Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

androidpolice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 130 posts

Re: The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

#71

Post by mbreese »

Karunamon wrote: post #61
mbreese wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone do the work to innovate if they can't make a ton of money with patent protection? Who's to say what a "ton" of money is? How much did it the initial work cost? Worrying about compensation isn't a good metric for patent validity.

>Why would anyone do the work to innovate.. This is a very weak defense of the patent system. Innovation happened before patents existed, and would continue to exist without them.

Patents have been around for centuries and they exist to provide incentive for people to advance society. Sure innovation might continue without them, but likely at a much slower rate.

I'm not a fan of the current state of the patent system, but patents do have their place.

Re: The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

#72

Post by hdevalence »

blinkingled wrote: post #23
moe wrote: post #9

Honestly. The hardware is fine. The problem with android is still the software and only the software. I'll take my handset in pink polka dots if it can finally scroll smoothly everywhere and not constantly annoy me with bugs in almost every single basic feature. Instead they keep on shoving out bigger screens, faster CPU's every year - and the only UX issue ever being addressed is the camera finally snapping pics in…

Performance / UI fluidity issues - that hasn't been true since long time now, especially so since ICS. Only hardcore apple enthusiasts and the ignorant keep repeating that (and Windows viruses) ;)

My Galaxy Nexus runs stock ICS and has fluidity issues, FWIW, and I'm not an Apple enthusiast. In particular, I've noticed problems switching in and out of the camera app, problems with the contact picture pop up, and with the music player.

Re: The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

#73

Post by snaky »

moe wrote: post #9

Honestly. The hardware is fine. The problem with android is still the software and only the software. I'll take my handset in pink polka dots if it can finally scroll smoothly everywhere and not constantly annoy me with bugs in almost every single basic feature. Instead they keep on shoving out bigger screens, faster CPU's every year - and the only UX issue ever being addressed is the camera finally snapping pics in…

>The hardware is fine

Pentile screen

Re: The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

#74

Post by waiwai933 »

I wonder what type of innovation would we see if only lawyers who were deathly scared of patent suits designed phones? After all, I think this isn't terrible, and I like it as a fresh take after seeing all the iPhone look-alikes.

Of course, my cynical side says that we'd either get no phones at all or they'd be oddly shaped polygons that hurt you whenever you try to use it. But still, maybe having attorneys in the room would encourage more creativity...

Re: The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

#75

Post by [deleted] »

andrewflnr wrote: post #69
heliodor wrote: post #3

I'd have to disagree about it being an ugly design. What was ugly was the hack of putting squares around every icon, when those icons were designed to live on their own, not in a square. That's what was ugly. I'm happy to see the squares gone and the design conform to the standard Android design guidelines. The dock of icons going away is also good. If I'm looking in the applications list it's because I'm looking for…

I would actually kind of like a nice charcoal grey for my phone.

[deleted]

Re: The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

#76

Post by enjo »

w1ntermute wrote: post #44
thought_alarm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung made $10 billion over the last two quarters selling devices with outdated 2.x Android software. And last time I checked my carriers, none of their myriad of Samsung devices came with ICS. Clearly ICS and smooth scrolling is not important to the carriers or their typical customers. Consequently, ICS is not important to Samsung. It's not ignorant to say that Andriod scrolls poorly. It's just that scrolling perf…

> And last time I checked my carriers, none of their myriad of Samsung devices came with ICS I don't know which carriers you checked, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (which runs stock ICS) has been on the market for several months now. In the US, it's available from Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint.

Also available directly from Google.

Re: The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

#77

Post by wavephorm »

Xuzz wrote: post #2

The community design is an "and", not an "or". The Galaxy Tab model which had issues with this in Germany, if you look at it, has all , not just one, of those characteristics. The "Apple thinks it owns the rectangle" meme is nice, but untrue. Nilay Patel, in the Verge article linked by Android Community: Now, some of these are a little ridiculous when taken individually — is Apple going to sue every digital photo fra…

The average human being is a complete imbecile. When they see any rectangular device that can make sounds and records sounds, they truly believe it is an iPhone. They're all like "whoa is that the new Iphone?". Really, regular people are complete idiots.

Re: The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

#78

Post by joenathan »

hdevalence wrote: post #72
blinkingled wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Performance / UI fluidity issues - that hasn't been true since long time now, especially so since ICS. Only hardcore apple enthusiasts and the ignorant keep repeating that (and Windows viruses) ;)

My Galaxy Nexus runs stock ICS and has fluidity issues, FWIW, and I'm not an Apple enthusiast. In particular, I've noticed problems switching in and out of the camera app, problems with the contact picture pop up, and with the music player.

You are fooling yourself if you think the iPhone is always smooth all the time, every device experiences hiccups at times. Android used to be worse at this but has come a long way with 4.0.

Re: The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

#79

Post by diminish »

wavephorm wrote: post #77
Xuzz wrote: post #2

The community design is an "and", not an "or". The Galaxy Tab model which had issues with this in Germany, if you look at it, has all , not just one, of those characteristics. The "Apple thinks it owns the rectangle" meme is nice, but untrue. Nilay Patel, in the Verge article linked by Android Community: Now, some of these are a little ridiculous when taken individually — is Apple going to sue every digital photo fra…

The average human being is a complete imbecile. When they see any rectangular device that can make sounds and records sounds, they truly believe it is an iPhone. They're all like "whoa is that the new Iphone?". Really, regular people are complete idiots.

Calling people imbecile is not much correct when it comes to behavior towards branded objects, remember your early teenage times. In this case people mostly care for a brand, and I believe, the logo is what matters the most, not resemblance. Mobile devices are closer to the realm of fashion mainly because when you are outside, when you hold it, and when you put it on a table you want people to see the logo. Au contraire, desktops are usually at home or workplace or even hidden beneath your table, and they are less of a fashion object.

A good example for mobile devices would be the jeans, bags, sun glasses etc. Where resemblance to fashionable brand matters however the logo or tag matters the most.

All that said, I am fine with my Rasberry PI and Linux.

Re: The Samsung Galaxy S III: The First Smartphone Designed Entirely By Lawyers

#80

Post by its_so_on »

Hey, this is a very entertaining story! I'd love to blog about this too, but what would really help is a photoshop of a "samsung" phone fitting the article's description while actually being ugly, so I don't look like an idiot when I do.

At a minimum it shouldn't look better than the previous samsung models next to it.

Thanks for any help!

Post reply on HN