14 DAY TRIAL // Headlines like “Android copies iPhone” or “iPhone copies Android” are nothing new, but one title that keeps coming back every now and then is “Samsung copies Apple.” And it happens for a good reason.
The South Korean company has often been accused of copying Apple’s ideas, and this week at CES, it did it again with no sign of regret.
Samsung’s keynote, which highlighted features like Samsung Pass, included a slide showing the capabilities of the company’s biometric authentication system. And to better explain what it does, the South Koreans turned to a set of icons, two of which made the audience think of Apple rather than about Samsung.
Simply because they are nearly identical to the ones used by Apple. Both the facial recognition and the fingerprint recognition icons that you can see in the photo here (posted on Twitter by Parker Ortolani) belong to Apple – the fingerprint recognition icon is actually a minor variation of Apple’s, but the resemblance is obvious nonetheless.
Samsung copying Apple’s Face ID and Touch ID icons clearly is unexpected, but then again, the South Korean company does this every once in a while, so we should more or less get used to this.
“Samsung copies Apple”
Back in 2018, a California court ordered Samsung to pay Apple no less than $539 million after copying a series of designs and utilities that were protected by patents.
But this isn’t the only example. Samsung originally mocked Apple for putting a notch on the iPhone before eventually using a notch on its phones as well. It also criticized its Cupertino-based rival for killing off the headphone jack, and now Samsung’s flagships come without a headphone jack as well.
Funny enough, there’s even a website called “Samsung copies Apple,” and despite not being updated in some four years, it’s living proof this thing isn’t new.
In the end, let me tell you one thing. Tech companies copying each other’s ideas isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the outcome is a significant improvement over the previous implementation, but in the last few years, Samsung’s been doing this way too often. And there’s no doubt this can only be embarrassing for the world’s number one phone maker.
