Dear Samsung, please find enclosed your 2012 report card.

So, Samsung, how did you do?

This is the first part of a series of editorials (or at least I hope the other editors will chip in to make this a series?) where we're going to look at how each manufacturer has done this year, and make some suggestions for what their path forward should look like in 2013. The intention of these isn't to make a fanboys dream list of stupidly powerful hardware specs, but to make a reasoned set of recommendations for how we feel they can improve in 2013.

To kick things off we're going to start with Samsung. In terms of what Samsung did right this year you could be brief and say nearly everything, but since when did we ever keep things brief here at AndroidNZ?


Before we even get into discussing hardware, there is a lot that Samsung has done right in terms of its general policies around device releases. Although I groan inwardly a little to suggest the comparison, it's slightly inevitable to draw a parallel with how Apple has gone about things in recent years. Throw a shroud of secrecy over the device before its announcement, then announce the device very close to a firm release date. The secrecy keeps the mystery alive, which helps build the hype-machine, and then making it available soon after the announcement capitalises on that before consumer attention wanes or turns elsewhere (yes  consumers, we really are that fickle).

If we're going to open the Apple Vs Samsung can of worms, we might as well break the lid off completely and speak to that some more. Samsung clearly beat Apple in the secrecy stakes this year, keeping a very tight lid on the Galaxy SIII until hours before the announcement. Where they fell down, just a little, was in not having definite pricing information in their announcement. This is hardly a unique failure for Samsung however, since basically no one besides Apple appears to have worked out that consumers like to know this from the outset. I hope Samsung will pick up on this in next years announcements, since this is one area at least where Apple is unlikely to have a legal avenue to cry foul over being copied, but where I'd really love to see others emulate them.

This editors favourite device of 2013, the successor to my favourite
device of 2012... and what an improvement!

Samsung have continued to hold to their "no locked bootloaders" policy wherever the depredations of carriers have allowed. Where they haven't done the development community so proud is in their Exynos-related documentation, source code, and kernel sources. In fact, renowned Samsung AOSP/CM ROM developer codeworkx vented his frustration against this very issue last year. If Samsung continues to neglect this we'll see an increasing number of developers abandon development for Samsung devices. Now admittedly this isn't an issue for the mass market, but then the possibility of losing the 200,000 CM users on the S2 alone and the goodwill of many hundreds of thousands more isn't something to be sniffed at either. In the past this wouldn't have been quite so much an issue, given the rather large disparity between Samsung's Exynos SoC and the competition, but the context is quite different now that Qualcomm's offerings are matching and in many areas bettering current-gen Exynos performance.

Turning our attention to their flagship phone for 2012, the Galaxy SIII, how does Samsung fare? Extremely well, for the most part. The internals all top notch, and although it may have recently lost its crown as the best SoC/GPU combination to devices toting the S4 Pro chipset, it still holds its own very well (and one might note there aren't thermal throttling issues with the Exynos). It does a lot of things right that others are did wrong - a removable battery of a larger capacity than what most flagships were offering at the time and expandable storage being two stand-outs in the design DNA of the Galaxy handsets. Most of the rest of the hardware merely goes toe-to-toe with its competitors - a camera right up there with the best offerings of its peers, one gigabyte of RAM, a fairly forgettable loudspeaker and so on. Besides the hardware aspects though Samsung really upped the ante on the software front. The added not only the most full USB OTG device support to date in an Android handset, but also a myriad of other value-added additions above and beyond what is native to Android. Some of those additions have proven really valuable to my use - support for USB DACs, exFAT storage formatting support, and the best hardware video decoding available.

Overwhelming power and features.

I am going to be terribly immodest and declare this the 

best Samsung Galaxy video on YouTube for 2013. If 

you've seen a better example to demonstrate their power

be sure and let me know!

If we cast our eyes forward a bit to the Note 2, we see the same kind of improvements over the its Galaxy S partner that we saw in the original Note and Galaxy SII. Finally 2GB of RAM graced a Samsung handset, along with an improved screen, a substantial increase in battery capacity and also performance, and a better developed UI software suite via the latest mint of TouchWiz.

So, what does Samsung need to do next year in its ongoing quest for world domination?

• Retain large capacity removable batteries.
• (even better perhaps offer slightly thicker versions of your flagship devices with much larger battery capacities ala Moto and Huawei, just make sure they're available in that form at release though eh?)
• Retain storage expansion.
• Ideally add the option for USB Mass memory connections as well as MTP, even if it only applies to the external storage.
• Increase the minimum internal storage to 32GB, and ideally max out with the newly minted 128GB NANDs that Samsung is mass producing.
• Make sure that higher internal storage versions of the devices are available at first release.
• Iterative improvements on the current-gen Exynos and Mali to keep pace performance-wise with competing options, focus innovation towards power-efficiency.
• Make pricing known at announcement.
• Make accessories available at release, lets not have a repeat of the wireless charging debacle from last year eh? If you're listening Samsung, I think there are still a couple of keen punters out there who might still like to know when that mythical beast will be arriving?
• Make sure accessories have a degree of future-proofing and that you are clear in communicating that. For example the very nice Samsung Smart Dock for the Note 2 would sell in much higher numbers if people knew it would work with next years handsets too? Of course you'd need to actually produce them in large enough numbers for people to buy in the first place, which is probably the main problem with sales for your Smart Dock...
• Retain a policy of no locked bootloaders.
• Go beyond that with proper support documentation for developers too.
• Improve the materials used in flagship devices - lets have a flagship whose finish mirrors the internals housed within. We've seen you produce handsets like the Wave and Innov8 in the past with durable metal chassis, let's have some of that in your Android handsets. Please Samsung? 
• While you're giving us better materials, how about better quality control and after sales service? Although QC issues affect all manufacturers, I think I can say you may have had more than your share in 2012, on both the hardware and software front. As if falling down there wasn't a large enough failing, your customer service afterwards leaves a fair bit to be desired, as I have been copiously reminded by a number of disaffected users on Twitter of late. One thing iOS buyers can have a reasonable degree of assurance about is being looked after there, to the extent that some of the straight up warranty replacements I've seen them get (often for all kinds of stupid user fault) beggars belief. This helps your brand image, but also encourages repeat custom. People waiting an age to get their device sorted for a manufacturer fault like the SIII 'sudden-death-syndrome' doesn't inspire confidence, mmkay?
• Keep adding every software feature known to man in your handsets! You gave us so much more than anyone else in the copious support for USB and bluetooth periperals, support for exFat formatting and so forth. 
• Give us a camera that represents a real advance over current-gen snappers, and I'm not just/even talking about megapixels here. Let's see some Nokia-esque improvements to things like sensor size, aperture, dynamic range, optical image stabilisation and audio capture. At a minimum at least include a Xenon flash and a two-stage hardware camera button. Please? Those two advances alone would probably be enough to set yourself out in front of your Android brethren (while continuing to cede ground to Nokia on the imaging front).

Phew! Quite a list of ills and required improvments there, some of them rather remedial too - and no doubt readers will have a few other things to add in the comments too.  Let's however not lose sight of the fact that one can make a very strong case for Samsung, on balance, doing more right in 2012 than any other manufacturer. For me, for all that they did wrong Samsung was easily the Android device manufacturer of the year, and there seems to be little in the way of them ascending to that throne in 2013 too. Still though, finessing a few more details could be the difference between a tentative seat at the top of the heap, and a year of utterly demolishing the competition. So what say you Samsung?