The barrage of rumors, leaks and chatter around exactly what is going on with the next flagship device from Samsung, the Samsung Galaxy S6, is rather interesting to follow. Various reports first started off saying the Samsung would be dropping the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor due to overheating issues. From there we heard that Samsung would be cleaning house, as it were, and be pulling many of the pre-loaded Samsung apps from the device. That wouldn’t be a bad thing in practice. Samsung does offer its own app store, Samsung Apps, and could push many apps to the Play Store like HTC, Motorola and Google have done. While we are, for the most part, happy to hear that some of the bloatware will be side skirted and made optional, the more recent chatter could cause more frustrations for consumers.
SamMobile is reporting that the Galaxy S6, while losing many Samsung pre-loaded apps, will instead be pre-loading a slew of Microsoft apps. The talks seem to lead to apps like Microsoft OneNote, OneDrive, Office Mobile (with a free Office 365 subscription) and Skype. A few days ago it was reported that Samsung and Microsoft reached a settlement in a patent royalty contract dispute out of court. The details of the settlement weren’t made public, but with the above details, I would bet that pre-installing various Microsoft apps was part of settlement agreement and Samsung would easily agree to a few apps versus a hefty monetary outpouring.
Like most of these details, they are being provided from an insider that is close to the matter. If they pan out to be true then we would be looking at a Galaxy S6 that will carry next to no pre-installed Samsung applications, but will be loaded with Microsoft applications all while running on their in-house Exynos processor. The smartphone business is a very fine line that can gain a company large amounts of success, but it only takes one or two bad moves to tumble a giant. Samsung has done some incredible things over the last few years. The Note 4 and Note Edge are fantastic devices and each has its pro’s and con’s just like any other device out there. TouchWiz as a whole has evolved over the years to something that is more palatable then it ever used to be, even though it is still one of the more disliked UI’s out there. It is also said that the new TouchWiz UI for the Galaxy S6 is slimmer, cleaner and faster than ever before, which shouldn’t hurt. The Galaxy S6 should prove to be a very interesting launch, just how well it will be received is another story all together.
What are your thoughts? Will the forced hand of Microsoft and the probability of Microsoft apps pre-loaded be a major turn off in your eyes? Is Samsung headed down a proverbial rabbit hole that it might not be able to dig its self out of with the Galaxy S6? Time will tell and we are all certainly looking to the March 1st event to see just what Samsung has up its sleeves.
Source: SamMobile | Samsung Tomorrow
