Please make a S21 Active

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I've been a Samsung Brand Loyalist since way back when Samsung TVs overtook the Sony Trinitron line of TVs as best in class and consumer purchase numbers. I'm not completely certain what the original appeal was beyond that or why the likes of LG or other equivalent brands of the day got no love from me back then. Fast forward to today, and I know exactly why. The second Samsung Galaxy smart phone I owned was the Galaxy S5, and that phone was a large part of why Samsung earned my loyalty. But the relationship would not be completely solidified until the company severely <edit> in the design of that iterations replacement. 

When the Galaxy S6 line was released, I was beside myself with frustration, confusion, and basically severe disappointment. While the new S6 designs were the impitus of those negative reactions, the focus of my ire was squarely on the company itself for basically designing out the very features that compelled me to purchase the S5 in the first place. They decided to eliminate the removable/ replaceable battery back when carrying around an extra fully charged battery for your phone was commonplace. They decided to eliminate the ¼" headset jack, doing so before quality Bluetooth headsets were hardly affordable and Bluetooth LE wasn't even a thing. And then they decided to eliminate the MicroSD card dock way before the concept of reliable cloud storage was anywhere near as widespread as it needed to be. 

There were more features that were curtailed and/ or eliminated in the S6 series, but these were the three that I found to represent the common underlying offense which lead to Samsung choosing to make these changes, an error that is far too commonly committed by manufacturers and service providers across the economy. Samsung simply chose that the S6 series was going to be the pivot point where they would abandon the needs and desires of their core global customer base, and instead of offering hardware that met the needs of this customer base, they would now begin to mimick the designs of their most challenging industry competitor, the iPhone. The Samsung Galaxy mobile hardware division simply lost its way and tried to be something they were not, and which their customers didn't want them to be.

Life's most valuable lessons are almost always delivered in the most painful experiences possible. There isn't a company in existence that hasn't dropped the ball in some way or fashion. It's actually a healthy process to go through for most, assuming the after action review of the failure is analyzed and corrective actions are taken. As is the case with individuals and companies alike, there is no greater catalyst for improvement or the gaining of knowledge then that which results from a complete and total failure. It's all about how that failure is handled and leveraged.

Once the anemic S6 features, or lack there of, were released and those like me who had been excited to upgrade but quickly became resigned to keeping the older phones we had, it wasn't long before the magnitude of the design failures started to become clear to Samsung leadership. I was only one of probably millions of disappointed people who were ready to buy the new S6, but decided not to. While I'll never know how many were compelled to voice our frustrations directly to the company via a very terse, yet well crafted email, I'm willing to bet it was a whole lotta people. 

We were Samsung customers for many reasons, one of the most significant being that Samsung was NOT iPhone. We chose Samsung because they didn't try to push it's customers into recent innovations in technology which were both excessivly priced and still unproven, something iPhone is always doing. We chose Samsung because they offered phones that were designed with utility and user customizable features that empowered us to make the phone work best for our specific needs, not a one size fits all mantra like iPhone. So what on Earth compelled Samsung to try and be the very company they were valued as not being? 

My loyalty was cemented a year later when Samsung released the next iteration of the Galaxy line, the S7 series. It was one of the first times I had been watching closely enough to see what it looked like when a multinational corporation chooses to listen to it's customers' collective needs, and I was beyond impressed. They didn't bring back everything, removable batteries were never going to remain mainstream, especially as the technology becomes more and more capable with each iteration. But sure enough, they heard us, they listened to what we were saying, and they reversed course with the vast majority of features. The fact that I would quickly grow to despise my S7 Edge on account of the Edge feature, Samsung was back on track!

After beating <edit> the S7 everyday in my steering wheel everyday when the stupid Edge screen would come into contact with a part of my hand and erroneously do things to enrage me, I knew I would never purchase another phone with that utterly worthless gimmicky feature. The problem was, they decided to make that Edge thing a standard design feature with all of the following year's S8 series phones, much to my dismay. But patience paid dividends for me when I read about the mid-cycle release of the S8 Active model. 

I had never really looked at the Active versions of the older iterations, and I'm not even sure I was aware of them. But this S8 Active had everything I could want, a bigger battery, no stupid Edge screen, and something I wouldn't realize about the phone until I had it for a few weeks. One of the many reasons I'm never going to own an iPhone as a primary cell phone is an experience I had with an older iPhone 5. I don't remember why I had it, but I do remember accidentally dropping onto a hardwood floor from a height no greater than 2½ feet up. From my perspective watching the phone drop in slow motion, I still am amazed at how the moment the frame came into contact with the floor, the screen didn't just crack. No, the screen seemed to enthusiastically explode out as though it had been waiting to do so it's entire life, and in an instant, the iPhone went from useful to useless. Done. 

I've dropped plenty of Samsung Galaxy phones throughout my life, all from differing heights, some faring better then others, but none exploding in glee like that iPhone. That said, the durability of that S8 Active was ridiculously high, and trust me when I say this, I tested that thing on more than once occasion. In at least one bout of ginger rage triggered by the phone not functioning how I wanted it to, it survived without a scratch after being overhand day pitched into a wall about 6 feet away, the sheetrock suffering all that damage (I've since repaired it because it wasn't the sheetrock's fault!). 

I would be compelled to maintain that S8 Active for years beyond it's dated technology because Samsung, for whatever reason, decided to do away with all Active variants in any Galaxy iterations that would come after the S8. Why, why do you do these things Samsung? The S21 Ultra is a beast which almost has the feel of an Active model once tucked into the Spigen case I use for all my phones. But I bet there is plenty of demand for an S21 Active if you made one. No, the corporate rugged XCover model that sorta looks like an Active doesn't rate. My <edit> 3 year old S8 Active had a more powerful processor and better features than that underdeveloped model offered. I want all the Gucci hotness you guys stuffed into this ridiculously capable S21 Ultra offered in a <edit> housing that can easily shrug off an occasional overhand fast pitch into a wall because I know you guys can build it. If you do this and relaunch the Active models, I'll be a Samsung customer for life. If you don't do it, I'll still be a Samsung customer for life, so I'm really not in a position to negotiate. Do it to make the exploding iPhones screens look even more stupid!

[SamsungRei · Accepted solution]

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