Like most companies, Lenovo owned Motorola took to twitter to let the world know about its thoughts. Moto US(Moto_USA) recently tweeted “In what galaxy is it okay to steal competitor phones’ cool features?” with the hashtags, “#TheOriginalAlwaysOnDisplay #motozdroid”. They are doing two things in the process. Taking direct aim the Always On Display(AOD) feature found in the Samsung Galaxy S7, and Note 7 and calling itself the creator of this feature.
It is wrong to do that since Motorola never created this feature to begin with.
Although Motorola introduced this feature into their smartphones way before Samsung did it was actually Nokia who introduced this feature in their Symbian OS in the Nokia N86 back in 2009 where the software would take advantage of the AMOLED display to give the user small chunks of information using the least amount of battery possible. The feature was later on updated in their Lumia windows phones and reiterated as “Glance Screen”.
Motorola’s feature, named as “Active Display” not only displayed that vital information, it allowed you to interact with it as well. Kudos to Motorola for enhancing the feature and setting the standards. We love it for doing that. But it cannot claim to be the creators of the feature at its core.
And as of the debate for “stealing” features, my opinion is that some features are too good to not be copied. For example, multi window, fingerprint sensors and what not. As software’s on phones mature, they become increasingly similar to each other. Companies for so long have been looking at each other for inspiration. At this point the only way they can succeed in defining their identity is by their hardware design, quality, support and price.
And besides, if Nokia is not pissed at Samsung, Motorola should not be.
Let us know your thoughts on this tweet and your stance on the whole “feature stealing” issue.
