When Microsoft decided to model its shartphone OS after its tiled Zune HD interface, most rational people saw the FAILboat pulling into the dock for its inevitable, if not humorous capsizing. But I begrudgingly have to hand it to Redmond: instead of laughably knocking off iOS, they are trying something different, dare I say innovative? Besides, if the Zune and XBox – OK the entire Entertainment and Devices division of Microsoft – have taught us anything, its that the company will set fire to small country GNPs before it abandons a product.

Because Microsoft decided to wait 5 years to seriously re-enter the smartphone market, they’re still catching up to some features that have been on other platforms forever. Take video calling. The iPhone, of course, has FaceTime and I’m sure Android has 5 or 6 shitty apps that rat on your location to remote Chinese servers while simultaneously sending your credit card information to Russia. But Windows Phone has been lagging – until now. Meet Tango, a video calling app not to be confused with Mango, which is the version of the Windows Phone OS you need to run the app.Maybe there is only one way to represent switching cameras, like some sort of Platonic iconography. Or maybe shitty developers lazily knock off prior art instead of making – hell, at least improving – on original work. One of those two.

There was a time at the turn of the century when Consumer Reports was a valuable resource for those looking to make an objective purchasing decision. They did research and compared products based on standardized criteria (as opposed to the “I know 3 friends who say” criteria some analysts use in their reviews). As the consumer product landscape moved from “mostly mechanical” to the “mostly silicon”, the publication spiraled into Flowers for Algernon-esque sudden-onset retardation when it came to tech, with larger and larger swaths of the reviews resembling a 4th grade production of Macbeth.

One of the more recent topics on which CR was staking its faltering reputation was Antennagate, the condition under which an iPhone 4′s antenna could be attenuated by contorting your hand around the aluminum band that frames the device. When the blogosphere finally thought they found a criticism to hang on the newly-released iPhone, Steve Jobs himself dismissed the issue pretty comprehensive during a press conference held around the issue. Once he pointed out – correctly – that several major smartphone offerings suffered from the same contrived signal loss, the bloggers and tech press were left to find something else about which to foment. But Consumer Reports would not relent. After disqualifying the 4 from its vaunted “recommended” devices, even though it was the highest rated smartphone tested, it maintained its condemnation even as the device was released on Verizon with improvements to the antenna. When CR refused to recommend its highest-rated smartphone, despite universal praise for the device and everyone else’s willingness to admit Antennagate wasn’t that big of a deal, the publication’s official Luddite status was confirmed.

So even though no one gives a shit about what Consumer Reports has to say about smartphones, that hasn’t stopped them from weighing in on the iPhone 4S. And guess what? They no longer have an issue with the iPhone’s antennae! But alas, despite cleaning the clocks of all Android shartphones 6 months ago, several of the latest crop are now ranked higher because of their pocket-busting screens and battery/wallet busting 4G.

"These are for you, CR. This one here is going up your narrow fucking biased ass. And this bad boy over here is in your fucking eye."

You guys don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Why don’t you leave technology for the myriad publications that understand it and go back to rating coffee makers?

I swear I just notice these things in passing. This time, I was checking out The Verge’s video review of the Motorola’s Droid 3. When they were talking about the camera, some icons that looked very familiar popped up.

For reference:

I’m sure the degree to which Android cuts and pastes from iOS is several times more egregious than what my corner-of-eye observations yield. This isn’t “great artists steal”, assholes. This is petty theft of an icon. How uninspired must your shartphone OS be that you can’t even design your own icons? It certainly isn’t without precedent, which makes it all the more pathetic.

Imagine my semi-surprise the “market research firm” Strategy Analytics released its numbers for global smartphone vendor shipments and stated that Samsung had shipped a whopping 370% more smartphones this past quarter (3rd quarter) than they did in the same quarter in 2010. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because these statistics are as impossible as “market research firms” are credible.

Samsung actually produced a useful document which seriously calls into question this wonderful 370% number: its financial reporting presentation for this past quarter, which I pulled from their “Investor Relations” webpage.

Quick aside – check out the Samsung Investor Relations website landing page:

No, take a good look at it:

It must be oddly comforting to Samsung’s investors that the same shitpile design aesthetic was applied to both Samsung’s web presence and their shartphone operating systems.

Back on point. According to the 2nd slide labeled “Segment Information”, 3rd quarter sales (in trillion Won) only increased 37% YoY.

Created in Windows Paint

So Strategy Analytics is saying that the number of smartphones shipped is greater than the increase in sales by a factor of 10 when compared to Samsung’s own information. Where’s that skeptical baby .jpg?

There he is!

Of course it’s entirely possible that Samsung shipped every one of those alleged 28 million phones in the 3rd quarter and most of them are still hanging out in the channel. The strategy, sometimes known as “stuffing the channel” is what I call “beating off into a dirty sweatsock”. It feels good when you do it, but it kind of sucks when you have to dispose of the evidence. Let’s see how Sammy deals with that in the 4th quarter.

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: I don’t care that The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is about the relatively shitty conditions under which all of our consumer electronics are made. The fact that the vast majority of every single product that could be seen as a target of your disposable income isn’t what’s being marketed on the marquee and it’s not the vehicle the one man show is using to hammer home your Western, consumerist guilt. It’s a singling out of Apple Inc. and Steve Jobs that gets people in the door.

The show focuses on one man’s trip to Shenzhen and the conditions he observed in some of the factories where Apple makes its products, taking tours that apparently aren’t even in the “Not for Tourists” guides. He meets with factory managers, workers and reps for underground organized labor movements at these companies. I have no intention of going, but from what I’ve gleaned from reviews, it seems appropriately awful and eye-opening. It’s also more than a little disingenuous.

First off, this is not a problem for which Apple is exclusively responsible, despite what all of the marketing for the performance would have you believe. A partial list of companies not named Apple that also have their devices manufactured in Shenzhen include Acer Inc., Amazon.com, Intel, Cisco, HP, Dell, Nintendo, Nokia, Microsoft, MSI, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Vizio. Did I mention this list is from one factory? Chances are, anything you buy that has an electronic component will come from a factory in Shenzhen. That’s why its one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.

Conspicuous consumption is one of those things the West is made to feel horribly about. It harkens back to every parental chiding about finishing your dinner because of the millions of starving Ethopians. I’m not going to argue that consumption and waste aren’t a global problem, but making money off of the name of one party to it and its now-deceased co-founder and CEO has a very familiar stink to it.

That fruit was hanging waaaay too low

Of course, I could have this all wrong. If it so happens that all the proceeds from the production (net expenses) go to the Shenzhen labor movement or some other worthy cause related to the issue, that’d be a pretty good indication that the person is more interested in helping solve the problem as opposed to cashing in off a big name and bitching about it, which is my suspicion. What can I say – I’m a pessimist. If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy to remove my post forthwith, apologize and buy a ticket to the show.