About that Samsung L870 Safari browser thing...
By Thomas Ricker 
posted May 30th 2008 3:04AM
posted May 30th 2008 3:04AM
We now have official word from Samsung regarding the browser on its new Samsung L870 slider. You may recall that the Samsung-issued press release listed "Safari browser (full browsing)" as a feature. Now the clarification: "Actually, L870 is equipped with S60 OSS browser, also known as S60 safari browser because both are using same webcore platform. Sorry again for the unclear specification, and bothering you with this."
Of course, the S60 browser has never been known, even informally, as the "S60 safari browser," but we'll let Samsung bang heads together internally over that one.
Well, the S60 browser user agent string includes safari in it.
Besides, why'd it take you guys so long to post this when so many of us corrected you? Jeez.
Here you go:
Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.2; U; Series60/3.1 NokiaN95_8GB/10.0.021; Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413
We did update the original post after discussing internally. However, we couldn't issue this retraction based on speculation alone, the official PR said what it said. Thus, we had to wait for official clarification from Samsung. The mistake here by us (me) is that we (I) did not take a more skeptical view of the matter when in my gut I knew it was unlikely. Sorry for that.
Thomas Ricker
Senior Editor, Engadget
Because the ppl who commented are official Samsung spokesmen
@Thomas
So, pure speculation is enough to post alleged "news" but official denial is absolutely needed to retract them?
@giuliop, yes, an official correction is required to retract an official PR.
Are you telling us that you are retracting the PR, and not what *you* said in your post?
Seriously, Thomas, who are you trying to fool?
its not that bad a browser... I've been using it on the N82 for a bit... its been ok.
Sorry that was meant to be a reply to Engadgetluvsappl (first commenter)
I'm finding the Flash support to be very useful. I can't wait to see the browser on a touchscreen phone.
Oh shit we really need to be allowed to delete our own stupid comments!
The lesson is read before you post!
If you make a fool of yourself, there's only you to blame :D
Nice.
Delete the comments that highlight the fact that the screw-up was yours and not Samsung's.
It was a fair point, since other sites carrying this story were aware of the fact that the browser in question was just the standard S60 WebKit browser, for you to turn around and place the blame solely with Samsung for your mis-reporting of the matter is a bit rich.
lain, I have no blood to offer you. Just a retraction and my personal apology posted above. I deleted your original comment to prevent you from embarrassing yourself. However, since you insist...
Thomas
I'm not out for blood and, frankly, wouldn't know what to do with any if you were to offer me any.
As I've said already, there are other sites that reported on this story and were fully aware that the 'Safari' mentioned was not Apple's browser, so that renders the whole last sentence/paragraph of the article invalid - it reads as though you are unwilling to accept that your own jumping to conclusions played at least as big a part in this as Samsung's unclear press release.
Now that clearly isn't the case, otherwise you wouldn't have then apologised in a comment later on but if you look at the article itself, it reads as though you're trying to pass the buck.
not all webkit browsers are created equally, this publicity stunt worked, foolish blogs.
Never ever buying a Samsung mobile again. I was surprised to find that the first couldn't do custom ring tones. When I was assured the second could I was pissed off to find out MP3's weren't selectable.
Who the hell does this? Samsung!
Was it an unlocked phone or carrier phone? If so, which carrier (assuming US Samsung)?
Samsung should just use the superior Opera Mini browser... In fact, all mobile phones should.
The phone is based on S60. It's not exactly a tough job to download it yourself.
The S60 browser is Webkit, isnt it?
I think Nokia even were the first to release the first WebCore for Windows (long before apple).
To be fair, symbian-freak and other symbian fan sites around the nets called the browser safari for quite a while. So yes, informally.
you know, when there wasn't other browser called mobile safari
Thomas,
It takes a big person to admit there mistake, so don't worry about the idiots. Something was wrong, it's been corrected. Let's move on people. These are not robot editors, they are humans just like us.
Keep up the good work!
Pfeh... human speak for yourself.
The S60 browser is an example of how webkit could be uglier than a Java app like Opera Mini.
Without Opera Mini, I would consider my E65 a non-web-browsing phone.