GITweekly

Are the robots taking over the world? Not yet, but Google is having a good crack at it. In a twist worthy of a William Gibson novel, the search behemoth’s operating system Android is penetrating the mobile phone market faster than cheap cocaine on the streets of London. That Google has built themselves yet another killer piece of software is one fact slowly becoming obvious to the masses. It remains to be seen however, what the phone makers will do with it. Are they putting Ferrari motors into Lada Niva chassis?

Samsung, the Sony of South Korea, has recently released an Android phone they hope will be seen as more Ferrari than failure. Does the new Galaxy S live up to their dreams of being a sexy, slick, iPhone killing objet d′art?

We’ve taken the opportunity to check this for ourselves, and we’re pleased to report that Samsung might be onto something with this little beauty. For starters, they’ve done what any sensible manufacturer would do with a relatively ‘novel’ tool like Android. They’ve slotted it into an immediately marketable package with bags of designer flair, an iPhone case. Well, it’s not quite an iPhone case, but it’s close enough that the Apple fanboys won’t notice you don’t have one. At least not until they realise that while they’re off to the local aftermarket phone addons supplier to get a booster battery, you’re still busy texting and surfing the web. Uh-oh, the gig’s up. “What do you mean, this isn’t an iPhone? It looks like one, it feels like.. no wait, it’s lighter than an iPhone, and dude, what’s with this screen? It’s craaaaazy!”. Yes, the similarities end with the near-identical packaging.

We’re not kidding about the craaaaazy screen by the way. Samsung have taken the sensible decision of sliding an uber-cool “Super AMOLED” screen into this phone, and all we can say is ‘holy direct-sunlight readability, batman!’. What’s all this AMOLED tomfoolery about you say? Well, without resorting to quoting Wikipedia, let’s just say it kills iPhone screen technology. Even the iPhone 4 doesn’t have the goods in the screen department; Apple has spent what is presumably millions of dollars developing their ‘retina display’, which we feel is little like flogging a dead horse; it’s simply based on inferior, fundamentally outdated hardware. What’s the difference you ask? It’s like comparing your old bedside telly to a new plasma display. The screen on this thing rocks. The brightness, contrast, and colour depth are outstanding. It has a slightly lower resolution compared to the iPhone 4, but in practice this won’t make a difference to anyone except the myopic amongst us who’ve gone out and purchased the latest nosetip phone holders.

So we’ve wibbled on about the outstanding screen. What else is there to this orange in apple’s clothing? Well, you can change the battery without needing a set of tools that instantly labels you as a massive nerd. Need we say more? Just go out and get it! Seriously though, this is one of our pet hates about the iPhone, that you have to resort to discovering your alarming lack of surgical skill to change the battery. A deft thumbnail twist (watch the polish, ladies!) and the Samsung Galaxy S’ rear case pops off to reveal a battery that can be swapped out with ease. Big points gained here in our book. Hang on, what’s this funny little slot next to the battery? Oh wait, it says ‘microSD’. You can add memory to this phone? Surely not! Surely yes! For those of us who like to store our entire DVD collection on the phone for those long-haul flights to nowhere-in-particular, adding some extra space is a doddle. Just slip a 32Gb card in there, and your phone suddenly becomes a data store sizeable enough to hold the entire internet. Well, maybe not the entire internet, but at least the contents of Apple’s complaints forums. Oh hang on, they deleted most of that.

Ok, so we’ve made it clear we think Apple are stooging us all with their deliberately under-done but cruelly cool gadgetry. Rejoice though, because now we have an alternative. It looks cool just like an iPhone, it runs Google’s rapidly rising and simply rapid Android operating system, and it does so on hardware that ticks all the boxes for both nerds and the herds alike.

You might think we’ve been hoodwinked, and that somehow our review phone was dusted with powdered love potion. No, we have our quibbles with this phone, but they’re not quibbles that make us think twice about having bought it. Not ever. We can’t say the same thing about the iPhone. Ok, that’s the last time we say anything negative about the iPhone. It looks lovely, really.

———————————–
The Good:
- Bright, colourful, craaaaazy good screen
- Relatively long battery life for a fully-featured smartphone
- Expandable storage (microSD)
- User replaceable battery
- Open-source, increasingly well supported operating system (Android)
- Some may disagree, but we love the plastic rear case. If it scratches or cracks, just replace it. It won’t cost you a fortune and you can do it yourself.
- Native tethering support

The bad:
We struggled to think of anything, but…
- Wifi reception seems a bit on the average side
- Samsung Kies software is slow, but also unnecessary. In our opinion, you don’t need it anyway.

This is the first post by our newest commentator extraordinaire, the prodigious Aikenthumb.

• Pin It
• Share
• Tweet