Samsung took the wraps off of its new Samsung Wallet app during a developer conference at Mobile World Congress on Wednesday. The Wallet app is designed to let users store things such as event tickets, boarding passes, membership cards, and coupons in one central location, much in the same fashion as Apple's Passbook app for iOS. In addition, Wallet offers time and location-based push notifications (again, just like Passbook) to alert users as to when they are able to use the passes stored in their account, and it provides real-time updates for membership points and boarding pass changes. Third-party developers will be able to integrate with Wallet to easily let users add passes and tickets to the app, but any app integration has to be approved by Samsung. Passes saved within the app feature bar codes that can be scanned at payment terminals. Unfortunately, there aren't any NFC tap-to-pay features in Wallet, even though Samsung recently announced a new partnership with Visa to ship future smartphones with the NFC-powered PayWave service.
THE PASSBOOK INFLUENCE IS QUITE EVIDENT
The company showed off a few features of the new app during its developer keynote, and it's quite clear that Samsung took its design inspiration for Wallet from Apple's Passbook (even down to the icon that Samsung used). When we asked why Samsung did not include NFC tap-to-pay features in Wallet, the company said that retailers prefer barcodes over NFC because they don't have to install any new infrastructure to support it. Samsung didn't rule out NFC features in Wallet for the future, however.
Currently, Wallet is only available as a preview for developers, who can download the SDK and API guides for it now, and the app itself will be available in Samsung's app store in the near future. Samsung says that it has lined up partnerships with Walgreens, Belly, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com, and Lufthansa for the app's launch, and it plans to bring more partners on once the app is actually available.
Samsung is planning to announce the new Galaxy S IV on March 14th, and we expect that Wallet will be one of the many new features shown off during Samsung's launch event. You can see a brief demo of the app with a Lufthansa boarding pass in the video below.
Y'all are so dramatic. Technology advances through a combination of inspiration and innovation. People build off of others' ideas in order to make better products. Not only, that. It's a damn app. The world continues to spin.
Cell phone stans are seriously the worst. The desparation to ATRL-ize any industry is ridiculous.
Y'all are so dramatic. Technology advances through a combination of inspiration and innovation. People build off of others' ideas in order to make better products. Not only, that. It's a damn app. The world continues to spin.
Cell phone stans are seriously the worst. The desparation to ATRL-ize any industry is ridiculous.
How can you even try to deny this? this copying is almost as blatant as when they copied the iPhone's homescreen. And this is not "inspiration and innovation". There is no innovation. They took Passbook, tweaked the design to avoid another lawsuit, and put it on Android. They didn't even add NFC, which would have been innovation.
And "ATRL-ize"? you do know that people in the tech industry take company wars more seriously than even stan wars?
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Originally posted by DWG
Oh, okay.
Well, I guess Apple DID NOT copy Google's Wallet app AT ALL when Wallet was released in September 2011.
Passbook and Google Wallet are two totally different things... yes Apple obviously took some inspiration from the idea but they're completely different. Samsung stole the idea of Passbook along with the design.
Well, I guess Apple DID NOT copy Google's Wallet app AT ALL when Wallet was released in September 2011.
Not when Google Wallet looks like this and uses credit cards + gift cards
Microsoft
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This basically sums it up:
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Passbook and Wallet have some fundamental differences.
Google Wallet was designed for mobile payment, for credit cards, a real virtual wallet.
Passbook takes another direction, focusing in tickets and boarding passes, integrated to their location (like showing your Starbucks pass when you get inside one of the stores). You don’t have a passbook for your Mastercard or Visa card.
More important, Google and Apple have completely different approaches for UI on this case. Samsung just ripped off Passbook design, period.
And yes: Google was the first to bring digital wallet to the market. Merit to them. In a certain way, yes, Apple copied Google with Passbook. But again, taking a totally different approach and radical new interface.
Samsung didn’t take any new approach, any new interface.
Dead @ them rearranging the cards and the movie/plane/mug logos on the top.
The reach. Noone even cares about passbook or whatever it is.
But - Apple Passbook more than triples accepted MLB stadium tickets http://t.co/1QVHhXfdS6 + Samsung thought it was important enough to unveil an app with the same functionality and partners.
I can't believe these frauds think can get away with it.
Technology advances through a combination of inspiration and innovation. People build off of others' ideas in order to make better products. Not only, that. It's a damn app. The world continues to spin. 
this copying is almost as blatant as when they copied the iPhone's homescreen. And this is not "inspiration and innovation". There is no innovation. They took Passbook, tweaked the design to avoid another lawsuit, and put it on Android. They didn't even add NFC, which would have been innovation.
you do know that people in the tech industry take company wars more seriously than even stan wars?
I like the idea of Samsung having something similar, don't get me wrong, but "Samsung Wallet?" That's too generic IMO.
