I hope Samsung doesn't stop being unique in the near future

Opinion

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

This year, Samsung has launched multiple smartphones with a different placement for the rear cameras. The Galaxy A8 Star came first, followed by the Galaxy A7 and the Galaxy A9. And I've been wondering whether Samsung will continue with the off-center camera position on upcoming phones. I believe Samsung's phones look rather unique from the back. Okay, not that unique, but it's easy to tell a Samsung phone apart from the rest by looking at the back.

But with the cameras placed on the edge of the device, Samsung's new phones look similar to phones from two of its biggest competitors: Huawei and Apple. And if I'm being honest, I really hope Samsung doesn't make it a standard going forward, even it means sacrificing things like battery capacity. The center rear camera placement is one of the ways you can recognize a Samsung phone, and that will be gone should the company move away from that placement. The only true differentiation then would be the no-notch Infinity displays and the Samsung logo at the back.

Samsung following trends rather than setting them is a troubling sign

And that's not all. We heard a rumor last week that Samsung might be ditching the 3.5 mm headphone jack next year. I would understand if Samsung did that on the pretext of moving towards the future, but even modern Bluetooth headsets still come with a 3.5 mm connector as an alternative and not a USB Type-C connector. The market clearly isn't ready for moving towards the Type-C or wireless audio future even two years after the iPhone went 3.5 mm-free. While that future may arrive by the time Samsung removes the 3.5 mm jack from its phones, it would mean that another differentiating factor of Samsung's phones would disappear.

So my request to Samsung is: Please stay unique and only change when it's totally needed. Stay with the center camera position, stay with the 3.5 mm jack, and keep offering expandable storage on all of your smartphones as long as you can. You used to set the standard before, and that's what you need to keep doing in the future as well.

What do you guys think?

Danny Dorresteijn - CEO / Founder / Blogger

[email protected]

First Samsung device: SGH-D900

Danny is the proud founder of SamMobile.com. His first Samsung phone was the SGH-D900, which he considers to be the best slider phone ever. He likes football (Ajax/FC Barcelona) and Formula 1 (Red Bull).

Opinion