Today I test drive 2 Android phones. A Samsung Galaxy S and an HTC Desire. But for this blog entry, I will focus on the Samsung.
My overall impression goes like this: if you’re coming from the iPhone world, you would put the Samsung back on the shelf instantly. But if you’re new to touchscreen smartphone, you’d loved this phone in an instant! Correction, if you’ve never used an iPhone, you’d loved the Samsung.
I reaffirm my feelings with others too. One was a guy whose wife uses an iPhone, he told me, “the moment I used the Droid, I felt like returning it”.
The fact is, Androids are super configurable. An iPhone is not. An iPhone is like a beautiful summer army club house. Its beautiful, everyone living in harmony. You have everything you need. You are always happy as long as you don’t ask for too much.
Android is more like a Lego set in Eureka. You can do whatever you want but it’s not easy getting around. You stumble along the way. Get frustrated and even pretend to pounce the phone. But once you have in your stride, you’d have the most beautiful, unique and highly satisfying phone. You feel like the King of The World! But just stay clear of iPhone 4.
Let’s talk about Samsung Galaxy S. The screen, as everyone knows, is bright. OMALED technology is the way to go. Period.
The hard buttons at the bottom of the screen are superb. When you click on it, it gives a vibrating click. It really feels fake. But it’s functional.
When you hold the phone, you know it’s a huge phone. On Asian women hands, it’ll look like a brick. But it compensates on its thinness. This is a phone with a Kate Moss profile. But due to the material it uses, it feels plasticky cheap. Just compare with a HTC Desire, you know what I mean in an instant. You just can’t compute, from the feel and outlook, that this is a RM2599 phone. The cheaper Desire feel more luxurious. And don’t let me start on iPhone.
But typical Joe and Jane are much more interested on what’s inside. Google’s Android are just marvelous. It’s a shame Samsung put up an interface before you can enter the Android world. The Samsung wall is OK but I think it’s needless. A droid is good enough to stand on it’s own. No biggie though.
Once inside, there not much for me to say. Everything is functional. A droid let’s you do just about anything. But you have to spend a lot of time getting your way around. For example, there are multiple of pressings before you can even kill an app. It’s not as intuitive as an iPhone. But that’s love for a techie. For those who are not so adventurous, I suggest some sleepovers before deciding.
The virtual keypad is OK. The sliding motion typing (see YouTube) works like a charm. But on landscape mode, the space bar is NOT at the middle. You might think I’m being a Chicken Little here but seriously, not having the space bar in between is like driving with a gearstick on the roof. Wacko Samsung. No such nonsense from HTC Desire though, so this is not standard Android-issue.
Connectivity is top notch. Right after you snap a picture with it’s superb camera, you can directly upload to sharing sites. It’s that easy and convenient.
Social networking is top notch too. The Facebook app works flawlessly. And with 1Ghz processor at work, everything is snappy happy.
Web browsing is superb too. I just don’t like the finger motion experience to browse a page that Samsung offers. I think iPhone’s experience is far better and close to virtual realism. But functionally, no big complaints on web browsing. The page loads up fast and beautifully. All the works are there; pinching, double tap to zoom etc.
Texting and instant messaging are great too. But getting to that function takes some looksy effort. Its hard when you have too many icons. And multi-tasking window is not straight forward. Either that or i did not spend too much time with the phone to find out the easier way. But iOS4.0 on iPhone is a good example for Google to look at for it’s next version.
But file sharing is awesome. You can share files with other devices just like any other phones or devices. You can drag stuff into the phone just like a portable hard disk. I love this function. And this is exactly what the iPhone can’t do.
This blog is a bit too long. So I’m cutting it off here. In short, the Galaxy is a great phone. Its overpriced. A HTC Desire would easily cut its queue to awesomeness and value for money, but there will be a lot that would fall for Samsung’s 4″ screen.
Having a huge memory that would make downloading apps an endless sweet music to the ear and a processor that produces 91million triangles per second (fast enough to power a netbook!), this is perhaps a clear winner.
My verdict: Highly, mighty, outrageously… recommended. Just don’t flirt with an iPhone 4.
Subjected To Wifey's Approval 