Editor-DN
Samsung is likely to extend its Galaxy AI subscription club to its flagship Galaxy phones in South Korea next month. ET News. The two words in this sentence need attention. Possibly And Korea.
The Galaxy AI subscription club is already a thing in Samsung’s home country for its line of smart devices. The service launched in December to overwhelmingly positive customer response, and subscription sales are already up with 30% of purchases at Samsung stores. South Koreans love Samsung and its software and are willing to buy it.
People in America are not so enthusiastic.
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That’s why you may have seen news about Samsung’s ‘phone subscription’ in the news this week. Thanks to some rather questionable articles on the matter, people assumed that Samsung was doing some kind of subscription pricing to use the phones we’re about to see on Galaxy Unpacked.
To be very clear – we are not. This is only For special AI services, even if it reaches the US, I hate that we call it a phone subscription because it’s not. It’s a software subscription no different than what Adobe or Norton offer for your computer. Phone stuff is weird sometimes.
Enough about what AI Club is and its scope. Let’s talk about reactions. Why do people hate it when Samsung does exactly what Apple and Google are already doing, for the same type of service?
If you use a new iPhone, you can use Apple Intelligence features for free until 2027, but to get the most out of it you can pair it with a paid ChatGPT subscription that costs $20 a month.
If you use an Android phone in select countries, you can use Google Gemini for free. To get the most out of Gemini, you can subscribe to a Google One plan that includes Gemini Advanced, which costs $20 a month.
Samsung has already said that all Galaxy AI features are free for phone and tablet users at least until the end of 2025. May be Add AI subscription tier in South Korea.
If it’s OK for Apple and Google, it must be OK for Samsung.
Judging by the reaction of internet tech prosumers, this is clearly not the right thing for Samsung to do. This is due to the way Samsung is viewed in the West.
When you think of Samsung, you probably think of phones and the components used to make phones. Samsung is well known as an electronics manufacturer and almost every phone has some Samsung components inside. Even an iPhone.
Samsung is also very good at this. There are no complaints from consumers about the performance of the Samsung display on the Pixel 9 or the iPhone 16. Samsung’s memory and controllers are great and are part of what makes your flagship phone so fast. The company’s phones and tablets are no slouch either, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra is one of the best you can buy.
When it comes to software, there is not the same enthusiasm. The company seems to have finally made a great version of Android with the latest version of One UI, but most tech enthusiasts don’t use Samsung’s phone software much or at all.
Samsung apps are like stock apps on an iPhone and end up in a trash folder if they can’t be disabled. Bixby (which really isn’t that bad) is a laughing stock among Android fans, and what Samsung did with Tizen should send some people straight to Dante’s Inferno.
That’s what American tech enthusiasts think about Samsung’s software. You don’t have to look hard to find people saying they wish they could buy a Galaxy S24 Ultra that runs Google’s Pixel version of Android, and plenty of people hacking their expensive phones. trying to Most users don’t care or even care and just use what’s out there, but die-hard techies are the ones who rant about everything on the Internet.
I would never pay for an AI subscription, at least not until it offered me more than a different way to provide information already available to me. When that happens, I don’t care if Samsung, Apple, or Google offer it — I’ll buy whatever suits my needs.
More than likely, we wouldn’t have to worry about this at all here in North America and it was just an easy excuse to complain about Samsung and AI in general.
