10 years since the first Galaxy – Can Samsung stay at the top?


“Samsung Galaxy” is undoubtedly one of the most well-known brands in the world of smartphones. This series began as an answer to the iPhone with Samsung’s motivation to offer a valid alternative. Since then, Samsung has become one of the biggest smartphone manufacturers globally. Tomorrow’s launch will be its biggest milestone in the celebration of the Korean conglomerate’s 10th anniversary of the Galaxy S smartphone to be unveiled ahead of Mobile World Congress 2019 (MWC) tomorrow. In anticipation, let’s take a pause to look at what made Samsung’s brand “Galaxy” so famous.

It’s funny that Samsung has now become one of the few handset makers that offers a ton of value without compromising on the quality, because it was absolutely the opposite before. Over the years, the company has faced both massive successes and blows, but still stayed on top. But the previous couple of years have been tough with the market evolving in interesting ways. Attention has shifted to India and Samsung finds itself a bit late. Better than never.

Even though Samsung undercuts the rivals like Apple and Google in the premium smartphone category, it has been a herculean task for the company down in the trenches to reclaim the mid-range markets especially in India that are dominated by Chinese makers like Xiaomi, Honor, Realme, Vivo and others.

If not for Galaxy M series, there would have been serious doubts about the company’s ability to more than adequately respond to the Indian consumer’s needs. So, has the company changed? We hope so, because there have been several innovations from them that drove the market and the only way they can stay ahead is by doing more of these crazy ideas.

The first 10 megapixel camera was on the Samsung B600. This is from 2006, 1 year before the first iPhone came out with a 2 MP camera. Sure it’s impractical but that was how the time was.

Even before that in 1999 there was a Samsung watch phone. We’re sure you have seen this somewhere.

Samsung has always been ahead in display tech, they launched the first True Color Phone in 2002, introducing the world to the active matrix LCD display and some other crazy designs. However things drastically changed after the iPhone so then we saw the birth of Samsung Galaxy S.

The SII had the AMOLED screen which became a big trend. Then, there was the Note Edge, starting the curved edges and bezelless movement.

By this time, the Note series had created its own space. A new large screen category debuted the S Pen.

Samsung then improved security and enhanced its software based services – Samsung Knox, Samsung Pay, and countless other services and capabilities opened up an ecosystem that includes the much hated Bixby.

The Galaxy S8 was the first flagship thin-bezel phone, really. With the powerful Galaxy Note9, and things like Samsung Dex, Samsung cemented its credentials at the top end. Memory wise Samsung has the only 512+512 GB storage-supported smartphones.

All said and done, the soon-to-be-launched Galaxy S10 series of smartphones and the purported foldable Galaxy F have the potential to capture a lot of attention in the smartphone market and tomorrow, we’ll know every little detail.

What do you think? Can Samsung stay at the top? Let us know in the comments section below.

This post was co-authored by Bharadwaj and Vigneshwar.


Author: Team FoneArena

A team of mobile geeks