Samsung’s plummeting profits and handset market share seem to have spurred the South Korean giant to take a more focused and refreshed approach to its upcoming flagship Galaxy S6. Reports indicate that Samsung is redesigning the hardware and its TouchWiz software, in the hopes of reinvigorating the brand, in the wake of disappointing sales of its Galaxy S5 flagship and increasingly fierce competition from more affordable Chinese devices.
This is particularly important in the light of Samsung’s preliminary figures, which forecast a 37% drop in operating profit year-on-year, down to $4.7bn. Samsung predicts sales for the period will decline 10% year-on-year, to $47bn. These numbers mean the company has now had five consecutive quarters of declining profits, as Apple’s new iPhones squeeze it in the high-end market, and Huawei and Xiaomi pile on the pressure in the more affordable segments. Gartner reports that Samsung’s global market share for smartphones fell from 32.1% to 24.4% year-on-year in the quarter.
In response, industry sources in South Korea are reporting that TouchWiz, often criticized for its poor user experience and aggressive attempts to push users into the Samsung equivalent of default Android apps, will be optimized to run much more like the stock Android 5.0 found on Google’s Nexus 6 – providing better experience for the flagship phone, more consistent with other Android devices.
Pushing TouchWiz towards the background, or even removing it entirely, would allow Samsung to focus on producing a phone that sells itself on its quality hardware – rather than tinkering with and trying to improve upon the OS that is ravaging its market share at the hands of its rivals, which is clearly good enough for the competition.
Business Korea writes that the newly reworked model is set to be unveiled at Mobile World Congress in February. Its industry source confirmed the decision to simplify TouchWiz, which has included in recent years an Easy mode to strip out many of the additional features added to the Android experience by Samsung.
Another benefit of simplifying TouchWiz will be found in the reduced system requirements and power usage for the flagship. After all, every cycle the processor makes is using electricity from the precious resource that is a phone’s battery. If Samsung can slim down the cycles, it could eke out extra battery life – which is particularly important in the age of power-hungry screens and their ever-increasing size.
Getting back to basics should see TouchWiz return to its position as a differentiating product – something that helped Samsung sell its early Galaxy flagships to a public that was new to both Android and smartphones. As other handset makers caught up, TouchWiz became synonymous with bloatware, and as the stock flavors of Android became more polished, the difference between the Samsung user experience and the ‘normal’ Android environment became much sharper in the eyes of product reviewers.
As for the hardware, Business Insider has been told that a metal S6 and a version with a curved screen edge, like that found on the Galaxy Note Edge. The recently launched Galaxy Alpha has been cited as the source of rumors of Samsung’s first all-metal S6, with Samsung gauging public reactions to the metal band that was included on the Alpha, before deciding whether to incorporate a metal unibody design. Leaked images seem to confirm a metal unibody S6, but whether there is a plastic design hasn’t been definitively proven.
More unnamed sources told SamMobile that the S6 will feature a Quad HD screen (2560x1440p), a 16 megapixel camera, 32-128GB of internal storage (dropping the uncomfortably small 16GB option from the range), and most interestingly, the new Exynos 7420 SoC.
Samsung’s 7420 is a 64-bit 8-core chip, built around 4 Cortex-A53 cores and another 4 Cortex-A57 cores, to better handle the workloads of high-intensity tasks and background processes. SamMobile also reports that Samsung use its own SS333 LTE modem, leaving Intel out in the cold and helping Samsung make the leap away from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon line, which currently power most of its flagships.
However, a Snapdragon version of the S6 will be produced using the Snapdragon 810 – the first flagship-suitable 64-bit SoC from Qualcomm. SamMobile also learned that the S6 will be using Broadcom’s new BCM4773, which was announced last September. The chip combines GNSS navigation, with a hub for gathering sensor data from the handset – with the aim of combining all available data to better determine location.
Broadcom claims an 80% lower power draw than standalone GNSS chips, and envisions the chip using WiFi or Bluetooth in combination with the GNSS positioning to determine whether a user is indoors or outdoors – and then pairing that information to the MEMS sensors that will be gathering environmental and user activity data.
Tizen phone and TVs:
Samsung has also launched its first Tizen phone, adding it to the range of Tizen devices that include its new TVs and a smartwatch. The Z1 handset has been put on sale in India for $90, and is a radically different design than what Samsung initially announced. Samsung originally promised a high-end Tizen phone back in early 2013, which then morphed into a mid-range device due to be released in Russia.
After the Russian launch was cancelled, without clear explanation, Samsung has now shifted markets again, and scaled down the tech specs. The dual-SIM device will be carried on Reliance and Aircel’s 3G network, and features a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, 768MB of RAM, 4GB internal storage, up to 64GB additional storage via microSD. A 4-inch WVGA screen and a 3.1 megapixel camera round out the notable features.
On the content side of things, Samsung is launching a free entertainment package called Joy Box, which provides access to TV shows, movies and music. Free access to Club Samsung is also included with the phone, and 3 free months’ access to music-streaming service Hungama and mobile TV platforms nexGTv and Box TV are also included.
Initially, Tizen looked like an attempt by Samsung to create a bargaining chip to use against Google – which was getting increasingly publicly frustrated by Samsung’s tampering with the Android experience. At the time, Samsung could have threatened to migrate its users away from Android and onto Tizen, seeing as it had a much larger market share than it does today. After the Tizen phone failed to materialize as a flagship device and the Chinese manufacturers began eating away at Samsung’s lead, Tizen now finds itself relegated in the Samsung billing.
But the OS seems to have found a concrete home inside Samsung’s smart TVs, cameras, a few fridges, as well as the curved Gear S 3G-connected smartwatch. It could also find itself inside any new products that emerge from SmartThings – Samsung’s recent acquisition, and maker of a smart home platform. Tizen could feasibly work as the OS for a home hub or controller, but convincing developers to jump ship may prove challenging, especially as Android enjoys a much larger install base than Tizen and shows no sign of slipping.
In addition, the multitude of much smaller devices that will be found inside smart homes do not use an operating system like Tizen. While Tizen can power a TV, touchscreen home hub or even an intercom unit, it has no hope of being installed inside light bulbs or heating units. Those devices don’t need an operating system, as they use extremely lightweight coding to save on computational requirements and extend battery life.
Consequently, anyone pointing to Samsung’s SmartThings buy as Tizen’s savior should be quietly ignored. Tizen’s future has gotten decidedly less exciting within the space of a year. Nonetheless, Samsung is promising that the new Z1 is “just the tip of the iceberg” of new Tizen products that will be released in 2015.