For a long time, Apple were considered the leading brand in the high-end smartphone market, excluding of course names like Vertu which are in an entirely different category. The general consensus among users and critics has generally been that Apple’s devices cost more than the average smartphone on the market, but buyers get a lot of value for that money, especially those looking for a long-term purchase. But for a while now, Samsung have been building up a serious reputation as a manufacturer of expensive smartphones too, and the recent release of the Galaxy Note 7 further solidified that position.
In fact, according to some, Apple may be in trouble if they don’t take action soon, as the Galaxy Note 7 is a strong challenger to the popularity of the iPhone 7 Plus. While it’s probably far-fetched to say that Samsung will manage to steal customers away from Apple in any significant numbers, it’s sill probably not a good idea for Apple to ignore that situation.
Because if the trend continues, people may soon forget about Apple as the primary player on the luxury smartphone market, and turn their attention to Samsung instead. Android used to have a poor reputation for its usability, as users frequently complained about the operating system lagging, crashing and generally performing poorly, but this has changed quite a lot recently. The newest editions of Android are regularly commended for their smoothness and general stability, while Google have also been putting a lot of work in the visual department too.
A direct comparison between the iPhone 7 Plus and Galaxy Note 7 doesn’t make much sense, as the devices are in completely different realms. Other than comparing the screen sizes and the camera quality, there isn’t much room for putting the two devices against each other. Processor speeds don’t matter much when each device is running a completely different operating system, and since iOS and Android also have different styles of memory management, even comparing RAM sizes doesn’t tell us much.
Plus, the hardware of the two phones is not even on significantly different levels, further making such comparisons pointless. At this point, many users are actually looking at the differences between iOS and Android as they are presented on each respective device, and it seems like Android has been winning many new fans recently.
Samsung still have some work to do in this regard though, as it’s still not rare to see complaints about their edition of the operating system. Many describe the experience as bloated, and while there have been some improvements lately, it’s arguable if those are due to any work by Samsung themselves or simply because their phones’ hardware has gotten powerful enough to handle all the additions to the system without much strain. Still, adding so many applications and modifications to the standard Android interface can confuse users, especially those coming from other Android smartphones, so we can understand where those complaints are coming from.
Apple seem to be preparing some surprise behind the scenes, if the latest rumors are to be believed, so we could see the tides turning in their favor sooner or later. Some of the company’s fans have been arguing that they should try being more active in the lower ends of the market instead of focusing on the top exclusively. And while Apple have made some experiments in this regard, not everyone seems to agree that this is a good idea.