It’s been a bad week for mobile Smart phone manufacturers. This weekend I had intended to sit down and write a review of the fantastic Samsung Galaxy Note 7 which was due to launch on Friday.
Unfortunately Samsung pulled the UK launch amidst stories of Note 7 batteries exploding and even those in the UK who got their hands on a Note 7 are being asked to hold it for an exchange unit. Apparently there was a tiny problem in the manufacture of batteries at one supplier, but with 2.5 million handsets having been sold it’s tricky for Samsung to figure out which mobiles may be at risk and which should be totally fine.
The President of Samsung’s mobile business Koh Dong-jin said “It will cost us so much it makes my heart ache. Nevertheless, the reason we made this decision is because what is most important is customer safety”.
I’ll still be buying a Note 7 so watch out for a review in due course, I’m just not sure when that might be now.
Apple aren’t having an easier time, but for totally different reasons. They’ve been hammered with a €13bn fine by the EU, apparently a special scheme offered by the Irish government is said to be illegal.
This is an interesting flexing of EU muscles, because a member state didn’t charge as much corporation tax as the EU suggests should be collected, the EU themselves impose a fine. Both Apple and the Irish government say that they’ll fight this fine which could have much wider ranging consequences if Ireland is no longer able to offer attractive tax incentives for big businesses to site themselves on the Emerald Isle.
Hopefully Wednesday this week will bring a bit of cheer to the smart phone business. Apple are widely expected to launch their iPhone 7 suite of mobiles on the 7th of September which is sure to produce queues at Apple stores around the world as Apple fans rush to be one of the first to get their hands on the latest model.
With all this going on the the smart phone world it does make me wonder just how often we really need a new smart phone. My Samsung Note 4 is still chugging along, but in truth it’s not as fast as when it was brand new. I don’t HAVE to have a new smart phone today, this month or even this year. It would be nice though but as the Note 7 is beset by battery problems even before the UK launch, should I buy now or wait a month or so or even another year?
Will you be upgrading your smart phone this year or will you wait until your old one totally fails?
2 Responses
I’ve already upgraded my phone this year to Huawei’s Nexus 6P. I’ve been a long time fan of the nexus range, and I don’t have any intention of upgrading soon, especially considering I dropped £439 on this one.
I used to be upgrading as soon as possible, these days, what’s the point? cant remember the last time i saw a phone with a “must-have” new feature.
it’s the same phone with a slightly bigger, slightly slimmer, slightly faster, whatever.
and Samsung are severely grinding my gears with bloatware. “only have 1gb of system memory? we’ll pre-load 750mb of junk you can’t delete to make it near unusable!”
I had been holding off until microsoft got their act together and release an x64 windows phone that can actually run real windows 10 and proper windows programs, but they keep dropping the ball on that front.