Let’s fire up the Samsung vs Apple debate—not about patents. I want to discuss the customer experience of buying a flagship phone.
When you buy an iPhone, you can pretty much expect you have the top product apple has on offer for about the next 12 months. You can upgrade every year or 2 to keep pace, or know you’ll have a pretty awesome phone regardless.
I expected similar from Samsung, though in hindsight this is a strange expectation. Samsung release many, many more products, and those products are going to compete with each other. The Galaxy Note 2 is an interesting comparison, for example, but these are different phones for customers who want different things.
What I didn’t expect, was for Samsung to release a better S3! But coming out this month is an S3 with 4G network support, available in black and grey. New colours are cosmetic—but why doesn’t my S3 have 4G support? To cap it off, they get the Jelly Bean update. Where’s my update!
Why is this a problem? It’s not a big deal really, but when you buy a top of the line S3, you expect to have a top of the line S3. You don’t expect to have a ‘second best’ S3 within weeks. 
I encountered this news while looking for accessories—something that’s also easier to do over in the apple camp!
Ben Boyle lives here! 