Some time ago, I was complaining about this

"El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!" (lightningzone)
09/03/2015 at 15:32 • Filed to: None

And on how unacceptable is for Google to dominate the mobile OS market so copiously.

I even suggested that LG could move from Android to Windows, to better differentiate itself from Samsung.

But after seeing this hands-on with the Tizen running, Gear S 2 watch, I think that Samsung is the one who should move.

The Tizen OS helped Samsung to come up with a snappy, easy to use product that seems to be superior to both the Apple Watch and most of the Android Wear devices out there.

I think that Samsung, being the huge conglomerate that it is, and having the huge market share in mobile that it has, can in fact develop Tizen into a viable alternative to iOS, Android and survive after dumping Android.

DISCUSSION (21)

Steve Zissou > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
09/03/2015 at 15:39

Didn’t see your previous article. Why is it unacceptable for Google to dominate the mobile OS market so copiously?

pjhusa > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
09/03/2015 at 15:42

This is because so many cell phones use Android; even no name brands use it.

scoob > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
09/03/2015 at 15:45

They won’t do it anytime soon. Tizen needs a bigger app ecosystem, as they call it.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > Steve Zissou
09/03/2015 at 15:48

http://oppositelock.kinja.com/the-blackberry…

That was my post.

I don’t have a problem with Android, I’m using it for five years, but monopoly is never a good thing on a market, and Android is moving towards monopoly.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > scoob
09/03/2015 at 15:53

And they can’t get more apps, unless they get more users. That’s why Tizen needs Samsung’s help. They could even offer their popular models in both Android and Tizen versions, at first, to kick-start the app creation/ conversion.

Übel > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
09/03/2015 at 15:56

Because nothing helps sales like making your users learn an entire new OS and give up all of their old apps.

djmt1 > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
09/03/2015 at 16:03

It will be very interesting to see how Windows 10 shakes things up. I’ve been on Android for the past 6-7 years and have no problem with it but I have a lot of Microsoft products around and I’m curious how the whole single ecosystem really works.

Still for me, hardware is king when it comes to smartphones and Lumia phones have generally sucked when it comes to this. Hopefully times have changed as my OnePlus One is becoming a pain and I might be upgrading sooner rather than later.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > Übel
09/03/2015 at 16:10

Sales may go down a little at first, but that will eventually happen anyways, because there’s a virtual limit to any company’s sustainable market share, and with the increased competition from both big name manufacturers and newer companies from China, Samsung is about to hit that limit.

Remember, Nokia died because it was too slow in adapting to new market conditions and because it didn’t managed its success, properly.

Übel > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
09/03/2015 at 16:18

Congratulations on failing to address anything I just said.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > djmt1
09/03/2015 at 16:20

10 may be too little, too late for Windows phones. Windows falls behind in both number of compatible apps and manufacturers, with Microsoft being the only one who still uses the OS.

scoob > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
09/03/2015 at 16:24

But no one’s going to move to an OS with no apps and become guinea pigs. That’s why Windows struggled so bad.

TheOnelectronic > djmt1
09/03/2015 at 16:50

Lumia phones have generally sucked when it comes to this.

Uh, what? Mine is rock solid. Literally. It has a comfortable heft to it compared to the “I’m going to break this oh wait I just did” flimsiness I’ve had with Samsung.

As for performance, I’ve never found it lacking. My GS5, meanwhile, has barely enough RAM or hard memory to do anything, and bogs down while TYPING. And this is with maybe 10 apps on top of the verizon/samsung bloatware.

10 apps because it doesn’t have storage for any more.

They may not hold up well on paper, but in my experience Android consistently manages to do less with more than either iOS or WinPho. It’s a very inefficient OS.

Not to mention the camera which despite not being one of the ludicrous ones, is still amazing. Especially since my hands shake quite a bit while trying to take pictures, the stabilization works wonders.

djmt1 > TheOnelectronic
09/03/2015 at 16:54

Not talking about performance or optimization. I’m literally talking about hardware. Things like waterproofing, wireless charging, laser focusing etc.

TheOnelectronic > djmt1
09/03/2015 at 16:56

Mine had wireless charging, but I get your point. Not enough “Gadgets.”

I really liked the waterproofing on my GS5, until the little flappy door fell off. Now it’s just a normal phone that overheats really easily.

I still think I’d prefer build quality over gadgets, though. In my experience most of them end up being neat for a few days and then I never use them again. The exception being wireless charging. That is excellent.

Textured Soy Protein > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
09/03/2015 at 16:59

If Tizen on an actual phone (not a watch) is anything like TouchWiz on Android, it deserves to not become popular. I hate every Samsung Android device I’ve ever tried, except for my old Galaxy Nexus which Samsung wasn’t able to put their terrible software on.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > Übel
09/03/2015 at 17:59

Because the issues you pointed out are quite easy to resolve.

Learning a new OS is not the end of the world, we used do that every time we changed phones when each manufacturer had its own OS/UI (they were quite primitive, I’ll give you that). As for apps, catch up is possible. Even Windows is catching up, and Samsung can usually be more driven than Microsoft, despite its large size.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > Textured Soy Protein
09/03/2015 at 18:19

That’s because on Android, Samsung can’t really implement it the way it wants, or software updates would take forever to get to you. Even Apple would end up with a turkey, if it had to start with Android and put its UI over it, that’s why most manufacturers keep Android relatively stock/with only cosmetic changes added. And that’s why I have an Xperia Z3 in my pocket and will probably get another Z, despite the beautiful design of the S6 Edge.

With Tizen, Samsung would be able to do a lot more software/hardware optimization, extracting more performance from a given hardware and getting updates to users a lot faster. Basically it’s a natural path of evolution for Samsung Mobile.

Textured Soy Protein > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
09/03/2015 at 18:44

Honestly, while smoothness is an issue on some relatively recent Samsung devices, that’s not what bugs me about TouchWiz so much. It’s just the overall UI is less intuitive than Android upon which it was based. It’s needlessly disjointed. Then Samsung takes nice, good-looking Android UI elements and makes them graphically worse. The icons are ugly.

So I went and found this video of Tizen on a phone, and it suffers from similar problems. Just the home screen vs. app drawer makes no sense. You’ve got rows of apps on the home screen that you swipe through, then a dock at the bottom with icons that don’t move. But then you swipe up on that dock, and you’ve got the same dock that doesn’t move, and a different row of apps that scrolls. I get what they’re going for but there’s no clear difference between the home screen and drawer.

I dunno, I just don’t see anything particularly appealing there.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > Textured Soy Protein
09/03/2015 at 19:10

The idea is that you always see the important /most used apps. Kinda like you see the most used contacts when you open the phone app. Anyway, that’s an unpolished version of Tizen, on a cheap phone for emerging markets.

The truth is that Samsung is treating Tizen as a secondary OS, for wearables and TVs and other stuff, as it gets ready for IOT. But with some work, and user clinics in mature markets, Tizen can become a viable phone OS, refined enough to pull up both future Samsung phones and other smart things.

Übel > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
09/03/2015 at 19:15

I think you’re confusing “possible”with “not market suicide.” You might as well suggest that the best way for HP to stay afloat is to stop putting Windows on their PCs in favor of RedHat.

Nauraushaun > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
09/04/2015 at 08:37

I completely disagree. I think we have enough competition. iOS is a very strong competitor, Android is outselling it because it’s substantially cheaper to get an Android phone. But Apple doing a bad job is hardly an excuse to fracture the market.

Relying on a small amount of mobile platforms is a good thing. Monopoly is bad, but we don’t have a monopoly so that’s okay. If we had too many platforms (Firefox, Amazon’s Fire Phone thingy, iOS, Android, Windows, Tizen etc) everyone would suffer. You’d never be able to find the apps you want, app developers would have to re-develop something 3-4 times to hit majority audience.

I like LG, and I don’t want them to fall on a bullet and go to Windows. Android is better.