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Yes, and I assume this anecdotal story of mine is not unique: phone salespeople do this. My grandmother (in her late 70s at the time) was sold an “iPhone” at a
by camhenlin 8y ago
Yes, and I assume this anecdotal story of mine is not unique: phone salespeople do this. My grandmother (in her late 70s at the time) was sold an “iPhone” at a Verizon store, after her and I discussed which phone for her to get. It was a Samsung galaxy. At the time, she had an iPad and a MacBook so it made sense for her to get an iPhone when upgrading to her first smart phone. The salesperson explained to her it was essentially the same and did all of the same stuff, and called it a Samsung iPhone and explained that it was better than the Apple one. You can guess at my confusion trying to walk her through how to use her new iPhone over the phone, when it wasn’t actually an iPhone and did not work quite the same as her iPad. I assume the salesperson made a better commission on the Samsung phone than the Apple one. It was definitely a bit of a hassle after the fact to go turn that phone in and replace it with an iPhone.
- exodust 8y agoCool story bro, but most grandmothers don't know or care about technology gadgets and get confused easily. She would not have known or cared about "rounded corners". It's flawed logic to say it's a widespread problem that people "accidentally buy a Samsung" because a salesperson lied to your grandmother. That's an edge case that means nothing.
- stickfigure 8y agoThis would have been a great comment without the "Cool story bro". The salesperson could have convinced the grandmother to buy a "Sinclair iPhone by Timex", assuming it was packaged into something roughly phone-shaped. The problem here isn't the appearance of the product.
- exodust 8y agoI don't write to satisfy comment "greatness". Downvote if you don't like my post, the editorial review isn't needed. I will happily point the finger at any tech giant when it does wrong, but Samsung didn't do anything to warrant years of court battles and accusations. It's tiring to hear people defend Apple's sideshow legal agenda. The "touch screen phone" was inevitable, and was always going to be something with round-ish corners, flat, with icons. The shape is too fundamental to the ergonomics of such a device. There's too little room for difference in design, relative to the objective of making such a device comfortable to hold. I had the Nokia N9 for awhile, and the pointy/squared corners were not a great feature. They probably wanted to avoid rounded corners, which is a ridiculous situation where consumers lose out.