Samsung Explains Pebble Blue Galaxy S III Delay... But Questions Remain

Samsung recently posted an in-depth explanation as to why it originally decided not to ship the first Pebble Blue units of the Galaxy S III. We were all concerned at the time, and wondered what happened behind the scenes. Now we know a little bit more about the delay.

"The shipment was postponed because the mass production process for the Pebble Blue battery cover did not perfectly reproduce the S III's fundamental design concept creating an aesthetic that was inconsistent with the planned product," Samsung explained in a recent blog post.

As it turned out, the "hairline" marks on blue Galaxy S III weren't appearing as originally planned, so Samsung needed to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to produce them properly.

"Pebble Blue was the color chosen to represent GALAXY S III, inspired by the ideals of human dreams pursuing nature. Like pebbles along a riverbed glistening in an array of colors reflecting variations in sunlight, GALAXY S III portrays every shade of blue, and was dubbed "Pebble Blue," Samsung said. "Within one hour after the recall was issued, the tool development team headed down to the Gumi plant where the product engineering team is based. They were at a crossroads to decide whether the Pebble Blue recipe should be completely abandoned or somehow find a solution to improve the status quo."

Samsung worried about how consumers would react if it didn't deliver on the original design that was promised in early release units, so its engineers stayed up all night working on a solution, which ultimately meant creating an entirely new recipe for the coating. So how did the team do it?

"Although the metallic finish was produced in the deposition process and the blue color was produced in the coating process, passion and patience were needed to accomplish both features in the combined Microsilver Blue coating process, which ultimately proved the successful method," Samsung said. "Developers spent three days and nights fine tuning the perfect color ratio of Microsilver Blue coating over dozens of trials. Samples were created and destroyed until every part became perfect. However, although two to three samples were sent to top management for review every day, final approval did not come so easily."

So what happens next? Unfortunately, Samsung hasn't revealed how the final solution came to be. The company has promised an update in a second part to the story, which we're looking forward to reading.