Archive for February, 2011

Introduction

You must remember this one – maybe not by face but certainly by name. The Samsung S5260 Star II has some big shoes to fill: over 10 million units sold propelled the predecessor to Stardom. The original Samsung Star was one of the most popular handsets in the early days of affordable touch phones. For the sequel, the count-up to 10 million has begun but this time around customers are harder to please.

Samsung S5260 Star II official photos

Maybe this is part of the reason why it took Samsung over two years to release the Star II. An upgrade is certainly in order and it’d better be worth it. Here’s what the Star II is bringing to the table in short:

Key features

• GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, GPRS/EDGE class 12
• Dimensions: 107.5 x 54 x 12.4 mm, 94 g
• 3″ capacitive TFT touchscreen, WQVGA resolution (240 x 400 pixels)
• TouchWiz 3.0 UI
• 30MB onboard storage
• Hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
• 3.5mm audio jack
• 3 megapixel fixed focus camera with smile detection
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP
• microUSB v2.0
• Document viewer
• Smart unlock
• Smart dialing
• Accelerometer sensor
• FM radio with RDS
• DNSe
• SNS integration
• Find Music recognition service
• Great battery life
• SMS spam filtering
• Decent audio quality

Main disadvantages

• No 3G
• Low-res display
• Basic fixed-focus camera with no flash
• Poor video recording – QVGA@15fps
• Poor web browser
• Laggy user interface

The changes aren’t too many but they should be significant enough for an entry-level handset. Does anyone really expect miracles from a €100 phone – 1080p video recording and big AMOLED screens are reserved for the expensive devices.

The Samsung S5260 Star II at ours

What the Samsung S5260 Star II should try and deliver is decent telephony, sleek design, long-lasting battery and the occasional bonus feature. A game or two would also be nice, but probably not mandatory – gaming has long since become a smartphone territory.

Introduction

The Samsung Galaxy Ace can get far with a name like this but it isn’t going any further than its comfortable midrange spot. You know, if you want the best seat in the house you need to move the cat. The Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 is a feline droid – the black cat in Samsung’s Android portfolio. And it spells bad luck for the competition – mid-range droids are a force to be reckoned with in the smartphone world.

Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace official photos

With the kind of specs, the Galaxy Ace could have passed for a high-end phone a while back. So, if your processing power and screen estate needs haven’t risen sharply during the past year or so, the Ace will serve you well.

In fact, with Froyo on an 800MHz processor, good connectivity and screen size and resolution that were good enough for the first three iPhones, the Samsung Galaxy Ace is looking good.

The only downside to the package is the QVGA video @ 15fps. That may be acceptable on a low-end dumbphone but certainly disappointing on a mid-range Android.

Here’s what else is going on the Ace’s spec sheet.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 7.2 Mbps HSDPA support
• 3.5″ 16M-color TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen of HVGA (320 x 480 pixels) resolution
• 800MHz ARM 11 processor, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset; 278MB of RAM available to the user
• Android OS v2.2 (Froyo) with TouchWiz 3.0 UI customization
• Swype text input
• 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash; Geo-tagging, face and smile detection
• QVGA@15fps video
• microSD slot (up to 32GB, 2GB in box)
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b, g, n and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity; Digital compass
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• DNSe sound enhancement
• FM radio with RDS
• Document editor
• File manager preinstalled
• Samsung Apps brings a few nice apps for free
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor

Main disadvantages

• Dismal QVGA video recording @15fps
• No shutter key for the camera
• No support for Adobe Flash in the web browser
• No ambient light sensor
• No DivX/Xvid video support out of the box

So, the video is no good, but the still camera should be doing pretty well. Samsung’s refined TouchWiz 3.0 with a document editor and file manager out of the box score good points for the Galaxy Ace too.

The phone is pretty compact and we especially like the new rubbery textured back. There’s nothing to worry about in terms of ergonomics or pocketability, but those decidedly iPhone-ish looks are a bit questionable.

Samsung S5830 Galaxy Ace live shots

That’s about all we can say by just looking at the phone – and it’s the second time we meet the Samsung Ace. You may as well remember our quick preview from a while back. It’s now time to see how ready the Samsung Galaxy Ace is for the real world and we begin with the hardware.

Introduction

Another year, another heir to the Droid throne – and Google are trying to be democratic about it. Which is a roundabout way of saying they’re not monogamous. For the Nexus One, Google teamed up with HTC. This time around, they trusted Samsung to do the job, using the Galaxy S as a base.

Google Nexus S official photos

It’s only their second try and users are given a second chance to like the Royal Droid. A tall task it is – the very concept is fundamentally incompatible with the free and open source Android system. Royal blood is not a benefit in a free democracy. Google did learn it the hard way with the Nexus One.

Google’s second smartphone child has more than just an image problem to tackle. The Samsung Google Nexus S has to keep pace with the evolution of the platform. The “S” in the name may stand for many things – from second to superior. But with Android 2.3 Gingerbread inside, speed is not far from the truth either. Here’s what else the Nexus S has to offer in a nutshell.

Key features:

• Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support
• HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps
• 4.0″ WVGA (480×800) Super AMOLED Contour Display with curved glass screen
• Android OS, v2.3 Gingerbread
• 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 (Hummingbird) processor
• 16GB storage, 512 MB RAM
• 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geotagging
• Front-facing VGA camera
• Wi-Fi b/g/n with DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS
• Portable Wi-Fi hotspot and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Near Field Communication chip
• Accelerometer, proximity and light sensors
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port (charging)
• Adobe Flash support out of the box
• Latest Google Mobile apps

Main disadvantages:

• No microSD slot
• No 720p video recording
• All-plastic body, fingerprint magnet
• No DivX and XviD support (no actual video player) out of the box
• No dedicated camera key and no lens cover
• No FM radio
• No smart dialing
• Overly expensive for its feature set

As you can see, the Nexus S shares a lot of the Samsung Galaxy S components. Powered by the very same 1Ghz Hummingbird processor and having the same 512MB of RAM, it feels a bit quicker probably thanks to Gingerbread.

The fact aside that our review isn’t exactly on time, this hardware is so 2010, while the imaging department is surely from 2009. We wouldn’t fuss about it was it not for the Tegra 2 SoC and its 1080p video recording, which has the power to be the next big thing in the industry. The emphasis here being on next. Maybe Google should’ve thought of that and instead of rushing to release the Nexus S.

If they chose to wait a couple of months, a dual-core CPU could’ve made a lot of difference – especially with Gingerbread. The Nexus S would have been a beast just like its predecessor was, with the first droid powered by a 1Ghz processor on the market. With this hardware, the Nexus S is no more than an overclocked Nexus One.

Google Nexus S live shots

But wait a minute – maybe not all is lost and the Nexus S will be salvaged by the software. Not only is it the first Gingerbread-powered phone to the market – it can also count on special treatment in terms of getting updates on time.

Anyway, when you have a second try at something the results are supposed to be better. Just like when parents raise a second child differently having learned from their past experience. Stick around to find out if the Google Nexus S is the definitive, all-muscle replacement of the Nexus One we’ve all been waiting for.