After such a long wait, I finally got my Samsung Galaxy S on July 20th, 2010. I activated it the next day, and I was as happy as a kid who received the new toy he wanted on his birthday. The Galaxy S was pretty impressive; it was well packed with a bright display along with a bigger screen size than my existing iPod touch.
Like any other gadget lover, I played around with it for a while before getting serious with its use. I was looking for the ways and means to interface this device with my laptop so that I could consolidate my existing iPod touch and phone into this new much awaited gadget. Everyone in our organization had been anticipating the release of the Galaxy S for months since it was announced that all employees would receive one of the smartphones. Thanks to a colleague of mine who advised me to download a driver from the Samsung site, I ended up finding the "Kies" software on the Samsung website. Though I didn't know what it was, I just downloaded it and was pretty satisfied with its interface and easy navigation.
So by now, you will have realized that I was happy with my new toy, but unfortunately that happiness was short lived. I became disappointed in both the Kies and the Android itself.
Let us look at the Android first:
I fail to understand why everything revolves around the Gmail account. I understand Android comes from the Google den, but I am sure Google is not silently pushing Gmail as it is already a proven email solution. As a side note, I am a big fan of Google, and use most of their products & services.
When I realized that I had no choice except to use a Gmail account, I configured my existing and primary Gmail account on the device, which in turn transferred all my email, contacts, Gtalk buddies, etc onto the phone, which I didn't want. I repeatedly tried to stop the sync, but it seems that the Galaxy S went deaf and failed to recognize my request as it frequently toggled between Sync on/off. For the record, it wasn't the first touch interface I'd used.
Dear friends at Samsung, please have a look at it.
Post sync, I realized I have my world of Gmail including contacts, calendar, Gmail etc in my hand, which I never wanted. So the obvious choice was to remove the account and I was happy to notice that there is an option to remove it, but that happiness was short lived as at one point it told me that in order to remove the primary account I had to reset the phone to the default or factory settings... One more bummer: all of my settings, which included a few punched in contacts, call logs and messages, got wiped out after I reset the phone to default settings (which I anticipated, but at the same time I was left with no options).
Our internal IT department had a plan to get us a collaboration portal on our mobile devices some time very soon, and I thought that until it gets executed I ought to sync my outlook calendar as I didn't want to carry multiple devices. Again my wish was rejected, as I was faced with one more road block "You've got to have a Google account configured on the device to sync your calendar."
Next, I thought to purchase some apps from Google market place, again you need to have a Google account and ID configured. Why can't it be open access If you want to download anything you must create a profile on Google market and control transactions from there.
And then I decided that I didn't want to sync my primary Google account onto my phone because I'd have many more contacts, email etc, much distraction on my primary Google account, so why not create one more Gmail account However, I had nightmares when I thought of syncing and controlling multiple Google accounts. I am sure there will be a way, as Gmail has flexibility with POP, & IMAP but still it is very tricky and needs more filtering options.
I can go on and on, but overall I would say my experience with Apple products thus far has been superior to Android. No wonder why Apple products are the most sought after.
Now let us have a sneak peek of Samsung S & Kies -
Much like my initial excitement, the interface turned out to be a sheer dissatisfaction. It took me a day to realize interface slows down if I open two or three internet explorers on my laptop. Speed and interface are always debatable, but allow me to share one specific functional experience.
My first step & foremost requirement was to somehow get my contacts into the phone, and Kies provides a very easy and intuitive interface and I was happy to realize that all my outlook contacts on my phone and I didn't dive in details like field mappings, etc.
Later in the day, I fixed some contacts on the Phone and synced them back using Kies and it was good to notice that the program noticed some changes. I selected the phone as the master record and bingo all my changes got transferred to outlook. I was glad to notice that at least contacts sync is up to par. Alas, this happiness was short lived when I realized that Kies messed up my contact names by merging last, middle and first name in one field (in the outlook client). I am so mad at Kies! How can it do it like that
One more thing, it took me time to figure out trigger point to get songs from my PC to the device.
I bet you will agree with me, the system needs better placement and a clearer indicator to sync/exchange content between the PC and the device.
Have a look at this screen shot:
In my opinion, there is a strong lesson to be learned from Customer Experience - how a customer feels and responds to the service or product at the emotional level. I feel products/services that touch customer both emotionally and functionally are the ones which last longer with high brand loyalty.
Talking again about the pure hardware - "Samsung Galaxy S", if you need to add/remove external SD card you got to remove the cover i.e. open the phone - what kind of an experience is that... Shouldn't the end user be allowed to interface seamlessly with it Things get even more complicated if you have a protective cover (which one surely will have). With high probability I can say, if you're a frequent external SD card user, within no time the back cover of the device will loosen its grip with the casing.
My intention of this write-up is not to complain about Samsung or Android, but to highlight a point that Apple has set the bar high for smartphones, and Samsung fails to exceed or for that matter to come close to its competitors.
There is a lesson for the pure play hardware manufacturers to think beyond hardware as it is the combination of hardware and software which makes the customer happy and enhances customer experience.
My two cents.
