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Samsung’s Report Says Galaxy Would Be Better If it Were More Like the iPhone

30 points by tjogin 14y ago

Zenst 14y ago
Interesting defence from Samsung. Not much else to say about this.
- andybak 14y ago
  Then why did you bother?
  - Zenst 14y ago
    I'm not sure if your question is rhetorical or not. I have never seen a company use as a defence in a court of law the argument that if we had copied your product as you claim then our product would of been better. That I don't interesting and I'm not aware of any case were such a argument has been leveridged before and as such found that aspect interesting. I hope that answears your question if it was a question. If your aware of anything similiar in a technology companies many outing in courts approaching such a similiar argument then I'd be interested - has this argument been used before in a court?
    - andybak 14y ago
      Sorry I was glib but your previous post was ambiguous and didn't add much to the conversation.
      - Zenst 14y ago
        Thats ok. What are your thoughts on this defence approach, is it something you have seen used before?
        andybak 14y ago
        From my understanding, Apple is using this document against Samsung rather than Samsung using it as a defence.
TwoBit 14y ago
While the iPhone was clearly better designed than the Samsung phone compared to there, many of the comparisons seem to be a case of Samsung just assuming that whatever Apple did was better, even though the Samsung version was OK. It's like they took everything Apple did and defined it as being better than whatever they did. Granted, that was in fact the case at least 70% of the time.
- jkn 14y ago
  Could you specify some slide numbers as illustration? I only read through the document quickly but I couldn't find a case where the iPhone wasn't indeed better. Edit: found one example: the "second hand" thing on slide 49.
  - DominikR 14y ago
    What's the point of making an internal presentation of all the points where the iPhone is worse and Samsung is better? Samsung is trying to _improve_ their products, so they'll obviously compare their perceived products weak points against what they feel is a better implementation.
    - jkn 14y ago
      Sure. The question here is whether the iPhone is indeed better on every point. If Samsung's version is as good as the iPhone or better, and they still recommend to copy the iPhone implementation, then you can accuse Samsung of copying for its own sake rather than to improve the device. That is what TwoBit suggested.
- ljf 14y ago
  The point of the document is to look at a competitor, see where they are doing something better, and boil down the feature/requirement, then see how it could be applied. This is the list of the things they think iPhone did/does better - not an exhaustive list of every single thing the iPhone does. It's not a score card. So everything on this list should be something that Samsung sees/saw as a place they needed to improve - hence the bias in the detail.
p_sherman 14y ago
It's important to note (when the article title is pure link-bait) that it's Galaxy S1 that's mentioned.
esolyt 14y ago
The article has a misleading title. Nowhere in the document does it state that they should or they will copy iPhone. It is just comparing their usability with Apple's. Quite the opposite, there is a page where they are stating they should differentiate and not look like iPhone's homescreen.
- andrewfelix 14y ago
  >Quite the opposite, there is a page... One page out of a couple of hundred stating they should be emulating the iPhone's look and feel.
  - azylman 14y ago
    If you read the report and not just the article headline, you'll see that Samsung's report wasn't "hey guys, we should make our phone exactly like the iPhone" but, rather, "hey guys, here's things the iPhone does better than us - we should fix that, while making sure we differentiate our product"
    - andrewfelix 14y ago
      What makes you think I didn't read the report? In almost every page a direction for improvement is given to bring the S1 in line with the iPhone experience. This isn't a 200 page report looking to make general improvements. It's a report looking to make improvements comparative and in line with the iPhone. Why else would they have a side by side comparison espousing the superior Apple UI/UX. FYI for any phone fanboy's frothing at the mouth; I own neither an iPhone or a Samusung phone. I think both companies are guilty of some pretty piss poor business practices. The whole iPhone vs Android thing is reminiscent of the Sega vs Nintendo nonsense of the 90's.
  - devcpp 14y ago
    What were you expecting? This document shows room for improvement. It's not a full-on comparison of every aspect. Engineers don't care about congratulating themselves on the areas where their product is better than the competition. They want to know where the competition is doing better than them. This is the purpose of this document.
calciphus 14y ago
The other ten versions of this same article on the frontpage have vastly more honest titles.
DeepDuh 14y ago
As someone who has never owned a Samsung Android device, I was astonished by these slides. My biggest questions are: - how the hell did Apple get that report. They were the ones submitting it to court, right? Looks almost like industrial espionage to me. - Was this really the release software of the S1? Was it that bad? I remember people praising that phone almost like the S2 later on. Really? Some of those slides show truly hideously designed UI, like the 'next' button on the keyboard?
- redcap 14y ago
  It's a court case - there's a process called "discovery" that lets you get a hold of information that looks relevant from your counterparty. It's entirely legal. I presume it's the judge who gets to decide whether it's admitted as evidence, but until then I presume that the only people who can look at it outside of the cleared people at Samsung are Apple lawyer.
  - DeepDuh 14y ago
    As a non American this is quite amazing to me. Couldn't that easily be used against someone in order to get to their valuable IP? Who decides what is relevant for the suing party to see and what not?
    - redcap 14y ago
      Check out the wikipedia page for some info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(law) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(law) Ianal, but my understanding is that each side hires lawyers to go through the opposing side's documents. My understanding at this level is that while these lawyers may be working for you, they still owe a duty of care to only produce stuff that's of value to the court case. Unless your IP somehow involves the other side in some fashion, then that should be safe. But "confidential" documents showing how you modified your own product after a comparison with another product on the market is probably fair game. What stops discovery escalating like you suppose is that there needs to be a basis for the court case, and that the lawyers looking at your documents have their own reputations to protect.
joe_the_user 14y ago
Guys, First, even with our fairly mad patent system intact, there is no law against looking at a superior product and brainstorming about how you can improve your product using the ideas contained there-in. And that is how it ought to be - should young painters back in the day have been prevented from studying Rembrandt because they would steal his ideas? Then consider, there's no law about changing product in the general direction of a superior product unless you violate a specific patent. Now further, if it is possible to patent any conceivable way to improve a product so that it is roughly similar to your product and solves the same problem problems as your product, then that should make us think even more about the insanity of patents.
KaoruAoiShiho 14y ago
This document basically completely exonerates Samsung. It proves that the Galaxy was an original design, and similarities to the iPhone were gained only after standard usability comparisons.

30 points by tjogin 14y ago

Zenst 14y ago

Interesting defence from Samsung. Not much else to say about this.

andybak 14y ago
Then why did you bother?
- Zenst 14y ago
  I'm not sure if your question is rhetorical or not. I have never seen a company use as a defence in a court of law the argument that if we had copied your product as you claim then our product would of been better. That I don't interesting and I'm not aware of any case were such a argument has been leveridged before and as such found that aspect interesting. I hope that answears your question if it was a question. If your aware of anything similiar in a technology companies many outing in courts approaching such a similiar argument then I'd be interested - has this argument been used before in a court?
  - andybak 14y ago
    Sorry I was glib but your previous post was ambiguous and didn't add much to the conversation.
    - Zenst 14y ago
      Thats ok. What are your thoughts on this defence approach, is it something you have seen used before?
      - andybak 14y ago
        From my understanding, Apple is using this document against Samsung rather than Samsung using it as a defence.

TwoBit 14y ago

While the iPhone was clearly better designed than the Samsung phone compared to there, many of the comparisons seem to be a case of Samsung just assuming that whatever Apple did was better, even though the Samsung version was OK. It's like they took everything Apple did and defined it as being better than whatever they did. Granted, that was in fact the case at least 70% of the time.

jkn 14y ago
Could you specify some slide numbers as illustration? I only read through the document quickly but I couldn't find a case where the iPhone wasn't indeed better. Edit: found one example: the "second hand" thing on slide 49.
- DominikR 14y ago
  What's the point of making an internal presentation of all the points where the iPhone is worse and Samsung is better? Samsung is trying to _improve_ their products, so they'll obviously compare their perceived products weak points against what they feel is a better implementation.
  - jkn 14y ago
    Sure. The question here is whether the iPhone is indeed better on every point. If Samsung's version is as good as the iPhone or better, and they still recommend to copy the iPhone implementation, then you can accuse Samsung of copying for its own sake rather than to improve the device. That is what TwoBit suggested.
ljf 14y ago
The point of the document is to look at a competitor, see where they are doing something better, and boil down the feature/requirement, then see how it could be applied. This is the list of the things they think iPhone did/does better - not an exhaustive list of every single thing the iPhone does. It's not a score card. So everything on this list should be something that Samsung sees/saw as a place they needed to improve - hence the bias in the detail.

p_sherman 14y ago

It's important to note (when the article title is pure link-bait) that it's Galaxy S1 that's mentioned.

esolyt 14y ago

The article has a misleading title. Nowhere in the document does it state that they should or they will copy iPhone. It is just comparing their usability with Apple's. Quite the opposite, there is a page where they are stating they should differentiate and not look like iPhone's homescreen.

andrewfelix 14y ago
>Quite the opposite, there is a page... One page out of a couple of hundred stating they should be emulating the iPhone's look and feel.
- azylman 14y ago
  If you read the report and not just the article headline, you'll see that Samsung's report wasn't "hey guys, we should make our phone exactly like the iPhone" but, rather, "hey guys, here's things the iPhone does better than us - we should fix that, while making sure we differentiate our product"
  - andrewfelix 14y ago
    What makes you think I didn't read the report? In almost every page a direction for improvement is given to bring the S1 in line with the iPhone experience. This isn't a 200 page report looking to make general improvements. It's a report looking to make improvements comparative and in line with the iPhone. Why else would they have a side by side comparison espousing the superior Apple UI/UX. FYI for any phone fanboy's frothing at the mouth; I own neither an iPhone or a Samusung phone. I think both companies are guilty of some pretty piss poor business practices. The whole iPhone vs Android thing is reminiscent of the Sega vs Nintendo nonsense of the 90's.
- devcpp 14y ago
  What were you expecting? This document shows room for improvement. It's not a full-on comparison of every aspect. Engineers don't care about congratulating themselves on the areas where their product is better than the competition. They want to know where the competition is doing better than them. This is the purpose of this document.

calciphus 14y ago

The other ten versions of this same article on the frontpage have vastly more honest titles.

DeepDuh 14y ago

As someone who has never owned a Samsung Android device, I was astonished by these slides. My biggest questions are: - how the hell did Apple get that report. They were the ones submitting it to court, right? Looks almost like industrial espionage to me. - Was this really the release software of the S1? Was it that bad? I remember people praising that phone almost like the S2 later on. Really? Some of those slides show truly hideously designed UI, like the 'next' button on the keyboard?

redcap 14y ago
It's a court case - there's a process called "discovery" that lets you get a hold of information that looks relevant from your counterparty. It's entirely legal. I presume it's the judge who gets to decide whether it's admitted as evidence, but until then I presume that the only people who can look at it outside of the cleared people at Samsung are Apple lawyer.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  As a non American this is quite amazing to me. Couldn't that easily be used against someone in order to get to their valuable IP? Who decides what is relevant for the suing party to see and what not?
  - redcap 14y ago
    Check out the wikipedia page for some info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(law) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_(law) Ianal, but my understanding is that each side hires lawyers to go through the opposing side's documents. My understanding at this level is that while these lawyers may be working for you, they still owe a duty of care to only produce stuff that's of value to the court case. Unless your IP somehow involves the other side in some fashion, then that should be safe. But "confidential" documents showing how you modified your own product after a comparison with another product on the market is probably fair game. What stops discovery escalating like you suppose is that there needs to be a basis for the court case, and that the lawyers looking at your documents have their own reputations to protect.

joe_the_user 14y ago

Guys, First, even with our fairly mad patent system intact, there is no law against looking at a superior product and brainstorming about how you can improve your product using the ideas contained there-in. And that is how it ought to be - should young painters back in the day have been prevented from studying Rembrandt because they would steal his ideas? Then consider, there's no law about changing product in the general direction of a superior product unless you violate a specific patent. Now further, if it is possible to patent any conceivable way to improve a product so that it is roughly similar to your product and solves the same problem problems as your product, then that should make us think even more about the insanity of patents.

KaoruAoiShiho 14y ago

This document basically completely exonerates Samsung. It proves that the Galaxy was an original design, and similarities to the iPhone were gained only after standard usability comparisons.