[Galaxy S 4 General] BarryH_GEG:
All marketing does is create propensity and predisposition. Sadly, I've marketed crappy products and I can tell you for a fact that marketing gets people in the door but if the product doesn't meet the expectation the marketing's set they'll walk out the door just as quickly as they walked in. And the higher the price and emotional value the more likely they are to balk. And if you can fool them in to buying a crappy product once it's highly unlikely you'll get them to repeat the same mistake twice. Or buy a different product from the same brand. Marketer's lives would be a lot easier if consumers behaved the way some of you underestimate them to.

Totally agree. Part of Samsung's $12B promotion spend is on individual employee spiffs for reseller's associates and huge incentives for resellers to push Samsung over other brands. It's a cold cruel world.

Let me ask you guys a question? What do you think success will look like for both the One and HTC? Here’s the total number of smartphones sold by each over the past few years. Samsung’s said they expect to sell 10MM SGS4’s a month when it’s released which is 80MM in the eight months of selling left in 2013. Analysts are estimating based on 2013 projected revenue HTC expects to sell 20MM One’s in 2013 which come out to 2.5MM a month (eight months of 2013 sales) which means they expect to sell 25% of what the SGS4’s projected to sell. In 2012 the One X sold about 10MM and the SGS3 about 60MM meaning the One X sold about 17% of what the SGS3 did. So is moving from 17% last year to 25% this year a “success?” Do you think they’ll achieve it? Do you think Samsung won't hit their targets?

---------- Post added at 12:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:41 PM ----------

The Cliff Notes for the lazy...

The Samsung Galaxy S line has produced some of the best smartphones over the years, and the Galaxy S4 lives up to its legacy. Some consider it an evolutionary step from the Galaxy S III, others would go ahead and call it a revolution, there's the third kind too who insist it's a mere rehash.

Without getting into the semantics, we believe the S4 to be a worthy update over its predecessor, which was already one of the most capable smartphones around.

Let's run it down: the big 5" screen fits into a very compact body (same footprint as the Galaxy S III and slimmer), the new 1080p Super AMOLED matrix offers a significant improvement in image quality, the 13MP camera is one of the best around and, performance-wise, the Galaxy S4 will probably hold the crown until the Galaxy Note III comes around.

Samsung's drive to offer the best Android software package borders on an obsession. Launching the Galaxy S4 with the latest Jelly Bean version is a good start, and we really like some of the home-brewed TouchWiz features. The complete list of options is so long that half of them may take unsuspecting users a while to discover. Now, a good portion of those are only gimmicks that still need a lot of work, but there are some real gems too and it would be a pity to miss those.

Anyway, the camera is the other thing we liked about the Galaxy S4, besides the screen and processing power. It has a simple interface and while it's not groundbreaking in any way, it combines the best from mobile cameras and has the image quality to match.

The Galaxy S4's competition is out in full force. The HTC One has a slightly smaller (but still excellent) screen, an optically stabilized camera, and killer looks - the only thing the Galaxy S4 seemingly lacks. We already did a dedicated shootout with those two, so you might want to check it out.
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