WHEN I caught the Samsung Wave in my hand I was immediately and magically drawn to it – for the look, weight, size and feel. Although I liked the form, fit and finish I did not know what to expect from Samsung’s bada platform as I had not heard anything from my peers or read anything about it.

 

 

 
In my hand, I loved the cool metal casing. It just felt better than any plastic, and it imparted resilience in my mind. The glass capacitive touchscreen that stretched almost to the left and right edge of the face impressed me even more than the Samsung GALAXY S’s massive 4.0-inch screen. The Wave’s screen is only 3.3-inches but it is still a WVGA (Wide VGA measuring 800 x 480 pixels) SUPER AMOLED display.

 

 

 
The Wave’s external buttons and controls are straightforward. On the face you have the capacitive touchscreen and three buttons at the bottom. The right button is used as a Close call or the button to turn on and off the device. At the centre is a raised diamond shaped button that is a singular button, and not a D-Pad for directional control. It brings up the main application screen. On the left is the Call button.

 

 

 

 

Looking at top of the Wave, there is a 3.5-mm headphone jack, sliding cover microUSB and a small opening that is used to let out the speaker audio when using speakerphone. I love the sliding USB cover. No more lost or broken off covers.
 

 

On the back side of the Wave, you will notice the oddly shaped digital camera. The camera lens will always be the same shape it is. Just that Samsung decided to make the glass window stylish and shaped it like a diamond with a matching LED flash. The shape does not add or detract the phone's picture-taking capabilities. Notice as well the rear cover finish is brushed aluminum as is most of the body.

 

 
The location of the battery makes it impossible to change out the SIM and/or microSD flash memory card without removing the battery first.

  

Now that I’ve covered all the cosmetics and hardware let me tell you that my biggest worry when I looked at the Wave was whether or not there is proper application support for the hot applications – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and others.

 

 
It was a relief to find direct support for those applications. If those applications are not able to satisfy your cravings, you can always try out Samsung’s App store.

 

 
 
Here’s a shot of the Facebook application. Looks neat, tidy and easy to navigate.

 

 
The album view mode of the Facebook application looks quite like the media file viewer (See below).

 

 
When I was first introduced to Samsung’s 5-megapixel with my Samsung Jet, I immediately fell in love with the quality and capabilities of the built-in camera software. I am happy to see and report that the same great software setup and features made its way into the Wave. Some of the features have been tweaked a bit but otherwise the camera works great. The video capture capability is something not to be missed. It doesn’t capture 720P or 1080P HD video. But what it does capture in DVD quality turns out amazingly for amateurs. Just make sure you have adequate light for shooting.

The media browser is easy to use and useful for shutterbugs that have difficulty remembering when a particular photo was taken because the browser will neatly organize the pictures as thumbnails sorted chronologically using the date the picture was taken.

 

 

If you prefer a big overview of the photos on the phone just change the orientation to landscape and you’ll get a visual list of the photographs.

 

 
The Wave may not have thousands of applications like those available for the Android™ platform, but Samsung made sure the important applications were done without having to resort to using the Internet Browser directly to access the web applications.

Time will tell if the bada platform can grow in popularity with the key being application availability. However, even if it doesn’t become popular, the Wave is a great phone and you’ll probably often get asked, “What is it?” and comments like, “It looks great – sleek, slim and a beautiful LED screen!”

Grab one now to show off the beautiful 3.3-inch SUPER AMOLED screen, the smooth application and onscreen keyboard input.

Here are some photo samples taken using the Wave's 5-megapixel camera.

 

 

  

 

| Posted by JamCanSing 28-Jul-2010

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The first thing I noticed when I received my Samsung GALAXY S was how plain it is. That impression changed quickly when I held it in my hand and turned it on.

The shape is not revolutionary but is very comfortable given it is pretty wide. The comfort comes from having soft curved edges. Other than the curves I came to notice the soft curved bump on one of the edges and strangely without even trying to analyse the reason for the bump I believe I figured it out. It is ever so subtle but by not making the device symmetrical, Samsung gives you a way to recognise which end is the top and the bottom as soon as you pick up the phone without having to look at it.

 

 

There are very few buttons to deal with – a power button, volume up/down rocker and a centre button on the face. All other functions are activated via the huge 4.0-inch capacitive touch screen.

The GALAXY S has a 3.5mm headphone jack for audio and video output. Located near to the headphone jack is an ingenious little sliding cover that protects the microSD connector from dust or damage. This is a really cool feature because most of the other manufacturers use pop-out rubbery covers that eventually wear out or become brittle and then break.

 

On the rear of the GALAXY S body is the 5-megapixel digital camera and surprisingly it does not have a LED flash or Xenon flash. This may limit your usage to only daylight or brightly lit subject shooting. Look out below for my usual gallery of photos. The rear cover features a scale like imprint that reminded me of reptilian skin but it also has an interesting iridescence to it.

A peek under the rear cover reveals the large battery with a capacity of 1500mAh (milliamp hours). It is a pretty big capacity but there are many other factors to consider when looking at just how long the battery will last.

The telco SIM has a slot as does a flash memory microSD card slot. You’ll also notice the speaker for speakerphone operation and if you recall the rear cover has 6 small holes that fit over the speaker.

 

Powering up the Android (version 2.1) operating system installed GALAXY S is quick. As I had not seen the 4.0-inch screen in person prior to receiving mine, I was blown away by the screen that greeted me. The colours are vibrant and the screen is bright, but what contributed to my wide eyed look was the cool animated wallpapers that also interact when your finger taps on them. Samsung's own user interface that deviates away from the stock Android setup. It is nice and with the 1GHz processor and 16GB of internal memory the whole package felt good and fast. The screen touch sensitivity seemed just right and with the slightly larger girth also meant that the onscreen keyboard had larger keys and were better spaced for faster typing.

 

 

A short technology lesson and background on the screen. The GALAXY S uses a SUPER AMOLED (Amorphic Light Emitting Diode) and the 'SUPER' designation means it is superior to other AMOLED systems. For instance, last year Samsung unleashed AMOLED technology when it released the Samsung JET. When I look at the Samsung JET and the GALAXY S side-by-side the new GALAXT S SUPER AMOLED is definately better. Note, that older screen technology uses LCD technology and may incorporate LED backlighting but it pales in comparison to the SUPER AMOLED. A benefit to using SUPER AMOLED technology is the reduction of power consumption and it is quite viewable even in bright direct sunlight conditions.

 

As the GALAXY S is using Android for the operating system you may find that the included applications are generic applications. However, you may not know what the applications are and I thought I'd share some of the applications with you. The GALAXY S is currently exclusive to SingTel and that gives you some unique applications - MobileTV, IDEAS, AMPed, inSing, and the TrafficLive Widget. Also included with mine were some Samsung Apps. This included: Vlingo Voice, Asphalt5, English Dictionary, Chinese Dictionary, blinkx Beat, Road SMS. The other applications are straighforward as are those included with Android. If that's not enough just open the Market to find a free application. Strangely I liked some of the built-in software. I liked the Mini Diary and Memo function. I would have liked to have seen direct link from the Memo to the Calendar for reminders or task lists.

 

 

 

The rest of the phone functions like the telephone and keypad as well as the contact list, email and browser works and does so without issues. So, there isn't anything to fear for the regular mobile phone operation. Moving along to the area that interests me the most, the built-in digital camera. The GALAXY S sports a 5-megapixel camera but does not feature a LED or xenon flash. 5-megapixels is more than enough for many instances especially if you drive your software properly for in-camera processing of the captured images.

The camera interface is straightforward and you can interact with the touchscreen to choose your focusing point. Take note there is no physical shutter button so you will need two hands at all times for operation as a one handed approach makes it difficult to press the virtual on-screen shutter. Two hands also makes for steadier shots, try not to depend on built-in functions like steady-shot or anti-shake. These functions help you but are not always able to 'fix' a blur photo because of the demanding photo taking environment - low light and/or moving subjects.

 

The shooting modes will impress the 'point & shoot' users as it emulates those cameras.

 

The photo results can be browsed using the Gallery application. The Gallery can display your photos in different modes. Thumbnails and an informative 'calendar' type view. The latter mode will lump photos taken on specific dates together.

 

 

There is a built-in slideshow function and as the GALAXY S has a TV-out function you can easily view and share your photos on a bigger screen.

 

I really like panorama photos and have diligently created two to share. The night shot is tough because if you leave the camera settings to Auto ISO your photos turn out very noisy. So, I manually forced the ISO to 100 and then, as best as I could, took the photo without shaking.

The sunrise panorama was shot in the vertical orientation to catch as much detail as possible.

I shot a variety of photos ranging - macro, outdoor, indoor, landscape, food and architecture. This should give you a good idea of how capable the camera is and with such a capable smartphone and thousands of Android applications available, I feel the GALAXY S is a winner. The superb screen, responsive operating system and hardware makes using the phone a joy. I was always drawn back to the phone just to interact with it that doing so so often meant my battery life suffered. If you are a hardcore social media user, I think you'll need to think about having a charger nearby or a spare battery.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoy the photos and if you get a GALAXY S, you're sure to enjoy taking photos with the phone. In fact, you'll also like shooting videos with it as you've seen from the included sample of the singing and dancing teenagers.

 

-# END #-

| Posted by JamCanSing 17-Jul-2010

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SAMSUNG Monte (GT-S5620) as a phone sits somewhere between a smartphone and a regular phone. I felt this way as I was using it because it featured a capacitive touchscreen. A capacitive touchscreen is usually found on a smart multi-touch device. Touchscreen devices are usually capable of operating in portrait and landscape modes, but the Monte works only in portrait orientation with text input through a keypad interface. You won’t find a landscape virtual keyboard which is a pity. This design limitation may be due to the screen width and resolution.

 

The display rendered colours well thanks to the 262 thousand colours display. The screen uses a not so common resolution of 240 by 400 pixels, but this is higher than even some of the latest smartphones from competing manufacturers. The slightly higher resolution gives the Monte an advantage of displaying slightly larger text fonts on the 3-inch wide screen. I found this a useful for my ever worsening eyes.

 

When I first held the Monte I was really attracted to how well it fits into my palm. It was a comfortable fit that I’m sure Samsung engineers took time to develop. The back was tapered ever so slightly and the bottom rounded off. The design was not just a symmetrical shape that went after looks and I commend Samsung for this design. Samsung did well to incorporate and maximize the design as you see from the metallic orange highlight on the sides. (*Please check stores for colour availability.)

 

Keeping a familiar button layout as Samsung’s Jet and Blue Earth, the micro USB port for charging and transfer can be found on top with a 3.5mm headphone jack next to it. On the right-hand side the Lock button and camera shutter button. Hidden behind a cover is the micro SD card slot. The left-hand side has the volume up/down rocker switch and a hole from which dangling accessories can be hung.

 

The internals, at least what internals accessible by a user from the rear, reveals a mechanism I like. It is a spring loaded slot-in for the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card. This design feature made it simple to insert my SIM without having to dig out the battery pack. Something I often have to do with other phones.

 

Operation of the phone was easy as I’m already familiar with the Samsung Jet. But new users shouldn’t worry because there has been some UI changes for the better and that makes it very easy to navigate. I really liked the numeric representation at the top of the screen indicating which virtual screen workspace is in focus. Previously, it was simply a short line. Activation and access to the built-in apps and widgets is done through a simple named button named, Widget. The widgets then appear from the bottom and you can flick to scroll what is available. A big improvement over the system used in the Jet.

 

Digging through the program icons I found something interesting and potential buyers may consider it to be the deal maker for getting the Monte. It is labeled ‘Dictionary’. It is a nifty English-to-English, English-to-Chinese or Chinese-to-English electronic dictionary. Other than the Dictionary I liked the fact that more of the Widgets are not just browser links.

 

As a Social Media networking device the Monte is equipped with the usual applications so don’t worry about being left out or falling behind all your friends' status updates. I was able to connect to and post updates using either my 3G network connection or the built-in Wi-Fi.

Google Maps, Mail and Search is included and works well. The browser installed is the Dolfin webkit browser version 1.5 and should suffice for most users. It maintains the single-handed, one-finger zoom in/out. An interesting inclusion for the browser is the ability to operate in landscape mode but the text input for inputting search text, usernames and or passwords remains as numeric keypad style and not a horizontal qwerty keyboard.

 

 

The Monte serves up a friendly connected experience but doesn’t go so far as being a smartphone and that is cool because not everyone wants a smartphone. The 3.2-megapixel camera may disappoint some as it doesn’t include a LED or xenon flash. As with Samsung’s camera software, the panorama mode still stands out as one of the talking points. Reserve photo taking with the Monte to the bright sunny outdoors.

 

 

| Posted by JamCanSing 19-Apr-2010

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BLUE Earth is an interesting name for a phone. I figure it is named this way to emulate the world we live on - the big blue planet. So, what does Samsung’s Blue Earth bring to the mobile phone arena? You guessed it, it has Green features. And even though it is small, can you imagine thousands of these saving every little bit of our fossil fuels? Every little bit counts and the Blue Earth is doing its part.

The Blue Earth is the first solar panel equipped mobile phone and this is how it helps to reduce the burning of fossil fuels. In theory, if you live in sunny areas of the world you could probably get by with not having to charge directly from the wall adapter. Check out the real estate that the solar panel takes up on the rear of the phone. In fact, the solar panel component of the rear cover takes up about eighty percent of the rear cover. There are a couple notices within the product manual that states the charging time will vary depending on conditions. An indication of the charging ability is noted. It states, “…1 hour of sunlight at about 80,000 lux (approximately the amount of sunlight at noon on a sunny day) charging will provide 5-10 minutes of talk time.”

With many electronic battery operated products, you need to ensure it does not get too hot as the battery could cause a fire. This is important inside a vehicle especially in the sunny climes of Singapore. I can attest to the fact that the phone gets extremely hot during the noon day sun sitting on my dashboard. This heat is in part the absorption to the dark dashboard colour and the phone operation (it was left on).

When flipped over, you see how it passes the electricity generated to the phone via the two metal contacts. The solar panel is protected by what feels like a piece of glass so be careful not to drop your Blue Earth.

The phone exterior is finished in a pearlescent blue that changes slightly depending on the angle of the light reflecting off the surface. I like the finish and the colour. It reminded me of an old mobile phone I had 10 years ago but that’s another story.

The physical size of the Blue Earth is about the same size as the Samsung Jet. It is small enough to fit in a tight jean pocket and not be too obvious. Since it isn’t super thin you also won’t need to worry about it snapping in your pocket. It fits nicely into my medium sized hand and can be operated with a single hand. I was able to do this comfortably in my left hand and use my thumb to navigate and press the touchscreen. Take note - the touchscreen is a capacitive screen. This means you'll need to use your finger to activate it. A stylus device will not work. This is a good thing because it means the screen won’t react to accidental presses if it is in your pocket; however that doesn’t stop the buttons from being activated. Don’t worry, the Hold button will stop accidental button presses while it is in your purse or pocket.

There isn’t a lot of buttons. You’ll find the volume up/down rocker switch on the left hand side, Hold and camera shutter on the right. On the face, there is the green Dial/Call button, red End Call/Power and in between is the Back button. For connectivity, you’ll only find a micro USB port located at the top right hand side. The port is protected with a plastic snap-in cover. Strangely, there isn’t a 3.5mm headphone jack to be found. I guess that isn’t so much an issue these days with many Bluetooth wireless headsets available.

The phone is equipped with a 3-megapixel digital camera. What you won’t find is a LED or xenon flash so make sure there is adequate amount of light for a properly exposed picture. The camera functions are easy to understand thanks to nicely designed user interface icons. The two camera functions I have come to love with Samsung mobile phones are the Panorama and Macro shooting. Unfortunately, the Blue Earth does not feature a Macro focusing option.

Check out pictures I captured with the Blue Earth. The outdoor shots turned out pretty good with good contrast and colour reproduction. I included a mosaic shot made up of four photos and it would have turned out pretty good if there was a true macro mode and the resolution was a bit higher. At the current resolution, the mosaic shots are really only good enough for posting on the web. If you want prints I suggest taking single high resolution pics and then assembling them together on your computer.

The Blue Earth is the first step to creating more ecologically friendly gadgets and I really like that. You can learn to appreciate the eco-friendliness of the Blue Earth by using the built in Eco Walk application. It translates your steps into calories burned and you also get to see visually how many trees you’ve saved the planet.

You can contribute additional savings, though it isn’t tracked, by using the Eco profile. The profile uses ringtone settings that use less energy. There is also an Eco display mode that reduces the display brightness. You could do this by hand every time but Samsung cleverly put in a setting to easily switch it on or off.

This isn’t for the hard core Smartphone, multimedia user. Instead, if you are a conservationist and citizen concerned with saving the earth for generations to come, you can have a clear conscience with a Blue Earth purchase.

| Posted by JamCanSing 01-Apr-2010

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CORBY...This is an interesting name for a handphone partly because it did not impart to me any significant features of the new slider device. In fact, the first thing I thought about when the name was mentioned to me was an image of the high school bully whose name is Colby. To make things interesting there is a PRO version and non-PRO version. I got a hold of the PRO version.

The Corby PRO B5310 is a remarkably small device that sports a full Qwerty landscape keyboard and a  touchscreen using resistive technology. The resistive keyboard can be operated with a stylus or any other object, just make sure it isn’t metal and sharp because scratching the screen will damage it. (Tip: The touchscreen can be used to Zoom in the Internet Browser with a single finger press – press and hold then slide up/down to zoom in/out)

 

Like most of Samsung’s mobile phones the little Corby PRO features minimal buttons and controls. The top edge has a 3.5mm headphone jack while the bottom edge has not connection points or buttons. The right-hand edge has the digital camera shutter button and a hold button. On the left-hand edge is the volume up/down.

On the front side of the device you will see the Send button, Menu Exit/Power and the prominently located Menu Key in between the two. The Menu key will bring up icons for the phone functions. There are three menu pages. The functions are typical of what you’d expect to find – calculator, radio, clock, converter, Internet, camera, alarms, file manager, music player, radio and more. Check out the full list of available functions by visiting the specifications page.

 

The keyboard keys are pretty flat with only a slightly raised bump on the home row key of F and J so you are most likely going to have to be looking down at the keyboard to input your text. Luckily, the keys are lighted so even if it is in the dark you can see. An interesting and useful addtion to the keyboard is the OK key. This key will respond to Save or Create actions that appear on the screen. You might expect the Carriage Return key to do that but it doesn't. Note there are also navigation keys at the bottom right and when I first saw them I thought why bother because the device has a touchscreen. If you were typing on the keyboard and didn't want to lose focus by having to touch the screen it does help to have the ability to simply press on an arrow key. (Tip: Sliding open the keyboard will Unlock the device)

 

 

The Corby Pro uses a rear cover that does not interfere with the MicroUSB jack. The MicroUSB jack is used to charge or as a transfer connection for synchronizing with the PC Application or using the device like a USB store.

 

The cover also serves to reduce the amount of dust that would normally get into the device through an open microSD card slot. I like this setup because it means you need to deliberately open the device to access the microsd card.

The rear cover removal is simple and it may not be noticeable in the above photo but the cover has some appealing circular design and patterns.
I was surprised by how useable the 2.8-inch QVGA LCD is. It supports 16-million colours so any photos you have will show up great, albeit a bit small.
Speaking of photos, I had the opportunity to take pics at a number of venues. Take note that the camera is only a 3.2-megapixel device and there is no built-in xenon or LED flash illumination. This means any pictures you decide to take needs to have adequate lighting. You’ll see from my samples that sunny outdoor shots turned out well. Indoor lighted shots tend to turn out a bit grainy.

 

 

Panorama is one of the preset scene modes I love to play and still do on my Samsung Jet. On the Corby PRO it is a simple matter of activating in the camera settings and follow the live guides for aligning and stitching the panned photos.

The rest of the phone operations are straight forward. As with many of the smartphone type of phones, you’ll be happy to know there are applications for Facebook,  MySpace, Internet, Instant Messenging, and more.

 

 

More Widgets' icon in the tray on the left connects to Samsung's wap server where you can check periodically for new or updated widgets.
I was happy to find that even though this is not a high-end device it was equipped with a Google Maps to help you get around, Wi-Fi which is a great benefit when you are on a low-end data connection plan, and of course it has Bluetooth.

| Posted by JamCanSing 21-Feb-2010

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