Samsung Gets Hip To Unified Look And Feel

The Samsung Galaxy S3 is here in a few days and, boy oh boy, does it ever want to eat the iPhone’s lunch. Perhaps one of the least touted yet most interesting and effective methods it will employ to do this is one of Apple’s standard tricks: Unify the product so that no matter where you get it or from whom, it’s always a Galaxy S3.

Known first and foremost for a spazillion different handset models, Samsung is pulling to make the S3 into one single experience. In other words: Whether you get it from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint or T-Mobile, you’ll get the same-sized screen, same data rates, same name and even the same colors. iPhone users may find this a little odd in that they have only ever seen one unified product from Apple, but this is a new direction from Samsung, and it’s clearly intended to cultivate a unified, singular product identity in the way that Apple has. BusinessInsider says:

It’s a strategy that sound very, Apple-y. And that’s a good thing. The Android platform has enough problems with software fragmentation. It did Samsung no good to go out of its way to fragment the hardware too.

It’s well-known that product fragmentation is one of the Android operating system’s biggest problems (if not the biggest). With different handset sizes, data rates, processor speeds, display ratios, etc. it’s very hard to design system and consumer software that will cover a wide range of products. With the Galaxy S3, however, a developer will at least know that if they make software for one S3, it should work on all of them. I say “should” because carriers are still guaranteed to add their own layer of useless garbage on the OS, as is typical with Android, but this sure is a step in the right direction for those who are looking to pick up Samsung’s latest and greatest.

Source: BusinessInsider

Corey has been been a tech journalist with a focus on Apple since 1998 and has written for The Loop, MacHome magazine, and as games contributor for The Mac Bible, and co-hosts the iGame Radio Podcast. He works as a corporate consultant and professional musician in Ottawa, Ontario.