[Galaxy Note 10.1 General] TheWerewolf:
I went to CES last month and attended the Developer U sessions. Made out like a bandit - got a free perception camera from Intel - like the Kinect only way smaller and a neat Bluetooth sensor dongle from the Bluetooth SIG and TI. The last session of the day was "Samsung and Developers" and after what was basically a video showing parties they hold in a few places in the US for developers came the Q&A sessions... except not one person had a question - which wasn't surprising since well, Samsung hadn't actually said anything.

Seizing the opportunity, I put my hand up and asked three questions:

1. Why doesn't Samsung finish documenting their unique hardware. I pointed out that, for example, the IRBlaster is still not documented even though it's on quite a few of their devices now and that we had to reverse engineer it from the kernel source.

2. Why doesn't Samsung consolidate their hardware at least to the point where their APIs are consistent across all devices. This would help solidify them as the 'other Apple' and ensure that people could and would develop for their platform even if it meant they couldn't make it work on other Android devices.

This was something I was pushing all over CES: that developers tend to forget that if they pick Apple - they're picking ONE manufacturer - but when they go to Android, for some reason, they feel compelled to support every single Android device out there - no matter how crappy it is. I kept proposing that a better approach is to do the same thing they do for Apple: pick ONE major Android company and develop for it and it alone. Samsung is the logical choice because they have the single largest market share - but they need to get their developer model simplified and consistent. That's what I took to the Samsung reps at this session.

3. Why are there so many variations on one device.. I held up my 8013 and noted that there's an 8000, the 8010 which comes in at least a dozen different versions each with their own version of Android, the 8017, the 8020... And this would be ok IF.. they made sure all versions were consistent and rolled out at the same time. Spreading updates across three months doesn't work for developers. By the time we've got our software working on say, Jellybean for the Note 10.1, Samsung's released a new version of the product and we have to start all over again. It's just not cost effective for developers.

I pointed out that Samsung claimed that the JellyBean release was first going to be 'by the end of the year' and then 'soon' which at the time suggested before December - possibly before November 2012. In fact, it rolled out almost at the end of the year for the 8000s and then slowly over the next few weeks for the 8010s. I noted that neither the US 8013s or the Canada 8010s had gotten theirs by that point in time.

I also described my experience with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus - the forgotten stepchild of Samsung.

I got mixed responses...

1. They agreed this was a good idea.

2. They kind of agreed this was a good goal, but it would be difficult (I'm not entirely sure why - Apple does it).

3. This is the biggest failure of the three. They stood there muttering for about five minutes then came back with 'You've answered your own question - it's because each model has to meet each country's regulations and markets'. My response was, again - Apple. When a new version of iOS is rolled out - everyone gets it everywhere in the world all at the same time. There may be more than one version of the iPad - but the customer doesn't know it. Perhaps Apple just holds back on new iOS releases until all the versions are tested so it looks unified - but the result is that Apple seems to be better at predicting when they'll ship a new OS and they generally hit pretty close to the date - everywhere.

You could tell the Samsung reps were *not* happy with me.

No one else asked any questions of them - one guy did come over and talk to me about how I would suggest solving some of these problems.

They did however give everyone a Samsung SIII plastic phonecover. Yay, since I don't have an SIII. :)

On the floors, Samsung had a big booth in the Main Hall that was pretty much dedicated to the Note 2 as was their main booth in the South hall. The Note 10.1 was barely there. Sammy was selling the SIII and the Note 2.

As I mentioned elsewhere, Corning was showing the Note 10.1 as one of their showcase Gorilla Glass 2 clients.

I'll be honest, I doubt my questions and comments will make much of an impact with Samsung - although I do have to note, several companies including Belkin did agree with my proposal of picking Samsung and focussing on them rather than trying to build for every Android device out there - although I also suggested that if they go Samsung, Asus, HTC, LC and Acer and stop when they hit the market share they're happy with, it could get them almost 85% of the Android market in five product lines or less...

On the other hand, it was good to finally get a chance to vent at Samsung.