The Handheld Blog » Samsung

Ever Waited In Line For An iPhone? You Should See This Samsung Ad

Vaibhav Sharma — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 04:23:04 +0000

A lot of people at one point in time or another have waited in line for a shiny new Apple product, and Samsung’s decided to go all in, toss subtlety out of the windows and mock them for doing so. The one minute ad focusses on the insecurities of the buyers, the iPhone’s battery issues and the lack of ’4G’.

What are they pimping instead? The Galaxy S2 of course!

[via: The Verge]

Video: NFC Demos On The New Symbian Belle Devices, Plus The Furture Of NFC Apps

Vaibhav Sharma — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:55:49 +0000

Nokia India recently had an event about its latest NFC devices like the Nokia 701, 700 and the 600, all of which run Symbian Belle. Since a bunch of us were together, we decided to get in front of the camera and demo some of the NFC functionality that’s ready to be used by the consumers.

We demo Angry Birds Magic, the game that lets you unlock levels using NFC, NFC pairing, transferring photos using NFC and using NFC tags amongst other things. We wrap the video up by talking about the future of NFC apps.

In case you are wondering, the people in the video are me (@v4ibhav), Clinton Jeff (@clintonjeff), Vikas (@tsuvik) and Nikhil Pai (@NikhilPai).

So what do you think does NFC hold for us in the future. Let us know!

MeeGo Makes Way For Tizen, An All New HTML5 Centered OS

Vaibhav Sharma — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 05:41:39 +0000

In some very big news coming on the sidelines of Intel’s AppUp Elements Conference, the LiMo Foundation and the Linux Foundation today announced a new open source project, Tizen, to develop a Linux-based device software platform. Tizen will be a standards-based, cross-architecture software platform which supports multiple device categories including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, netbooks and in-vehicle infotainment systems.

We had been hearing rumors about how Intel was going to pause MeeGo development after Nokia backed out, and today we’ve received official confirmation, its all about Tizen from now.

Meanwhile, a post has also gone up on the official MeeGo blog taking about Tizen and ‘What’s Next For MeeGo?’. The question on everyone’s mind is why Tizen? Also, why didn’t they just incorporate all the new capabilities into MeeGo? The answer on the official post to that is:

We believe the future belongs to HTML5-based applications, outside of a relatively small percentage of apps, and we are firmly convinced that our investment needs to shift toward HTML5. Shifting to HTML5 doesn’t just mean slapping a web runtime on an existing Linux, even one aimed at mobile, as MeeGo has been. Emphasizing HTML5 means that APIs not visible to HTML5 programmers need not be as rigid, and can evolve with platform technology and can vary by market segment.

Granted, this is a judgment on our part on which reasonable people could disagree, but that’s the conclusion I came to.

My guess is that if Intel needed a big manufacturer to step into Nokia’s place, they needed to get rid of the MeeGo brand. No one would start developing for a platform which Nokia thought was not worth it, nevermind the underlying technologies, the name had to go. There was a lot of chatter about Samsung stepping up, and it seems a the companies got together, decided to work together and better MeeGo with deeper HTML5 support amongst other things and call it Tizen.

Infact, a few very interesting words can be found on the Intel AppUp Developer blog post commenting on Tizen:

For those speculating on rumors per Intel & Samsung, I trust this news is more encouraging than what was bounced around in the blogosphere. This is not a two company story. With the Tizen platform, the Linux Foundation and LiMo unite, driving more choice and open innovation.

Tizen’s development will be led by Intel and Samsung and an initial release of Tizen is targeted for Q1 2012. The first devices running Tizen are expected to come to market in mid-2012.

DEVELOPMENT

With Tizen, the aim is to use HTML5′s capabilities and cross platform flexibility and the Tizen SDK and API will allow developers to use HTML5 and related web technologies to write applications that run across multiple device segments, including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, in-vehicle infotainment, and netbooks. Intel’s AppUp center will be expanded to support Tizen with Intel AppUp as a store front for multiple Tizen device implementations.

MEE-GO?

So is MeeGo well and truly dead? The answer to that again comes from Intel’s App Developer blog:

MeeGo continues for our devices in market. MeeGo is a great choice for emerging markets and we’ve seen amazing devices already like the ASUS EeePC x101. AppUp continues to support MeeGo and we encourage MeeGo developers to continue to build and submit apps for our netbook devices in market. We also encourage MeeGo developers to consider a common development framework of HTML5 to bridge development between MeeGo and Tizen devices. And on the netbook side the MeeGo neetbook apps in the Intel AppUp center will be compatible and will run unchanged with Tizen netbook. So for those developers who invested in MeeGo for netbooks your apps will continue on Tizen netbooks.

Since MeeGo is open source, it will never truly be ‘dead’ in technical terms, but will it ever go mainstream? No. For that there’s Tizen. Therefore the MeeGo blog states:

Over the next couple of months, we will be working very hard to make sure that users of MeeGo can easily transition to Tizen, and I will be working even harder to make sure that developers of MeeGo can also transition to Tizen.

So there you go, here’s another open source operating system that sees Intel partner with a large smartphone manufacturer. The Nokia partnership was a bust, but Intel is looking to learn from those lessons and come back hard with Samsung as a partner this time.

Livecast: Samsung Launches The New Galaxy Tabs 750 & 730 In India

Vaibhav Sharma — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 06:58:05 +0000

Samsung is launching the new slimmer Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9 in India today, and they’re calling the 10.1 version Galaxy Tab 750 while the 8.9″ variant get the Tab 730 moniker. You can watch the live webcast below.

The Galaxy Tabs are the only real competition to Apple’s iPad and have been having some intellectual property difficulties in Europe and Australia, but we’re glad to see them roll out in India. Given the current situation around the world, you can expect Samsung to put all their weight behind making it a success in India.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be priced at Rs 36,200 for the 16 GB version, while the 8.9 version will retail for Rs. 33,990. Both tablets will be in stores next month onwards. If you’re looking for a data deal as well, Samsung has tied up with Vodafone to offer 2GB of data per month for six months for a total sum of Rs 3000.

The In-Depth Samsung Galaxy S2 Review

Vaibhav Sharma — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:30:42 +0000

The Galaxy S was a runaway success for Samsung, infact they couldn’t make enough of them. It went off the shelves for a little while and only returned with a Super LCD display, Samsung clearly wanted to concentrate somewhere else and the only thing that would make a company divert its attention from its most successful smartphone ever, would be its successor.

That’s exactly what the Samsung Galaxy S2 is, Sammy’s new superphone that aims to rule them all, if the original Galaxy S sold 10 million units, they want to sell even more of these. So does the Galaxy S2 live up all the expectations? We find out in our review.

Lets start with a quick unboxing and overview to give you an idea of the box contents of the S2, it comes with a pretty nice leather case that doesn’t add to the bulk too much, check it out in the video below. The device also comes with a microUSB cable and stereo in-ear headphones which will suffice for casual playback.

HARDWARE

The Galaxy S2 is Samsung’s premium smartphone, their most expensive and most powerful, so you would expect they would want to cram in everything under the sun. A 4.3” Super AMOLED Plus display, a dual core Exynos 1.2 Ghz processor, 1 GB RAM, 16 GB of inbuilt storage with a microSD card slot, an 8 Megapixel Camera with an LED flash along with the usual set of connectivity options like WIFI, GPS, Bluetooth and so on. When announced, the Galaxy S2 was supposed to have NFC chips as well, but that’s been left out from the current batch of Galaxy S2 i9100 models that have hit shelves the world over.

Building on such great hardware means that Samsung could add a bunch of features most other Android manufacturers haven’t incorporated. Things like 1080p HD video recording at 30 frames per second, WIFI Direct, support for USB on the go, Bluetooth peripherals like mice, and DLNA support that’s continued from the original model. To keep all the above humming along nicely, Samsung’s put in a 1650 mAh battery.

DESIGN

The Galaxy S line of phones from Samsung is focused on making fast, elegant and slim smartphones and the S2 has started from where the original left off. The device is slightly larger on account of the bigger 4.3” screen as compared to the 4” on the original, but is surprisingly even slimmer at just 8.5mm, compared to the 9.9mm on the S1, making it the thinnest and most powerful smartphone on the market today.

The design language is still very similar, a front occupied mostly by the screen with a physical home button at the bottom, flanked by the menu and back keys. No place for the search key means that the menu key doubles up to perform those functions as well, a long press on the menu touch sensitive key and it begins to work like the search button, working across all applications. Personally I like this setup as that makes for a cleaner design, and you won’t accidentally press any keys as the touch sensitive keys are separated by the physical home button.

The sides have minimalist buttons with the left packing the volume rocker and the right holding power/lock key, there is no camera key. The positioning of the power button is perfect, it is much easier to hit, immaterial of whether you are left handed or right, compared to a position on the top of the device where you’d generally find the power button. Reaching across a 4.3” display won’t have been a joy if it had been placed on top. Speaking of the top, all that it carries is a 3.5mm jack for plugging in your favourite headphones, while the bottom of the device holds a solitary microUSB port, which can also be used with the HDMI connector to connect to an HDTV.

The back of the device holds an ever so slightly protruding 8 Megapixel camera with an LED flash. The bottom of the device bulges out towards the back and holds a mono loudspeaker. As you can imagine, keeping the device faceup blocks the loudspeaker and can cause you to miss calls, this problem is however mostly evident on soft surfaces.

SOFTWARE

The S2 runs the Gingerbread 2.3.3 release out of the box, with Samsung’s proprietary TouchWiz 4 overlay. The latest version of Gingerbread is 2.3.4, and the Galaxy S2 is expected to receive the update in the coming weeks, even otherwise 2.3.4 isn’t something you would miss dearly.

TouchWiz 4: What deserves special mention is the TouchWiz 4 interface that adds a lot of value to stock Android. A lot of people prefer a stock UI, but TouchWiz 4 really makes you reconsider that stand. It brings quick WIFI, GPS, Rotation and Bluetooth toggles to the pull down notification bar. Also present there are forward, back and pause buttons while the music is playing, you can even control music from the lockscreen without having to unlock the device.

Next, it gives you upto 7 homescreens and plenty of widgets to play around with including agenda widgets with month and today views along with a bunch of clocks etc. Some widgets are resizable, so you can decide how much of the screen should say the weather widget occupy, or if you want to make the today view larger. You can quickly jump between homescreens by pinching out or dragging your finger across the dots on the bottom to glide between homescreens.

The apps are presented in a page based format, much like iOS and I am personally a huge fan of this approach. No need to keep scrolling up and down, and you can organize your apps by moving them across pages or within folders. You can glide between pages in the same way as homescreens. TouchWiz also has bunch of other tricks up its sleeve with a brightness control that can be activated to holding the pull down notification bar for a second and then dragging right to increase and left to decrease.

TouchWiz 4 also introduces motion based gestures, for example you can move widgets between pages by holding them and then moving the phone left or right to jump pages, or holding down two points on the screen to zoom in and out of the browser, pictures and so on. These things are more for fun than actually helping you save time, but nevertheless make for a great way to show off your new device to friends.

All in all, I’m a huge fan of the TouchWiz 4 interface and as surprising as it may sound to some of the Android purists, it adds a lot of value to the device. If you don’t like it, you always have the option to choosing a new launcher from the Android Market and forget about TouchWiz completely. Here is a video that takes you though some of the lesser know tips & tricks that are available of the Galaxy S2.

The one things that I don’t like about Samsung’s software is that they want to control how I use my battery once it is running low. Beyond a certain point, the camera kicks you out because the phone is running low on battery, or the music player shuts down and so on. Samsung does it to protect the basic function of the phone i.e. make and receive calls, but if I want to take a picture, the phone can simply warm me and then let me take the shot instead of blocking me completely. Fortunately, there are workarounds to this problem. A camera app from the Market solves the purpose, so does a third party music player.

Flashing: But if that’s not enough, you will be pleased to know that the SGS2 comes with an unlocked bootloader and is one of the most mod friendly Android devices on the market. There are already custom ROMS and hacks available, so if you ever feel something is amiss or you that would like to try something new, the modding community will keep you satisfied.

Some custom ROMs and hacks also let you get rid of the battery limitations I described earlier.

On the software front, as I mentioned earlier, the S2 brings new functionality such as USB on-the-go, so that you can plus in flash drives, portable hard disks etc to copy data across without needing a PC. There is also support for WIFI Direct, a technology that lets you copy data wirelessly, much like Bluetooth but at much faster speeds using an adhoc WIFI connection. Find a detailed write up here, and following is a video showing it in action:

PERFORMANCE

Considering it runs on a dual core processor and a gig of RAM, you would expect this thing to fly, and fly it does. Despite the days of rigorous tests, app installs and non-stop use, the SGS 2 has performed with flying colours. Everything is fast, there are no lags whatsoever, and even after days of use you do not need to reboot. The booting time for SGS 2 is a breath of fresh air and it takes about 10 seconds to get upto speed from a cold boot. The annoying Android file keeping on boot is also a matter of seconds.

The device has about 833 MB of RAM available and on a fresh boot you will generally find that around 650MB is free, more than enough for anything you might want to throw at the phone.

If you had worries about TouchWiz slowing things down, you can get rid of them. The browser is fast, most apps load almost instantly, the camera takes 2 seconds to get ready to shoot, the scrolling is smooth and you don’t see jerks.

The browser despite being blazing fast to load pages, does manage to show a few check boxes while scrolling, this is a software bug and I would think that Samsung would be working to get it fixed with subsequent firmwares. Otherwise it handles flash just fine and that doesn’t really affect the overall smoothness of the phone. The Gallery app sometimes take a second to load, but once inside, flicking though pictures is instant.

But if you really cut to the chase, I’m yet to come across a single app that actually needs a dual core processor to show its true potential, the dual core chip is more for about being future proof than being a requirement for today. Still you feel good knowing its there.

CAMERA

The auto focus camera on the S2 is an improvement from the 5MP shooter on the original, and possibly one of the better ones across all Android devices. The S2 does not have a physical camera button, so all the controls are on the screen itself. You can touch a particular area to focus or use the camera key and let the phone take that into its own hands.

With stills, there are a lot of options available, right from taking panoramas, to an action mode for fast shutter speeds and even a cartoon mode. Also present is a macro (close-up) mode, a Face Detention mode and the usual auto mode. For most documents scans and closeups, the auto focus mode is enough and you are saved from the bother of having to switch to macro each time. When you exit, the camera remembers your settings.

The UI of the camera app is clean and simple, you can select which controls to show on the left hand side while the right holds the toggle for switching to video, taking a picture and jumping into the Gallery.

The S2 also has a 2 Megapixel front facing camera that is a very welcome improvement from the VGA shooters that we see on most smartphones. It is passable for portrait shots and will help improve video call quality if our networks and apps are upto it.

ISSUES?

When the Galaxy S2 launched there were quite a few rumors surrounding the screen, heating and WIFI performance, so its best to put those to rest as well.

First the screen, the alleged problem being that there is a slight yellow effect on the left hand side of the display. I have played with two Galaxy S2 devices and on both occasions I had a very hard time locating the yellow batch, sometimes I see it, sometimes I don’t. It is allegedly visible in low brightness with a solid grey colour in the background. But for me it is not a problem, the screen looks great, even better than the original Super AMOLED display on the S1 and I am yet to see any the issue in any real world scenario.

Next is talk that the Galaxy S2 gets excessively hot. In peak of the Indian summer, my device has held up well, it does get a little warm at times, specially when you are charging it and using it at the same time, but this is no deal breaker and expected to an extent. Bottomline, don’t worry about it.

Next, some people are having problems with WIFI reception. In my tests using the default India firmware, the SGS2 performed well enough. My N8 and the the iPad 2 had better reception at the edge of my router’s range, but the SGS2’s performance is still passable. You’ll only have problems if you try and leech off your neighbour’s WIFI.

Last, the original Galaxy S had problems with GPS performance and it looks as if Samsung has gone to great lengths to make sure that the GPS performance on the S2 is stellar. Infact after the using the device as my primary smartphone for the last 4 weeks, I am yet to see a show stopping bug, or even something that is a minor annoyance.

Battery Life: Finally lets talk battery life. After a few recharge cycles, the Galaxy S2 possibly has the best battery life of any similar device in its class. With 4 email accounts, WhatsApp, Gtalk and Tweetdeck running continuously in addition to a few calls, a bunch of texts, moderate browsing and 20 minutes of light games I still get a day’s usage from the device.

So if you leave the house at 8am with a full battery, you should still have some juice left over when you get back at 8 in the evening, it might even get you through the after work parties unless you really hammer it. Considering the S2 has a 4.3” display, it manages to last for an impressive amount of time.

GALAXY S v GALAXY S2

At this point a lot of original Galaxy S owners are wondering if it is worth it to update to the successor, here is what I think:

CONCLUSION

The good: While the S2 excels in most aspects, the following stand out:

Screen, the colours really pop out and the blacks are seriously impressive.

Size, super thin and very light.

Blazing fast, with a useful TouchWiz overlay.

Great call quality, one of the loudest in, in-call volume.

The bad: There’s hardly anything bad, but the following things would have been better:

The camera while being one of the best ones on an Android device, still doesn’t match up to the likes of Nokia’s N8. The single LED flash could have been brighter as well.

Some people would have preferred a more metallic finish, but Samsung’s compromised on that front to keep the weight and antenna performance better.

A loud enough mono speaker, let down by the placement on the bottom where it gets muted easily. The same plastic bottom is also prone to scratches if you aren’t careful.

The TouchWiz overlay will mean that updates come to the SGS2 a little later than the Nexus series of smartphones, but Samsung’s been stepping up its game recently with their speed of updates and judging by how popular the S2 will be, you can rest assured about getting the updates sooner, than later.

One the whole the Samsung Galaxy S2 is a superphone, to call it a mere smartphone would be an understatement. It has its niggles, but they are far outnumbered by the overwhelming positives in its favour. It is without a doubt the best Android smartphone on the market and depending on how you feel about Android, perhaps even the best smartphone today, certainly the most powerful.

So if you were in the market for a high-end smartphone, would I recommend the Galaxy S2? Definitely.

Demo: WIFI Direct On The Galaxy S2, Seriously Impressive

Vaibhav Sharma — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:47:35 +0000

One of the brand new features that the Samsung Galaxy S2 brings is the support for WI-FI Direct. WI-FI Direct, if you remember, is the technology that lets you transfer data between other WIFI Direct devices by creating an adhoc WIFI connection between them. In other words, it allows WIFI devices to talk to each other without the need for wireless routers.

It works much like Bluetooth, just faster and has better range. Symbian is supposed to get WI-FI Direct this year as well, but Samsung beat everyone to the chase with the Galaxy S getting certification last year itself and now the SGS2 becomes one of the first smartphones (if not the first) to ship with WIFI Direct support out of the box this year.

I have played with WIFI Direct for a while and it is definitely a very welcome feature, one you probably wouldn’t be able to live without once you get used to it. Transferring an mp3 (5-6 MB) is virtually instant and very large files also take mere minutes. For example, you could transfer a 700 MB movie wireless in the middle of the desert in under 5 minutes using WIFI Direct.

Here’s a demo of WIFI Direct on two Samsung Galaxy S2 devices:

That’s not all, if two Galaxy S2 devices were connected to the same network, then I could also send files between them without having to activate a peer to peer network which meant I didn’t have to disable the WIFI connection from my router and could browse the web meanwhile.

Impressive.

I cannot wait for WIFI Direct support to other devices. What do you think of it?

Further reading – Our In-Depth Samsung Galaxy S2 Review.

Head To Head: Samsung Galaxy S v Galaxy S2

Vaibhav Sharma — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 07:34:29 +0000

The Samsung Galaxy S2 just hit the global markets a few days ago after having sold in the millions in Samsung’s own country, South Korea in under a month. A lot of people are looking at what is essentially a superphone, as their next smartphone and why not! It packs a 1.2 dual core processor, 1 GB of RAM, a beautiful 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus display, is thin as you like, feels extremely light and is power by the latest in Google’s software.

But there are also a lot of people who still like the predecessor to this device, the original Galaxy S. Some would wonder if it is worth the upgrade if they already own a Galaxy S and some would wonder if it makes sense getting the now much cheaper Galaxy S original if it meets their needs. In this post I’ll attempt to put the two Galaxy S devices head to head to see if the successor has enough extras to make it a compelling upgrade. You can jump directly to the all encompassing video, or get the background in text below.

Physical: The all apparent physical bits first, both devices have essentially the same design with the S2 going a little easy on the curves. However, the S2 is slightly larger on account of the bigger 4.3″ display as compared to the 4″ display on the original. But the thing to note is that despite the boost in specs, its now much thinner 8.5mm v 9.9 mm and is also lighter by 3 grams, 116g to the original’s 119g, making it the thinnest and most powerful smartphone on the market.

Finally, because of the light weight and the slim profile, the Galaxy S2 doesn’t feel much bigger than the original. If you are used to the S1, you shouldn’t have any problems adjusting to the S2.

Display: Its not just the size of the display, but the technology behind it that’s improved as well. The 4.3″ screen on the S2 is ‘Super AMOLED Plus’, compared to the original’s ‘Super AMOLED’. Does this make a difference? Yes. Everything is better, the colours, the sunlight visibility, the viewing angles, the blacks. When you first move from a Galaxy S to a S2, the difference isn’t obvious, but when you move back to the Galaxy S, it then that you realize that Samsung’s new display does deserve the ‘plus’ moniker. That’s not all, the sub-pixel count has improved from 8 to 12, so this means that despite having the same resolution 800 x 480, the S2′s display will be sharper and the corners smoother than the original.

Power: The S2 is powered by a 1.2 Ghz dual-core exynos processor that literally blows the competition away on benchmarks. It also comes with a gigabyte of RAM with about 833 MB being useable. Compare this to the 1 Ghz processor on the original and the 329 MB of available RAM on S1.

Camera: The S2 comes with an 8MP auto focus camera with a single LED flash. It also shoots in video in 1080P at 30 frames per second. The S1 on the other hands has a 5 MP AF camera without any sort of flash and shoots at video at 720P, 30 FPS. Needless to say, the camera on the S2 is better, but the one thing to note is that when shooting at 1080p, the frame is slightly zoomed in, watch the video below to get a better idea of what I’m taking about.

Software: The S2 runs Gingerbread 2.3.3 out of the box with a TouchWiz 4 overlay. The S1 originally ran Eclair, but with the recently leaked 2.3.4 Gingerbread release, the S1 runs the absolute latest in Google’s software, even bettering the S2, which is supposed to get 2.3.4 is the coming weeks. Officially the S1 now also runs Gingerbread and newer units ship with it. TouchWiz 4 on the other hand is a very welcome improvement over TouchWiz 3 that runs on the S1, making it my favorite Android launcher/skin by far. A bunch of things have changed, the messaging app has skins, the memo app is better, the homescreen layout and switching is faster, you have music control from the lockscreen which itself has improved and looks much better. See the video to get a better idea.

Battery: The S2 comes with a 1650 mAh battery (compared to 1500 mAh on the S1) and slightly better battery life than the original running the latest Samsung ROMS. Also, the back on the S2 is matte and non glossy, giving it a premium feel. However, removing it does show you how thin it is and that can cause some anxiety. Overall, its still a definite improvement.

Connectivity: The S2 immensely benefits when it comes to connectivity. First it has HSDPA support for speeds upto 21 MBPS, compared to the 7.2 MBPS cap on the original. It also has USB on-the-go and WIFI direct support (more on that later today), not to forget the HDMI out with the microUSB adapter.

So these are the broad difference/improvements that the Galaxy S2 brings compared to its predecessor, I have outlined all of these and more in the video below. What is my final conclusion? Watch the video to find out!

Already have a Galaxy S2? Then check out some little known tips & tricks or our In-Depth Samsung Galaxy S2 Review.

Must Know Tips & Tricks For The Galaxy S II

Vaibhav Sharma — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:18:33 +0000

The Galaxy S II is Samsung’s latest and greatest superphone and judging by the rate at which these things are selling, very soon millions around you will have a one. The device packs a dual core 1.2 Ghz processor, a 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus display, runs Android 2.3.3 out of the box with Sammy’s TouchWiz 4 on top.

TouchWiz is Samsung’s custom UI layer that differentiates the SGS 2 from the myriad of other Android slabs and Samsung has managed to add enough value to it to make it a very welcome addition. Some of its benefits become obvious, but some tweaks and shortcuts that can make your experience even better are tucked away. This post aims to showcase a bunch of tips and tricks that every SGS 2 user should know. Some of these might even work on older TouchWiz devices.

Hit play and tell us in the comments section if you think I’ve skipped any must know shortcut/tip!

If you can’t see the video embedded above, hit this link to go to YouTube. If you’d like to read instead of watch the video, read on.

Quick Calls & Texts: Once you have the contact you want to call or text in front of you, instead of entering it and then carrying out the operation, you can simply swipe left to place a call or swipe right to enter a text.

Homescreens: TouchWiz supports upto 7 homescreens and jumping between them can quickly become a problem, but you can easily pinch to get an overview and then quickly jump to the screen you want.

Screenshots: Taking screenshots on Android devices is a pain, but on the Galaxy S2, you can simply hit home button and then the power key while holding onto home to take a screenshot. You can then see them in the Gallery.

Brightness Adjust: The notification bar can serve as a brightness scroll on the Galaxy S 2 if you are not using the auto brightness option. Just hit the notification bar, hold for a second and swipe left to decrese and right to increase the brightness. This is one of my favourite tweaks.

Browsr Text Wrap: Out of the box the Galaxy S2 doesn’t automatically reflow the text in the webpage if you zoom in. But if you just goto settings and check the ‘auto-fit pages’ option, all is well again.

User Agent Change: The browser lets you change the user-agent without needing an extra app, just type ‘about:useragent’ and you can choose between the iPhone, Nexus One, Desktop, Galaxy S or even enter a custom string.

Pinch Based Tab Switching: While you are viewing a webpage, just pinch out and you will be shown the other tabs that are open, or you can even open a new one. Handy, finally possible on the Galaxy S2.

Custom Fonts: The Galaxy S2 comes with inbuilt support for custom fonts. Just goto Settings -> Display -> Screen Display -> Font Style and choose from the three options or follow the link to download more from the Android Market.

Change Bottom App Drawer: Its just easier to explain if you watch the video, around the 03:28 minute mark.

Quick Slider: Whether you are in the homscreen or the app list, just roll your finger over the dots at the bottom of the screen and see the screens fly by. Beautiful and functional.

Video Lock: Pressing the power button in video player locks the screen, now you can hold the device any way you like, no accidental presses.

Testing Mode: *#0*# in the dialer enters the LCD test mode, useful if you are hunting for dead pixels or a few other things.

Search Key: The SGS2 like the SGS doesn’t have a dedicated search key that all other Android devices have, but if you long press menu, it doubles as a search key and pulls search up, wherever you need it.

Quick Dialing: On the dial pad spell the name of your contact and see it popup, great when you need to make a quick call.

Bluetooth Mouse: The SGS 2 supports using a bluetooth mouse, the functionality is more of a proof of concept vis-a-vis being actually useful. TV out presents a useful senario.

Any others you would like to add? Let us know in the comments section below!

Further reading – Our In-Depth Samsung Galaxy S2 Review.

Gingerbread Officially Begins To Rollout For The Samsung Galaxy S

Vaibhav Sharma — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 08:18:12 +0000

In what should come as great news for millions for Galaxy S owners, Samsung has started rolling out the Gingerbread update for their widely successful device. But before you get too excited, do keep in mind that this is a staggered release and it may take some time before an official version hits Kies in your region.

That being said, if you cannot wait for the update to reach your shores, you can flash the new firmware via Odin and get a piece of an official Gingerbread ROM as opposed to leaked Gingerbread ROM that has been floating around.

The Gingerbread on the Galaxy S is still based on the RFS file system, but early reports indicate speed improvements in startup times, and general phone behavior. The RFS lag only creeps in after the a while, so it may be a few days before we know the engineers at Samsung have finally be able to get rid of the lag, once and for all. The build date for the firmware is April 8.

Do keep in mind that downloading the ROM and then flashing via Odin, may void your warranty. I suggest you wait for an official release for your region which will also come with all the operator data, MMS etc settings for your region. But if you cannot wait, follow the XDA Developers thread below.

You can also spoof your product code and force Kies into believing that you are entitled to the update, tutorial here and reports suggest that these settings work.

[via: XDA Developers]

Samsung Releases Facebook S! Facebook For Android Alternative

Vaibhav Sharma — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:34:24 +0000

The Samsung App Store on the Galaxy S line of Android devices packs less than 10 applications and is usually not the place where you would go for all the cool Android apps. Although it does have Asphalt 5, Vlingo and a free fun utility apps like road SMS, but that’s about the extent of it.

Today I was surprised to find a pretty cool addition to the store in the form of Facebook For Samsung or Facebook S! Apparently Samsung’s isn’t too happy with the current iteration of ‘Facebook for Android’ and decided to offer something better for its users. I found the app on the Galaxy S and am not sure if Samsung’s other Android devices have also been blessed with this update.

I already have Facebook for Android installed and did not have to sign into the Facebook S! app after I downloaded and installed it. The major draw of the application is Samsung’s location integration which lets you tag your status with your location either using GPS or by picking a location on a map.

The application is a light download, under 1.5 MB in size.

You can click on a geo-tagged status to see it on a map.

Tap the ‘add location’ button to pick a spot on the map or use the phone’s GPS. I was unable to use the GPS mode indoors, its almost as if the phone gives up too soon. May be an update will improve this feature. On the computer, the link to your location opens up in Google Maps.

There are also options to upload pictures and videos directly from the camera or the gallery.

The photo viewing mode is not too great as you cannot swipe across images and will have to use the back key to move to a new photo. A double tap will zoom the image and turning the phone will make the app switch to landscape.

One thing I liked was the ability to sort your Facebook news feed by the category you want, really helps cut the clutter out.

There is no widget, but the application does have a nice and simple UI, and a few features that seem to work better than the stock Facebook application for Android. Give it a go and let us know what you think.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Debuts – Will It Have Far Reaching Impact?

Vaibhav Sharma — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:03:33 +0000

Samsung today made its 7″ Android 2.2 powered tablet official at IFA 2010 and marked the arrival of the first real iPad rival. The Galaxy Tab has a lot going for it, the flexibility of Android, a powerful Cortex A8 1.0GHz processor, dual cameras, video calls and the ability to be used as a phone.

At 7″ it threatens to be pocket-able but falls slightly short, although you could easily slip it into a coat pocket. With 3G HSPA connectivity, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 3.0 the Galaxy Tab becomes the best connected tablet on the market and the ability to use a SIM card for data and calls is a huge plus. The screen is a 1024×600 WSVGA TFT display and personally that’s a disappointment because I wanted to see Samsung’s superb Super AMOLED display that powers its Galaxy S lineup of phone inside.

My use case for a tablet is very simple. Video playback and Web browsing are a priority while apps and games come a close second. The reason the iPad was not for me is because of a clear lack of multitasking, but more importantly the inability to play a host of popular video codecs. The Galaxy Tab on the other hand plays DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.263, H.264 and more out of the box and this means I can throw virtually anything at it and it will play just fine, even if it is 1080P HD content.

The Galaxy Tab also packs a very capable browser with support for Flash 10.1. Two clear wins over the iPad. So does the Galaxy Tab have it in it to succeed? It is after all just an larger version of the Galaxy S phone with a 3″ jump in screen size and a 4000 mAh battery.

It will come down to the price Samsung can retail it at in addition to the the time to market. It is slated to go on sale in Europe this month while it will hit the US and Asia sometime next month, India might see it late September itself. The iPad is not available in a lot of countries till date and if Samsung can push the Galaxy Tab to those countries first, it might just gain a distinct advantage. The i9000 Galaxy S smartphone retails for about 28000 INR (600$), and if the Galaxy Tab crosses the 30,000 INR (640$) mark I don’t see many people picking one up as the iPad then becomes a cheaper option.

But if priced reasonably, we might just have a device that is compact, powerful and much more usable in bed or on the go. 380 grams in light.

The official Galaxy Tab site – http://galaxytab.samsungmobile.com/

Samsung Galaxy S Review: Hardware

Vaibhav Sharma — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:30:57 +0000

When it comes to sheer specifications, the Samsung Galaxy S is virtually the king of the pack in the world of smartphones. In this review we will be looking at its hardware prowess, including aspects like the processor and RAM, display, camera, battery life and the device in general.

RAW POWER

The Galaxy S packs a 1 Ghz Hummingbird Processor, a whopping 512 MB of RAM. Infact with a bit of potentially warranty voiding tweaking, the Galaxy S (running Android 2.1) even shames the Nexus One running on Android 2.2 (Froyo).

It packs the fastest GPU of the current lot of Android devices and with a Froyo release for the Galaxy S expected in September, the phone promises to become even faster than it currently is.

DISPLAY

Next let us have a look at its display. It packs a 4″ Super AMOLED display that is sheer class, infact it is virtually the best display I have seen on a smartphone. Some people would argue that the iPhone 4′s retina display is better and to an extent it is, because if you look carefully you can still make out pixels on the Galaxy S’s 800 x 480 resolution display. However, because of the .5″ advantage in size (4″ v/s 3.5″) the Galaxy S wins it for me.

The blacks are amazing, the contrast is superb and things look way more pretty on the Galaxy S than on any other display. Infact on a black background text stands out as if you had placed a cutout on the screen rather than the screen itself displaying it. Pictures look great and the whole Movie watching experience is nothing short of incredible. The Galaxy S also supports Divx playback in addition to a bunch of other codecs and will play virtually anything you throw at it. When paired with the 5.1 sound via headphones you know where things are headed.

BATTERY

All of these things are very power intensive and this bring me to the subject of its battery. Despite its Super AMOLED display being pretty power efficient, its 1500 mAh battery really gets stretched when it needs to power the 4″ screen throughout the day performing tasks like video playback and web browsing.

Couple that with the always online mode in which the device is checking for Twitter and Facebook updates, emails, calendar syncs and so on and the battery can quickly go down.

Infact, I have managed to kill the battery within about 8 hours with all the above heavily in place. But on a normal day with the sync’s set to every half hour and not much web browsing or ebook reading, the Galaxy S lasts through the day and you can be confident of getting home in the evening with some juice left.

DESIGN

The design of the Galaxy S is not very imaginative and to a lot of people it looks like an iPhone, but then to those people almost anything with a touch display looks like an iPhone. It is very slim, infact so slim that there are times when you feel that it might just slip out of your hands.

The front is all glass with two touch sensitive buttons on the bottom, along with a physical home button. The sides have a nice metallic feel to them and pack the volume rocker on the left and the power button on the right, sadly absent is the camera button. The bottom unfortunately is glossy plastic which equates to being a fingerprint magnet. On the whole however the phone does manage to look pretty impressive. We have a huge photo gallery here.

GENERAL ASPECTS

As a phone the Galaxy S performs well, it has good reception and I’ve not dropped calls because of it. The in call volume is ample and the clarity is what you would expect from a phone. The loudspeaker on the back is powerful enough to notify you of calls or messages, but isn’t really sufficient if you wanted to catch a podcast or a movie.

Since it is also placed on the back, the sound gets muffled when it is lying flat and on a soft surface you can expect to miss calls because of this. Be careful to place it upside down when you set alarms or you wouldn’t be getting up any time soon. The Galaxy S case however has a nice cutout to allow sound to escape.

CONCLUSION

Inspite of the issues like the lack of a dedicated camera button or a flash, it is very difficult not to like the Galaxy S. The raw power and the gorgeous screen are very difficult to resist. One look at the Galaxy S tells you that this device will be great for content consumption and once you buy it with this frame of mind, there isn’t much you will not like about the phone.

Movies, Pictures, Ebooks and a ton of other things look great and sometimes you will get so caught up in them that your productivity will be affected, that’s how nice it is. For our final rating, watch the video below. Hint: We like it!

Head over to YouTube to watch the video in HD.

The Samsung Galaxy S Gets A New India Firmware – I9000DDJG4

Vaibhav Sharma — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 15:26:32 +0000

Samsung has just released a new firmware for the Galaxy S in India in the form of the I9000DDJG4 update. The new firmware is available via KIES, its PC application. The update brings bug fixes and a solution to the lag issue that the Galaxy S is plagued by once you have a number of applications open.

Early reports suggest that the performance of the Galaxy S is much better with I9000DDJG4 as compared to the firmware that it shipped with (DDJF3), however just a little lag remains. Rooting the Galaxy S is also possible post installing the new firmware. If you do not wish to update via KIES, then you can also grab the firmware from here to flash with Odin.

For more information you may want to follow this thread on xda developers.

The Samsung Galaxy S Gallery – Plus Comparison Shots

Vaibhav Sharma — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 19:06:39 +0000

I have recently taken delivery of the very impressive Samsung Galaxy S and to kick things off here is a complete gallery of the device, complete with comparison shots. The first thing that you notice when you hold the Galaxy S in your hand is that how thin it actually is and how light it feels. What makes this even more impressive is its specifications which make it one of the most powerful devices in the market today, and probably the most powerful on sale in India.

A gorgeous 4″ Super AMOLED display, a 1 Ghz Hummingbird processor, 512 MB of RAM and a 1500 mAh battery along with a 5 MP camera. Easily a geek’s dream configuration. I will be bringing you a detailed review in due course of time, starting with the hardware.

But for now, here is the Galaxy S in its full glory.

(The Galaxy S I9000)

(Galaxy S & the Nokia N900)

(N900 v. Galaxy S v. Nokia N97 v. Nokia E52)

The following slideshow hosts the complete 50 image gallery, if you prefer to view the images of Flickr directly, here is the link to follow.

Want me cover something in specific? Do let me know in the comments section below.

The Samsung Omnia HD Comes To India With A 1GHZ Processor

Vaibhav Sharma — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:54:15 +0000

In a brief but surprising development, Samsung today officialy launched the Omnia HD in India. That is not what was surprising, the interesting thing was the the Omnia HD will hit India with a 1 GHZ processor rather than the 600MHZ ARM Cortex A8 that it is available with abroad.

Another interesting things is the name. When it was first announced, Samsung called it the Omnia HD, later on they decided it was better off with i8910 but on the Samsung India website, there is no mention of the i8910 bit. The demo models at the Mumbai launch although did carry the i8910 tag.

The device will retail at Rs. 33,990 ($700) similar to what the N97 sells for making it a very tempting high end Symbian device. Basic specifications include:

A 3.7-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen
TouchWiz UI (Samsung’s homescreen implementation),
a 8MP camera with 720p video capture
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, DLNA
7.2Mbps HSDPA, 5.7Mbps HSUPA
16GB internal memory, wih a microSD slot
Video player with Divx, Xvid support

The much larger processor should hopefully help capture much better video as the with the 600 MHZ piece it did suffer from the problem of dropped frames while shooting in HD. All the device misses is a hardware keyboard. But as was the case with the N97, Samsung haven’t managed to ship the device with a decent initial firmware, so if they can do that in India, I’m sure a lot of people will give this device a long hard look before making a purchase decision.

Samsung Unviels Omnia HD i8190

Vaibhav Sharma — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:16:19 +0000

Samsung today unveiled the Omnia HD i8190, a device that could well possibly be the phone of the MWC. The phone runs on S60 5th Edition, packs a 3.7″ AMOLED display, an 8MP camera and is capable of full 720p HD video recording, a first for any S60 smartphone.

At just 12.7mm, it is pretty slim and pleasing to the eye. The device is completely touch based and the few buttons that it has are placed similar to those on the Nokia 5800.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

HSUPA 5.76Mbps / HSDPA 7.2 Mbps / EDGE /GPRS Class 12
Quad Band (850/900/1800/1900)
UMTS Tri Band(900/1900/2100MHz)
Display : 3.7″ Full Touch QHD (360×640) 16M AMOLED
Symbian S60 5th Edition (Full touch UI)
Camera: 8 Megapixel CMOS + CIF, Auto-Focus, Power LED Flash, Face Detection, Smile Shot, Blink Shot, Panorama
Video: DivX / XviD / H.263 / H.264 / WMV / MPEG4, RV 24fps @ HD (1280x720p)
DLNA & HD TV out (DLNA dongle needed)
Video Editing: Trim video, Audio dubbing, Live dubbing, Add subtitle, Image capture
FM Radio with RDS
MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, RA
Dual Stereo Speaker & DNSe 2.0
GPS / S-GPS / Xtragps with Navigation
Proximacy, Light Sensor, Compass, Accelerometer
Advanced TouchWiz UI with Widget
Mobile Widget, Share Pix, Document Viewer
E-Dictionary / Biz Card Recognition / Podcasting / 3D Games / Application Download
Push Email (MS Exchange)
Real-time video uploading / Smart Search
Connectivity: Bluetooth v2.0 / USB 2.0 / Wi-Fi
Memory: 8 GB or 16 GB Flash + microSDHCTM (up to 32 GB)
Size : 123 x 58 x 12.9
Battery : 1500 mAh

The Omnia HD has already been previewed by the russian site Mobile-Review. Have a look at what they have to say. More info here.

HD capture @ 720p + S60 5th Edition – Samsung Acme i8910

Vaibhav Sharma — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 14:38:50 +0000

Delicious. Samsung is fast emerging as the main competitor for Nokia in the S60 space, it is actually not merely competing but setting the bar pretty high if the leaked Samsung Acme i8910 is anything to go by. Not only did Samsung beat Nokia in the race to the 8MP camera, it also seems all set to trump it in getting the first HD video recording capable handset to the market.

The Samsung Acme i8910 will also be the third S60 touch handset after the Nokia 5800 and the N97. It is clearly focused on Imaging and also packs a HDMI out slot. Eldar from Mobile-Review had an opportunity to try the HD video capture on the device and reports that the phone dies in a mere 40 minutes with HD recording in play, although that might/probably will change by the time the device gets to the market.

Here are a few other major specs of the upcoming Samsung:

A wide touchscreen display – Exact resolution uncertain
WIFI & DNLA
GPS
8MP camera with a single LED flash and HD video recording
DivX support
A 3.5mm jack

With the Mobile World Congress just around the corner we can also expect to be surprised by the Finish giant, for all we know Nokia’s Imaging flagship might also be on its way. What eventually happens – we’ll know in 9 days.

For more images head over to Daily Mobile.

Nokia No Longer Has ‘THE’ Top Spec S60 – Introducing The InnoV8

Vaibhav Sharma — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:45:49 +0000

The N96 Has Serious Competition Coming From The Samsung InnoV8

Wow! I almost never expected this to happen, but its true. Ladies and Gentlemen – Nokia no longer has the top spec S60 powered handset. Samsung has powered ahead of Nokia’s upcoming flagship the N96, at least as far as core specifications go. The upcoming Samsung i8510 also known as the InnoV8, is based on S60 OS v9.3 Feature Pack 2 and comes with the 2.8″ QVGA screen. Like the N96, this is also a slider and looking at both these handsets from a bird’s eye there is not much of difference. Samsung has extensive experience with sliders and Nokia also has been learning, slowly but surely so the difference will most likely come down to user experience. That being said, the Samsung offering is better at least specwise in quite a few areas and here’s how.

CAMERA – The i8510 boasts of a 8(!) megapixel camera that can also shoot VGA video at 30 FPS and QVGA at an impressive 120 frames per second. Not only this, software wise also it offers features such as Face & Blink Detection and Panorama Modes out of the box. An extensive onboard video and image editing with Movie Maker and Storyboard is also present. Now, a bigger megapixel count doesn’t always mean a better camera but it sometimes does become a little difficult to argue with 8 megapixels.

VIDEO – It will also support video formats Divx and WMV out of the box. unlike the N96 which depends on third party software and still can’t do WMV. (Edit: I will eat some of my words here, the N96 can if fact do WMV out of the box. Not only that it can also output SDTV resolution on TV-out, something I, like Jukka below doubt the InnoV8 can do).

BATTERY -This is like running salt into the N96′s wounds, the InnoV8 comes with a 1200 mAh battery as opposed to the N96′s 950 mAh.

SIMILARITIES – While the above were advantages enjoyed by the InnoV8, there are loads of similarities too. The same OS, the same screen size and resolution. A 3.5 mm jack, an accelerometer for automatic screen rotation, AGPS, 16GB of internal flash storage, stereo RDS capable radio and the same August/September launch window.

IMPACT – Looking at the specs one would think that the Samsung would probably blow the N96 away, but in my opinion that will not happen. For one, Samsung lacks the a trusted base of S60 loyalists who are used to their kind of product. When I personally have tried non Nokia S60 phones, I frankly haven’t found the experience to be as enjoyable. May be its the slightly different UI or the fact that Nokia’s home grown application suite that they regularly churn out of Beta Labs is missing.

If Samsung can create the right buzz, hopefully we’ll see Nokia pushed, something that hasn’t happened recently. This also augers well for the S60 developers who will now have a larger base to make applications for. Also, Nokia is sure to hit back with a top spec Nseries phone of their own but until then its wait and watch.

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