Over the last couple of years, there have been a number of incidents with third party accessories – specifically batteries – causing issues(exploding) with smartphones, Samsung as one of the largest manufacturers has certainly born the brunt of the PR blowback as their products have been involved on a number of occasions, but Samsung is possibly looking to implement a new policy to fight this by ensuring that only ‘official’ Samsung accessories are used on their future Smartphones.
According to a report from Korean news site ETNews Samsung could be looking to embed a ‘chip’ of some description into their official accessories, that would authorise the accessory with the phone and prevent any un-authorised accessory from being used. According to the report this would affect anything from chargers and batteries to Smartcovers, although exactly what the ‘chip’ would entail is not specified, but some manner of NFC or RFID could conceivably be involved.
With Samsung selling the largest amount of Smartphones, they represent a rather large pool of third party accessories available in-store in Australian retailers and is quite a large market for third party manufacturers, any move away from allowing even third party covers would be a big step. It remains to be seen if this new idea will be implemented, but it’s interesting that they would consider it.
Will a policy enforcing use of ‘official’ accessories on Samsungs products change your mind on future purchases?
This is an anticompetitive move, which if implemented will rule Samsung out of my future purchases.
That will be a deal breaker for me. Samsung become Apple, looks like Google may become the new Samsung (ok their Moto Division), time will tell.
Obviously some Spin from the Samsung Spin factory. The problem Samsung has had with phone batteries has in fact been caused by Samsung supplied batteries, and in fact they are replacing the said batteries for S4 phones right at this time. So to infer that batteries from outside suppliers is the fault is misleading.
Is it just me, or are Samsung slowly turning into a horrible company?
Why do I feel like the Galaxy S 5 may fork Android completely and adopt Tizen?
I am against the principle but having said that I have two official Samsung accessories for my galaxy s2 and they are of excellent quality and were very competitively priced at the time I purchased them.
Me too, the one’s I have purchased were indeed excellent quality.
Way to burn a market, Samsung. Here’s a tip: Apple support is dropping for a reason. So why emulate them??
Perhaps because apple are duking it out with Exxon Mobil for largest US corporation?
Perhaps because they have more cash than the US government (even ignoring debts)?
Because they have the most massive profit margins of a consumer facing company?
No company can reasonably be questioned for _why_ they would want to emulate apple’s bad behaviour.
The only reasonable question is do they think they can get away with it too?
Currently on the Samsung galaxy s3… looking forward to the Sony Xperia Z1s.
This is what happens when you make silly decisions Samsung.
Samsung are getting a bit too big for their boots… In a big way, they OWE their success to Android, yet they seem to be trying with all their might to create their own closed ecosystem, away from mainstream Android. Samsung are no better than Apple, they are just cheaper, that’s all. I have never owned a non-Nexus Samsung smartphone/tablet, and never will.
Samsung sitting on top of the slide inching forward ready to go down…they are starting to forget what has got their phone products this far.
This is an anti-competitive action and would I suggest not be looked upon well by the ACCC. It could only work if they registered a non-genuine accessory and warned about it etc. Blocking their use entirely would be on shaky legal ground I feel.
How come the ACCC hasn’t prosecuted Apple for this?
Apple never banned the use of third party parts and accessories, they just made up stupid proprietary plugs like the 30 pin and lightning usb.
Yes apple only had a proprietary plug. Proprietary as in they offered no details on it to other manufacturers who has to reverse engineer it if they wanted to make devices for Apple products. While a proprietary chip is a little further down this road it is still essentially the same comparison imo. Of course I’m no lawyer so as far as I know legally they could be as different as apples to oranges.
Had my SIII4G for a year now… picked it because of the performance and feature set. But I wasn’t completely happy with it until I fitted my ZeroLemon 7Ah battery. So if I can’t mod future Samsung phones to fit my needs, then I guess I’ll be looking at other manufacturers…
I’ve been going off Samsung products more and more. Despite their plastic feel & bodies, the Note 3 eFuse and now this.
Gotta love that fake leather on the note 3 *sarcasm*
Well Samsung are pretty much on my no buy don’t recommend list THIS would just make hating them even easier. Shame seeing as we already have Apple for this
Same here. Due to the touchWiz bloat and how bad it looks i will not touch a Samsung product and now this stunt makes that decision a lot easier. They are becoming very fruit-like in the way they are attempting to lock people into their own walled garden…