It's that time of the year when both Apple and Google have lot of good deals on their online app stores, probably the best time to download some noteworthy games and popular apps. Get going and grab some apps from publisher's like EA, Gameloft, Rovio Mobile etc.
Here's a list of some of them on sale which I happened to browse through on Google Play store.
Here’s my review for Samsung Galaxy SII after using it almost above a month now, let’s find out if this new flagship phone from Samsung is a worthy contender to be amongst the best smart phone launches in year 2011
Content/Packaging: Almost all phone manufacturers have resorted to smart packaging, getting eco conscious and doing away with a thick manual booklet, unwanted CD’s etc, Galaxy SII packaging is no exception to this. Along with the phone you get a standard charger, USB data cable, Samsung headphones which I haven’t tried out yet they also come with spare headphone ear bud attachments, a KIES software mini CD, Black leather pouch and finally a 1650mAh battery.
Hardware and Design: A prominent wow factor that catches your attention while holding this phone is its 4.3” Super AMOLED Plus screen and weighing 116 grams it is way lighter than Nokia N8 I have used prior to owning this handset. With a minimalistic design Galaxy SII sports a touch interface based menu and back buttons, you’ve got a home screen button and on the sides you have volume keys with power on/off, lock button. Surprisingly Samsung has not included a button on the phone for camera.
Gorilla glass looks durable and I suppose it can resist minor scratches and smudges in general. The rear cover provided with the phone is made up of flexible plastic material which has a matte finish and though it has got a scaly look to it, it does not help in getting a firm grip. A Word of caution for slippery palms, please get a case as soon as possible to avoid any damage to your spanking new phone accidentally.
The overall design of the phone does not spell class instantly, what amazed me was the slim factor for a powerhouse phone like this one, weighing just at 116 grams against N8 I used earlier which I thought could be the least smartphones could get slim which weighs 135 grams.
OS / Phone interface
Current OS version of Android available on Samsung Galaxy S2 is Gingerbread 2.3.3, phone icons, screen layout etc. leave an instant impression ofapple rip-off’s no doubt Apple has locked horns with Samsung on the legal front accusing them of lifting their iPhone designs/interface for upcoming Samsung phones.
Samsung has refined gyroscope function in the phone which I feel is slightly better in terms of response even compared to Ipad 2, adding option of motion based gesture control. Swiping through phone menu, home screens, working across multiple applications happens in a jiffy which goes to show what amount of processing power is really packed with 1.2 GHz dual core processor under its hood. I found Galaxy S2 offering ample features to customize the way you control power settings, using various applications which leaves a lot to be explored while using the phone. Videos look vivid and crispier and I have played some 720p HD videos which look amazing on the SuperAMOLED plus screen. I found the onscreen keyboard slightly difficult to operate while holding the handset vertically, on horizontal orientation it felt laid out properly and easy to use while composing text.
Using phone for navigation via Google Maps it latched on to GPS signal in no time and got my accurate position displayed on the screen, no difference in performance while using it over Wi-Fi or 3G connectivity. Flash support on the default Android browser comes with smooth integration and it just couldn’t get any better. It also allows you to view flash content on websites on demand in case you want to do away with flashing ads on a webpage and just focus on the content
Video/Music/Camera
Samsung Galaxy SII supports 1080p HD video recording at 30 fps, I have tried recording videos at 720p resolution (1280 x 720) which did not turn out to be jerky and 8 mega pixel camera captures images with different settings provided in the phone and I found camera performance satisfying enough for my experience moving away from N8’s 12 mega pixel Carl Zeiss lens. You can juggle between image capture pre-sets or define your own settings to click images.
I have not yet tested camera performance in low light settings yet however have tried macro, landscape and normal mode pics with some fiddling with outdoor visibility and auto contrast features. Digital zoom up to 2X does not land up in grainy images but 4X zoom does impact image quality and it would be better to resort to manual ISO settings to check the quality on pictures taken with digital zoom. Front end 2 mega pixel camera is suitable for video calling, not useful enough to snap pics.Stock music player on this phone offers equalizer pre-sets and custom settings with 5.1 surround feature that does not work well on all genre of music, still the default music player along with radio deliver decent performance.
With all major features covered for the phone a note on some issues that surround the current version of Android Gingerbread OS 2.3.3 are mainly battery backup problem which even I encountered during first few days of using this phone.
Using apps like Juice Defender and getting the settings right for your phone display, Wi-Fi settings, Background data sync and 3G usage would make a lot of difference and I have seen improvement from 7-8 hours of battery backup improving to almost a day now on medium to heavy usage. As a blogger and social media enthusiast this phone is a boon for people like me as it provides you sharing options from browser, from various other apps falling into social media category and abundant options to play around with themes, widgets and screen customization features.
It does not stop there, Samsung has also provided Social, Game and Reader’s hub that aim to integrate your experience with regards to configuring twitter/Facebook notifications, listing popular news feeds, subscribing to magazine and book reading subscription based services from Kobo and Zinio and for Game downloads you would spot Game loft games available to try and buy.
Phone body tends to heat up around camera area for weird reasons at times you can keep a watch on battery stats through few free apps available to download from android market, Android marketplace is brimming with lots of apps available in different categories still it has a long way to go in meeting standards set by apple for their app store, the issue being around governance of the quality of apps that get launched on the marketplace, a technically not so savvy user can get confused checking if the app is really compatible with his/her android phone OS and device.
Samsung Galaxy SII has already crossed 5 million units in sales even before hitting US market and poses a good challenge to iPhone 5 which is about to release somewhere in Sept/Oct this year in USA. Android OS needs serious tweaks and bug rectifications in the upcoming Gingerbread 2.3.4 OS version that should address battery and heating issues to some extent and truly the phone has a galaxy of features you would have not imagined in a smartphone before.
I had never used an Apple product apart from a 2nd generation Ipod which i had won in a competition, the plain white piece of music playing device did not excite me much, i am a bass junkie and prefer to toy around with customized equalizer feature in any music player which kinda made me sell off my Ipod shuffle as soon as i could. After all these years i resisted the idea of buying an Iphone or an Ipod touch, I kept following the tech news of the growing app market for Iphone over the past few years, and one important thing which kept lingering in my mind was the evolving gaming capacity of this device.
My desktop pc finally conked off after 6 years of use and i was no longer interested in upgrading my desktop, so i got myself a decent laptop upgrade in HP G62-455TX replacing my old acer laptop which had started giving me enough trouble with the battery and overheating issues. I had a plan to upgrade my phone from Nokia N8 to Samsung Galaxy SII because i was planning to shift my mobile OS experience away from Symbian and check out the Android OS catching up to popularity world over. Still my desire to own a good portable gaming device was still pending. I shelved my plans of the phone upgrade and freezed upon two tablet devices.
Apple Ipad 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 which is due for late June release in India. I was heavily moved with my decision to choose Samsung GT 10.1 and wait for it, however i knew that with an improved dual core processor Apple Ipad 2 would be a good device for portable gaming that i have being looking for all this while.
I began my extensive research on both these devices for few days and finally decided to buy Apple Ipad 2. I got my Ipad 2 from Reliance Digital Istore at Jewel Square mall in Koregaon Park on the launch day itself, a black 16 GB Wi-Fi Ipad 2. The store representative first called me to inform that due to octroi issues their stock had got stuck and i would get my delivery on Saturday, luckily i got a call again in the evening and got my Ipad.
Dimension Specs
0.34 inch in thickness
9.5 inch tall
7.3 inches in width
Weighing close to 600 grams
Holding the Ipad 2 gives you feel of a really well designed tech marvel, not recommended to hold it for long in your palms it would start feeling heavy and having a protective cover is a must for this device as the screen is smudge magnet and there are already some cheap covers + bluetooth keyboard accessories available on ebay india site. Smart cover that is going to retail for Rs 2100 was still not available from the store I purchased my Ipad. Screen resolution of 1024 x 768 is crisp and can be customized for brightness. It also has ambient light sensor, an accelerometer and 3 axis gyroscope . The Power button is situated on the top right corner just behind the screen, with a 3.5 mm jack for headset connection towards top left. Volume control button is placed vertically just below the power button on right hand side.
Powering up the Ipad 2 it boots within roughly 20-25 seconds. Swipe unlock familiar to Iphone and Ipod touch is also present in Ipad 2, factory preset model comes with limited apps like Photo Booth, You tube, App Store, Game Center and FaceTime app. The first thing i did was to download Itunes software on my laptop and load the system updates available from Istore, registered my device and synching the Ipad to Itunes is pretty swift. I got started on the App Store instantly and exploring different useful apps, downloaded few of them.
Using Ipad 2 virtual keyboard is easy in general however you would have to rest the Ipad on a desk or some support because it starts feeling bulky after a while switching palms and hands becomes obvious. Ipad 2 is zippy and does not struggle with orientation changes, home screen swipes opening up multiple applications which i tried with a HD game and camera application and 2 other applications all open while i kept switching between them. the A5 1 Ghz dual core chip within this device handles multi taksing without much issues, still need to check as to what limit would the processor get maxed out. While using the FaceTime app for placing a video call i notice Ipad 2 heating up slightly after almost close to 1 hour of video call.
Ipad 2 scores low on having decent camera for taking photos, HD video recording is almost up to the mark, since taking videos and photographs was not on my priority list of what i was looking from a tablet device so i gave this feature a miss, you can take a look at the sample video and pics i have taken from Ipad 2.
With 512 MB RAM on the house playing games is much sought relief for me to move up from playing on small mobile screen to a proper portable gaming device, i always kept giving Sony's PSP a miss because i did not want to get tied down to a small screen device for gaming which a lot of new gen smart phones are getting better at. I have downloaded few trial games to see how they look on Ipad2 and i must say it delivers pretty well as a portable gaming device.
Watching movies, video clips also looks great. The default video player would only accept MP4 format videos and that too copied via Itunes, you need to buy a seperate camera connector adapter to copy images and videos from a SD card, USB drive. for playing video format other than MP4 you can either download some free apps like Ipad video converter from Aleesoft, which would work for small videos but becomes a tedious process for converting full movies if you have got them in popular formats like DivX or Xvid etc. So i brought a paid app for $3 from the App Store called CineXplayer which is a good and stable software to play your movies without the trouble of conversion, however it does not support .mkv video and AC3 format yet. Unfortunately Itunes store for India does not feature music downloads, you can still download audio and video podcasts for your device. There are some paid apps that are available on the app store to allow viewing of microsoft office documents, not sure how many of them allow creating word, excel and powerpoint format docs as ipad does not have a Microsoft supported office productivity app.
I am yet to test the 10 hour battery claim, so cannot comment much about it right now. You can feel the fluidity in the accessibility and navigation while using the device which is a pleasant experience and i must say that i have got hooked to my Ipad in no time. iOS 4.3 does not herald any significant changes from it's previous versions again i cannot delve much into it because i have not being a iphone or ipod touch user before. ipad 2 also has Airplay feature which enables wireless broadcast of songs, images, videos and other media content on an apple enabled device which supports airplay technology. Using FaceTime app is great and pretty simple to use which i liked the most. Applications like Garage Band, MovieTime also seem to be interesting from the videos i have watched over Youtube not planning to spend much on apps right now, as getting a decent cover with screen protector is the priority right now. Was just amazed by the plethora of accessories and stuff available on the web for ipad 2, no wonder Apple products sell like crazy in US and Europe.
If you already have the first gen Ipad it is really not worth going for Ipad2 unless you are really willing to let go of your previous device and opt for a faster, improved graphics enabled ipad 2 that comes along with front and rear camera. ipad 2 falls short on lack of flash support, no USB connectivity for external HDD devices, missing SD/micro SD card slot (for heavy downloaders storage could easily become a challenge), the same missing checkpoints is where Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 was scoring on with also being a telecom device along with tablet i decided to enter the world of iOS opting over Android as it has a long way to go in garnering developer support to build a strong app library like iOS currently has and also user base that would further drive the success of Android. Samsung GT 10.1's rear side 8 megapixel camera and front 2 megapixel camera with a stunning AMOELD screen almost tempted me but i think i am not regretting by choosing ipad2, people like me who have never used an apple product like macbook, mac pc, ipod or ipod touch and are seeking a good tablet device that provides a rich experience of media viewing especially gamers looking for a cool portable gaming device you can undoubtedly go for ipad2.
Nokia has woken up to the fact that it cannot keep it's share growing in the Indian Handset market unless it seriously works on offering value for money mobile phones in the 5K - 10K segment, this segment is being currently lead by Samsung, followed by LG and a slew of other Indian Mobile Phone manufacturers who have being aggressively advertising their phones, and the recently ended IPL tournament has given enough visibility to brands like Micromax, Maxx, Lava and others.
Out of the recent announcements made by Nokia on mobile phones in the offing, Nokia X2 (expected to be available by June 2010) and Nokia N8 (To be released in the last quarter of 2010) would be the phones to watch out. Nokia X2 is expected to be priced around 5K range and Nokia N8 in the range of 22K - 26K, lets take a look on why these phones could be important to both consumers and Nokia in the Indian market.
Nokia X2 has a major USP of having a 5 Megapixel camera, and if it does stay close to the 5K range, Nokia will surely have a winner on hand, since the other features of the handset are not revolutionary to be spoken about, current specs as available from the Nokia website are:
2.2 inch QVGA display
Dedicated music keys
Dual speakers, FM Radio
Bluetooth 2.1
3.5mm headset jack
Nokia Messaging
Facebook integration and MicroSD card support
S40 Operating System
Nokia has a bad reputation with camera quality on phones under 10K range, even the Nokia 5800 Express Music has pathetic 3.2 megapixel camera quality even with Carl Zeiss lens.
The Other phone we are looking at is N8, which can be a potential breakthrough product for Nokia if they get the pricing right for India, lot to write about the phone,
Nokia ^3 OS, a positive move away from current Symbian OS series, which is getting buggier by the day, further messed up with frequent firmware upgrades that Nokia Symbian phones have to go through.
12 Megapixel Camera, with Xenon flash, could be a big plus if delivers
Dolby Digital Plus, audiophiles like me would be eager to experience the quality of sound it can deliver
Just 12.9 mm thin with a spaced out 3.5 inch AMOLED display.
Multiple, personalized home screens.
Additional graphic processor in the handset would make gaming more fun, takes away the load from handset processor.
HD video recording.
I did take a look at the handset image quality released by Nokia on their website and i was very impressed with it, this phone is surely on my wish list for future upgrade, both the handsets Nokia X2 and N8 are tuned to deliver a decent social networking experience to the consumers through widgets and apps made available in these phones.
I had posted pics of Chevrolet BEAT here on my blog on Dec 4, re-posting the details as i got to know the name of this Car today which i guessed was probably from the Chevrolet Stable, and yes it is a Chevrolet BEAT which i saw on a test drive at Mumbai Pune Expressway on 28 Nov 09.
Chevrolet Beat is going to be launched mostly Next month while it features in the upcoming Auto Expo this car is going to be placed in a Price Band of Rs 3.5 - 5 Lakhs, and a possibility of 3 variants to this model, the car hood behind gives it a sporty look and the design of this car is mostly similar to it's international version, it's a B Segment Hatchback touted to give competition to Maruti Ritz, Hyundai i10. Chevrolet had a good run in terms of sales with Spark and it's the right time they found a successor to Spark to maintain the presence in Indian market and grow ahead on their offerings to the evolving car market in our country, This car had featured in the Transformers 2 Flick also this year, check the pics at my album here
Take a look at this video review from CNB Show aired on NDTV
