Stefan Mileschin

Some pundits have been wading into Samsung for "copying Apple" by releasing a gold version of its Galaxy S IV right after Apple released and then quickly sold out of its gold iPhone 5S.

"If recent reports are correct, the demand for the gold version is higher than Apple expected. Of course Samsung wanted in on the action," wrote TechCrunch.

Cult of Android cheekily asks: "does this company [Samsung] have any shame?"

The main theme appears to be that Samsung blatantly copied Apple's glorious winning strategy by releasing a gold Galaxy S IV right after Apple.

But if we are going to get into a juvenile peeing contest about gold plated phones, it may surprise commentators to discover it was Apple that copied Samsung.

Samsung released a gold smartphone in August, weeks before the gold iPhone 5S came out. It was called the Galaxy Golden and it was a pig-ugly hybrid flip phone-smartphone.

It had two 3.7-inch AMOLED displays with WVGA resolution, a 1.7GHz dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel rear camera, a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera, LTE support, a 1,820 mAh battery and the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean operating system.

But what was more important was that it shipped in a "champagne gold" colour. It seems that Samsung has been thinking about Gold phones for a while now, long before Apple showed off its first sample.

Then again, like the rectangle with rounded corners, gold isn't really something that belongs to either of the quarrelling companies. Don't expect that to stop them and their fans from fighting about it, though.

http://news.techeye.net/mobile/samsu...gold-for-apple