Why? I asked Samsung’s Won-Joon Choi, the executive in charge of both R&D and operations for Samsung’s mobile business. He says the added thickness of magnets is a bad tradeoff to make, because you’re just going to buy a case anyhow.
“About 80 or 90 percent of people are using a case, and cases with magnets are very popular these days,” he tells me.
Samsung would rather use that extra height to give the phone a larger battery or make it thinner, he says.
That doesn’t mean Samsung isn’t looking into magnets. “We’re still doing a lot of research to make sure we don’t have any sacrifice inside the phone; when we actually achieve that, we’ll integrate,” he says.
Personally, I disagree with Choi’s premise. I want extra battery and magnets, and I’m willing…