standard Samsung got something wrong when they designed the S6

5 Comments

So the other day I stumbled on a post by Rene Ritchie over at iMore, The difference between Apple and Samsung industrial design, where he touched on something that I consider to be highly important, but also something I didn’t notice at first glance. I recently bought a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge that I have been using instead of my usual iPhone 6 (yes, don’t worry I also use a Lumia 930), and so far haven’t had any real complaints, other than it doesn’t play nice with the ID3 tags on my iTunes music, and that TouchWiz really sucks (good thing Nokia made Z Launcher for me to replace it with). I hadn’t used Android in a while, and I was ready to be convinced by Samsung that this time they had actually gone and learned something about industrial design, actually producing flagship phones truly worthy of their price tag. And then I saw that article I just mentioned.

galaxy-s6-bottom-alignment

Can you see it? If you look closely, can you notice that the USB port, headphone jack, speaker grille and microphone aren’t aligned on the S6 Edge pictured above? Notice how they follow a perfect straight line on the iPhone? And it’s not just on the bottom of the phone that we find this:

galaxy-s6-qualcomm-alignment

Once again, the mic, SIM card slot and IR blaster don’t align.

galaxy-s6-side-alignment

Same goes for the standard S6 with the power button and the SIM tray not lining up as we can see above.

What is going on here? Apple don’t even run their own factories like Samsung do, and their phones don’t have this problem. Samsung spent billions of dollars and many years designing the S6 and S6 Edge, and yet they failed to notice this very straightforward and simple detail that may appear to you to be very minor, but is a big deal when you consider that this company is the largest manufacturer of mobile phones around the world. Not that I’ve used one yet, but it doesn’t appear that the LG G4 that Ali recently wrote about has this problem.

Safe to say after realising this, I put my SIM card back in to my iPhone 6.

I’ll leave you with a thought – which of these phones has been designed by artists, and which has been designed by businessmen merely out to get a profit?

 

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  • Nokia Rox

    laziest designer of phones ever in history in the world.

  • Moody Caplan

    If you followed Nokia you’d know that it’s an art fitting internals to create a durable phone and it is not an easy task, true no phone will have Nokia’s rigidity but Nokia didn’t make thin phones or metal phone all that much, when they did 925 wasn’t that durable.
    Volume rockers were the weak point that made the iPhones bend as such it makes sense not to create a Symmetry that would ease the task of bending.

    • Thank you for your feedback Moody, you raise an interesting point there regarding form over function, I’d like to challenge you a little bit on your facts there – indeed you are correct that a small number of 6 Plus phones did bend around the volume rocker, but that had far more to do with supply chain issues – if you’ll recall in scientific testing it has been found that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are just fine when it comes to structural integrity – http://blogs.wsj.com/personal-technology/2014/09/22/iphone-6-is-the-most-durable-iphone-yet-says-insurer/.

      Keep in mind that if Samsung made this decision willingly (very hard to believe) then surely the S6/Edge wouldn’t bend as easily as the iPhone, except that they do, if not worse – http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/3/8341123/samsung-galaxy-s6-bendgate.

      Nonetheless, us specheads and enthusiasts could argue all day about nothing, but most consumers honestly don’t care.

  • D Harries

    Or is it style over substance….?

  • Ep 017

    I’d rather have the device with the better screen to body ratio. And the iPhone’s is just ridiculous.