Samsung to make exynos open source

good new to everyone, samsung has finally acknowledged the lack of documentation for the exynos powered phone like the galaxy s2, galaxy s3, galaxy note and the note 2. as custom roms like cyanogenmod has more than 2.5 million users samsung has come up solution at the big android bbq stating that they will release the necessary documentation requested by the developers and also said that they would release the necessary documentations for the mali gups! now that's a wonderful news. there is a strong belief that the documentation will be available before december. now this is something to celebrate on. ill keep you updated on further information in a while. 

Samsung Galaxy s2 jelly bean 4.1.2 update

Samsung galaxy s2 jelly bean 4.1.2

This is a review on the galaxy s2 i9100 running the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) coded by Cyanogenmod running Cyanogenmod 10 Nightly

There are certain things i want to mention about Cyanogenmod. They are really doing a great job developing the AOSP without shifting the phase where we liked things the google way. They are really working hard and i would really like to mention that still the galaxy nexus hasn't received the 4.1.2 update yet. But the cyanogenmod team merged the codes within two days of the source codes were made available at the AOSP. along with the stack features cyanogenmod has made many cool features, notably the pop-up messaging and the power widgets to toggle wifi or bluetooth, but unlike the samsung's roms we have the freedom to choose what we want to have in the power widget and how many with boundaries. There are many more but you will realize it only when you use it.

Coming back the jelly bean 4.1.2

well i got to say that am really impressed how smooth and beautiful the OS feels though not as much as the windows phones because THE PROJECT BUTTER couldn't be implemented as SAMSUNG has still not released the SOC(system on chip)for the EXYNOS chipsets DOCUMENTATION for the developers and its quiet notable that all the other chipset makers  like qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Sony have always made sure the developers get the codes asap, thus no butter, no JELLY BEANaudio( still runs on the cracked ICS documentation) support and no proper hwcomposer support and still they have managed to run the OS so smooth till now. do ask samsung at twitter @SamaungExynos to release the source codes. more the requests sooner there would be a solution and thus the benchmark results have also gone a few hundreds down on the quadrant 

as you see the score is low compared to the samsung's rom and so it reflects while playing some high end games like asphalt 7 heat, The Dark Knight Rise and so on. They run a little choppy. not such a huge difference though still you feel it.

INTERFACING

looks the same as the ICS but with a lots of changes on the screen 

you must be aware that in the nexus phones and the nexus 7 the google search bar stays to all the page you scroll over and in the cyanogenmod you have an option to remove the search bar. As this being the AOSP there are everything that you get what the nexus runs like the google now and so on. but before getting there the UI of the jelly bean is actually refreshed in terms of transition which are so gorgeous and beautiful and with PRJECT BUTTER i bet its going to make it even more fluidic and beautiful. the UI is quick and very responsive. The app drawer is the same as the ics but you will feel the difference on the widget section.

you can see the beautiful smooth edges and layout compared to the ICS. Looks a lot better. its not just about the looks but feels completely different on the performance and the way it works from ICS.

NOTIFICATION BAR & NOTIFICATION DRAWER INTERFACING

The notification drawer on the Jelly Bean is  completely refreshed from the ics. there are so many new features unlike the ics had (swipe to clear notification)

as you are seeing the notification drawer you can see the power widgets below the clock and its my frequently used once i choose to have there. once you swipe from the top of your screen and pull the notification draw it follows your finger so smoothly and there you see a big and beautiful clock on the left corner and the date and day mentioned next to the clock. there is short cut to get to settings and the clear all button to the right corner and have to say all of this alignment looks a lot beautiful and mature than on the ICS. the next noticeable thing will the the notification with a small icon on the left corner mentioning what it notifies and it makes a lot of sense. all these makes you to understand what kind of notifications you have received at a glans which is a lot helpful when you are driving or when you are using your phone during class hours. its really nice how the notification drawer works and the bottom grey border glows blue when you touch it and it adds more beauty to it.

Excluding this there is this option to expand and collapse the notifications like for example you see the screenshot where it shows the screen shot icon is the expanded form and the collapsed ones looks like the other notifications. this feature works on all google apps and developers who are willing to add this feature to their apps. trust me this works with a single hold and pull down and pull up to expand and collapse the notifications and with one swipe from the top to bottom you can open all expandable and collapsable notifications which is really cool which covers the initial level of interfacing.

even the settings have been a tweaked a little and cyanogenmod coded has the follow deeper interfacing features 

as we see under INTERFACE we got

LAUNCHER

LOCK SCREEN

THEMES 

SYSTEM

let me go in the order

LAUNCHER

The launcher is something we are familiar with this doesn't mean cyanogenmod is using something like nova launcher. Everthing is stack and this launcher is suited to execute more features. once you enter the launcher this is what you see.

and here we can see a variety of options for further customization like home screen, drawer & general.

HOME SCREEN

this setting deals with the complete customization of the home screen and its completely flexible.

now its needless to say as you are looking at it. the grid size option gives use the option to have 4x4 up to 7x7 in one screen and thats really amazing. its like completely utilizing the screen space depending upon the user's needs. it really gives you an option to choose your layout. the number of rows and columns from 1-7 and they can be selected the way you want, even 1x7 or 7x4.

the homescreens lets you have up to 7 of them which we get on a samsung's rom just by pinching the homescreen to add and remove, in this case you choose it here.

the default screen option is really one good way to keep a default screen which can be one among the 7 you like. such feature is available on the samsung galaxy s3's nature ux and not in the touch wiz 4 yet. this feature is  really convenient.

the vertical and horizontal padding is about leaving the border spaces and i don't think anyone would like to change that as everyone wants the full screen in use don't you?. you may feel " why do i need all this" its just the freedom you get! using and not is up to one's interest.

i have already mentioned on removing the search bar on the homescreen and here is where you remove it if you don't want it.

 this is something really amazing on the RESIZE ANY WIDGET. this lets you resize the widgets which are no resizable too so it acts like the windows phone 8 homescreen, as bigger the icon is dragged it gives more information and when you make it small it becomes as small as a normal icon and i love the window phone 8 like feel. knowing or unknowing cyanogenmod had this feature from ics so can't actually say its a windows phone 8 kinda feature. so this option is really interesting to people who like having a lots of widgets to their apps

the hide icon label is the black label that appears below every icon on the homescreen to highlight the app's name you can see in the above screenshots.

DRAWER

in AOSP when swipe along the pages it goes to the widget drawer when the app pages are over. this stops that from happening. all these may seem to be small features but all these come under the comfort zone and absence of these might be annoying. 

GENERAL

this doesn't have so much to do but one of the most interesting feature. auto rotate screen. that doesn't mean inside the apps but even on the home screen. this feature was available from ICS but this was made available by google officially from this 4.1.2 and that too for tablets and am not sure whether this feature will be hitting the phones. some symbian users love this feature as all the symbian devices had this and its here.

with all this the complete interfacing and interfacing customization of the homescreen is completed

LOCK SCREEN

the android lock screen from the ICS had only two options. swipe to the left for the camera and to the right to unlock the device. this went through a small change in the jelly bean where you get the google now to make the smart assistant to assist you. but cyanogen mod when a step ahead and gave us the freedom to add few of our favorite app to the homescreen with no boundaries, which includes messaging, music games and any kind of application that is installed in the phone

as i listen to music a lot i have added my play music to the lock screen and it simplifies my task by going to they player by just swiping to the play music icon. 

this lock screen options are the once with AOSP thus has screen security which has options like pin,pattern, slide, face unlock, password.

the none makes  the power key to lock & unlock your phone without any unlocking patters or gestures, even that's a welcoming utility.

but still cyanogenmod has something more to surprise us. i use the slide unlock and when i get into that setting i see more things to customize. after i press the lock button you can set a delay too if i feel the need. you have an option to even unlock your phone by using the menu key or the middle button on your phone.

there is quick unlock option for those where one uses a password or a pin where you need not  enter the ok or the enter button to make the device recognize your key, if you key in the right password\pin your phone unlocks and that's a cool feature too.

you even have this option to have the clock in the right middle and left. the battery status is a new feature that show the battery status on the lock screen and there is an option where you can view it all the time on the lock screen or only during charging, some other stack features are viewing the weather and calendar on your lock screen notifying your events and alarms and so on. other than this you have this option to display the owner's information on the lock screen.

THEMES

one of the most loved features is the themes and this was completely dead with symbian. when i had a nokia phone i use have so many themes that made the look and feel of the phone better and more interesting to use, i really appreciate cyanogenmod for bringing it back and give it to android. more than launchers i personally feel that the themes give better look and feel for the device as they are light and just a cover that acts over the OS but the launchers run as a separate application and drains the battery. everyone likes themes and i hope there would be plentiful themes available for the cyanogemnod just like how symbian devices had during those days.

SYSTEM

the system part of the interfacing take you to more deeper into customizing what we see and what we want to see when we wake up our device.

STATUS BAR

this is where we see the battery icon, the signal the clock and the other notifications icons. here we get to set the cock to show the am/pm, you get to see your battery in a circle within which the % will be mentioned or you can even hide the battery status and the same applies for the signal strength status. people who look for more notifications on the status bar will be really glad with this feature though you won't know your basic details if you are going to hide them.

NOTIFICATION DRAWER

as mentioned earlier they let you enable the power widgets on the notification drawer and apart from that you not only get to chose what power widgets you want on the drawer bout also the order in which you want it in.

POWER MENU

the power menu show the options to add like reboot menu, screenshot and profile switch

HARDWARE KEYS

you can use hardware buttons to perform talks depending on the number of times they are activated and we get to choose the pattern and the activity that will take place when activated.

this the new accounts layout which would be very much know to the iphone users and thus that same system of accounts layout has been deployed with the ability to have multiple accounts from one application which is really cool.

PERFORMANCE

am not talking about the phone's performance here. there is this setting called performance in the settings menu which help you save power or work with performance

this doesn't mean you can over clock your cpu. there  are modes like on demand, userspace, power saving and few more where the clock speed is adjusted depending upon what we want. power saving gives up the gup usage and thus the phone runs a lot choppy and the phone processes in around 200-500 mhz. these clock speeds doesn't exceed the 1.2 ghz that we got out of the box.

well i would say a cyanogenmod is always better than the samsung rom. and this very quick updates form cyanogenmod is really one thing to celebrate about for the flashaholics. as i said everything is really good about the cyanogenmod running galaxy s2 but the lack of the soc documentation for the exynos chips really bugs me as we don't get to fell the full power of the exynos and the mali 400 monster gpu in the s2. because of this there is no project butter too on the s2 as mentioned. but samsung has told that they are working on to settle down this issue. but when the jelly bean rom from samsung gets released for the galaxy s2 i am sure the butter and lot more problems will get solved but nothing can make the device better until samsung releases the documents. hope it happens soon and due to the lack of this the battery performance is a little poor but the phone is really fun to use. my say will be once your warranty gets void its worth rooting and flashing your phone with cyanogenmod. 

Jelly bean 4.1.2

The review for jelly bean 4.1.2 on my galaxy s2 running cyanogenmod 10 will be in detain tomorrow stay tuned

GMAIL app updates for android

An upcoming version 4.2 of the Gmail app has been spotted in the wild and has two new features, one of which was right on top of the most requested features for this app.http://youtu.be/00xUH86sJV0

GOOGLE PLAY UPDATE

Google has released v3.9.16 of the Play Store application for Android and with it come some useful new features. One of the new features is the ability to delete apps from your ‘All’ apps list within ‘My Apps’. Anyone who has been using And

roid for a while will know that this list is cluttered with useless apps that you only downloaded once and then deleted but are now permanently part of that list. Well, not anymore.



Applications in this list that are currently not installed on your device will now have a delete button next to them, so you can instantly remove them from the list. Moreover, you can now press and hold over these items and delete a whole bunch of them simultaneously.

Another useful new change is that the Play Store app finally remembers your position in a list. Before, if you scrolled down a list and clicked on an item and then went back, you’d go at the top of the list. This would be extremely frustrating of you had scrolled down a lot. Now, the app remembers your position, so you can go back and continue scrolling down from where you left off.

Other minor changes include new notification icons that appear when there is an update available, along with expandable notification option. Your phone will now also show the icon for the app that you updated instead of the same generic icon it showed before. The new Play Store app is also smaller in size than previous versions.

The update is rolling out now so you’ll have to wait for it to arrive on your device. Alternatively, you can click on the source link below and head over to Android Police, who have uploaded the APK for your downloading pleasure.

samsung exynos documentation

samsung's exynos division promised on resolving the soc documentation for developers to make the custom roms work the best! as we know the soc information is a closed group detail and its not necessary for samsung to give out the soc they are developer friendly like qualcomm and Texas instruments so looking forward for the soc and a better working roms in the future! cheers samsung! don't think just give the documents! you won't regret

Official Android 4.0.4 ROM leaks for the Samsung Galaxy S II

good news for the people who were really pissed off with the galaxy s2's buggy 4.0.3.
 

finally a believable source (samfirmware) has come across an official Android 4.0.4 ROM for the Galaxy S II. No proper changelog is available at the moment but if you have used it on the Galaxy Nexus you’d know that 4.0.4 only brings minor improvements.

Since this is a full ROM, you will have to flash your phone with it, which will result in complete loss of data (unless you do a backup). If you’re fine with that, you should proceed to the source link to download it, or else wait till Samsung starts rolling it out over-the-air.


you may ask what problems are there on the ICS 4.0.3 if you aren't that so into smart phones


1.i had some issues with the music player
2. the battery keep draining even if its in sleep
3. no improvement on predictive texting 

but love the transitions 

4. wish there was the wigit section on the app drawer
5. not all the wigits  re size 
5. they don't make folder when one app is placed on the other
6. touch wiz has got the galaxy note's version on gingerbread on that galaxy s2
7. there are no wigit previews
8. got some wifi issues. (doesn't turn on quick like it does on GB)
9. lags so much
10. doesn't feel like ics. its like an update value pack like the galaxy s got. 
11. music player malfunctions often which need a reboot to make it fine again
there are lot more un told! but these are pretty bugging me when i use my phone

there are hardly any noticeable changes! i really mean to say that when samsung puts on a custom skin they should make sure users don't get bored of it. its their responsibility to keep things amazing with every update!
we didn't ask for s-voice or any features that the s3 holds! i would have been a lot happier if the galaxy s2 got the touch wiz version updated to the s3's that would have made all the 22 million people holding it more happy! 


hope the 4.0.4 update comes up soon and some tweaks or a better touch wiz for the galaxy s2 soon!

Jelly Bean is 4.1

just some time before Google unintentionally mentioned at Google play store that the galaxy nexus enabling HSPA+ is available with 4.1 JELLY BEAN, Now this an early surprise that confirms the confusion over 4.1 or 5. The visual look and feel of the home screen has changed a bit. Thus comes to our notice that the jelly bean update will be just a minor tweak over the os and i guess updating all the current ICS running devices won't be tough to update their devices as much as the once with gingerbread to ice cream sandwich was.
i personally request Samsung, htc and all others who have custom skinned their ICS devices to give us a bit more of the a pure android experience over the jelly bean update. lets hope for the best. the Google i/p o/p event is going to happen on 27th of this month and we already have confirmed that the next iteration is going to be 4.1 JELLY BEAN. hope there are features that would really impress us. stay tuned

Dog fight: windows phone 8 vs ios6 vs android 4.x

As every one was excited about the windows phone 8 event held some time back i would like to say that they have bought some wonderful improvements to the next line up from this fall

           

Its something really great that they not only came up with a completely new level of how windows phones use to work but also bought more and powerful hardware support.

Now this is what we actually call ecosystem. The windows ecosystem is really amazing to see it evolve without disturbing the growth of the sub platforms of windows powered devices.

with windows phone 8 they open the eyes for all and for everything

*they have promised multi-core processors ( please not that the windows phone 8 could support on devices up to 64 cores. well i then guess windows 9 is far far away)  

        

*they have made native coding available from windows phone 8 and that's gonna bring all the new and most wanted as soon as possible or on the release for other platforms

*As we already know that the window phone market place climbed to a tremendous reach of 100,000+ apps in a very shot span of time and with native code enabled i assume in early 2013 they will be having more or less of what android play store or apple's app store would offer

* havok vision engine suit will integrated with the windows phone 8 os for  brilliant interfacing and graphic details over the games, Now that's real big step for the windows phone platform.

*the best of all they render with Direct X for all 3D graphics and with this the graphic experience created for the pc can be expressed with no change over the phones we will be using as they share the same rendering method with the directX and this will really gonna be awesome on the gaming part.

*when it comes to app development windows has made it look unique. Which i mean to say that the developer will have to develop the app only once for any one of the platform and they will be easily ported the others in the ecosystem

for example if i develop a game for the windows 8 system. they will and also can be used with the windows phone 8 and windows 7.5 and this all can be done without a change in it.

*with native coding available developers can easily port apps with the least changes to be made to make them run on the windows phone 8 and windows 8

*now this will lead to a very high market place gain. windows phone 8 doesn't need any kind of separate app development method. the one made for the 7.5 will support the 8 too so is for the 7.5. so by this am really happy to say that Microsoft had made a breakthrough over fragmentation over the devices and the OS

*from windows phone 8 all updates will be received OTA all over the world. now that's a big deal and the OS supports 25 more languages than what iOS6 promised

*on the multi-core processing Microsoft has made sure that all the manufacturers use qualcomm's chip-sets as they are all 22nm technology and offers drastic battery performance and better processing.

Now that's what i call planed processing, Powerful yet efficient

there are lot many exciting features about windows phone 8 but these some mentioned above amuses me the most
*windows phone 8 now delivers video calling on the devices even with applications like skype and so on. even the skype call's data will render in the background when multitasking and when we get a call i doesn't so it different than a normal network received call and when answered gets into the app.. All these new steps are mind blowing and tempting.

          

*When it comes to ios for the past 5 years we see the same UI and now with ios6 there aren't much too after watching what windows phone 8 has to offer. when it comes to UI i would say that android made sure there is something new to see and feel but that went well only with the nexus devices. the custom skins of the other manufacturers is really a turn off and spoils really what the android had to offer. that's where windows unit made clear that there will be no custom UI allowed. that's really a good step by Microsoft.

*the re-sizable home screen tiles they bring a lot more than a wigit, It can act as icon to the app and when expanded to the desired size gives information about what is going on with that application according to the size maximized or minimized. now that's something really innovative and really satisfies for the people who wanted wigits to be available for the windows phones.

*the new voice assistant makes you feel like you are talking to another person to do your tasks on your need

the phone responds and understands what you want to do like your friend. i would rather say it performs better than siri and samsung's s-voice. it was really impressive what Microsoft have bought in to this windows phone 8

*this voice assistant can possibly do everything with voice control on the phone what you do with your fingers to access and i would like to say that no other assistant does it other than audible on the windows phone 8

*the NFC on the windows phone 8 will and as far as i have seen makes the most of it. almost every app can be used with nfc on multi-player mode or transferring contacts or any information one would like to share but this works over every app including the 3rd party applications, but when it comes to the other os it works only with the native apps! this is big. and Microsoft has seeded it.

* the complete wallet experience which you wanna hold like your credit card payments made, credit card payment yet to be made and to who

*the coupons you get on offers. its a digital wallet that can hold everything your physical one can hold. now that's something new too compared to the google wallet.

* with nokia map integration on the windows phone 8 they get turn by turn navigation and we know nokia maps are the best when it comes to navigation

*the real-time multitasking is the best of its kind as it renders data in the background. and this is not just for the native apps but also for the 3rd party applications too which all os doesn't have access to

*with abolition over fragmentation am really glad to say that windows phone has a bright future as with windows phone 8 they bring satisfaction to the hardware manufacturers, consumers & developers

such innovation is yet to see in any of the mobile os.
*unlike the ios the windows phone 8 offers expandable memory slot like present in android and promises to perform really to its best. so we can expand the memory in the future without disturbing the present data. so can applications be moved to the expanded memory location. that's so cool what android offers and this works on all 3rd party applications.

there was a question asked whether people would go for the windows phone ditching their android/ios devices

my answer and why

yes i would ditch my android/ios device for a windows phone 8 

why?

*pure windows phone experience which can't be felt with android because of the manufacturer's custom skin which really is not appreciable

                

*with ios am bored of see the same stuff for the past 5 years as with each update there are few noticeable changes and nothing new.

* there is no fragmentation in the windows phone os but with apple and android they are  suffering so

*the seem to be having a promising os support which android doesn't deliver.

*windows phones are smoother and will perform better with the windows phone 8.

conclusion:

i really feel that windows phone 8 is tempting compared to any other os so far.

ios6 is not really that impressive and waiting to see what google's got to deliver at this month's fall.

for all i have seen windows phone 8 will be my choice of OS from now on than hanging on and suffering with boring ios and fragmented android with custom skins.

windows phone 8 will do all your pc can do because the windows phone as well as the desktops works with the  same rendering engines and architecture so one can say that as powerful hardware your windows phone 8 is that much pc experience in the form of 

*performance

*graphics

*uniform availability of apps for all windows 8, windows phone 8 & windows phone 7.5-7.8 with just developing it once and porting apps with native coding

thus with windows phone 8 i personally guarantee that one can perform all which is done on a windows operated desktop.

now that's cool and obviously go for such a powerful os than for ios6 or the upcoming android

the sad part is that the current windows phones running the 7.5 won't be getting updated to 8 as windows phone 8 is made keeping in mind for multi-cores, performance, gaming and so on. so Microsoft has promised a 7.8 update that bring the home screen of the the windows phone 8 and the navigation related stuffs delivered by nokia, they also port the camera application with most of the windows phone 8 capabilities and so many more.
so can't say widow's 7.5 users are left aloof.
Microsoft has promised that they will give software updates for their devices for at least a minimum span of 18 months from the day of the device released to the market.
can't wait for windows phone 8 coming this fall.
just waiting to get one and let go of my galaxy s2   

Ios 6 event tomorrow at 6pm

The event's keynote starts Monday, 6 p.m. London time.

Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference is about to start tomorrow and as usual, it's a big industry event - one, which has seen the announcements of new iPhones, new iPods and iOS versions in recent years.

Eye-witness photos of the Moscone West convention center, where the event is held, show the place is being rigged up for tomorrow's event. And the new banners confirm the highlight of the opening Keynote will be iOS 6, the next iteration of the mobile OS.

ice cream sandwich update for the samsung galaxy s2 india i9100 international version

its a news i got from a Samsung customer support that the galaxy s2 ics update for the international version i.e the i9100 will be rolling out from today! the updates are ready to roll out any time now before evening. as we know that there is another version of the galaxy s2 i9100G which got the update yesterday and the international version didn't an now the wait is over in india for the international version phone users because that update is gonna roll out today before evening. stay tuned. 

The wait is over. The galaxy s2 ice cream sandwich update is finally here

As per reports. Its said that the ics update for the galaxy s2 india has finally been release a while back today. Well what are you waiting for. Plug in and do the thing.. Cheers..

Sorry but i doubt that this ics update is officially up for the galaxy s2 i9100G versions and not the international one. So stay tuned for the international version's. Bit disappointed with what samsung is actually doing.. When it comes to updates samsung doesnt know to play the game right..

Get great discounts on iOS, Android, OS X, Steam and other games thanks to the ‘Because We May’ campaign

We just talked about some great discounts on EA games on the App Store. But why should iOS users have all the fun? Now thanks to the ‘Because We May’ campaign, you can get great discounts on Android, OS X and Steam as well.

The purpose of this campaign is simple. Developers should be allowed to price their apps as they please. If they want to drop their prices because they want to promote their titles, they should be free to do so. Through this campaign, some of the developers have come together and offered to price their games at a discounted rates for the duration of May 24 to June 1. It also helps highlight the application stores that give the freedom to the developers to price their games whatever they want to.

You can go to their website and choose from some very popular titles, such as World of Goo, Osmos, EDGE, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, Riptide GP, SHADOWGUN, Fieldrunners, Super Meat Boy, Braid, etc., all at heavily discounted rates.

If you are a developer and want to take part in the campaign, you can just register on their site and then your game will be listed there.

If you are a user, well, what are you waiting for? Click the source link and start downloading.

Yahoo axis browser

Talking abt the axis browser on the desktop as said in the site it just acts as a visual search engine and with book mark options. The pages apper in tiles by giving a projection of images in them of how the site would look. This was a smart move by yahoo i would say as this plug in can be plugged into any bwoser on the desktops and notebooks. So that's catchy but there are some problems i would like to mention about.

1. When on another serach engine this doesnt load (when i open my chrome, google is my home page and from there it doesnt work)

2. For a deep search its a little time consuming to keep passing on to tiles as we are not able to get the time or date of post like we get on bing or google. Thus tough to know whick one is the latest posted

3. Personally am not so moved over by this axis plugin rather they could have made this a  seperate browser that could have been from seeing what yahoo axis could offer over this plug-in.

4. No talks about the availability for android is really bad as that's one of the most used operating system world wide

5. This plug-in appears to the left bottom of the page and when tapped grows full length and when we start typing raises up to show the visual search. But the problem is as i mentioned abt the not working part where google was open and so i opened another site and till that site got completely loaded this axis plugin didnt surface. I haven't tried on a blank page.

But there are advantages too

1. There is a top trending button right below the search bar that might help the users to get most of the times what they need whick is a good feature on the topic we search

2. Even with the axis we can login to keep our package safe, i must say thats really good for a plug in, sometimes when we find some other browser better than what we use and we like this axis we can import all we had on the other browser's plugin just by a sign-in like importing bookmarks and all we got in it like how we do with google chrome signing-into chrome using gmail to save and sync all bookmarks and imortant stuff with the mail id is real cool

3. Its predective loading feature so like from 18v of the chrom really does a good job giving quicker and better choice to search up on

Verdict: for me i would have preffered a browser over just a plug in. Its good but no so impressive on a browser. Its fun for while but i find google better over the search engines. For a change axis is really awesome.

Samsung galaxy s2 ics update for india this week

Samsung has officially mentioned on their tweets that the ics update for the galaxy s2 is round the corner as that means that its gonna hit the devices before this week passes on. Now thats a wow isnt it. Few more days.. And a post too said that a samsung insider mentioned that the ics for the samsung galaxy s2 will be available by the 3rd week of may and here we are at the 3rd week and so be ready. Anytine from now the updates will be available. Stay tuned. And to be mentioned that the update will be available via kies and OTA and i would always suggest the users to use the OTA than going with kies. If OTA is not available go to the nearest official service center for your update. Am gald samsung india had now managed to put a smile on the few faces of the indian users thoung its too late on the ics. Check the pic below

Samsung galaxy Note ics update india now available

The wait is over.. Plug your device to kies or take them to a service center for your update for the galaxy note and the galaxy s2 useser i believe should wait. I dono how come its happing the other way but thats what is happening and so am hoping the s2 would get it soon in the following days or week.. Stay tuned

     

so.cl a new social networking by microscoft

SOCL is a new social networking site started my microscoft just sometime back. And as expected the sign up page by itself follows the smooth and delighting metro UI and that's fun to watch. I couldn't get into it as its not open to public still but get this what microscoft. and even the site takes it from its name social as so.cl or socl we call. So.cl is an experiment in open search. That means your searches on So.cl are viewable by other So.cl users and will also be available to third parties.

Elsewhere, the site describes itself as

“an experimental research project, developed by Microsoft’s FUSE Labs, focused on exploring the possibilities of social search for the purpose of learning.”

Use cases Redmond has dreamed up include:

• So.cl combines social networking and search, to help people find and share interesting web pages in the way students do when they work together.
• So.cl helps you create rich posts, by assembling montages of visual web content.
• To encourage interaction and collaboration, So.cl provides rich media sharing, and real time sharing of videos via "video parties."

Another part of the screed FAQ on the site says:

We expect students to continue using products such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other existing social networks, as well as Bing, Google and other search tools. We hope to encourage students to reimagine how our everyday communication and learning tools can be improved, by researching, learning and sharing in their everyday lives.

And the better part is that we are allowed to sign in with a facebook account or a windows live account.

now like how google+ goes with android i would say that so.cl will be may be integrated with the next iteration of the windows phone or with upcoming updates is my intuition. 

The signup process also informs would-be users that:

So.cl does not automatically post your searches, comments, or likes to your Facebook stream unless you choose this option. Also, we don’t contact your Facebook friends unless you invite them.  

Bing seems to be the beating heart of so.cl, whose main feature seems to be socialising searches made with Redmond’s indexatron. As the FAQ explains:

“By default, searches in So.cl are shared publicly. As students work together, they often search for the same items, and discover new shared interests by sharing links. We see this trend today on many social networks, such as Twitter, where shared links spread virally and amplify popular content. So.cl experiments with this concept by automatically sharing links as you search. The So.cl search experience is powered by Bing, and we use the public Bing API’s to display search result data.”

this so.cl is a complete merto UI and really amazing. i couldn't get more from the video on the site. but its sure gonna be exciting and better than google+. if anyone has an account activated already do share what you feel about it. there is an option to follow the twitter page of the lab that's developing it for instant updates.
so.cl

Samsung galaxy s2 india gets ice cream sandwich update

According to fone arena the news confirm that the galaxy s2 bought around a day or two before came out of the box with ice cream sandwich. For the screen shots and details hit the link below
http://www.fonearena.com/blog/49982/samsung-galaxy-s2-now-shipping-with-ics-onboard-in-india-2.html

samsung galaxy s2 ice cream sandwich update INDIA

this abt something i always wanted to share and ask abt the galaxy s2 regarding its ics update!

Ice Cream Sandwich update brings:

• Improved user interface
• Faster web browser with added features
• Slightly better graphics performance
• Slightly better battery life
• Stereo sound in videos
• SNS integration into phonebook
• Better UI for switching apps and killing them
• Face unlock
• Built-in data usage monitor

i agree with all this improvements! but is it visible?! i would say no!.. as far as i have seen! the changes, the feel and touch hasn't changed! every one agrees! that's the part of the touch wiz! but what abt the app tray and the wigit tray? where did that go?! that is also a very important feature we all were looking forward to have!

all this time we have been made to see what ics aka 4.0.3 update yet to land in india is delivering!

but still there are so many unfixed! i would rather say that the ics update on the galaxy s2 is numb! cant feel it! except at few places! i would rather call this a value pack! when you take your s2 and compare it with the galaxy s that is currently receiving the value pack i bet has all the features above!

now i don't understand how this happened! so i feel that they have worked on the gingerbread and tweaked it up calling it the ice cream sandwich update! its not the ics that's injected into the process! as we all know from the look and feel of it! and i dono abt ROBOTO they were talking abt the new font style and am not sure its there on the update never said never heard! but there are more features they haven't given along with the update! like the image capturing while recording a video! that is still not available and so on! so is it that they will give us all the missing parts or should we have to just forget it!?

ok now from here! am starting from how the galaxy s2 fails so as its not like what ics is all abt!

am just wondering though the galaxy nexus is still not as powerful as the galaxy s2 it could take all the potential of the ice cream sandwich! the betterment is proved by the bench marks reviews available at the gsmarena.com

so based on that! we see the s2 deserved a better ics look and feel! 

let me start from the lock screen

ics lock screen

galaxy s2 lock screen

so as we see here! the nexus has a short cut to directly access the camera but the galaxy s2 failed there! because that could compensate the absence of a camera button! and by thus been more productive! so there we go again! i don't understand why Samsung had to remove that. 

HOME SCREEN:

ics home screen

home screen on the galaxy s2

so seeing the home screen there is not a much of a difference! but one thing what i felt is they could have refreshed the icons. there should be something new to see and feel! so some new icons and wallpapers would have done better. yet not disappointing. so we can't blame them here

NOTIFICATION BAR

ics notifications 

notification bar on the galaxy s2

ther is hardly a change. still the same green feel. can't feel ics on it at all. a blue theme could have been cool. 

one more thing to note is that the ics screen shot has a short cut to the settings directly which is not present here. both have swipe to close notification. but still the setting key is missing.

MUSIC PLAYER

ics music player

galaxy s2's

    

no one asked for same cool blue! but the same functionality and appearance on green too would have been really nice. but i have heard that the music player has become better. so ill write abt that when i get the update and plug in my head set.

CONTACTS

ics contacts view

galaxy s2 contact view

  

the contacts have a better look but couldn't be as good as on the nexus, some where close! still better is all i can say. this a really good improvement over the app

TEXTING:

on the texting part the galaxy s2 is still a lot disappointing though the keyboard has changed is what i hear so looking forward that even the predictive texting is as good as its on the nexus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTMpctKxY3E&feature=related

check that link above to see how it works on the nexus

those are some common things we use on the phone all the time and its a shame that samsung didn't concentrate on that part at all! especially am disappointed that they didn't give the application and wigit column in the main menu. even that would have give a complete ics feel to galaxy s2 as on my side and all the galaxy s2 users across the world we request samsung mobile to work on these problem we are facing and make it a better os for the best phone in the market

with bench mark views the galaxy s2 is really close with the htc one x in most of the cases though the one x has a quadcore with nvdia tegra 3 chipset. even with the battery performance the galaxy s2 has proved itself as a masterpiece and i would say it deserves a better treatment of ics on it.

Performance improvements

You'd think that getting better performance out of a phone would require a hardware update (and unlike PCs, smartphones just can't do that), but Ice Cream Sandwich brings some tangible improvements.

Our CPU benchmarks don't report a massive change. Actually, Linpack's result went down after the update. We've seen that before and think it's a problem with Linpack rather than the CPU performance going down.

It sill shows that apps are not quite ready for the relatively rare 4.0 ICS version, but that's bound to change as millions of Galaxy S II phones along with others get the update.

 

NenaMark 2, a 3D benchmark, shows definite improvement however. This means you can expect slightly better performance after the update. Like Linpack, there might be some compatibility issues, but we haven't encountered any yet.

And now we get to the good stuff - the browser. We already mentioned it's faster than it used to be, time to put concrete numbers to that claim.

SunSpider puts the Samsung Galaxy S II on par with the Galaxy Nexus and since both have two Cortex-A9 cores at 1.2GHz, we're not surprised. Either way, the two phones are the fastest handsets on this benchmark.

Finally, there's BrowserMark, which adds some HTML5 tests to JavaScript, where the Galaxy S II beats everything we've tested so far by a healthy margin.

To sum up, updating to Ice Cream Sandwich will boost the performance a bit in some use scenarios. You might not notice it in games (46fps vs. 51fps isn't that much of a difference), but you'll definitely notice it when browsing - the S II renders pages faster and there's less lag on JavaScript-intensive benchmarks.

Slightly longer battery life

We've used early releases of Ice Cream Sandwich on the Galaxy S II and they showed promise for improved battery life, so we reran the tests after the update.

Call time remained unaffected (there's no reason it should change), the Samsung Galaxy S II will last you just over 8 and a half hours of talking over a 3G network.

Web browsing wasn't exactly a strong suite for the Galaxy S II, with predominantly white web pages that don't play well with the SuperAMOLED Plus screen. After the update, the browser is much faster, but uses less battery too - the S II running Ice Cream Sandwich lasted 40 minutes longer than it did on Gingerbread.

Video playback was the Samsung Galaxy S II's forte - it used to do 8 hours straight until its battery fell to 10%. After the update, it lasted a little less - 11 minutes less to be precise. We're not sure why, we expected to see no difference here.

What you can expect in terms of autonomy is about 42 hours between charges, if you do an hour of calls over a 3G network, browse the web over Wi-Fi for an hour and watch an hour of video each day. That's slightly better than the 40 hours a Gingerbread-running Galaxy S II scores.

In the end, it's not a major improvement in battery life, but considering this is just a software update it's more than we could have asked for. It improved the Galaxy S II in an area that needed work, so it gets the thumbs up from us.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Sort by Label
• Sort by Value

• HTC One X338
• HTC One S306
• Samsung Galaxy S II452
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus408
• HTC Sensation XE536
• Sony Xperia S536
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1351

Linpack

Higher is better

• Sort by Label
• Sort by Value

• HTC One X126.1
• HTC One S210
• Samsung Galaxy S II77.6
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus77.1
• HTC Sensation XE50.4
• Sony Xperia S86.4
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.190

The 3D graphics department is handled by NVIDIA's own GeForce GPU. On the HD screen of the One X it did 47+ fps, while the Adreno 25 inside the One S does 60 fps but on a qHD display, which has just 33% fewer pixels. This means the ULP GeForce GPU does better than the Adreno 225 in terms of pure power.

NenaMark 2

Higher is better

• Sort by Label
• Sort by Value

• HTC One X47.5
• HTC One S60.5
• Samsung Galaxy S II51.6
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus24
• HTC Sensation XE23
• Sony Xperia S37.5
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.143.6

On SunSpider, the CPU-stressing JavaScript benchmark, the HTC One X posted a blazing fast result, beating all competitors but the One S. The HTML5 test, BrowserMark, however shows that HTC has some more work to do as the One X lost to an ICS-running Galaxy S II by about 10% (and the S II CPU has fewer cores andlower clock speed).

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Sort by Label
• Sort by Value

• HTC One X1757
• HTC One S1708
• Samsung Galaxy S II1849
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus1863
• HTC Sensation XE4404
• Sony Xperia S2587
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.11891
• Apple iPhone 4S2217

BrowserMark

Higher is better

• Sort by Label
• Sort by Value

• HTC One X96803
• HTC One S98435
• Samsung Galaxy S II111853
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus103591
• HTC Sensation XE72498
• Sony Xperia S74990
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1113256
• Apple iPhone 4S88725

All told, the HTC One X is certainly one of two fastest phones on the market - there's no test in the mobile world it can't pass with flying colors. The dual-core Krait-powered devices might be able to match and at times even outdo it, but you should keep in mind that Nvidia takes good care of its chipsets making quite a few high-quality apps exclusively available to them through its TegraZone store.

isn't that enough to show that the galaxy s2 with a dual core is doing a lot as close to a quadcore?

hope samsung does take this issue serious and make all the users feel worth the money

and one more disappointing this is that they need to work on the updating schedule. its q2 now and still india hasn't received the update. every time asked they say it will be available soon but we dono when, so unprofessional. if they them self dono when and how the update is going to happen how will be the reputation on them?

i hope the upcoming update changes all the above mentioned flaws and give some change over the skin, as it still feel like the gingerbread. and i hope samsung will update the touch wiz too to get some more friendly with the ics on the galaxy s2 soon.