Surveying the mobile landscape: Samsung

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	Home / Cell phones / Multimedia smartphones

	Surveying the mobile landscape: Samsung	By Philip Berne, 24 December 2007

The fast-rising Korean manufacturer has released scores of phones this past year, and even gave us a chance to see some of their native best. What would make Samsung the company to beat in 2008?

Samsung is going to put their best into taking the top cell phone manufacturer spots from Nokia and Motorola in the global and U.S. market, respectively. Of all the top manufacturers, Samsung has perhaps the most impressive and diverse portfolio. Samsung phones appear on all the major carrier networks, a feat no other manufacturer but Motorola has accomplished, and Samsung has continued to support the newest technologies, sometimes even before they become available. The first phone to ship for Verizon Wireless’ V Cast Mobile TV network was a Samsung (because the LG phone was delayed), and phones are already showing up on T-Mobile with radio bands in place for their upcoming 1700 MHz 3G network, even though the network has yet to launch.

When Sprint’s WiMAX network starts rolling out early next year, we would bet that Samsung phones will be among the first available, as Samsung has all but told us this will be the case. In fact, Samsung’s back-end servers and infrastructure will be driving a large portion of that WiMAX initiative. Likewise, when AT&T rolls out its mobile television service, probably this year, we certainly expect to see Samsung on board, since it will be based on technology currently used by Verizon.

When we were in Korea . . .

On our trip to Samsung’s HQ in Korea, we were treated to a glimpse of things to come, but most of these offered a vision of a future in which WiMAX, or at least some wireless broadband network, was ubiquitous. We saw phone’s linked with mobile internet devices (MIDs) linked with home security and even the home refrigerator. While we don’t expect these technologies to come to market in the next year, they do bring up an interesting and recurring point when it comes to these large electronics manufacturers.

We would like to see more cooperation among the various departments at Samsung in the coming year. Samsung makes some of the best LCD televisions on the market, yet we hardly see that level of quality, or the appropriate co-branding, makes its way to a cell phone. Samsung audio players have excellent sound quality, unrivaled Bluetooth features and an interesting menu scheme. Why not bring these to the phones? Most importantly, though, Samsung cameraphones, even the 5-megapixel G800, have disappointed us in terms of image quality, though Samsung makes fine cameras and camcorders. Why can’t the two come together?

Loads of innovation

We expect a lot from Samsung this year, and of all the major manufacturers, Samsung has us the most excited about what we don’t know. We’ve seen innovative touchscreen phones with haptic feedback, phones with optical joysticks, and phones, co-branded with Bang & Olufsen, that have top-notch sound quality, even from the onboard speaker. On our Korean trip, we saw phones with two TV tuners for picture-in-picture, phones with 3D screens and dual camera lenses for 3D pictures, and robust gaming phones. If a major manufacturer can surprise us, certainly Samsung can.