There Is No Place Like Home

In a race to make a smartphone that’s only a large piece of glass with no bezel and no buttons, Samsung seems to be in the lead. Galaxy S8, which will be here in a matter of days, is a flagship in the fullest possible sense. Tour de force priced as a premium device, and a culmination of all bleeding edge tech Samsung’s been developing so far. This huge piece of glass which is basically an edge to edge display, with nothing else on the front of the phone — Samsung logo included, thankfully — appears to have it all: processing power, curved screen, advanced biometrics, unique voice assistant, everything. Conveniently, it also seems like a proper answer that Galaxy product line needed after a certain issue with Note 7 from last year.

But there’s much more to be read between the lines, other than jumping to conclusion and flat out declaring how Samsung clearly out-designed Apple this year. If we take a few steps back and look at the bigger picture, what we’d be able to see is that 2017 looks to be a great illustration of vastly different approaches to iterating a successful product. First approach is called “fill the blanks” and second one is “put the pieces together”:

1. First approach is to throw every tech that can be produced in large enough volume into a product, without paying too much attention what works and what doesn’t, and later fill the blanks;
2. Alternatively, take your time, make the product piece by piece and put the pieces together only when ready.

Fill the blanks

Filling the blanks is what Samsung is doing at almost any time. They often have a cool technology that mostly works, and they put it into a S or Note phone. Whether the technology works as intented, and whether it makes sense to have it at all, that comes second. The thing that trumps everything else the answer to the question “is it new and cool looking?”. If the answer is yes, then the way forward is to implement it, put it on shelves and fill the blanks later based on feedback. It can even happen that cool tech from one year gets completely skipped in next year’s top of the line phone.

Original Galaxy Note was one of such things that ended up opening the door for something huge. Huge both figuratively and practically, as large screen phones are the norm nowadays and Note was a pioneer. But for every success there were plenty of dead ends and only okay-ish devices: projectors on phones, a ton of never-used software features in S4 and S5 phones, but certainly most famous recent example is the curved screen. At first it was made public in Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, where it was present only on one side of the phone. Then it moved into regular S and Note series, this time on both sides of phones, although the consensus every time was still “it’s nice, but it doesn’t really do anything particularly useful” which holds true even nowadays. But having something unique is more than good enough in a time when there’s no differentiation other than price so Edge is now the norm, not an option, for Samsung flagship devices.

Now in 2017 Galaxy S8 is introducing a new personal assistant, Bixby, and some new biometrics for unlocking the phone like face or iris scanning. By early accounts, none of these seem to work better than existing already methods. They are new and unique though, which is more important when fill the blanks approach is employed.

Putting the pieces together

Putting the pieces together is an approach where technology that’s not 100% ready for the spotlight is not released. Smaller bits and pieces that make it work may get released, but as part of different functionality at first. This is approach that Apple typically takes. They were holding out with displays over 5" for years, waiting for hardware to be fully ready and most of apps capable of handling new resolutions. They were holding out with NFC until seamless authentication mechanism became ready and whole security aspect was airtight. Touch ID, a key part of it, was made available however before Apple Pay rolled out as shortcut for PIN lock. The rare times when Apple rushed a technology before it was 100% ready, like Apple Maps and Siri in some ways, aren’t in their fondest memories. Apple does not have what it takes to throw stuff out and later improve things that show potential. Call it DNA or culture, they just can’t make it work, but they excel in putting the carefully crafted pieces together.

While Samsung seems to be ahead in no-bezel-and-all-display race because they’ve thrown everything they have in a phone making way to store shelves right now, Apple is not as far behind as it looks, and has a good chance of being ahead by the end of the year. While display is a big part of all-display device (duh) there are many more small pieces to put together, or the blanks to fill, depending on the approach taken. Most interesting of which is 3D Touch — iPhone today is perhaps missing a killer app (though using keyboard as trackpad is sweet), but it means a few key pieces for all-display phone are in place; mainly a method for user to push everywhere, without having a button anywhere. Not only that, but with current haptic engine iPhone even has a way for phone to push you back.

Some might say none of that is a big deal and that the only important part of all-display phone is, well, the display. But before we go too much forward, let’s take a brief detour to history lane see what a button really means. Home button, to be more specific.

There is no place like Home

Home button on smartphones always had a special meaning. Back when PCs were beige boxes that misbehaved a lot, many users turned to Power/Reset buttons to recover when things went wrong. DOS could get stuck, browsers would crash, Windows freeze, Excel wouldn’t close — users would need a way out of such mess, and Task Manager is hardly a user friendly application. But part of a beige box was a Reset or Power button that solves everything, though in a stone age kind of way. System would restart after a few minutes; Windows and Office would offer Safe Mode and some of the data would be recovered. User could hardly consider it a success though. Software could work fine or could crash; how and why either happens is abstract for most regular users. Buttons, especially large ones with single and very clear function such as “Restart”, on the other hand are not.

Smartphones changed how we deal with unexpected app behaviour. With Home button present on almost every smartphone in the early days regular people had a way to get back to familiar territory in an instant, no matter how deep into menus they went or how long a single app was stuck. There was no restart required, no Safe Mode, no data lost. And most of the time Home button was physical so whatever happened with the phone’s software, the button was there and couldn’t ever be taken away. That single button was probably responsible with making more people comfortable with using a computer than all of the Safe Modes of the past 20 years combined. It’s a kind of a safety net that few people admit they need, but almost everyone finds it useful to have.

Moving away from a physical Home button is no small change. Of course today is not 2010 anymore and people are quite used to Android and iOS, and with training wheels coming off buttons done in software are becoming the norm. Personally, something with software buttons such as those on LG phones never felt quite… right? Comfortable? Satisfying? Anyway, on Samsung Galaxy S8 all buttons are virtual, and pressing any of them makes the whole phone vibrate. While this is not a first time that a virtual button is used in Android phones, Samsung has so far stuck to a physical Home button because they understand what it means. This time around, quite literally, there is no place like Home.

Competiton is facing a similar dillema: new Home button on iPhone 7 is not a regular button, but also technically not a virtual one either. It may look like a regular Home button and occupies space where one was present in every iPhone so far, but it does not move or sound like one when the phone is off. It can’t be really pushed; only a part of the phone vibrates in a way that makes it sort of feel like a push. But interestingly enough it also does not feel like a regular vibration engine. It gives the sensation like the bottom portion of the phone is clicking. That is enough to provide us with a couple of hints about the future:

a) Button can be replaced with something more than a button, i.e. any arbitrary area on screen can act both as a “Home button” and other key functions.

b) “It gives the sensation like the bottom portion of the phone is clicking.” Meaning Apple didn’t make the whole phone feel that way, and when technology is refined enough it will be possible to make any part of the phone feel like clicking. It will be possible to have buttons nowhere and anywhere.

This is what makes the difference between Samsung and Apple approaches most evident. There are a lot of nuances when it comes to making a phone that looks like a huge screen and nothing more; it’s not only about making a huge screen but a lot depends on making it feel right too. Samsung first makes huge display cover almost all of the phone, and then at some point will care about virtual buttons and haptic feedback that feels like Home. Apple is first getting the virtual buttons and haptics to behave exactly as they want them, and will most likely follow up with edge to edge screen.

Chances are that both approaches will result in bezel-free phone in 2017. Both worked so far. “Fill the blanks” captures the headlines and looks innovative because it’s first and it’s impossible to miss; Galaxy S8 pair of phones looks striking in any picture or video. iPhone’s haptic feedback doesn’t translate into photos or videos, but it also doesn’t seem all that great in person at first. It takes some time getting used to. That’s why Galaxy S8 reviews will say that iPhone 7 looks years old compared to Galaxy S8, but there’s a lot more going on under the surface.