UPDATE : Galaxy S5: the most hated delight?

We all know that the next big thing was unveiled a month back at MWC 2014. To my and everyone's surprise the device was not what we all wanted it to be. Basically we need to understand that Samsung hasn't made a bad device, the rumours made it. I don't know how many of you saw a leaked box cover of a samsung device which got leaked prior to release. The specs was a 5.25" QHD ( there's a huge difference between qHD and QHD and if you're not familiar its better to use 2K) resolution. 20.7 MP camera, a solid 3000 mAH battery and 3GB of ram.

This is what everyone wanted to see when Samsung was saying "THIS IS GALAXY S5" and when it didn't we all hated Samsung for that. It was not just me but most of the reviewers who were present there were not happy. But later when they got to have a hands on the device everything just changed. Most of them were praising the device for how it has evolved. From the moment the galaxy s5 was unveiled i told +Mathew Poynter that am going to get one and he was saying as i quote was "am disappointed man. This not what i expected". I was sure the galaxy s5 is the one am going to get anyway because i had the chance to realise the betterment of the device in mean time people weren't over the shock of the unexpected specs sheet samung gave in.

There is always two sides for a coin. Yes the galaxy S5 isn't everything that were rumoured to be but its everything a average consumer would want. what is that? you would ask and its as simple as "running with no issues out of the box". Every time Samsung made their breakthrough technologies invested on every galaxy device we always faced issues. Ever since the galaxy S. The galaxy S was an icon of a android devices. Still the issues were pestering the consumers. When the galaxy S2 came out it had issues with the new super AMOLED+ screen and that was one among the first phones to sport a dual core processor home made branding (exynos). The phone was state of the art at hardware thus was good at everything (theoretically) but lacked proper colour reproduction, blue tint to the top corner of the screen, low battery life, poor audio and so on. The galaxy s3 came out and it sported a quad core processor and it had a HD AMOLED technology which they switched back to the super AMOLED and not the same super AMOLED+ used on the galaxy S2. Though it was the hottest selling phone for Samsung till date, its still not the phone where everything is ok. Samsung did not stop there and when the galaxy S4 came out it was an octa core phone with FHD super AMOLED technology and that's where the screen issues mostly were addressed and finally improved drastically. No one knows what would have happened if Samsung's galaxy S5 would have had a QHD display. Why do we need QHD on a phone with the pixel density already super-passing the mark of 320?. We did see the OPPO FIND 7 and we did come to know how much the QHD made the phone compromise on display quality and performance.

Well to anyone's knowledge this is the first time Samsung created a opportunity for itself to fixed all the issues it had carried out till date for all these years. The FHD super AMOLED on the galaxy S5 is one of the best displays out there and this is not just told by me but by the experts from Display mate. It has the Brightest screen every made on an AMOLED and the dimmest too. It has an awesome fluid, well and beautifully polished UX and came out with the least gimmicks ( e.g.heart rate monitor).  They've fill in so many wonderful features into the phone like the ultra power saving mode. It has one of the deepest speakers any galaxy device has ever sported thus making the sound more punchy where its needed and loud enough as well (don't compare with boom sound). To be frank the galaxy S phones were never good with audio quality and to my surprise the galaxy S5 was awesome with its output in ears. The music player has more features that are very useful and the camera is a stellar. If you knew this or not the galaxy S phones always borrowed their camera technology from Sony. For the first time Samsung has implemented its very own sensor which is called ISOCELL. They are not just on papers feels sound  but practically does. Its one of the best cameras you can get on an android device. So being a iterative update over its predecessor isn't a  bad thing. I got the chance to use the galaxy S5 and am not getting into more details about the device because i will be getting my Brand new galaxy S5 tomorrow and the unboxing and walk-through sessions will be live broadcast on youtube along with +Mathew Poynter  on the boat. The galaxy S5 is one of the best phones in its class and i would recommend for one over any other manufacture not because you would am a Samsung fan but to know why and to get your doubts cleared stay tuned for tomorrow. The broadcast time will be posted tomorrow at GMT ASAP i receive my package. keep a check on Samsung Galaxy page on facebook.

UPDATE : The galaxy s5 unboxing and the walkthrough tour will commence by 5 pm GMT or 6 hours from now.  The link will go live 5 minutes before the broadcast starts.
   

ARE YOUR EYES SAFE?

Now a days we get smartphones with the best displays out there like apple's retina, samsung's AMOLED and so on. These displays have been challenged on visibility outdoor and for that competition they are doing really a great job. There are different types of screens like TFT, LCD & LED or AMOLED. All of these are really doing great in the recent times. With all the viewing angles and color complexion and vividness being so great depending on the technology the manufacturer uses to make it better, but there is one problem that everyone faces when it comes to night time use. I use my phone during the night times or when i hit the bed. The worst part is that when i just power up my phone's display the brightness from the screen really pokes my eyes. I know this happens to not just me but for everyone who uses their phones at night time. There where applications like the UC-Browser when i use to use my nokia X-6 and it had something called night theme and it could bring down the screen brightness of the phone even below the minimum the manufacturer has set or may be the color theme that were used would have made it appear so dim. It was so pleasant for my eyes and It was more comfortable to read. This kinda cool and awesome feature was bound only to the application itself and wasn't available for such a control all over the phone's display.The absence of such a feature that can be used in every application caused my eye sight to go poor as i continued to use the Galaxy s2 and now my s4 at night times. Its needless to say that the minimum brightness from the screen is bright enough to poke one's eyes during night reading in a complete dark condition. I realized that i can't let my eye site get worst and then is when i remembered the night theme i use to use in the UC-browser. I went to the play store and searched for NIGHT MODE and there it was!.

This application on what i saw thought i could give it a try and installed it right away on my galaxy s2 and the application wasn't even hardly a MB. Not only do you get to set your brightness level but also you get additional setting to make it more comfortable for your eyes. Frankly i never played with those additional setting as i preferred to use with the default ones. Check how bright my screen looks under normal condition.

Now i get into the application and all i had to do was to hit the start button and before that i would ask you to set the brightness to your desired level and here for me 50% is what pleases my eyes. I got into the application and this is how it looks before i start the night mode.

Now you see a start button there don't you? just adjust your brightness level and hit the start button and see the magic happen.

Its brilliant and amazing. Now not only don't i need to check in apps that if they have a night theme but i just needn't even worry about turning on my phone in the night to check all i want to without shrinking my eyes to reduce the poke. This works every where you go cos its has the capacity to reduce the brightness on your phone or table's screens no matter of what kind of screen it is. It reduces to something more minimum than that of the brightness that the respected manufacturers limit. It just works everywhere.

This is how the same home screen looks when i turn the night mode on. This is really amazing to use. You can stop this anytime by just switching back to the night mode app and just tap the stop button. This will not damage any of your hardware. I can promise you that its gonna work just fine. I have been using this for the past few months to confirm on it and it works. give it a try and share this article if you like it.

THIS APP IS ANDROID EXCLUSIVE.

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 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.