The new Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra are less than two weeks from being officially unveiled now (February 1, save the date), and to no one’s surprise, we keep receiving newly-leaked, official-looking renders of the phones.
Well, one of those official-looking renders seems to have sparked what phone nerds would call “an outcry” on Twitter. The image shows a side view of Samsung’s new Galaxy S23 phone, which is strongly reminiscent of that of the iPhone 14 Pro marketing material that we saw last fall when Apple’s flagships were unveiled.
In fact, it’s not just the way the Galaxy S23 is positioned within the picture but also how the shiny aluminium frame of the phone gives out a similar iPhone 14 Pro-like glow, with muted, yet premium looking colors. In all fairness,
I wouldn’t pay that much attention, if it wasn’t for two things:
- People (and by that I mean tech enthusiasts) really seem to care about the tiny details (always blows my mind, by the way)
- As a company that took numerous “pokes” at Apple and the iPhone with some openly targeted ad campaigns, Samsung surely doesn’t shy away from taking inspiration from the way Cupertino does certain things
Still, this story isn’t based on just this one marketing image. Instead, let’s talk about Samsung’s bizarre (probably one-sided) “love-and-hate” relationship with Apple and the iPhone.I’d also like to give some primetime to the actual aesthetic look of the new Galaxy S23 and S23+ phones – as it turns out, many Twitter peeps find them a bit “bland”, and while I really like some aspects of Samsung’s design, I think I can see why some Android users are disappointed…
Galaxy S23 design shows Samsung has firmly taken after Apple’s idea of “slow innovation”; forgets about Android competition
Galaxy S22 (left) and Galaxy S23 (right).
As someone who does whatever I do (we aren’t sure yet) for a living, it’s not hard to see that Samsung has been mimicking Apple’s “incremental upgrade” strategy for 2-3 years now. And as I’ve shared in recent stories, I actually find this to be the right move, as it gives the South Korean company enough time to pay special attention to certain details of the user experience and successfully deliver exceptional Galaxy flagships (which Samsung has been doing for a few years now).
That being said, what I certainly do not mean by that is that Samsung should put itself in an “Apple box” and give us nearly identical-looking phones 2-3 years in a row. Before you ask, yes, Apple can (and does) get away with that, but that’s only because the iPhone is the only phone in the world that runs iOS.
Samsung, on the other hand, is competing with a ton of other Android phone-makers, and lately, it seems like some of them have been getting really good at… design.
As I’ve said before, phone buyers choose mostly with their eyes, and therefore this aspect of phones might turn out to be far more important than some might’ve thought:
- Google has been delivering some of the freshest-looking and best-received Pixel phones for two years now, thanks to the likes of the Pixel 6 …….