Android Handset : Samsung Galaxy S3 Review & Hands-On

You should had been aware of the launching and announcement of the new Samsung Galaxy S3 a few months ago or simply you get to know it through 9gag where the promotional quote of this Galaxy S3, "Designed for Humans.", has been a joke over the internet lately. This new Samsung Galaxy S3 Android handset comes with numerous features that are truly designed for consumers like any of us. The hardware comes with a quad-core processor, 8MP rear camera & 1.9MP front camera, HD super amoled display, smart stay censor, LTE, and so on.

The design of this phone is a little bit curved and bigger comparing to the Samsung Galaxy S2 which is rectangular in its design. The screen has 4.8 inches HD super amoled while the succeeder features only 4.3 inches super amoled screen. The locations of the buttons are maintained and the home button of Galaxy S3 is slightly narrower and longer.

The front and the back view of the Apple iPhone competitor ultimate device. Unlike the Galaxy S2, Samsung offers a range of colors on the Galaxy S3 which the colors include marble white, pebble blue, amber brown, garnet red, sapphire black, and titanium grey. Well, the back of Samsung Galaxy S3 will all be glossy surface rather than a rough surface like the succeeder.

This ultimate device is bigger than my palm. Regardless of the size of Galaxy S3, the user experiences especially the web browsing experience does satisfy the user together with the solid colors being displayed through the HD super amoled display which is fantastic and unique in its own definition.

Smart Stay, another feature that may amaze most of the electronics consumers in the market that automatically disables the screen timeout if it detects your face is facing the screen. This feature is great but provided if and only if you enabled it in the device's settings. Personally, it does not make any differences to me because my thumb will be on the screen randomly all the time (disabling timeout manually)

Smart Alert in Galaxy S3 does make a difference in user experience among any other smartphones available in the market today. It notifies you intelligently that you have a missed call, text messages or so with a gentle vibration when you are back reaching your phone. Will you miss a missed call or text messages? I think probably not. Besides, reviewing the intelligence of this device, there is one feature that brings in the convenience to the users called the Direct Call. This feature automatically calls a person when you place the device towards your ear. How does it works? It works with messages applications for example when a person texted you "Where are you?", instead of tapping on the menu or contact info to call that specific person, you just place your Galaxy S3 towards your ear to call.

The keyboard in my experience is way too big for typing with only one hand. The accuracy if typing will be a 100% and no typo tolerance without the autocorrect of course. Last but not least, S Beam feature that allows sharing of multimedia files with only one tap is definitely awesome feature ever designed. Even Olympic hotels accept Samsung Galaxy S3 as hotel keycards because of this feature! Unfortunately, this feature can only be connected and shared among the Galaxy S3 devices at the moment.

With the quad-core processor, taking continuous photos with zero lag is absolutely possible. In my experience, taking continuous photos where you keep on tapping the shooting button works flawlessly and you will not even realizing how many shots you had taken. The shutter speed is as great as the DSLRs, capturing every single moments of an activity. The camera features the abilities to take not only burst shots but also panorama photos and HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos. The quality of the photos taken with front camera does satisfies me instead of a VGA quality photos. For your interest, the samples of photos can be view here.

Instagram For Android On My Samsung Galaxy 2

It has been a month ago since the official launch of Instagram for Android platforms. It has also been very long awaited by Android users including me who loves snapping photos and inspire people with my stunning photos. I got it downloaded into my Galaxy S2 on the day of the official launch and so far until today, I am lovin' it!

The user interface is running very smooth ever since I downloaded it on its day of official launch with a few updates being available in the Google Play. Overall, the UI is very simple yet it is indeed fast in response especially the time taken to upload a photo. Comparing with the Instagram for iOS devices, the Instagram for Android has most of the editing features but sadly, it does not have the feature of 3 blurring effects. The photos below were grabbed from my Instagram profile :

Regardless of whatever debates are going on in between iOS users and Android users over Instagram, I personally think that it does not really matter me or any preexisting Instagram users because I am using a 8MP and above cameras. Did I forget to mention my iPad 2's camera? Well, you are able to view my photos taken with Instagram in my Tumblr photoblog [click here] or simply follow me @merrittslau in your Instagram!

Desired Mobile Phones Across The Time And Forward

When we were just small little kids a decade or less ago during the "N" branded mobile phone era, I suppose the majority of the populations preferred the exact same model under the category of cellphones whereas there were indeed quite numerous people who had got themselves the "M" branded flippable handsets with extendable antennas before the introductions of cellphones with color screens capabilities and wider range of brands. That, had happened when I was in the primary school and I were given a Nokia 8860 cellphone by my brother who had changed to a new phone at that time.

Continuing on when I was studying in the high school, brand names of "SE" and "M" has gotten popular together with the "N". Influenced by a classmate of mine in Form 3 during the high school who owned a "SE" walkman phone and eventually wanted to change for a new color screen mobile phone. We together were discussing yet comparing about phones for a few days literally in the school. It was one of my dilemma in my life for choosing one out of the two popular mobile phones. At the end, I bugged my father to get me the Motorola V3i. V3i at that moment has the key feature of being able to synchronize your music playlists from your iTunes in your computer despite its coolness when you flip-to-answer your phone calls.

The Apple Original iPhone which is also known as the iPhone 2G was announced in January and launched back in 2007 the same year when I got my V3i, my brother who was furthering his studies in the United States of America had got me this awesome device and finally I had my hands on that iPhone 2G after months of waiting, patiently and impatiently. The iPhone 2G has to be jailbroken and unlocked for use in other countries outside America, so I was once a mini developer in the jailbreaking community. I could not imagine how much time I had spent with the iPhone 2G identifying and modifying the system files and eventually created my own themes and whatsoever that had caused the downturn in my academic performance. FYI, the jailbroken iOS device ran with Installer instead of Cydia on the early firmwares of 1.1.1 until 1.1.4 if I am not mistaken. That is when the growth of an Apple geek of inner me began.

Proceeding to the working days of mine in my local authorized Apple premium reseller after graduated from the high school, I got myself the iPhone 3GS with the subsidization I got from my father. Getting the iPhone 3GS at that moment was like cutting over a slow-moving object in front of me because the iPhone 2G was getting slower and slower with the firmware updates available from Apple that got me frustrated over the speed of overall performance of the phone especially when launching a simple application of messages that took about 8-10 seconds to load. The iPhone 3GS had served me really well until I switched to Samsung Galaxy S2 running on Android platform.

The Nokia N95, iPhone 4, and Galaxy S2.

Today, there are thousands of thousands of ranges of smartphones (mobile phones) available in the market today. But what is the ideal phone that will definitely suit your usage of all time? Personally, I need a phone with the fastest speed and even longer battery life that keeps me connected to the social networks, emails, web surfing, and any other usages without having the feel of sluggish. In order words, I am hoping that there will be a phone that would probably works as perfect as a personal computer where the websites are accessible in desktop version without any boundaries we are having now and any other limitations. PS even the interface of Blogger blogpost composer is not satisfying in the iPad. For now, does the rumors of quad core processors really matter in the upcoming phones or is it the mobile OSes and user interfaces really really matter and need to be seriously improved? What do you think and what were your desired mobile phones from the past?

Photos & Videos Taken With Samsung Galaxy S2

Wondering how are the photos' and videos' qualities taken with a Samsung Galaxy S2? An 8 megapixel camera with full HD recording that captures any pleasurable yet unforgettable moment of yours seems to be very very promising. After a month of usage in taking both photos and videos, i personally love it as an alternative device for taking photos for my mini blog as I travel around.

Sample Photos

Sample Videos

All photos and videos are taken by me personally except for the second video sample. So, what do you think about the photos' and videos' qualities taken by this awesome device? What will the camera and video comparison between this device and the new iPhone 4S be? Voice out your comments!

The Best Android Handset : Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-i9100G

Couple of weeks ago, I got myself the best Android handset in the recent market, Samsung Galaxy S2, after days of consideration that includes the comparison of iPhone 4 and this handset to which both of them met my budget line at the same price despite looking forward to the release of iPhone 4S in Malaysia. This handset I purchased was the Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-i9100G model which was the model after the GT-i9100 that came with hardware differences as in the processor and GPU that each of these units run. The GT-i9100 run on 1.2GHz ARM CortexA9 Exynos 4210 and ARM Mali-400 GPU while GT-i9100G uses Texas Instruments OMAP4430 CPU and PowerVR SGX540 GPU. It does not really matters me in a way as mine, GT-i9100G is working like a charm and I would say it does runs a little bit smoother than the GT-i9100 unit as compared with my friend with no offense.

-Why Galaxy S2? -Why Android phone?. These are the common questions being asked by your friends and also those who prefer an alternative yet popular smartphone. Despite any other influences and factors, the simplest reasons are I love going against a norm or something that is very common on the other hand as you would probably seeing 8 out of 10 people on the same street are indeed using the same device which you will probably got a right guess on what I intended to point out. The following reason is, I would prefer at the liberty of customizing my own device with all sort of awesome yet cool tiny little or big widgets in the home screen of the device instead of a fixed user interface. And, the last simple reason is, I got no phone.. 

The front view of the Galaxy S2.

Back view of Galaxy S2. The back cover can be bent however you want and it will not broke into two.

The speakers are located together with the antenna on the lower end of the device.

It comes with 8 megapixel camera with full HD video recording and a LED flash.

Samsung Galaxy S2 is durable than the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S from which the demonstration of drop testing video. So far, I have not encounter any issues with it such like lagging or whatsoever and I love it! The only thing that annoys the users most of the time is the pop up notification of "Unable to use flash" for both photo shooting and video recording when the battery is at 15% and below. Photos and videos taken with this device can be viewed here!

The lockscreen of Samsung Galaxy S2 running on the current version of 2.3.6 Gingerbread.

The home screen of the handset with customizable widgets, lovely.

Software updates can be done OTA ( on-the-air ) via wi-fi or 3G networks. The battery life seems to improve drastically after the update to 2.3.6 Gingerbread comparing from the previous version of 2.3.5. The touch respond does not delay your gesture commands, it works as fine as the iPhone. Besides, the experience with typing and words suggestions on this handset is very pleasing without the auto-correct that gets naughty sometimes in the iPhone. An alternative of an iPhone? Yes, it is. 

Looking for the photos' and videos' samples? <CLICK HERE>