” then it’s just annoying.
if the makers are going to just customize everything to the point of it not being ‘android’, it’ll turn out the same as WinMo. but maybe google is ok with that.
Sounds like AT&T may be one of those two carriers. Big Blue has been hesitant about Android since they’re in bed with Yahoo (ex.: AT&T/Yahoo DSL, Yahoo is the default search client on AT&T phones, the YouTube player was pulled from TouchFLO on the HTC Fuze), and this article makes it seem like they’re looking for the best of both worlds.