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Because at large people don't select their phone based on what you mention. What does matter I believe is marketing. I think most importantly is Samsung's imag
by trabant00 6y ago
Because at large people don't select their phone based on what you mention. What does matter I believe is marketing.
I think most importantly is Samsung's image presence vs LG. Can't remember the last time I've seen a TV advert for LG. Or a billboard in the city center, or youtube hype from influencers, etc. While Samsung is everywhere.
Second is the cool factor. LG has none while Samsung have this as a priority. From the design of the phones to their special physical presence in malls.
People often ask me (as an IT guy) to recommend a phone. But they always have their mind made up by the time they ask and Samsung is the choice. The other options don't look as good, are considered a risk vs a known, and are also seen as a budget choice for those who can't afford a Samsung. Sometimes I feel they would be even ashamed of having people see them with anything "less".
- deanCommie 6y agoSamsung absolutely decimated the other manufacturers in marketing - including Google. I remember seeing GQ articles that were interviews with celebrities that was kind of a "30 questions" thing where each celebrity was asked the same set of questions. One of them was: "iPhone or Samsung?" It didn't matter that the answer to every single one (in that issue) was iPhone. It didn't surprise me that celebrities would be 100% iPhone users. But as a discerning high-end android buyer gravitating between flagship Google Nexus devices, HTC, and LG, the implication that the alternative to iPhone was "Samsung" was BEWILDERING to me.
- arkitaip 6y agoWhen 6-year-olds use Samsung as a synonym for Android, you know that Samsung's marketing is crushing it. Which is a shame considering how poor their overall software quality is.
- benibin 6y agoI'm sorry but how a 6 years old know anything about phone brands?
- erhk 6y agoAdvertising.
- OkGoDoIt 6y ago6 year olds watch a lot of TV/YouTube, and see a ton of advertising
- tda 6y agoThat really depends on the parents I would say. My kids watch about zero linear ad riddled TV and YouTube, because we don't have a TV. They do get to watch Netflix, NextTube and Disney+. And various educational programs that are streamed ad free online. That at least limits their exposure to advertising, though some shows are basically advertisements for cheap plastic toys (paw patrol, fireman sam) and we disagree if they are allowed.
- arkitaip 6y agoYoutube, TikTok and countless other apps. They will literally create videos asking each other to rate phone brands and what not.
- murukesh_s 6y agoits election time in my home state in India and my 6+ year old asks me who will win the election? I was surprised at the question and the fact that she is able to articulate the political party names. At her age i didn't even know what a political party is. I then realized she sees lots of Television now ever since she moved to her grandama's house during covid. She goes and names three top parties herself and predicts that one particular party will win. I was surprised.. Asked her why she think so and says she sees more ads of that particular party more than others.. i was beyond words.
- mjevans 6y agoYou should teach your children, and those in your extended family, how to, and to, avoid ads. We should all also do our part to end the political ad insanity. This can't be healthy for anyone.
- cageface 6y agoFWIW I've had good experiences with recent Samsung devices. The OS is fast and stable and adds some useful things to stock Android. Their bundled apps aren't terrible either. I use their mail & notes apps. At this point I'd rather have a flagship Galaxy phone than a Pixel since Android doesn't bring that much in terms of new features with major releases these days.
- PicassoCTs 6y agoThey should hire at least one UX-Designer and listen occasionally to it.
- jariel 6y agoIt's not bewildering if it's literally always been true. A few points: Samsung is not cool. Or rather, maybe a little bit among some very middle/lower class people. Selling mobiles is done primarily through carriers - this is not about Samsung direct advertising mostly, by and large, it's through the deals made with carriers. Google has never taken their phone and it's manufacturing/distribution as seriously as Samsung. Carriers may have also specifically not wanted Google to win, because it gives G too much power, they hate Apple and don't want to have to be told what to do. Samsung has always had a huge variety of phones, a much bigger and broader approach. They have always led with a kind of crappy, thrown-together feature, but it was enough to put some wrap a bad campaign around good enough for a bulk of the Android community.
- billfruit 6y agoOutside of US, carrier bundling is rarely seen, people buy phones and carrier plans often prepaid separately.
- carschno 6y agoThe US is a pretty large market, plus carrier bundling is quite common in Europe too. You are usually free to choose a non-bundled phone as well, but I have no ideas what the numbers are. Within the bundled packages, my impression is that Samsung is very dominant as well among the Android phones.
- billfruit 6y agoChina and India are the two largest smartphone markets in the world, and I am thinking in these big markets carrier bundling isn't a thing at all.
- kiwijamo 6y agoNew Zealand is outside the US and it's not unusual for people to buy their phones from their carrier alongside signing up to a plan especially if they are spending a lot of money. Phones purchased directly from the carrier are guaranteed to have the correct LTE bands which makes it easier to be sure you will get the best performance. Also carriers offer sweet interest-free deals with free stuff throw in which makes it more appealing than buying a phone outright. It's usually people buying cheaper phones that may just pair up an cheap phone from an independent store with a cheap plan often from a virtual operator.
- datavirtue 6y agoI think it stemmed from their dominance in quality TVs for a while. These days I see no reason to pay Samsung's rediculous TV prices and they do puy out some real garbage screens now but for a while it was Samsung or some peasant trash.
- sanxiyn 6y agoThere seems to be large regional variance. I live in South Korea, LG definitely advertised a lot. I recommended LG phones to a lot of people who asked me, and no one complained. Edit: For example, people love LG's KnockON feature.
- rnotaro 6y agoSamsungs S10+ and Google Pixel phones have a double tap to wake up too. [1] https://www.samsung.com/sg/support/mobile-devices/how-to-quickly-access-your-lock-screen-with-tap-or-double-tap/ https://www.samsung.com/sg/support/mobile-devices/how-to-qui... [2] https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/7443425 https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/7443425
- erhk 6y agoMy LG G3 had it in like 2014 or whatever year I bought it.
- distances 6y agoIntroduced by Nokia in Symbian but I forgot when, maybe around 2008? I have to assume Nokia patented the feature as it's super useful but was missing from all non-Nokia phones for the longest time.
- minusf 6y agog2 was the first to have it, because the buttons migrated to the back and there had to be a way to wake it while lying on the table
- kiwijamo 6y agoHere in New Zealand, I see Samsung advertising everywhere. TV, billboards, in store, digital, etc. Whereas LG has very little advertising and usually not for their mobile phones. LG is a South Korean company so I guess they advertised heaps domestically but not internationally?
- 6y ago
- postingawayonhn 6y agoI think for Samsung the key was to build a loyal customer base by copying the iPhone at a lower price point. Thier designs have now departed significantly from those of Apple but the core customers have stuck around.
- waheoo 6y agoI think it's simply that people that buy LG don't buy a lot of phones. Samsung so shit you need to buy the new model to get rid of the annoyances of the last. S3 and note were really their only winners. LG hits it out of the park at every price point almost every generation. Same goes for HTC. Buy once, cry once, hodl that shit for half a decade on the short side.
- eptcyka 6y agoIs that feasible when the device is only supported for 3 years max? This is a serious question. Just bought a new pixel 5, because the pixel 3 I had bought refurbished 2 years ago will lose support in October. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the pixel 3, it's literally the same phone with slightly older innards and no wide angle camera.
- mcny 6y agoMy guess is it is a self fulfilling prophecy. If a lot of people have older devices, application developers have to support the older API levels. For example, a store called Safeway decided to cut out an older version of Android. However, they reversed less than a month later. Speaking of marketing, I think LG does market quite a bit inside the Republic of Korea. I saw a show called oh my ghost and everyone had an LG phone in the show.
- richardfey 6y ago> I saw a show called oh my ghost and everyone had an LG phone in the show. That's product placement?
- jayp1418 6y agoRead somewhere "Good product with great marketing beats amazing product with no marketing."
- zibzab 6y agoGalaxy S2 was a pretty bgreat phone and Samsung capitalised on that success by releasing slightly improved versions every year . LG on the other hand was up and down. I think LG was the one that needed marketing since they always lost their fans and had to bring in new people
- throwaway86310 6y agoI can't agree with this enough. LG failed to create a marketing worthy "series" like Samsung did with "galaxy" series.
- minusf 6y agothe lg g2 was the best android phone i ever had. unfortunately the series ended there for me. lg was just making it huger and huger.
- jsight 6y agoThis is so underrated as a comment, but so true. Samsung just kept at it with incremental updates to a single series and an occasional separate model if they wanted to try something new. LG was constantly shifting markets. I had a G2 and really liked it. I would have bought other devices from them, but the things that appealed to me about the G2 disappeared in most future products. Constant shifts in focus gained share but also lost share at the same time. They really needed a cohesive line.
- abdulmuhaimin 6y agoReplacable modules - gone in the next version Self-healing body- gone after 2 version Vein sensor - gone in next version At that point, any feature LG introduce are gonna be labeled as gimmicky, because they never develop it further for their next phone
- avereveard 6y agothere's a lot of tradeoff in samsung phones, from thermal envelop to installed crapware, but their success is not just marketing, they usually come with top of their price class camera, and that is something a lot of people care about. especially mid range a lot of phone produces washed, sad mockery of pictures unless you're under the sunniest day conditions, and even then skin and faces get garbled by the ai-thingy lot of them sports. this does matter to a lot of consumers.
- carlmr 6y agoI mean honestly looking at the Linux or alternative phone offerings, I'd love to jump on it, but the cameras are ages behind. And my phone has become my main camera.
- avereveard 6y agoall the downvotes only show how much detached from reality the hn cohort has become.
- 2muchcoffeeman 6y agoWhat does matter I believe is marketing. "It's just marketing" is an age old refrain from tech people. As a group, we still haven't figured out that marketing works and matters. Nor have we figured out the kinds of features that lead successful products.
- Ensorceled 6y agoOh, we’ve figured it out, we just don’t like it.
- neogodless 6y agoMy nephew asked me what my phone was. I said a OnePlus 7 Pro. He said "is that a Samsung?" My anecdote suggests there is only iPhone and Samsung that people choose between. Of course many know there are other options, but that seems like the mindset of the masses.
- mdiesel 6y ago+1 for OnePlus. I started years back on the 2, upgraded more recently to the 6T. Will take a lot of convincing for me to even think about anyone else. Same experience though, people have either heard of it and rave about it, or ask who makes it.
- FearlessNebula 6y agoUnfortunately OnePlus hasn't been releasing software updates for their new phones
- neogodless 6y agoMy understanding is that OxygenOS 11 took longer than expected but has been announced as far back as the 7. It was available for the 8/8T a month ago. Still I am holding off on it as there are too many issues on various forums. I don't think there's anything I'm missing from Android 11 (yet.)
- enragedcacti 6y agoThey've actually promised OxygenOS 11 all the way back to the 6. That said, rumors are that we won't get even a BETA until August meaning it will be more than a year after AOSP release and be out of date before it even ships :(
- moonbug 6y agothat's wrong. They've just made their latest release - 10.3.9 - and it's supported on all models back to the 6.
- 6y ago
- YinglingLight 6y ago>People often ask me (as an IT guy) to recommend a phone There are two types of IT guys. Ones who care entirely too much about phones, and ones who care absolutely zero.
- kipchak 6y agoSamsung was also much more aggressive regarding incentives/commission for salespeople. At a Verizon store an employee might make $50-100 on selling a Samsung flagship vs $5 for an iPhone.
- ErikVandeWater 6y agoThis doesn't answer OP's question. Tech reviewers have extended access to phones to see if they live up to the hype.
- tootie 6y agoI'm pretty amazed Samsung can pull this off. Anyone who is the least bit brand conscious is buying Apple everything. Android's big appeal to me is power features and value and Samsung is the worst on those facets. I've had a few LGs and they were really nice.