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Rant: Samsung need new shoes

Due to an over-abundance of frequent flyer miles I was able to get a Samsung Galaxy Tab. It refuses to tell you if there are any system updates unless you create yet another account with yet another password! You are not allowed to use "samsung" anywhere in the email address. So samsung@example.com is banned, as is foosamsungbar@example.com, and of course a combination of samsung and several expletives.

It takes quite a while to charge the device. This is significant because there will be a many hour delay from when you plug it into the charger to when it is fully charged. My phone has a small led that changes from orange to green when charged. The Galaxy Tab turns on the screen, plays a sound and displays a notification telling you to unplug the charger. Hope you weren't sleeping or otherwise engaged. You can find numerous pleas for how to stop this online.

I had a support question (their case physically fitting in their dock) and so clicked on support from the product page. Which then made me select my product again, yet the product didn't occur in any category. (Hello, I was on the page in the first place - figure it out.) I got a well written email response that correctly restated my question, and then proceeded to answer a completely different question. You cannot respond to the message via email or pointy clicky on the website. They do let you submit a new question completely from scratch using a bit.ly URL they tell you not to click on but retype into the address bar. And yes it is completely from scratch - you have to reselect a product that doesn't exist in any categories on their support form.

Samsung make a multimedia dock. However this is a rather unique definition of "multi". It only has audio out. To get video you have to buy an additional dongle. Heck to get USB you also have to buy another dongle so they may as well call it a multimedia USB dock. The dock is ludicrously expensive considering it is just some molded plastic and a pass through for their port connector. What they should have done is have the audio out, HDMI, USB and sdcard all builtin to the dock. That would be compelling.

There is an adage about walking a mile in someone else's shoes. May I suggest Samsung start by walking even a few centimetres in their customers' shoes?

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