Samsung, in an announcement yesterday before MWC was ramping up, unveiled its plans for the future of its devices, and debuted the long-awaited smartphone OS “bada,” beginning its transition to a completely “smart” line of devices, and signaling the company’s shift to better position itself with growing competition.
Samsung’s vision put simply, is that every phone should be a “smartphone,” not so-called “feature phones” as the company has been prone to since its inception. To begin the transition, bada was created to become the device maker’s de-facto OS across its line of devices to bring “smart features” to otherwise “dumb” phones.
“We are committed to bringing the smartphone era to everyone, and making it a true democracy for billions of people on all continents in all corners of the world,” said JK Shin, President of Samsung’s mobile communications division. “This is Samsung’s vision to advance the democratization of the smartphone era, regardless of cost, or lifestyle or geographic location.” It’s an aggressive notion, but one that Samsung has the power to fulfill given its distribution power and placement as one of the leading device makers of the world.
The only device sporting the new OS, at least that Samsung is ready to introduce, is the “Wave,” a new smartphone sporting specs such as a 1GHz CPU, a 3.3 inch 800×480 pixel AMOLED screen, a 5 megapixel camera, as well as multi-touch and multi-tasking capabilities. While the new device and OS seem to integrate the latest features and technology, many are already saying it’s buggy and prone to crashes.
Though the jury is still out when it comes to the new OS, one thing is certain: Samsung’s vision of mobile devices in the future is dead-on, and hopefully other device makers follow suit. In today’s mobile ecosystem, there’s no reason why the simplest of devices should be void of such basic features, such as full mobile Web browsing, fully enabled mobile messaging, ability to access and run multiple third-party apps and so on. Hopefully, Samsung’s initiative will start the movement necessary to make it a reality.
