Tech Junkie

Samsung Galaxy Player Still M.I.A. Oh, And It’s Ads Are Bizarre

If there were an Android product that were on the market right now I would buy to keep, it would be the Samsung Galaxy Player.  Sure I’ve tried a couple Android phones but as good as they were, they couldn’t hold up to the quality experience of an iPhone.  Still, I would love to have an Android device around just for experimental purposes.  And if this were on the market right now, I’d go out and buy one today.  And I’m sure there are lots of other people who would too!  The iPod and iPod Touch have had zero competitors (no, Zune doesn’t count) for their entire existence.  And with how popular Android has become the SGP would have to be mildly successful at the very least.  

They are supposed to ship in two flavors, a four inch model and a five inch.  I don’t know why they don’t just make one the same size as an iPod Touch, perhaps they want to continue the trend of Android having poor battery life.  There is no doubt that these large displays play a factor in that.  Moving on, they are supposed to come with front and back facing cameras as well as micro-SD slots upgradeable to 32gig.  Nice.  They will ship with Android 2.2 Froyo, and claim to be upgradable to 2.3 Gingerbread, most likely when Gingerbread is a year old (sorry I had to).  One feature they tout is DLNA compatibility, a feature I reviewed on the HTC Thunderbolt that I absolutely love.  

So where is this thing?  I typical Android fashion this device was teased to the masses last year  and early this year with a release date of “sometime in spring”.  Could you please be more vague?  Oh and by the way, it’s spring right now so maybe you might want to update us on that.  

The main thing though I wanted to point out most though, is the Galaxy Player website.  This thing is WEIRD man.  They are definitely trying to be different with these ads but they are just super odd.  It’s made up to look like a newspaper with breaking news of a convenience store robbery and features a bunch of different characters which all used the Galaxy Player in different ways during the event.  You have characters such as the “hot girl”, “kung fu master”, and of course “the robbers”.  You can’t make this stuff up!  Watch the video of “the hot girl” below.  

I mean seriously, how odd is that?  What’s funnier is that this awkward clip BARELY shows you anything about the product!

I was speaking with a co-worker yesterday who told me that “the only reason the iPad is so popular is because of the marketing”.  I retorted, “So 100% of the iPad’s success is from marketing?”  "Yes", he replied.  This couldn’t be more wrong.  Sure marketing can play a HUGE role in the success of a product, but you have to start with a good product before anything else.  Apple has awesome products that are only bolstered by great marketing.  If the product was crap, the marketing might help, but in the end, wouldn’t save a poor product.  The Samsung ads are just bizarre and barely show you what this product can do.  

Back to the Galaxy Player website.  Once you have had your fill of extremely weird videos, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and some short blurbs about features of the device.  At the end of each blurb there is a link which says “Watch related video”.  These links bring you BACK to the odd character videos.  Ugh what are they thinking???

One last thing about this site I’d like to point out is they heavily market the fact that you can change the battery.  So much so that they have a video of this very practice.  An old grandma finds that the battery on her player is near death and shows us all how easy it is to swap it out with your spare.  I know this technically is a “good feature”, but I’m under the opinion that if the battery of my device won’t last a whole day, then I don’t want that device.  

In conclusion I’ll say this: When the Galaxy Player comes out, I’ll be one of the first in line to get one.  Who knows when that will be though.  At this point I just don’t trust these companies that flash their fancy new gadget in front of you at tech events and then say, “It will probably, be coming out around [insert season here]”.  They are almost never accurate and then they wonder why people complain when they don’t deliver.  And they aren’t helping themselves with these weird ads.  You can’t tell me with a straight face that these ads are going to be a big factor in the sales of these products.  You just can’t.  Yes I’ll buy one, but what about the average consumer who has only heard of the iPod Touch for the past five years?

One more video for your enjoyment.  "The Kung Fu Master":