Smartphones these days are getting stronger and more advance than ever before. The Android section particularly is taking the world by storm having a large amount of share over the market just slightly below of Iphone.
Samsung recently jump the bandwagon to release an Android powerhouse, their flagship model, Samsung Galaxy S. Spotting their flagship SUPER Amoled screen and a 1 Ghz Hummingbird processor equip with PowerVR SGX540 GPU, its no wonder Galaxy S retains its tittle as the most powerful phone in the market. But is it enough to knock out Iphone 4G? Read on.
(This review will be comparing to the Iphone 4. As such I will state that when I am comparing both of these phones)
(The UI above is not the original phone’s UI but after extensive modification. Now you know the power of Android, but ill leave that for another post to cover them)
The phone weighs at about 119g making it one of the lightest smartphone available. No doubt, it feels plasticky, considering the cheaper-yet-better-hardware price. The whole phone is made out of plastic except for the frame as you can see in the picture above. Despite the plastic feel, the phone feels solid, measuring at 122.4 x 64.2 x 9.9mm just 0.6mm thicker of IPhone 4 at 9.3mm.
If theres one phone that Samsung is certainly mimicking, it’s the Iphone. The design itself is so similar to the Iphone especially the ‘trademark’ middle button that Iphone posses. Volume rockers are located at the upper left of the phone and there’s touch sensitive control for the menu on the left and back button on the right. Samsung however decided to leave the 4th Android button off this phone which is the search button and instead making the long press of the menu button to replace it. The power button is however awkwardly place on the right side making it un comfortable to press.
This sleek device comes with a 4inch SUPER AMOLED Display with a resolution of 800 x 600, it certainly own the title of the best screen out there if not including the Iphone’s 326DPI Retina Display. Of course this display could not match up to the Iphone’s but for real life usage, the AMOLED wins it all due to the fact that the eyes could not view past 300DPI and the fact that SUPER AMOLED uses as much as 33% lesser power than the Retina, juicing out the Iphone already sucky battery life. The Galaxy S also spots a multi touch capacitive touchscreen that respond well enough to touch and requires minimal touch to have it to work. SUPER AMOLED = WIN.
The original UI of the phone.
Apart from that, Samsung has also threw in 5mp camera that has a whole loads of settings, camera mode and of course wide range of scene that suits your photography taste as opposed to the Iphone. The only thing missing from this camera is LED Flash while the Iphone 4 has. One particular mode I love the most is the sweep panorama which allows panorama picture to be done by the camera itself.
Video recording seem decent although both Iphone 4 and Galaxy S records at 720p. Video might seemed pleasurable to view, audio on the other hand seems a little blow off because of the lack of stereo microphone.
WIFI on the other hand spots Mobile AP which translates into WIFI Tethering. This means you could use your phone as a hotspot, and having a few WIFI capable devices to connect to your phone and using its HSDPA connection for internet access. This is a plus point especially to those who would want to work on their laptop and needing a internet connection urgently.
This section of the article will talk about the problems of the phone and WHY you SHOULD or SHOULD NOT buy this phone
Many users who own this phone complains on the lag they experience and while its true this phone does lag a lot, it can be fix. This is the power of Android and open source, any bug or whatsoever can be fix by YOURSELF. The only problem we have is, do you have the knowledge to do it? I would recommended an Android phone any day over the Iphone but seeing this lag problem I am sure EVERY single one of you guys will just go “Oh Android sucks”
Well, there, that’s your mistake. The problem is not with Android but with Samsung itself. Samsung screwed up the whole phone with their unknowledgeable programmer and their ego on retaining their home build filesystem, RFS. The RFS filesystem caused a bottleneck on the I/O performance and causing lags for read and write on the disk.
The lag seemed unjustifiable over the powerful 1Ghz processor but that problem is not that big considering the open source community came out with various fix to address this issue. My phone if flying after the fix. Ask a few bloggers out there, the phone is as smooth as an Iphone 4.
Ok here’s the GOLDEN QUESTION
Should you buy this phone?
YES. If you trust the open source community. This phone is powerful, unfortunately Samsung screwed it up but the community is working very hard to bring out the full power of this phone. Once most of the issue is fix, this phone will be really really fast. Notably for games, this phone can pump out 90 trillion polygons per second and in layman terms it translates to SMOOTH GAMING, even beating the Iphone 4!
NO. If you think computers are just so not my type. You just want a working phone out of the box. Well, the phone is working, but the lag needs to be fix. Its actually quite easy and need no programming skills. But then again, its up to your personal preference.
RyanZA from XDA-Developers.com recently released a downloadable app from the market to fix this issue. Its as easy as clicking a few button and its fix. If you were asking on my opinion whether or not to get this phone, my answer would be YES! Android is a powerful platform that is targeted to CUSTOMIZATION. You could do anything with it whether on features or UI. It certainly beats the IPhone 4 in every aspect except for the ‘lifestyle’ that Apple has to offer.
Don’t blame Android or the phone for its slow performance. Blame Samsung. To other galaxy S owner out there, after clearing your mind and you think that you would wanna fix this issue and stop complaining and whinning your ass off, contact me. Email me. This issue can be fix with only a few clicks. (I wont be held responsible if anything happens).
Samsung Galaxy S (GT-I9000) Mobile Features:
- 4-inch Super AMOLED Display
- 1 GHz application processor
- 5MP Camera
- A-GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi
- Always-on social networks connectivity
- Integrated Google mobile services, like Search, Gmail, and Google Maps
Galaxy S Android Mobile Unique Features:
- Instant access to weather, news, stocks, and the scheduler.
- DLNA (Digtal Living Network Alliance)
- Can be used as digital photo frame, table clock, calendar, and music station
- Write and go
- Swype: Provides fast and easy way to input text on screen while on-the-move.
- ThinkFree Apps to view and edit Microsoft Office 2007 documents
Samsung GalaxyS I9000 Mobile Technical Specs:
- GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz)
- 3G/HSDPA 7.2Mbps, HSUPA 5.76Mbps
- Android 2.1
- 4.0? inch (800×480 pixels) WVGA Super AMOLED Display
- 5 Megapixel Camera with AutoFocus
- HD Video Recording (720p)
- 8GB/16GB Internal memory
- MicroSD card Slot up to 32GB
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
- BLuetooth v3.0
- A-GPS with Digital Compass, Google Maps
- SMS/MMS/E-Mail/Video messaging/Microsoft Exchange
- 1500 mAh Battery
- Dimension: 64.2×122.4×9.9mm
- Weight: 119gm
Stumble Upon
Del.icio.us
Buzz
