Apple plays catch-up with Samsung,
New Galaxy features sound a lot cooler than the new, smaller iPhone
So, will customers choose a new phone with extra memory, water resistance and an improved camera that promises better shots in low light? Or the same ol’ iPhone, in a smaller package?
Have you seen those TV ads for Samsung’s new Galaxy smartphone? In the spots, the company does a killer job of pointing out new and very welcome features.
In my mind, they drove home what seems to have become more apparent over the last several months: Apple has a lot of catchup to do to create a product that really captures attention.
Samsung’s new Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge phones, out March 11, are water resistant, which is great. They bring back the expandable memory slot (for those of us who hate getting those out-of-memory messages), and more important, it comes with 32 GB of storage, which is twice what Apple offers on entry-level phones. (Apple’s phones start with 16 GB of memory, which goes really fast once you start adding apps, photos, videos and music.)
The phones aren’t cheap, starting at $669 and $779, without a contract. Best Buy offers the phones for $199 with a two-year subsidized contract.
Apple’s last iPhone, the 6S, starts at $649 without a contract and was the first to show sales that didn’t grow substantially over the previous model. Consumers either thought their current iPhones were good enough or the new features Apple touted for the 6S, like 3-D touch for shortcuts, improved camera that can shoot videos in 4K resolution and having personal digital assistant Siri always on, were a meh.
While Galaxy is clearly No. 2 to iPhone sales — roughly 800 million iPhones sold to more than 250 million Galaxy S phones — Samsung’s recent models haven’t seen huge growth.
Apple is expected to introduce a new iPhone in a few weeks, and based on initial reports, it’s a total yawn. It’s the same iPhone as the 6S but in a smaller body (for those who think the current iPhones are too big). The phone is expected to have a 4inch screen, compared with 5.1 inches for the S7 and 5.5 for S7 Edge, and basically replaces the iPhone 5c, which was initially released in 2013.
Beyond the new features of the Galaxy S7, Samsung buyers are poised for the next big thing — 360-degree virtual reality, a movement we’ve yet to hear a peep from Apple on.
Maybe Apple has a surprise for its March event we haven’t been signaled on yet. And we do know that traditionally, the real new iPhone, the one with a major redesign that comes every two years, is in September.
Who knows what Apple will come up with for the fall? But this much is clear — Apple really does have a lot of catching up to do.