Samsung is Rolling Out a Smartphone Subscription Next Month

An anonymous reader shares a report: It looks like Samsung is finally ready to roll out a paid subscription for its AI-powered smartphones, but it might not look like what we were expecting.

According to ETNews, Samsung Electronics vice chair Han Jong-hee has confirmed that the company's AI Subscription Club, which launched last December for some of Samsung's home appliances in South Korea, will soon roll out to both Galaxy phones and the upcoming Ballie AI robot.

"We will apply the subscription service to Galaxy smartphones starting next month," he says. "Ballie will be introduced first in Korea and the US, and we plan to supply it as a subscription in Korea."

What's the telco situation?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This proposal seems DOA in the US; not so much because people would rebel against phone subscriptions; but because phone subscriptions are, de-facto, already how a great many phones, especially the more expensive ones, are sold thanks to the "free" with 2 year contract arrangement that you'll get from any of the major carriers, who probably won't be thrilled to surrender their piece of the action to the phone OEM.

Does anyone know if the situation is markedly different in Korea, and this offering is going

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[timeOday]

the major carriers, who probably won't be thrilled to surrender their piece of the action to the phone OEM.

They won't like it, but since you can already use a phone you own, how are they going to know if you're making payments on it to Samsung? Let alone bar you from doing that?

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[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's not that they'll try to stop someone, any more than they'll spit on your money today because you bought an iphone from the apple store; but the major carrier contract prices have those 'free' phones baked into them; and generally don't offer discounts for bringing your own device; so there just isn't much incentive to turn down the phone you are stuck paying for anyway in order to pay someone else for one.

The situation is different with at least some of the MVNOs and prepaid offerings; where you can

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[timeOday]

I pay for unlimited service on 5 unlocked phones on Verizon for $150/mo. I don't think there are any phones baked into that price that I could be getting for 'free.'

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[saloomy]

I have been on the iPhone Upgrade Program from Apple for almost a decade. I get a new phone ever year. It costs me about $50 a month. I do it because I work in tech, my job is extremely mobile, and having excellent voice quality, a battery I can count on, a responsive device when im navigating apps like VMware Horizon or Hudu, or whatever, can be mission critical at times, saves me from having to run back to my laptop. I give up the resale value of the phone after 2 years, which is always roughly $250 for h

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[RUs1729]

$50/month? Suit yourself. I couldn't care less what Samsung is doing: as long as they keep filling out their terrific phones with their abominable software there is no way I will be buying a Samsung phone anyway.

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[torkus]

I can't tell if you're a shill or just drank too much kool-aid.

$50*12 = $600

iPhones do not depreciate by $600 in a year. A quick check on the 15 pro 128GB used ebay is 650-700 (from $1k new) so you're leaving ~$300 on the table per year.

The rest of your post reads like a 'suckers wanted' poster straight out of Apple Financial Services. Not that a year old phone has poor voice quality or is unresponsive, but you could still have the latest and greatest without wasting money. Most carriers have uncoupled d

Just NO

[sit1963nz]

Subscription are just NO. I am sick and tired of my life, my documents, my work being held to ransom each month.

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[WankerWeasel]

Do you get paid for your work monthly or in a single lump sum every couple years?

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[GoTeam]

Do you get paid for your work monthly or in a single lump sum every couple years?

I assume that if they quite, they don't take the results of their work with them...

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[ewibble]

Most people get paid for they work they do, when they do it, I assume if he quits he won't continue to get paid while doing no work.

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[WankerWeasel]

So most people would prefer to be paid while they're doing the work, like subscriptions offer, rather than just at the end like a single-use software license. Got it.

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[mkoenecke]

That's the problem right there: Software As A Service. I suspect you're quite a bit younger than I am, and may not remember the old days where one would actually purchase a piece of software for a set cost, and use it indefinitely. Often new versions would come out, which might offer improvements, and you could pay for those (for what it's worth, that is at the *beginning*, not the end). This software would be installed on and reside in your own computer. Unfortunately, some years ago software providers rea

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[WankerWeasel]

Yes, I've been around more than long enough to know how it was in the '90s and '00s. I've worked as a developer during those times too. That doesn't mean it should stay that way. It wasn't an ideal setup for developers. It meant even the small developers had to concentrate a significant amount of their time on marketing rather than programming. It means having to continue supporting old and outdated software and invest in products that are no longer profitable for them. It means not having a steady paycheck

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[dohzer]

Samsungs are just NO. I was sick and tired of their unremovable bloatware, so I left for greener pastures and haven't looked back.

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[tlhIngan]

Subscription are just NO. I am sick and tired of my life, my documents, my work being held to ransom each month.

You pay your phone service every month.... and if you stop paying, your phone stops working.

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[sit1963nz]

And I have multiple phone companies I can move to without problems, I can even keep my number.
I also dont have to pay extra to use any of my phones facilities, I have unlimited txts, have data that I dont use.
I also dont have to pay Apple anything extra, I bought it, I use it, its an iPhone 11 and I will keep using it until it dies.
What I DONT like is if you "buy" music, video, books,etc you can lose access when the provider loses distribution rights
What I DONT like is that when I spend huge amounts o

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[torkus]

Try playing some of the old console games on an emulator some time. Not only is there no pay-to-play, there aren't even expansion packs. Just new versions of a game (hi megaman).

The "as a service" that's not actually a service, but a recurring billing purely to drive ongoing profits is a scam.

Worse, as you mention, you live at the whim of the 'as a service' provider - changing costs, removing access, or worse: them accessing and/or parsing your data for whatever reasons they deem appropriate. Private key

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[sit1963nz]

Yes to all these things, I do exactly the same.

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[OolimPhon]

No. Your service stops working. You are at liberty to take out a new plan with another carrier at that point, but your handheld computing device will still do everything else but make or receive calls if you don't. Ever heard of WiFi?

So I read the entire article and summary

[redmid17]

Somehow this is even fucking dumber than I expected it to be (subscription to lease phone / services from Samsung). And as usual is less informative here on ./ than on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Andro... [reddit.com]

This sounds like great news!

[Voyager529]

...does it mean that if I don't pay the subscription, the AI will be disabled?!

I think Samsung is about to find themselves re-learning how subscriptions only work if you charge them for things people WANT.

pay-once products, or lose market share

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

... https://www.sammobile.com/news... [sammobile.com]

Cable Tv. doesn't talk about it but some people don't return the decoder box when the subscription ends. Samsung is jumping into those problems, feet-first. They think a new product line with a new online service, will force people into subscriptions. They should think, their competition against Google online services didn't bring them lots of fans, this will also be ignored. Most people won't want AI and won't choose a subscription, so Samsung will have to continue their non-AI, pay-once, products, or

Few questions:

[thegarbz]

We already largely have subscription phones. A significant portion of the population get the phone and pay it off monthly through their telco plans. There are some questions here though:

a) Will it be cheaper than the Telco?
b) Will the phone be unlocked?
c) Will you get ownership of the device after some period of the subscription?
d) Is this cheaper than simply getting a payday loan from a mobster and buying the phone outright?

I suspect the answer the answer to one or multiple of these will be no, in which ca

This from the bloatware company

[RUs1729]

Samsung has a much-deserved reputation for coming up with excellent hardware, only to fill it up with the worst crapware. The good thing here is that, in this particular case, they will not force it down your throat, unless you pay.

Can we stop the "services" for ownership of things

[Marful]

I'm getting pretty tired of companies offering "Services" or "licensing" for physical items that are for mass consumer purchase.

What's next, Nike requiring you to pay a monthly fee to buy a shirt?

Subscribe then receive what?

[OneOfMany07]

At first I thought it was just paying for the latest cell phone in perpetuity, get a new phone every whatever...

Then it sounded like something I pay for to use on, or with, my phone. That whole AI business. Like I'm expected to pay for the phone, pay the cellular/data service, AND pay for something else if I'm going to use my phone at all.

Kind of curious what feature(s) they think will command this. And something only THEY can offer. Anything beyond "Samsung ChatGPT" would surprise me greatly (their own

Bubble popping time

[CEC-P]

Will this finally be the case study that causes everyone to recoil off of AI at a corporate level? Because a whole bucket of NOBODY is buying this garbage. Nobody trusts it. Nobody asked for it. Nobody wants to waste battery power on this. Nobody wants another subscription payment in a month. After Recall and Copilot failures and multiple AI companies going bankrupt or coming close, is this FINALLY the product failure that will push this trash over the edge and into to the trash pile that we've been waiting

Subscription "club"?

[backslashdot]

LOL .. a club is supposed to be a group of people gathering together around a topic they enjoy doing like the Chess Club or Dance club. I never heard of a subscription club, talk about deceptive wordplay. Nobody enjoys subscribing to things, if they do they should be in a psychiatric facility.