Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 is making waves in an unprecedented way, with the company's latest phablet, S-Pen-toting flagship pulling such large numbers unseen with previous Galaxy Note models that even Samsung has been caught off-guard (if you're still waiting for your Galaxy Note 7 pre-order shipment to arrive, you're witnessing this firsthand).
And yet, wherever there is celebration, trouble is always lurking. That seems to be the case for the Korean giant, who has now been thrown a curve ball on Twitter from none other than Motorola, a rival Android OEM that, like most other OEMs, has been silent throughout the Galaxy Note 7 rumor and release period.
Motorola took to Twitter to say that Samsung has copied its Always On Display feature (called Active Display back on the 2013 original Moto X): “In what galaxy is it okay to steal competitor phones' cool features?,” the company asked frankly.
Well, Motorola could stay atop its moral high horse if Motorola was actually the first one responsible for implementing the feature; actually, Nokia was the first to implement the feature in 2009 with the Nokia N86 smartphone, then brought it back as a Glance Screen feature in 2013. In other words, by the time Motorola was implementing the feature for the first time, Nokia was re-introducing it. Doesn't sound like Motorola can claim too much credit here.
It's not uncommon for companies to try to claim features and ideas as their own, but it doesn't really seem as though Samsung “copied off Motorola's script” when it introduced the feature for the first time this year in the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge. After all, if Samsung really copied Motorola, then why wait 3 years to do it?
Methinks Motorola doth protest way too much — for something that didn't originate with the company to begin with. When companies complain about a feature that was stolen from their handsets, the complaint highlights their failure to innovate in the market rather than address an actual intellectual property theft.
What do you think?
