Gadget Reviews, Product News, Electronic Gadgets

Samsung kicked off their 2012 CES presence by announcing that with their new product offering they would be “pushing the boundaries of innovation further than ever before.” Fans of the brand won’t appreciate me when I say this, but I think it can be argued that any innovation at all would be welcomed from that group when most of what they’ve delivered since the BlackJack in 2007 was their interpretation of what other market-leaders had developed.

Television is the next big target in the category of ‘technology needing a revision’ with many of the key players starting to throw their hats in the ring with products and services aiming to revolutionize what many feel is still the greatest form of home-entertainment.

Credit given where it is due, you have to admire Samsung’s gumption. Facing downward on what could prove to be a slippery slope, the once well-respected and tech giant is looking a whole lot less imposing these days. That’s bound to happen when you start legal actions against your largest customer even after it’s made pretty clear that chances are good you were actually the one in the wrong and doing the copy-catting.

So not to be left out, Samsung announced their newest addition to the Smart TV Platform with a rather impressive looking 55″ OLED screen. It’s thin, the colors are vivid and apparently the interface on the unit itself is pretty fast. Honestly I’m not surprised either. Samsung has been making televisions for a while now and doing a nice job. What I’m not sold on is the way they think they are flying in the face of Apple –when they don’t even have a clue what Apple has planned. (though you can see in the news that they are rather quick to discuss how the things Jobs had planned really weren’t that innovative or exciting)

Samsung does have a host of neat features with their Smart TV including what they dub as “Smart Interaction”: motion control, voice control and face recognition. They also released AllShare Play which is a cloud-based storage service designed to let you access your content from all connected devices regardless of location. Of course, Android features are present as well (read: 55 inches of Angry Birds).

I’ll admit, it does actually sound pretty good. Some of it really isn’t as new as Samsung is selling it to be, but all-in-all it is a well-rounded feature offering on what looks like a quality product. What I’m not convinced of is that this will squash the plans Apple has for the next generation of television. Apple doesn’t have a history of creating products to “eliminate the competition” but rather to change the face of technology (or at least try to), so I wouldn’t discount that what Apple has up their sleeves might be completely unexpected. I still think it is unlikely that they would suddenly enter the television set market as that would represent an entirely different consumer-electronics spin on the company’s directives which is not like them at all.

One quick note to Samsung: when you release a series of advertisements that make fun of consumers that love Apple products it really doesn’t do much to romance me away from them. If you had spent those advertising dollars on a little bit of R&D toward making a more persuasive product I may have considered placing my loyalty with your company in the future… but make fun of me and I just might happily watch you slide down the side of the technology-sink and circle the drain.