There’s a minor controversy brewing around the Galaxy S20. I’ve been asked to comment on the issue, and my feelings on this topic are a little messy.

Samsung’s newest phones are apparently plagued with a few issues. While no one would argue against the new S20 series as powerful options in the Android ecosystem, camera gremlins are souring the experience for early reviewers. Some encountering an experience struggling to live up to inflating price tags.

Techies online are debating how seriously these camera gremlins should be factored into the conclusions of their reviews. It’s very likely many of these issues can be fixed with some software patches, and there’s a decently high probability a day one patch could be pushed to consumers.

Should a reviewer review the phone as it was sent to them under embargo? Should a reviewer anticipate what the phone MIGHT be after some polish? Should a reviewer hold a review to see if Samsung delivers the promised improvements?

How do I feel about this issue?

The short answer, I think reviewers should stop playing Samsung’s media circus game.

The long answer is, well, longer…

Here’s how the game has changed.

After the Note 7 fiasco, Samsung poured more money into advertising. Through 2018, they overtook Procter and Gamble to become the world’s largest advertising brand. If Samsung feels like a ubiquitous presence around you, that’s not an illusion. By most measures, Samsung spends more on their overall company advertising than most of their competition does in total on advertising AND manufacturing.

In North America, roughly half of all Android phones purchased are Samsung, but for this market dominance, and ubiquitous brand awareness, the smartphone market is still in a downturn. The smartphone is a commodity product now. A pocket computer is no longer a sexy “disruption” gadget. It’s an appliance everyone kind of needs to own.

Consumers today are more likely to be exhausted by the idea of a phone upgrade rather than getting excited for buying new tech.

Immediately following the launch of the Galaxy S10, we saw encouraging headlines that pre-order sales were topping the Galaxy S9. By Q2 2019 though, Samsung profits dipped significantly, in part because of lagging S10 sales. The Note 10 was also an underwhelming sales performer long term compared against previous Notes.

For all the attention we pay the ultra-premium segment of the market, consumers are increasingly pivoting to mid-range devices.

Last year the Galaxy A series outsold the Galaxy S series by a wide margin internationally, but carriers in the United States greatly prefer recommending more expensive phones to their customers. Zero interest loans and phone leases are strategic ways to keep people paying full retail, and it’s an agreement preventing a customer from leaving the carrier easily.

Phone leasing isn’t as insidious as the cellphone contracts of old, but it’s only slightly less predatory for keeping people paying top dollar on products which depreciate incredibly fast.

The market data points to a fast sales peak, followed by a steep drop off. If Samsung wants to maximize the financial benefit of the S20, the phone needs to have the most positive impact in pre-order and early sales.

That brings us back to the controversy surrounding S20 reviews.

With so much riding on the early consumer reaction, Samsung is leveraging their enormous marketing budget to put reviewers into crunch mode. Seeding pre-release devices is never an accurate representation of what a phone owner will experience living with the product. Samsung is counting on a shorter review window to craft the image of their product.

The core group of customers they care about will buy immediately. Samsung needs shallow “happy” reviews to keep the image positive. Follow up reviews will be footnote fodder, likely ignored by most of the people who spend their own money to own these products.

Samsung and Apple can largely dictate the course of their review destiny. They spend so much on traditional advertising, that general “non-techie” consumers are more likely to seek out information on those products. That makes the SEO game a lot easier for a YouTube reviewer. Those two companies can then game the review cycle with a short embargo period.

A lot of work goes into producing a video on a smartphone. If a reviewer wants the best chance at monetizing that effort, they need to ride the wave of popularity surrounding that product. Samsung appears to makes their SEO job a little easier (carrot), and YouTube’s algorithm is punishing for folks who aren’t on the trending topic pulse (stick). Your channel will suffer if you’re late, and that hits you right in the wallet.

This leads to lopsided coverage for a phone like the Galaxy S20. Looking at sales data, it’s not really organic consumer excitement for the product, it’s a review hype machine.

If a reviewer’s job is to inform and educate, then I would argue that a two-week embargo is insufficient to label any commentary a “review”. Unfortunately, the word “review” doesn’t mean much in a world where everyone is trying to appease the YouTube algorithm. It’s an SEO keyword now, slapped onto a video, to improve someone’s chances of spiking their metrics and getting a better payday.

The S20 is sure to be a monster phone, but it’s following a tough year for Samsung. If we only look at the embargo videos, the S10 and Note 10 were nearly perfect phones, completely deserving the mindshare as the “default” options for consumers shopping Android handsets.

The customers that mattered most to Samsung slapped their cash on the table before we could discover some of the issues with the phones.

Unsecure face unlock

Unsecure in-display fingerprint sensor

Weak LTE performance

Camera app crashing and autofocus issues

Poor performance in some regions

Poor battery life in some regions

Early reports of overheating on the S10 line

Samsung Pay selling user data to partners without disclosing those agreements to users

Samsung potentially sending user identifiable info to Chinese servers through a third-party storage cleaner

Find My Mobile was compromised, and we still don’t know the full ramifications of this recent data breach

I know many people, especially Galaxy owners, are bristling after reading that list. Rightfully, many of these issues have been improved over several software patches. For example, Samsung denied any security risk with their storage cleaner, but then quietly removed any reference to using a third-party plugin in a following update. Problem solved.

There’s now a cottage industry of listicle articles on how to fix the numerous issues with popular phones. It’s a done deal, a forgone conclusion. You’re going to buy from Samsung or Apple, so here’s a top 10 list on all the problems you’ll need to fix. Smaller manufacturers aren’t often afforded the same consideration. It’s only “worth” fixing problems on popular phones.

We should recognize that the modern smartphone is never really a “finished” product. Prices are climbing. More pressure is put on manufacturers to keep up with an unrealistic yearly release schedule, so it shouldn’t be surprising that more and more of the phone is in an unfinished state at launch.

I think it’s the height of hypocrisy though to criticize less SEO popular manufacturers for small issues, while downplaying the issues found on Galaxy phones. If Samsung is a market leader, they should be held to a higher standard. If we give Samsung a pass because “all phones have issues”, then all phone manufacturers should be given the same latitude.

This review situation moves beyond a handful of camera gremlins. Many of the issues facing the S10 weren’t uncovered until weeks and months after the phone’s retail launch. Past the return window for folks who pre-ordered, there literally wasn’t enough time for reviewers to properly dig into all the nooks and crannies of the phone and test Samsung’s performance and security claims.

The reviewers who took the time to properly vet the phone were “rewarded” with less YouTube engagement, lower monetization, and likely a cadre of angry Samsung “fans” ready to hurl abuse at anyone criticizing their preferred lifestyle tech brand.

I’m not entirely sure what we’re trying to do as reviewers anymore.

I’m seeing a lot of commentary on what “regular” consumers should expect, but honestly, regular consumers shouldn’t be shopping $1000 phones. Even Apple figured that out with the excellent iPhones XR and 11.

Which brings me back to the “short answer” at the top of this editorial. It’s my assertion that the only winning move is not to play.

To frame the debate as “how heavy should we factor some camera gremlins into an embargo review”, only serves to perpetuate the control Samsung has over the review market. It means the reviewer is still rushing to meet the embargo deadline instead of taking more time to examine the product. It means we’re still grading Samsung on a generous curve. We give them a buffer which isn’t given to any of Samsung’s Android competition.

The unfortunate truth of this review market however, any reviewer who steps out of line faces lower ad revenue and monetization potential. Serious criticisms will make it less likely that a smaller reviewer will be included on future embargo windows. Samsung PR reactions can be punitive if they don’t get what they want out of a content creator. Deliver the right tone though, and Samsung might feature you in a bevvy of TV commercials. The incentives are staggeringly high.

I honestly don’t know how the smartphone review industry should course correct. The problem is too large and multi-faceted. We can draw some inspiration from other tech markets like laptops. We don’t see the same duopoly controlling North American sales, but laptops sales also aren’t dictated by carrier agreements. It’s an exceedingly difficult challenge to untangle.

It’s pretty clear to me though, this flavor of tech “info-tainment” is unsustainable.