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Samsung Galaxy S Initial Impressions

Posted on 2010/08/15 by The Opethian

Samsung Galaxy S

Only a few weeks ago, one could say that I was a “crackberry”. RIM managed to create a device that makes one person (me) depend on it so much. It’s like an extension of you. Unfortunately, things turned sour and I wasn’t happy with the unstable OS releases the company was providing. Sold the phone online and jumped ship to Google.

Truth be told, Google is my favorite company. Ever since I got my invite in Gmail several years back, I decided to choose them as my internet “portal” company of choice. It’s been a few short years but Google in general has given back much to a lot of it’s users. Other companies look pale in comparison in terms of giving me, as the user, a platform that I could work on. Google may be my favourite company, but I don’t think I can call myself a Google fanboy. Not yet.

So the platform that I’m on now is Android. The device that I chose to succeed over the BlackBerry Bold 9000 I once had is from Samsung and it’s the Galaxy S i9000.

Several factors came in to play with regards to my decision:

1. First of all, the cost. I’m not much of a Gadget freak to be in a position to be buying a new phone every year. But I wanted something new.

2. That leads me to my second point. I wanted something new and in terms of gadgetry nowadays new essentially equates to something that was released not more than 6 months ago (some even consider anything older than 3 months is OLD). At the same time won’t make me feel lacking in terms of wanting to upgrade already after only a few short months.

3. It needed to be something that could do what I needed and wanted. I need something that has an always on connection to the usual forms of communication I use, wherever I may be. So that’s phone, SMS, MMS, email, Facebook, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, and Windows Live Messenger. BlackBerry PIN Messaging is something that I may miss, then again, it’s another platform in the already big market. I want something that will enable to me to use social media easily. I got Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare covered in that respect.

4. I needed a stable, powerful platform. Android fits the bill here, but just almost. It still has the drawback of a modern mobile OS, in that too many apps may cause slowdowns and all (rarely a crash, and I’ve never had to reboot the device yet from a system hang). But if you know how your phone works and what to expect with what you do, the Android platform will serve you fine. It is, after all, backed by Google. Android offers true multi-tasking.

5. After sales service and support. Samsung is like Sony, only Korean. I have a Samsung GX-10 DSLR that’s been working like a tank for many years now and I haven’t had bad experiences with the brand so far. There’s also a lot of online communities that support the Android platform, including XDA-DEV, and for the device alone, there must be at least three dedicated forums to just Galaxy S range of phones.

6. The device simply has new tech others don’t have. Super AMOLED namely. The screen is just beautiful. Backed by a nicely named powerful “Hummingbird” 1GHz processor and plenty of memory (2GB ROM for apps, 8GB internal for “stuff” and the usual MicroSD slot), this device wants to be used to its full potential.

Therion with Mum

7. A good camera. This device can record video in 720p and it records it well. It’s a 5 megapixel shooter with lots of bells and whistles, even an auto-panorama mode. There’s a few apps in the Android Market that does the job, and one of the standouts is “Vignette”. I wish there was the QuadCamera app I used to have on my old iPhone for Android too but Vignette does the job fine for the moment.

8. A modern media player. This device plays DivX, FLAC, and OGG out of the box.

9. Finally, one of the biggest factors, is that I don’t have to use iTunes whenever I want to do something with it on a computer. I copy files to it, and off I go. Everything is synced to the cloud. List of my apps is handled by AppBrain. My contacts are synced through Google and so is my calendar. I’m hoping to have Google open up something that lets me sync my notes, but in the meantime, I’m sticking with Evernote for important notes.

Samsung Galaxy S

So there you have it. I pretty much tried to argue why I would instead want an iPhone 4 or a BlackBerry Bold 9700 (these are the other two only phones I would consider). The benefits outweigh the negatives greatly. Especially at the price point O2 offered me on my purchase.

I feel that the iPhone platform is excellent, but paying for so much money for it is a sick joke. BlackBerry on the other hand are too corporate to realize that they’re getting left behind. When I say too corporate I mean it’s all about “profits”. Where’s the innovation?

We got modern versions of the smartphone platforms in the form of iOS4 and Android 2.2 but RIM is still stuck in some land far away. Both Apple and RIM have devices that do work well, that I know, but the overall package for the type of user that I am is with Android.

There are things that make me unhappy about the platform and the device (lack of convenience keys for one), but at the end of the day, I’m glad I chose Android and the Samsung Galaxy S.

Posted in Computing, Opinion, Technology | Tagged Android, gadget, Galaxy S, Google, mobile, Samsung, smartphone, tech | 1 Comment

Blogging with WordPress on Android

Posted on 2010/07/31 by The Opethian

This is the first post I’ll be creating using the WordPress app for Android. The last time I blogged from a device was using the WordPress app for the Apple iPhone. It’s been over a year now since I used it and now I have jumped ship using a totally different mobile OS.

After the Apple app, I had a go at the Blackberry version of the application. Definitely out of the three, the Blackberry device rules just because of the keyboard.

After getting used to the Apple keyboard, I could say that it was more of a draw. It could become quite tiring typing using the keypad on the BlackBerry. Using a touchscreen on the other is a lot less accurate but definitely less strenous on the wrist.

Swype is fantastic, but I think typing with two hands is still much a faster. The Samsung keyboard is actually good on the Galaxy S. Although there’s one caveat, comma’s and apostrophes are not on the same keyboard and require going into a sub-menu. But other than that, I can see myself geting used to it.

- This post was written using the Android WordPress App

Posted in Computing, Technology | Tagged Android, blogging, mobile, Samsung Galaxy S, wordpress | Leave a comment

Exit Stage Left BlackBerry, Enter Stage Right Android

Posted on 2010/07/25 by The Opethian

It was a long good ride RIM. It was very productive while it lasted. And while I still think that your devices are the fastest and most efficient in terms of business use, I have grown and had to move on, and you haven’t kept up with the times.

I was first introduced to the use of a BlackBerry when it became an obvious necessity in my line of work. Back then I was working for the Carphone Warehouse and having a BlackBerry device enabled me to be up to date on what’s happening at work.

The most fascinating thing about using a BlackBerry device is how everything is just INSTANT. Someone sends you an email, you get it within ten seconds on average. Instant messaging on the platform is even faster. Conducting several benchmarks confirmed that the use of instant messaging on the BlackBerry with any of the popular clients (Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger) proved to be consistently faster than SMS.

When you needed to share something, you would be able to do it fast, and without a 160 character limit which SMS had. This is very good technology that needs to be implemented everywhere. Now of course, big corporations who do not have access to the BlackBerry servers (like Nokia, Apple, Samsung, etc.) will need to make use of the fastest tech they have in terms of messaging, and that’s SMS. RIM wouldn’t be able to compete with £10 phones.

There it is. For the good part of the last 5 years I was a BlackBerry user. And I depended on it. During that time, Apple hit the earth with the Jesus phone and the smartphone market hasn’t been the same since then. I still think that the iPhone wasn’t a smartphone until they introduced copy and pasting into its OS.

I was once also an iPhone user, but when it came to deciding which device I would NEED, it was either the iPhone or the BlackBerry Bold back then, I had to choose the Bold. T-Mobile and Orange here in the UK just then released their PAYG BlackBerry plans and for £5 you could get “unlimited” BlackBerry service for a month.

I am a heavy internet user. I don’t care much for SMS or voice calls. I send instant messages a lot. Email people sometimes 20 times in a day. I like how email keeps record of everything. And the keyboard won me over the touchscreen. RIM produce the best keyboards out of any other device out there. They were engineered for SPEED.

Now my topic here is about my transition to Android. It’s only been a few days since I’ve been on the Android platform. Old habits die hard, and even if there were a huge list of reasons for me jumping ship, there was still a lot of things that BlackBerry spoiled me with. I liked the battery life of the BlackBerry. Call the OS ancient or whatever, it was very efficient. Sure it’s butt-ugly and looks like a Nokia S40 device from the past but it got the job done.

When the realization of me clinging on to old habits kicked in, I saw things differently, and that’s when I accepted the fact the Android was the platform that I was waiting for.

Only a few weeks ago I was really hoping to get an iPhone 4. But antennagate left a sour taste in my mouth. I would go to the shops and try out the iPhone 4 a week after its release, and the feeling that a gadget geek apple fanboy would have had upon seeing the first iPhone wasn’t there. It was glass. It was small. Small? Well, thanks to HTC with their release of the Touch HD2, I couldn’t see myself using a small screen again.

Samsung Galaxy S i9000

The very main reason for me abandoning BlackBerry was that the latest OS, version 5, just wasn’t up to spec. It would consistently make the device halt to a standstill. Installing a few apps would make the device unstable. The main reason I fell in love with a BlackBerry was not there anymore. RIM gave in. Throw away efficiency and stability for a few bells and whistles. What’s up with that App World? Even downgrading back to version 4.6, did not solve the problem.

It’s going to be a while before I write about Android. I need to thoroughly test the device. I may end up unhappy about it. But at the moment, the Galaxy S is my communications and media device and I hope Samsung+Google will make me a happy bunny, something that RIM once did, but eventually failed in maintaining.

Posted in Technology | Tagged Android, blackberry, Galaxy S, Google, i9000, RIM, Samsung | Leave a comment

Poladroid – Falling In Love With Polaroids Again

Posted on 2010/07/14 by The Opethian

My Nephew Tyler

Thanks to my wife’s recommendation, I recently came across this fantastic program called Poladroid. As the name suggests, it’s got something to do with the classic Polaroids. Here’s a simple review that I hope you find useful.

Poladroid is a free program that makes digital Polaroid photos from your existing ones. What makes it fascinating is how the overall experience is when using the program.

You start off by downloading the program off of their website and installing the software on to your computer. It has both Windows and Mac versions (sorry Linux fans!) as well so it covers a lot of ground.

Running the program, you’ll see a Polaroid camera floating on the desktop. Using it is as simple as dragging the photos on to it and essentially waiting for the program to “process” it. This “processing” involves the program taking a few seconds to apply the necessary filters after which it then places the photo/polaroid on to your desktop.

Ayin and Therion

Take note however that the program acts like a real Polaroid camera. After taking photos, you will need to wait for a minute or two for the photo to “develop”. You have the option of getting an early still from the development process by right-clicking (on Windows) on the photo. Another thing is that you can only drag up to 10 photos at a time to be processed. The reason being that this particular Polaroid camera only has 10 shots before you need to replace the cartridge!

I’ve never had a Polaroid camera, but I’ve always wanted to have one. I’ve always been fascinated by it. It’s one of those things that just looks good. It’s an icon. Easily identifiable, and pretty much anything taken on a Polaroid automagically (that’s not a word) looks cool.

Almost the same applies here. Photos that I throw at it come out looking very good. So much that my Flickr account’s recent photos consist of only these renders. I recommend anyone try out the program, and join in on the growing community backing this fantastic piece of software.

Poladroid – http://www.poladroid.net

Posted in Computing, Photography | Tagged Freeware, photography, Photos, Poladroid, Polaroid | Leave a comment

Brighton – Summer in the UK

Posted on 2010/07/09 by The Opethian

Today was a fun and tiring day for the family. Went to Brighton using the special deal that the TFL Oyster had going on. Only for £10 (£5 each for me and the wife) we were able to get on a fast train down south and enjoy the sun in Brighton.

All I can say is: I’m definitely going back! Here are a couple of photos of the beaches taken from the pier.

Brighton

Moving on to the other side of the pier I was able to take the following photo:

Brighton

The city is just wonderful. It’s like one huge shopping center and tourist spot. It’s very tourist friendly and I for one would like to go back there during the winter just to see how drastically different it might be. I wish we had planned of staying for a few days instead of just one long afternoon.

As of writing this blog post and processing the photos, I noticed a rather odd anomaly on the second image. I only noticed it when I put on the Infrared filter on top of the image. Take a look:

Second Photo / Infrared Filter

Now take notice at the center of the image. I see a rather on figure, and upon closer inspection (I recommend that you enlarge the image to see it more closely) it branches out towards the sky.

The photos themselves are originally four images stitched together as a panoramic widescreen, and then cropped and the colours adjusted. No tampering in regards to adding artifacts were done, not in a way that could produce what looks like a vector line art there. Are these the “chemtrails” that we’ve been hearing about?

If anyone has any idea, please post them in the comments.

Posted in Odd and Unusual, Photography | Tagged Brighton, chemtrail, England, summer, uk | Leave a comment

Hampstead Heath – A View From The Hill

Posted on 2010/07/04 by The Opethian

Hampstead Heath - A View From The Hill

I went with my wife and son yesterday to Hampsted Heath. My kid has a day out with other kids sometime in the next few weeks so we decided to scout the area out. Quite surprising that such a nice place exists here in London. There are ponds, footpaths, and a hill where you can look down on London.

According to HampsteadHeath.net “It’s an oasis in Central London!” which I think is pushing it a bit. Then again, it may just be that beautiful during the spring time. Summer is here and I could really feel it in the air.

The location is easily accessible by going on the Overground network and getting off at Hampstead Heath station. There a hill, parks, ponds, and a track course. The children’s playground is huge, and it has a paddling pool perfect for the young ones this summer.

Posted in Photography | Tagged hampstead heath, panorama, photography | Leave a comment

Acton Main Line Sunset

Posted on 2010/06/20 by The Opethian

Acton Main Line Sunset / 20th June 2010

It was another rather beautiful sunset outside our window this Sunday evening. I could not help myself but have another go in making a panorama. Again, please click on the image to view the photo in fullscreen.

The last photo I took was several photos stitched together horizontally. This time, I tried to stitch together about 8 photos, split in a 4 by 2 frame. I just love how summer’s colours are upon us.

Posted in Photography | Tagged Acton Main Line, evening, panorama, sunset | Leave a comment

US considering giving President Internet Kill Switch

Posted on 2010/06/18 by The Opethian

Joe Lieberman

Yes I can see this NOT blowing up in their faces. Nothing could go wrong here. This is totally not going the way of Big Brother. So we have US Senators spearheaded by Joe Liebermann saying “preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people”.

So let’s see here. Imagine a scenario where this bill is actually passed. Hello world, the US just became China all of a sudden. They will not suddenly shut down the internet. Why would you close or shutdown such an important thing. The easiest answer would be to simply stop the flow of information.

The US government has the biggest propaganda machine that nobody knows. Controlling the internet is just going to make the world a scarier place. Wait, scratch that, let me remove all search items for “U.S.” and “propaganda”. There, it isn’t scary anymore!

Senators propose granting president emergency Internet power | Politics and Law – CNET News.

Posted in Computing, Politics, Technology | Leave a comment

Launchy – Every OS Needs This

Posted on 2010/06/16 by The Opethian

Today I’m writing about one of the best software utilities that I use. It’s a nifty utility that let’s you launch a program or file easily with just a few keystrokes. The program’s called Launchy (http://www.launchy.net) and it was created by Josh Karlin (http://cs.unm.edu/~karlinjf/#Home). I’ve been using the program for several years now, and it’s become one of the first things I install on any newly setup machine.

Launchy

To launch the program, you simply press Alt+Space, and then begin typing for what you want to “launch”. The shortcut of course, can easily be configured to something else. I’d recommend to stick with it since it becomes a good habit. The program “learns” what you usually launch and usually after a whole day’s work it should learn the usual program and files that you use.

Upon installation, Launchy indexes your shortcuts, so it will only match what you type to those programs that have shortcuts in your desktop and in your Start menu. A little bit of configuring and you’ll be able to make it index your commonly used folders to launch files in them. Can be quite useful if you have a lot of spreadsheets or text documents that you update on a regular basis.

Launchy working on it.

After getting into the habit of using it, you’ll realize that this is a program that should be a basic feature of any operating system. Majority of people out there are using the tried and true formula of running a “launcher” in the form of the Start menu, or the Quick Launch (and it’s other variations like those docks).

Now on my system, I don’t have any icons on my desktop, and none pinned to my taskbar. After everything, it has dawned on me that pressing Alt-Space and typing what I want is way more faster than going through the start menu and/or the file manager.

Posted in Computing, Technology | Tagged free, launchy, utility, windows | Leave a comment

TV Show Mini Review – Fringe

Posted on 2010/06/12 by The Opethian

Fringe

I just recently finished watching the first season of J.J. Abrams’ Fringe. It was a fun and interesting watch. I won’t go into reviewing the show into full detail, since you can go on to various review sites about that, but I would like to say a few words of recommendation about it.

I was about halfway through the second season of Supernatural when I lost interest and Fringe was getting too old in my “to watch” queue. A surprising good change of pace it was. Supernatural was slowly becoming Heroes in a way where people had these super powers. So from religious mumbo-jumbo, I jumped on to the next logical thing and that was the next shot in becoming the new X-Files, and that’s what Fringe is, minus the aliens.

Only after watching the first few episodes I realized who the regular characters were. I went ahead and started to watch the show with the only knowledge that Joshua Jackson was a main character in the story. He turns out to be just the support to this lady FBI agent which the story mainly focuses on. There’s a third person in the show which I really disliked at first, but turned out to be a very important part of the entire show. He ends up being my favourite after watching the end of Season 1.

The show tries to poke around with the “what-ifs” regarding man’s venture towards science which is considered unethical. The list goes on and after the first season, it just feels like they’ve barely scraped the surface of possible material that they can cover.

Monsters, body modification, trans-species mutations, and more monsters. And because this show has J.J. Abrams backing it, each episode usually ends up with a lot more questions than answers.

I have the second season already lined up to watch and I can’t wait to see what the writers have done with it.