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Apple this week pulled out what it hopes will be a trump card in its courtroom battle with Samsung over allegations that the rival device maker copied the look and feel of its iPhone and iPad devices. The supposed trump card is a 132-page internal Samsung document from 2010 in which the company directly compares the Galaxy S1's shortcomings to the iPhone in a variety of areas, with recommendations on how to improve them.
The document, which is uploaded to Scribd and first reported on by CNet, covers nearly every aspect of the Galaxy S1 and is titled "Relative Evaluation Report on S1, iPhone." In it, Samsung said it discovered a total of 126 issues, the majority of which related to "basic functions." Seemingly trivial things like the fact that Samsung's Memo and Calculator apps weren't supported in landscape mode were compared against the iPhone in a series of side-by-side diagrams. From making calls to browsing the Web, as well as nearly two dozen items related to visual interaction effects, Apple's iPhone provided the better experience.
Samsung's document is by no means damning, however. There's no doubt Samsung will argue it was simply putting in the proper research by comparing its device against the iPhone.
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Comments are closed on this article
warptek2010
August 08, 2012 at 11:23pm
Okay so now all Samsung has to do is produce either an internal Apple document or show through other means where they copied everything they did from someone else, which you know they did.
SPreston2001
August 08, 2012 at 8:15pm
I hate Apple more and more each day. Seriously I will never buy another Apple product again...
don2041
August 08, 2012 at 3:02pm
I personaly don,t give a damn about which one looks best ,rather which one work s the best. if we can,t have MAXPC then lets have MAXIPHONE
Peanut Fox
August 08, 2012 at 11:01am
While I don't think it applies to a lot of their current design. I've always thought the Galaxy S1 looked way too much like an iPhone. Andorid powered or no.
I don't think this document will help Apple in the slightest though. Seriously. If you're biggest competitor is the iPhone what device do you expect people to compare their mobile with?
mellamojay
August 08, 2012 at 10:27am
This is going to screw over Apple FAR more than Samsung. All this document shows is all of the DIFFERENCES between the devices AFTER the product was launched. This means that AFTER they made their product they compared it to the market standard to see where they were failing. This does not show ANY PROOF that Samsung copied Apple but the exact opposite. If they had an internal document showing all the features of Apple that they wanted to incorporate then they would have something... Apple is a company built on taking the ideas of others and improving upon them in some way and claiming that they came up with it... they are either going to fail HARD here or the courts will fail.
Shalbatana
August 08, 2012 at 9:59am
Apple should be sued by the apple growers of america for directly copying the shape of their logo from the shape of the Macintosh apple.
pastorbob
August 08, 2012 at 1:13pm
Actually, the fruit is spelled McIntosh, named after John McIntosh.
USraging
August 08, 2012 at 9:19am
I think xerox should file a law suit with apple for using their UI and also microsoft. if only time had not passed for that one. I would have bought tickets.
RaptorJohnson
August 09, 2012 at 12:50pm
I was under the impression that they had Xerox's permission. Some money (not very much) was exchanged and Xerox said "good luck with this UI stuff, it's not like it is going to turn into something big."
Khoiboi
August 08, 2012 at 10:26am
Microsoft copied Apple. Apple copied Xerox. Pretty sure Xerox did something back in the 80s already. The differences is that the Xerox Starr was a horrible, horrible device from the get-go. If someone else hadn't copied the UI, our only interpretation of this wonderful graphical UI would be the abysmal example that is the Starr.
Ledoubleu
August 08, 2012 at 9:06am
I'm sure there's more than one Toyota in a GM corporate warehouse too! A development team needs to know the current standard and a marketing department has to look at the competition to know where your own product stacks up and can be touted.
agello24
August 08, 2012 at 8:58am
im still pulling for samsung. someone needs to take down the semi giant of patient stealing. along with the idiot drones that follow them.
dakishimesan
August 08, 2012 at 8:51am
Every company needs to conduct competitive research. The problem is that internal emails make clear that Samsung became obsessed with Apple's success and, after identifying weaknesses compared to the iphone, decided to copy apple's design solutions, i.e 'brand dress', instead of innovating their own. other companies, like htc and MS, did not do this, instead creating unique design language. samsung however did in fact cross the line from 'parallel innovation' to direct copy.
kuebel33
August 08, 2012 at 10:40am
Weird, too bad the docs showing Apple "directly copied" Sony got thrown out, yet the docs showing Samsung "directly copied" Apple didn't.
SSquirrel
August 09, 2012 at 1:13pm
No, those documents show that an mp3 player SONY designed (and admitted to an influence from the iPod, an Apple product) then had a SONY engineer talking about the general guidelines they used to produce it. Apple then produced something using those vague guidelines in a Sony style. That didn't look like an Apple product and they actually had an older prototype internally that looks a lot more like the iPhone 4.
If I tell 2 people to paint a blue sky w/3 clouds and an airplane in it, the picture will look very different. If I tell one person to make the painting and then tell the 2nd that they can paint as close to that as they would like, then I would be talking to Samsung :)
Those documents arrived too late to be admissable and didn't do anything to damage Apple to boot even if they were evidence in the trial.
Farmboytechie
August 08, 2012 at 7:30am
I dont have the Samsung document in front of me but it sounds like Apple just gave out how their Iphone was NOT copied by Samsung. :)
Shadow Death
August 08, 2012 at 8:18am
Funny, I didn't even think of it that way but yeah. 132 pages of differences between the Galaxy S1. Leave it to Apple to blunder on this level. :D
MdX MaxX
August 08, 2012 at 7:25am
Umm... Samsung would have been insane not to do this. A corporation doesn't get anywhere by ignoring what its competition is doing. I mean, look at RIM.
USraging
August 08, 2012 at 6:51am
If you are a company you have to find out what your competitors are doing, and why they are succeeding where your product is not. I imagine that every company that has close competitors would do the same to try to come up with better solutions to fix problems with their products "this is what the competition is doing, how can we make it better?"
gmvolk
August 08, 2012 at 7:17am
Agreed, we do that at our company. What are they doing and how can we do it better. Still it might hurt Samsung in the courts.
