Everyone is talking about action movie director Michael Bay walking off the stage at yesterday’s Samsung event. I guess a poor reaction to a downed teleprompter makes for a good story, but it ignores the rest of the press event. (Don’t worry, we’ll embed the video of the man known for explosions imploding on stage below for your enjoyment.)
Samsung needs people to focus on the actual news, what what with an 18 percent drop in profits for Q4 2013. The company blames slow holiday sales, but is it possible that people have become bored with Samsung?
Let’s look at the Galaxy TabPro series. A trio of 12″, 10″, and 8″ tablets, all with 2,560 x 1,600 displays and Android 4.4 (KitKat). Despite being new, the look is reminiscent of the Galaxy Note 3 and the latest Tab 10.1. Sorry, though, no S Pen on these. If you like plain white plastic and a faux-leather back, this is the tablet series for you to check out.
Maybe the new NotePro will grab you? A massive 12.2″ tablet, with S Pen, weighing in at a bit more than a pound and a half (1.66 pounds to be exact), it’s apparently a slightly blown up version of the 2014 Note 10.1. The LTE version will come with a 2.3 quad-core Snapdragon, while the WiFi only ships with the same Exynos Eight-Core chip as the aforementioned Note 10.1.
Love that big thick pen. Ahem.
Both the TabPro and NotePro lines carry a new user interface called Magazine UX. Samsung’s put a lot of detail into past interfaces (TouchWiz and Nature UX), and we’ll be interested to see what makes this one tick. Samsung certainly offers a whole lot of special offers with the devices, including 50 GB of free storage for three years.
If those items strike you as rehashes, you may hate this next one. The ATIV Book 9 Plus is an update to the ATIV Book 9. The “plusification” is a 15.6″ screen instead of the 13″, albeit with a slightly lower resolution but brighter screen. It also has a stronger battery.
Another update is the ATIV One 7 All-in-One. Gone is the black, HDTV-esque design of last year. Instead, the 2014 edition will be all white. It’s very 2007 iMac, but with a thinner, more powerful underpinning. Samsung wants you to think 24″ 1080p, Core i5 Galaxy tablet, but you can’t tell me this doesn’t look like an Apple device.
That sums up the problem; we have the same complaint people have been making about Apple for the last year or so. None of this feels fresh or new. Sure, there’s that 105″ curved TV, but that’s of interest to the maybe one percent of people who can afford it when it makes it to market. After all, even the 55″ curved HDTV costs almost $10,000.
I’m not saying Samsung is doomed. The consumer electronics giant has way too much market share and mind share to go away soon. However, there needs to be a bit more than running in place, which is what this spate of announcements feels like.
Speaking of running, here’s a video of Bay’s walk off we promised. Just because.
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