Quattro LoVes FasT

LG KM570 Cookie Gig review: Live at the arena

2010-05-27T06:04:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Cookies just won’t stay put – they need more space to do their thing. The LG KM570 Cookie Gig steps right into LG Arena territory. With looks and camera to match and a Cookie-grade price tag, this phone is on track to go platinum. The Dolby mobile logo at the back hints at a knack for multimedia and the 4GB of built-in memory means there’ll be plenty of room for your music.

But we’ll not let the pretty face fool us, the Cookie Gig has its highs and lows – here they are in summary.

LG KM570 Cookie Gig official photos

Key features:

3" 256K-color resistive TFT touchscreen of WQVGA resolution (240 x 400 pixels)
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps)
Widget-enhanced interface and Livesquare homescreen
5 megapixel autofocus camera with face detection
D1 video recording @ 30fps, QVGA time-lapse and QVGA slo-mo video
4GB of built-in storage
microSD card slot, up to 16GB
Standard 3.5mm audio jack
Standard microUSB port (charging)
Dolby for Mobile audio enhancement
Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
Accelerometer for screen auto rotate; turn to mute
Landscape on-screen QWERTY keyboard
FM radio with RDS and FM transmitter
Office document viewer
Social networking integration
Smart dialing

Main disadvantages:

No Wi-Fi
No GPS
Low resolution screen (compared to LG Arena)
Camera has no flash or protective cover
Records video in 3GP only
Poor sunlight legibility
Maximum email attachment size is 2.2MB only (both ways)
No DivX/XviD video support
No handwriting recognition support

So, the LG KM570 can’t quite match the LG Arena, but no mistake – it’s a king amongst Cookies. The camera has the same high-end features as the LG Arena’s, and the inclusion of Dolby mobile and some iPod trickery earn the audio player high marks.

The user interface is borrowed from the LG GD510 Pop. It’s the regular LG touch UI but with a coat of S-Class paint over it. And it works – it’s nice to look at, ready to multitask and the homescreens are full of widgets. There’s also a bit of pointless fun with Livesquare.

The LG KM570 Cookie Gig chats with other touch phones in our office

So, the LG KM570 Cookie Gig is a marked improvement over the original Cookie and the updates that came after it. But the competition wasn’t sleeping – there are several phones that compete directly with the Gig in its price range, including even the LG Arena.

Just a quick note – the LG KM570 has quite a number of aliases. So it might be called differently where you live. The Cookie Gig is also known as LG Cookie Music, LG Surf 4GB and LG Arena II.

Never mind the name, let’s see what the Cookie Gig has to offer before we pass judgment on it. As always, we start with opening the box – join us on the next page to see what we find.

Modest retail package

The LG KM570 Cookie Gig comes in a compact package that carries only the essentials. There’s a charger that uses the microUSB cable to connect to the phone. A one-piece handsfree is also supplied, though it’s nothing special.

There isn't much stuff in the box

A mini CD with the needed software and some printed manuals can be found in the box, though the phone includes an animated walkthrough for basic operation, which is more than enough to get you started.

There is no memory card in the box, but the LG Cookie Gig comes with a 4GB of built-in memory, which is enough for a decently sized music collection.

Design and construction

The LG KM570 Cookie Gig takes after the LG KM900 Arena – in fact, the front of the Gig can easily fool you. That’s a fine compliment for the young Cookie Gig – we always appreciate premium looks within budget.

The LG KM570 Cookie Gig looks good

One of the defining features of the LG Arena was the excellent high resolution touchscreen.

Despite being nicknamed the Arena II in certain markets, the LG KM570 Cookie Gig has the screen resolution of the original Cookie instead – 240 x 400 pixels on a 3” screen. That’s exactly a quarter of the pixels that the Arena has on the same screen estate. The Cookie Gig’s touchscreen is a resistive unit – the phone has a budget to meet.

The screen has decent colors and viewing angles indoors but the blacks are not solid enough, even for a TFT. It’s quite sensitive and registers even light presses. We do miss though the sharpness that the WVGA resolution brings – especially when reading text.

A WQVGA resistive display – the Cookie Gig has to stay within budget

Sunlight legibility is sub-par. The screen layers are quite reflective and it’s hard to find an angle that doesn’t reflect sunlight, obscuring everything on the screen.

Besides the touchscreen, the front panel of the LG Cookie Gig also features the earpiece, which doubles as the loudspeaker, the video-call camera at the top as well as the proximity sensor.

The video-call camera and earpiece on top

Below the screen, there are the three touch-sensitive controls: menu, call and end keys. They use the same haptic feedback as the screen and the transition is as smooth as it gets.

The three keys at the bottom

The left side of LG KM570 Cookie Gig features the microUSB port and the volume rocker. The microUSB port is used both for charging and data transfers with a computer.

On the right-hand side of the Cookie Gig is the shutter key. The keys are wider than their equivalents on the LG KM900 Arena and easier to use.

The volume rocker and microUSB port on the left • shutter key on the right side of the LG Cookie Gig

The top hosts the 3.5mm standard audio jack, the Power/Lock key and the battery cover latch. The power key is a bit too small, but comfortably raised. It’s still ok to use and accidental presses are unlikely.

The 3.5mm jack is on top, along with the tiny power key and rear cover release button

There are no controls or connectivity ports at the bottom of the LG Cookie Gig.

There is nothing at the bottom

The back side of the LG KM570 Cookie Gig hosts the 5 megapixel camera lens with no extras – no LED flash or lens protection.

The 5 megapixel camera lens is prone to scratches

The 900 mAh Li-Ion battery of the Cookie Gig is quoted at 300 hours of stand-by and 6 hours and 40 minutes of talk time. It lasted us just over two days of testing, which is about as much heavy users can expect from the Cookie Gig.

The 900 mAh battery performs pretty decently

The microSD card slot is also placed under the battery cover but it is still hot-swappable. As we managed to confirm, the LG KM570 Cookie Gig can easily handle a 16GB microSD card – you get access to the card instantaneously, there’s no initialization period.

The battery cover has brushed metal finish but it’s made of plastic – still, it’s pleasant to the touch and does a good job of concealing fingerprints, unlike the glossy frame on the front and of course the touchscreen itself.

At 11.9 mm the Cookie Gig is fairly thin, but its rounded corners slim it down even further. The glossy strip on the front and the faux brushed metal finish at the back make it quite a looker. The Blue color version that we tested looked great, but you can opt for the Prism Violet hue or the classic Silver Black variety.

LG KM570 Cookie Gig in hand • size comparison vs. iPhone vs. Samsung Blue Earth

Interface gets S-Classy

The LG KM570 Cookie Gig is dressed up in terms of software too. It borrows the user interface from the LG GD510 Pop – a Cookie interface at the core, with S-Class eye candy on top. It also comes with the proprietary Livesquare homescreen plus a handful of social networking apps.

The interface features a lot of nice animations and transition effects. However, it’s not the fastest we’ve seen – every action takes a while to complete. The Cookie Gig is not unresponsive, but it can be sluggish – it takes a second for the menu to appear, and even longer to get back to the homescreen.

The lockscreen • the three homescreens

The KM570 Cookie Gig has three homescreens but not in the usual sense of one extended desktop. It has three kinds of homescreen, though you get only one at a time and they are non-scrollable.

The first is the Widget-enabled screen that allows you to arrange several mini applications as you please.

A touch on the marker in the bottom right corner of the homescreen pulls out the Widget tray, which holds all of the currently unused widgets. You can choose the ones you want and drag them onto the screen or stash the ones you don't need back in the tray. There’s a “shake to auto align” feature, but you can use the padlock pictogram at the bottom left to lock the position of the widgets and prevent accidental rearrangements.

Widget homescreen • widgets are collapsible

The widgets available on the LG Cookie Gig include two clocks (analog and a dual time zone piece), a mini FM radio, a mini music player, a weather widget, notes app, image slideshow, a calendar, Pocket Apps, a Facebook widget and more.

There’s only one non-scrollable widget screen but the widgets have a way to deal with this – in their default state, they are quite small but if you tap them – they expand. For example, the calendar widget only shows the current date by default, but once you tap it, it expands to show the whole month.

The Pocket Apps widget is very nice and useful – it gets you access to several installed apps. We'll get to those in detail in the mobile applications chapter of this review.

The Facebook widget shows status updates from your friends and serves as a shortcut to the full-blown Facebook application. It can be collapsed to just the Facebook icon which saves a lot of space. There are no widgets for other social networks – you’ll have to use their respective apps.

The Facebook widget

Unfortunately, new widgets cannot be added. That is the main disadvantage compared to the competing Samsung TouchWiz interface.

To get to the second homescreen you sweep your finger sideways across the screen. The screen turns over like you roll a cube – a throwback to the cube menu of the original S-Class UI.

The contact homescreen doesn't work with widgets, but lets you arrange up to eight favorite contact icons instead. You can arrange them free-hand or use the shake to auto-align feature. The screen could easily have fit one contact more but there’s no way to add more than eight.

Contacts homescreen

When you tap a contact it jumps front and center and four buttons appear to the sides of the contact’s photo – call, send an SMS, edit the contact and remove from speed dial (you can also drag it back to the dock, just as you would a widget).

Finally, there’s the Livesquare homescreen, which is in essence a log of all your recent communications. They are displayed on the screen with icons for each person you've made contact with - even ones that are not in your phonebook. By having them straight on the screen, you can easily call them back without opening the phonebook or the actual call log.

You can set the background as a Zoo, a Park or pick a custom image, populated by small human or animal figures, which will represent your contacts. You can pick from several different icons and randomize the color of their clothes for even greater variety.

When you tap on a contact, the icon at the bottom of the screen starts throbbing to attract your attention – you can call a contact, view the contact info or send them a message. You can click and drag to select multiple contacts – but then the send message option is only available.

Selecting multiple contacts in Livesquare • Livesquare options

Livesquare enhances usability but its graphical implementation is really childish. While that was OK on the tween-happy LG GW520, the LG KM570 has more mature looks, despite its Cookie branding.

Speaking of icons at the bottom of the screen – there are four virtual soft keys that are there regardless of which homescreen you’re currently using. The first one takes you to the Dial pad to punch in a number, the second opens the Contact list, the third one takes you to Messaging, and the last one brings up the main menu.

The LG KM570 Cookie Gig main menu looks very similar to the S-Class launcher (LG Arena, Viewty Smart and Crystal) and is accessible via the dedicated shortcut on the home screen. There are three menu layouts available.

The first is the familiar four-row layout (called “Zigzag”) with each of the rows scrollable separately. If that’s not the thing for you, another layout puts all the icons on two pages – in essence the four rows scroll together. The final layout arranges the icons in one tall page which you scroll up and down.

If you turn the phone sideways, the menu items are all displayed with smaller icons fitting the screen perfectly with no need for scrolling (but with no text labels either).

The main menu is S-Class styled

In the Zigzag layout, you can rearrange the icons from every row by tapping and holding the desirable icon and dragging it where you want it to appear. Strangely, that doesn’t work in the two-page layout.

The three menu styles – scroll, page by page and Zigzag

The lockscreen prompts you to press-and-hold but you can also slide-up to unlock. Recent events like missed calls, new messages or emails are also displayed on the lockscreen.

The lockscreen

The Cookie Gig makes use of a task manager allowing you to run several Java and native applications simultaneously and effortlessly switch between them.

The task manager on the LG Cookie Gig is pretty similar to the one found on the Renoir and the Cookie. It's complemented by a secondary "Favorite apps" tab that hosts a number of configurable shortcuts to various applications. It offers up to nine slots for shortcuts.

The task manager and the favorite apps shortcuts

Another thing the KM570 Cookie Gig shares with the other recent touch phones by LG is the Status screen - tapping on any of the icons on the status row on top (next to the clock) opens up a screen with signal, battery and memory stats, and allows you to quickly toggle the ringing profiles, music player and Bluetooth. It’s not quite as useful as the one on Android – but as close as possible for a feature phone.

The status screen is accessed by pressing any of the icons at the top of the homescreen

The LG KM570 Cookie Gig comes with two themes for the menu – Black and White. White is more cartoonish and goes well with the Lifesquare homescreen, but with Black you get both more serious looking menu and you get to choose the complementary color – you can make it red on black, blue on black, or almost anything else, there’s a full palette to choose from.

The Black and White themes for the UI

The usual phonebook

The phonebook capacity offered by the LG KM570 Cookie Gig is up to 1000 contacts, each with its full set of details. You can organize your contacts into caller groups, and you can also assign them a personal picture and a ringtone.

There is a bunch of available fields for each contact on your list. You start off with fourteen fields, but once you enter a number or an email address, an additional empty field of the same type becomes available.

You can also add a note to a contact and when you enter a birthday or anniversary date, you can also have the phone save it to the calendar as a reminder.

There is also an option to choose the contact's Livesquare icon so it can't be mistaken with somebody else.

The phonebook • Livesquare integration

If you don't want to go through all the contacts to reach those starting with "Z" for example, you can either use the search box at the top or you can drag the side scrollbar. If you choose the search box option, you can have T9 turned on or off.

T9 might seem the quicker option but it has its disadvantages – for example, it leaves room for only one contact (with T9 off, there’s room for two) and it’s not particularly good at guessing names. For example, pressing the 3 key on the keypad (you’re working with a standard 12-key pad here), types E and it doesn’t find names starting with D or F (as it should have).

T9 is not very good at names

You can opt for displaying the SIM and phone contacts separately, as well as all together in a single list.

Advanced telephony features

The LG KM570 Cookie Gig handles phone calls very well – the voice quality is good and can be turned up really loud. The reception is mostly good, but in areas of quite poor coverage, there are some sound breakups, but we didn’t experience dropped calls.

The dialer supports both smart dialing and fast dialing. When you enter the first digit, the dialer brings up the name of the contact associated with that speed dial number (if there is one). Type three digits, and if they match any part of a contact’s phone number, their name will be offered.

Calling Duck Dodgers • the onscreen dialing pad • quick dial • Smart dial

The Cookie Gig has a proximity sensor that automatically locks and unlocks the screen. Another sensor that helps the telephony features is the accelerometer, which enables turn to mute. You can reject a call with a preset text message (and compose new reject-call messages too).

From the Common settings menu, you can activate automatic call rejection – you can set up the Cookie Gig to reject all calls, without caller ID, contacts from specific groups and so on. This is a handy feature, similar to what Nokia Eseries have.

During a call, you can unlock the screen and take down a note, check your calendar or messages, even record a part of the conversation.

The call key takes you to the call log. It's pretty standard: there are four tabs for full call history, dialed, received or missed calls.

The call log

The LG KM570 Cookie Gig scored a Very Good mark in our loudspeaker performance test.

Messaging department does the job

The LG KM570 Cookie Gig handles the SMS, MMS, and email with ease. SMS and MMS share an editor, which is the normal state of affairs.

For text input you get the standard virtual alphanumeric keypad with T9 in portrait mode and in landscape there’s the virtual QWERTY keyboard. Haptic feedback is enabled, which increases typing accuracy.

The Cookie Gig offers alphanumeric keypad and a full QWERTY keyboard

On a 3” screen, the QWERTY keys are not very big, and the KM 570 Cookie Gig hasn’t got the most comfortable virtual QWERTY keyboard. But once you get used to it, it leaves the alphanumeric keypad in the dust in terms of typing speed.

The keyboard arrangement is questionable though – or LG thinks that people use some strange punctuation in their text messages. You get a dedicated “!” and “+” but no full stop, there’s both colon and semicolon – but no comma. How about that?

Despite having a resistive screen, the LG KM570 doesn’t support handwriting recognition.

The LG Cookie Gig has excellent support for email. Setting up an account is effortless – you just type in your user name and password and the Gig takes care of the rest. You can even set up a Microsoft Exchange mailbox, which should please corporate users.

The email client is doing a great job

In case you have to setup your email account manually, there is a host of settings that you need to enter. Both POP3 and IMAP4 protocols are supported along with SSL. The email client can be set to auto retrieve new mail at a preset interval with a dedicated setting for roaming.

The maximum attachment size for both incoming and outgoing mail is 2.2MB. Such a limitation is nuisance in a modern email client and we suspect they're imposed to save network carriers the traffic hassle.

Microsoft Office files and PDF files are supported and can be viewed directly from the email client or saved to the internal memory. Unsupported file types, such as ZIP or RAR, for example, cannot be opened by the phone, but still you can save those to the phone memory if you get them with an email.

Once you've downloaded your messages, you can use the search feature to find specific emails or you can sort them by various filters such as date, sender, priority, read/unread, subject, size, etc. There is also an option for marking multiple emails as "read" or “unread.

I Pad

2010-05-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

iPad adalah sebuah produk komputer tablet buatan Apple Inc. (AI). iPad memiliki bentuk tampilan yang hampir serupa dengan iPod Touch dan iPhone, hanya saja ukurannya lebih besar dibandingkan kedua produk tersebut dan memiliki fungsi-fungsi tambahan seperti yang ada pada sistem operasi Mac OS X.

iPad

Pembuat	Foxconn (on contract)^[1]^[2]
Layar	1024 × 768 px (aspect ratio 4:3), 9,7 in (25 cm) diagonal, appr. 45 in² (Templat:Convert/sqin), 132 PPI, XGA, LED-backlit IPS LCD^[3]
Kamera	Tidak ada
Sistem Operasi	iPhone OS (modified) 3.2 (build 7B367)^[4] Released 3 April 2010 (2010-04-03), 45 hari yang lalu
Input	Multi-touch touch screen, headset controls, proximity and ambient light sensors, 3-axis accelerometer, magnetometer
CPU	1 GHz Apple A4^[3]^[5] PowerVR SGX 535 GPU^[6]
Memori	256 MB DRAM built into Apple A4 package (top package of PoP contains two 128 MB die's)^[7]
Penyimpanan	Flash memory 16, 32, and 64 GB^[3]
Konektivitas	Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, USB 2.0/Dock connector Wi-Fi + 3G model also includes: A-GPS, micro-SIM slot, Quad-band GSM 850 900 1800 1900 MHz GPRS/EDGE, Tri-band UMTS 850 1900 2100 MHz HSDPA
Ukuran fisik	242,8 mm (9.56 in) (h) 189,7 mm (7.47 in) (w) 13,4 mm (0.53 in) (d)
Berat	Wi-Fi model: 680g Wi-Fi + 3G model: 730g ^[3]
Media	Bluetooth, speaker, microphone, headset jack
Lihat pula	iPhone, iPod touch (Comparison)
Situs resmi	www.apple.com/ipad

Sejarah

iPad diperkenalkan pertama kali oleh Steve Jobs, CEO (yang merupakan singkatan dari Chief Executive Officer) dari Apple Inc. dalam Apple Special Event yang bertempat di Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Fransisco, Amerika Serikat, pada tanggal 27 Januari 2010. Produk ini dirancang sebagai sebuah perangkat digital yang berada di antara telepon pintar (smartphone) dan komputer jinjing (laptop). Apple Inc. berencana akan mulai memasarkan iPad di Amerika Serikat (AS) mulai 3 april 2010, dengan kisaran harga mulai dari 499 Dolar Amerika Serikat (USD) hingga 829 USD. Namun warga AS sudah dapat memesan produk ini mulai tanggal 12 Maret 2010 melalui Apple Online Store.

[sunting] Spesifikasi

Apple sejauh ini sudah mengumumkan dua jenis model iPad. Model Wi-Fi dengan Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n dengan berat 680 gram yang akan dipasarkan 3 April 2010 dan model Wi-Fi + 3G yang memungkinkan pengguna untuk menggunakan jaringan HSDPA dengan berat 730 gram, yang akan dipasarkan pada akhir April 2010. Produk ini memiliki desain layar multi-sentuh 9.56x7.47 inci dengan lebar layar 9.7 inci atau sekitar 25 sentimeter (cm), yang dilengkapi LED backlight dengan teknologi IPS (singkatan dari In-Plane Switching), resolusi 1024x768 piksel, kapasitas memori flash drive mulai dari kisaran 16 gigabita (Gb) hingga 64 Gb, prosesor 1 gigahertz (GHz) Apple A4, baterai lithium-polymer yang dapat bertahan hingga 10 jam pemakaian, mendukung pemutaran audio dengan format AAC, MP3, VBR, audible, apple lossless, AIFF dan WAV serta mendukung format video H.264 hingga 720p, .m4v, .mp4, .mov, dan MPEG-4. Selain itu juga terdapat Bluetooth 2.1, kompas digital, GPS, Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n), dock connector, built-in speaker, mikrofon, 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack dan menggunakan sistem operasi yang sama dengan sistem operasi iPhone.

Aplikasi

Di dalam iPad, selain fitur umum seperti home screen, contact (kontak), kalender dan catatan terdapat juga sejumlah aplikasi-aplikasi seperti:

Safari: merupakan penjelajah web yang dapat digunakan untuk mengakses berbagai situs internet, seperti Google, Yahoo, Myspace, Flickr, Apple atau situs jejaring sosial seperti Friendster, Twitter, Facebook dan Plurk.
Mail: merupakan aplikasi yang memungkinkan pengguna untuk melihat surat elektronik (email) dan fitur ini dapat bekerja dengan hampir semua provider terkemuka seperti Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, atau Windows Live Hotmail.
iTunes: merupakan aplikasi yang dapat digunakan untuk menjelajah dan mengunduh musik, tayangan televisi, video maupun podcasts melalui iTunes Store. Aplikasi iTunes yang ada di dalam iPad dapat disinkronisasikan dengan iTunes yang ada pada MacBook ataupun komputer yang dimiliki pengguna.
iPod: merupakan aplikasi yang mampu mengorganisasi dan memutar musik, sama seperti yang terdapat pada produk Apple yang lain seperti iPod ataupun iPhone.
Photo: sebuah aplikasi yang dapat digunakan untuk menyimpan, mengorganisasi dan melihat foto. Pengguna tidak hanya bisa melihat foto berdasarkan tanggal dan acaranya, tetapi juga berdasarkan wajah ataupun tempat dimana foto tersebut diambil. Pengguna juga dapat mengsinkronisasikan foto ke dalam iPad dari Mac atau komputer melalui iTunes ataupun memindahkan foto dari kamera digital ke iPad melalui iPad camera connection kit.
Video: aplikasi yang digunakan untuk menonton berbagai jenis video, mulai dari film dengan kualitas High Definition (HD), podcast, acara TV sampai musik video dimana saja walau pengguna sedang berada di dalam pesawat sekalipun.
App Store: digunakan untuk mengunduh aplikasi yang jumlahnya mencapai hampir 150.000. App Store menyediakan aplikasi untuk produk-produk buatan Apple dengan beragam kategori, mulai dari permainan, gaya hidup, pendidikan dan lain sebagainya. Aplikasi yang terdapat di dalam App Store dapat diunduh secara gratis oleh pengguna namun ada juga yang dikenakan sejumlah biaya.
Youtube: aplikasi ini dapat digunakan untuk memudahkan pengguna melihat berbagai macam jenis video yang ada dalam Youtube tanpa perlu mengakses situsnya.
iBooks: sebuah aplikasi yang digunakan tidak hanya untuk membaca saja, tetapi juga menjelajah dan membeli buku-buku berformat digital (e-books) dari iBookstore. Aplikasi ini dapat diunduh di App Store secara gratis, namun sayangnya aplikasi ini baru tersedia di AS saja.
iWork: aplikasi yang juga terdapat pada Mac, yang terdiri dari Keynote, Pages dan Numbers. Aplikasi ini dapat membantu pengguna membuat presentasi, dokumen, maupun spreadsheet.
Maps: aplikasi yang dapat digunakan untuk melihat peta dari atas dengan resolusi tinggi melalui pencitraan satelit. Selain melihat peta, pengguna juga bisa mencari lokasi tempat atau rute dari satu tempat ke tempat lain.

Aksesori Tambahan

Apple juga menyediakan berbagai macam aksesori tambahan yang dapat dibeli secara terpisah oleh pengguna untuk melengkapi Ipad. Aksesori tambahan untuk iPad tersedia mulai dari keyboard dock, iPad case, iPad camera connection kit, iPad dock, iPad 10W USB power adapter, iPad dock connector to VGA adapter, Apple wireless keyboard, headphone, earphone hingga composite dan component AV cable.

Translit to english if you want

by Chris Poole Inside This Article 1. 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost Review and Prices 2. 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost Preliminary Specifications

2010-05-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

Rolls-Royce says its latest experimental car, the 200EX, shows the direction of the upcoming Ghost.

Consumer Guide's Impressions of the 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost

Leave the chauffeur at home. A smaller, more driver-focused Rolls will soon court young high rollers with $350K to spend. It's not quite a "baby Phantom," but the new Ghost should take the Flying Lady mascot to more driveways than ever.

What We Know About the 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost

Rolls-Royce sold just over 1,000 cars in 2007, the first four-figure annual tally in the firm's 104-year history. That surely delights parent BMW, which took charge of Rolls in 2003. But the Bavarian bosses see greater things for their celebrated English marque beyond its current trio of hulking $400K-plus Phantoms. Specifically, they want to boost Rolls sales closer to those of former stablemate Bentley, which now moves over 11,000 cars per year as part of the Volkswagen group. That suggests a somewhat smaller Rolls model that uses BMW hardware to sell just above the $200,000-$250,000 realm that has proven so lucrative for Bentley. It might be less sporty than a Bentley, but would tilt toward the same younger, very well-heeled buyers.

That, in a nutshell, is project RR4, a.k.a. "New Generation Saloon" (sedan to us Americans). Rolls-Royce confirms this car will debut sometime in 2010. The company recently announced it will go into production during 2009 and be will be called the Ghost. Rolls-Royce gave a sneak peek, in the form of the experimental 200EX at the March 2009 Geneva Auto Salon in Switzerland. Expect coupe and convertible versions early next decade. If all goes well, the Ghost will more than double yearly production at the modern BMW-built R-R factory in Goodwood, England to somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 units. That's still far behind Bentley, but Rolls-Royce ownership isn't for everyone, old bean. Price? Well, if you simply must know, it's being rumored at $300,000-$400,000.

The 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost was made official in late 2006, but with few specifics given. Since then, Rolls has announced that Goodwood will add a second assembly floor and a second shift to produce the Ghost. It has released two vague sketches of what the new car will look like, and several photos of the experimental 200EX the company says shows the direction the Ghost will follow. Fortunately, our spies have unearthed most of the basics, though some items remain a mystery.

Broadly speaking, the 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost is based on the redesigned 2009 BMW 7-Series sedan that's due to start sale in the spring of 2009. The new 7's "F01" platform will be pulled like taffy to make the Ghost longer, wider, and taller than its German cousin. Yet, the Ghost will be almost a compact next to the Phantom--over a foot shorter by some accounts. It's also said to be nearly 500 pounds lighter despite a structure that uses less weight-saving aluminum. Still, the Ghost will be no bantam, likely to tip the scales just north of 5,000 pounds.

The Ghost will be motivated by a "unique to Rolls-Royce" turbocharged 6.6-liter V12 that packs 500 horsepower. The firm said early on that the powerplant will be "exclusive to Rolls-Royce," so some think that rules out a BMW engine. On the other hand, "exclusive" could just as easily mean a Rolls-only version of a new BMW V12 engine that is rumored to appear in the redesigned 7-Series.

Another complication is the Ghost's place in the world. In terms of power and performance, the 500-horse V12 puts it "upstairs" of the 453-horsepower 6.0-liter V12 Phantom, yet it leaves Ghost conspicuously "downstairs" of a prime competitor, the 553-horsepower 6.0-liter W12 Bentley Continental Flying Spur. In addition, the Phantom has been roundly criticized for its prodigious fuel thirst, and Bentley has announced plans to reduce fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions for all its cars, which put pressure on Rolls to follow suit. According to the carmaker, this engine, combined with a ZF 8-speed automatic transmission, boasts better fuel and CO₂ efficiency than the "already class-leading Phantom series of cars."

The 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost will borrow many other components from the redesigned 7-Series, mainly those that owners won't see, as one R-R source told trade weekly Automotive News. The modified new-7 architecture should bring jumbo 4-wheel ABS disc brakes, all-independent suspension with air springs and computer-controlled shock absorbers, and speed-sensitive power steering. Another given is BMW's full range of electronic driving aids, such as an antiskid system and traction control, and radar-based cruise control. Wheels are said to be 19- and/or 20-inchers, with run-flat tires a possible no-cost option.

Other features are less certain, but the 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost should be loaded with gadgets, partly for the presumed tech-savvy target audience and partly because BMW loves gizmos. Among the items being widely whispered are auto-close power doors and trunklid, a navigation system with a new type of glare-proof display screen, and a headliner with multiple fiber-optic points that glow to create a "starry night" effect, a bit of set design also found in the 2-door Phantom Coupé. (And please do say "koo-PAY.") A BMW iDrive-type control knob already appears in Phantoms, and so will probably appear in the Ghost as well.

As for styling, Chief Designer Ian Cameron says the 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost will have a "more informal presence than Phantom models, with a greater emphasis on driving. In design terms this is expressed by [a] more organic form, yet with powerful, purposeful proportions." OK, but those company sketches suggest the Ghost may look rather like the 2005 Cadillac Sixteen concept, right down to the use of rear-hinged "coach" rear doors, as on the Phantom sedan. The Ghost should also lift the senior car's retractable "Flying Lady" grille ornament. The grille itself, however, will be smaller and far less upright than the Phantom's--much like the rest of the package. Interiors, unsurprisingly, will be lavishly appointed in top-grade materials, and the artisans at Goodwood will doubtless be happy to oblige sir or madam with all manner of special-order trims and colors.

One British report recently noted that the 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost is "all about scale," a sales-boosting move down-market to where buyers are more plentiful. It's the same tactic Rolls employed to get back on its feet after World War II with relatively "cheap" models like the Silver Dawn. The Ghost is no less apropos for these difficult times, especially as even some Rolls customers might now feel just a bit conspicuous being seen in a Phantom. Ah, the problems of wealth.

Rolls-Royce unveiled the experimental 200EX at the 2009 Geneva Motor Show.

A Notable Feature of the 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost

Some regard the 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost as a "21st-century Silver Shadow," referencing the popular R-R models of the 1960s and '70s--the first unibody Rollers, by the way. That's such a good summation of the overall concept that we wouldn't be surprised if the Ghost is introduced with the Silver Shadow name.

There's also talk of a diesel option for the Ghost. Though an "oil-burner" might seem unspeakably plebian for even a junior Rolls, today's diesel engines boast much of the same mechanical refinement as their gasoline counterparts, plus the timely advantages of higher fuel economy, longer driving range, better low-end torque delivery, and reduced CO₂ emissions. What this engine might be is anyone's guess, and it likely wouldn't be in the catalog until at least 2012, but a diesel option would symbolize a newfound social responsibility at Rolls-Royce, which may be why it's on the table.

In the same vein, the rumor mill speaks of an eventual hybrid Ghost using the 2-Mode gas/electric drive system developed by BMW in concert with General Motors and the former DaimlerChrysler. Alas, specifics on this are elusive, too, though the upcoming hybrid option for BMW's X5 SUV and X6 "sports activity coupe" may give some clues.

Buying Advice for the 2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost

It's pretty meaningless to speak of practical purchase considerations in a Tiffany's-level class that includes not only Bentley but also the Mercedes-Benz Maybach and Aston Martin's upcoming 4-door Rapide. All are super-luxury cars with prices to match, and are built in lower quantities than even top-line BMWs and Mercedes, which are pretty exclusive themselves. Your choice will probably come down to how you feel about the character and status of the various brands and models. If you're looking to move up to a Rolls--or want a garage mate for your Phantom--then the Ghost is the logical selection. Of course, anyone rich enough to buy one of these cars can probably afford more than one, and good for you if that applies.

2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost Release Date: We've heard nothing definite yet, either from Rolls or our sources, but we'd guess the Ghost will start U.S. sale in March or April of 2010.

2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost First Test Drive: The Geneva premiere mentioned above could mean media previews in late summer or early fall of 2009, but we could be wrong.

2010 Rolls-Royce Ghost Prices: Rolls-Royce is naturally mum on this point, but we've seen base-price estimates ranging from $300,000 to $400,000, as noted above. We'll hedge and call it $350K, but the figure could be higher given today's unstable dollar/Sterling exchange rate and production costs being pressured by fast-rising commodity prices, especially for steel.

Samsung Omnia II

2010-05-14T06:45:00.000-07:00

Omnia II

Samsung’s top tier of Omnia devices is populated by some seriously heavy-hitters – first the 720p video recording Omnia HD and now the Omnia II – with its best-in-the-business display, WM 6.5, zippy processor and preloaded software galore, it will certainly win the hearts and minds of Windows Mobile fans.

It’s no secret that the Samsung Omnia II has the HTC Touch Diamond2 in its sights. The Omnia II has several advantages, not the least of which is the amazing 3.7″ AMOLED WVGA display. For the acronym-allergic – WVGA means 480 x 800 pixels resolution, which several years ago might have been considered acceptable for a computer monitor. That resolution is not so uncommon today, the exciting part here is “AMOLED” – active matrix organic LED. Or in plain English – brilliant picture quality.

It doesn’t end there – the 800MHz CPU is one of the speediest around and the available capacities of up to 16GB built-in memory and up to 32GB external storage via microSD card offer more than enough memory expansion. There’s Wi-Fi and GPS, the autofocus camera shoots 5MP stills and D1 video at 30fps and has dual-LED flash, there’s DivX playback out of the box and HSDPA and HSUPA push the phone to great wireless speeds.

Samsung I8000 Omnia II official photos

We can spend a lot of time talking about the features of the Omnia II but here they are in a bullet list, which should be easier to read.

Key features:

3.7-inch 65K-color resistive AMOLED touchscreen, 480 x 800 pixels
Windows Mobile 6.5 with TouchWiz UI 2.0 and Media Gate 3D
Samsung S3C6410 800MHz processor; HW Graphic Accelerator
256MB RAM
5 megapixel auto focus camera with LED flash, geotagging, face detection, smile shot, image stabilizer, Wide Dynamic Range (WDR)
Records video in D1@30fps, QVGA slow-mo video recording
Tri-band 3G with HSDPA (7.2Mbps) and HSUPA (5.76 Mbps) support
Quad-band GSM support
Smart dialing
Wi-Fi with DLNA technology
Built-in GPS with A-GPS functionality
2/8/16GB internal memory
microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
FM radio with RDS
Bluetooth and USB v2.0
3.5mm standard audio jack
TV-out functionality
DNSe audio technology and SRS sound effect
DivX/XviD video playback
Proximity sensor for screen auto turn-off and ambient light sensor
Accelerometer sensor for automatic UI rotation, turn-to-mute and motion-based gaming
Office document editor
Full Flash support in the web browser

Main disadvantages:

No xenon flash
No camera lens cover
65K color limitation of display results in banding in color gradients
microSD slot is under the back cover
Browser has issues with Flash support

Samsung I8000 Omnia II in our office

The Omnia II sample used for this review runs Windows Mobile 6.5, while the units that are currently available on the market run Windows Mobile 6.1. Those however will be eligible for a free upgrade to ver. 6.5 as soon as Micorsoft release the final build of the new OS (rumored late September or early October). All Omnia II units that will ship after that will run the Windows Mobile 6.5 out of the box.

UPDATE 29 Aug: There seems to be a lot of commotion in various forums, our comments section included, about the actual CPU speed of the Omnia II – 667MHz or 800MHz. Samsung official specs seem to deliver some contradictory information and you should rest assured we will be contacting Samsung directly to clear up the issue.

All that being said, it’s just numbers we’re talking here. If you think that calling it 667MHz makes Omnia II a worse performer, you’re wrong. The clock rate of a processor is only useful for providing comparisons between computer chips in the same processor family and generation and is hardly useful for direct comparison between competing mobile platforms. But we digress.

Our point here is that no matter what the actual MHz number is, at no point did we judge the Samsung Omnia II by its pure clock rate. Instead we quite more value the real-life impressions of our experienced reviewers and we’ve hardly drawn any conclusions based on the pure processor spec sheet. And neither should you – no matter if it is 667MHz or 800MHz we’re talking about in this particular case, the Omnia II remains a leading performer among smartphones this year.

Now that we’ve taken that off our chest, jump to the next page while you catch your breath after reading that long specs list. We continue with the Omnia II doing a 360 pirouette and then look at the hardware side of this multimedia Goliath.

Unboxing the Omnia II

We didn’t get the retail package so the contents of the box might be different from what we have here. We got a charger, which plugs into the microUSB port, a microUSB cable and a headset.

The two-piece headset has its remote ending on a 3.5 mm jack so you have quite a choice of alternative headphones to use with the phone. Or you can bypass the remote entirely thanks to the 3.5mm audio jack on the phone itself.

The contents of the box in which our Omnia II arrived

The retail box will also include manuals and a disk with software as well as a carrying pouch, though as we didn’t get one, we can’t really comment on its quality.

Design and construction

From a distance all touchscreen bars look practically the same – a huge touchscreen display with perhaps a few buttons below it and that’s it. Still, the Omnia II preserves the spirit of Samsung styling and is very easily recognizable as a Samsung device. Maybe their devices are becoming a little too samey – if it weren’t for the size difference and the red Samsung styling of the Jet back, the Omnia II and the Samsung Jet would be indistinguishable even to our trained eyes.

Samsung S8000 Jet and I8000 Omnia II side by side

Things haven’t changed much overall since the pre-release version we used in the preview, there’s mainly been just a little polishing and tweaking of the design.

The Samsung I8000 Omnia II front is quite sleek with black glass framing the display, while the surface of the buttons has a “brushed” appearance that helps keep fingerprints away.

There used to be a silver strip edging the front of the device in the pre-release unit, but that has now been replaced with the same black plastic that covers the rest of the phone. We quite liked that strip, as it gave the device some individuality.

The front, much like the front of a TV set, is dominated by the display. It’s an AMOLED unit, 3.7 inches in size and is at the limits of one hand usability. With a WVGA resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, it’s among the highest resolution examples on the market and it’s certainly the highest resolution AMOLED display on a mobile phone.

As far as sensitivity goes, Samsung showed that even resistive touchscreens can be very sensitive and we’re happy to report that the touchscreen on the Omnia II is almost as sensitive as the one on the Jet.

The display is supposed to use Samsung’s Advanced Resistive touchscreen technology and though you can’t really spot the difference without a direct comparison to other devices, it seems to do its job very well, reacting to even very light touches. Plus sticking to the resistive type of display has the added bonus of being able to use it with anything you want – stylus, pencil, nails, gloves, etc. Writing, scrolling, typing, zooming – everything is as easy as on the capacitive screens of Samsung’s M7600 and S8300.

The display looks great

The only things that stop it from being perfect are the limited number of colors – 65K – and, of course, the disappointing sunlight legibility. The limited number of colors is quite a downer as banding ruins almost every color gradient.

There’s also no slot for a stylus. So, in the original Omnia tradition the I8000 Omnia II users will have to do with an attached one on a lanyard if they insist on having one.

A stylus is not really needed most of the time thanks to the touch-friendly TouchWiz interface and even the Windows Mobile 6.5 OS, which shows through occasionally, is trying to shed the need for a stylus. Handwriting recognition is about the only place where a stylus is a must. But then, there are many people that prefer using a stylus to a finger – so those are definitely catered for.

As big a screen as they could fit, 0.2″ bigger than the iPhone’s, but AMOLED

There are three hardware buttons on the front – the Call and End keys obviously and the center button. The center Cube button has changed quite a bit – it’s transparent with some sort of 3D effect which looks cool but it no longer glows. Glowing was better – the light pulsed smoothly, which looked great, and also notified you of events such as the battery going low.

Another change to the Cube key is that it no longer launches the Cube menu. Instead, it brings up Samsung’s four-section menu. That change is for the better as the Cube menu is pure eye-candy and serves no practical purpose. The newly assigned four sections of the menu keep things organized slightly better than the standard WinMo menu does.

The buttons on the front are large and easy to hit

The video call camera, a proximity and ambient light sensors are crammed in above the display.

Videocall camera, proximity and ambient light sensors

Design and construction (continued)

On the left you get the volume rocker and on the right are the hardware Lock key and the back key / shutter key combo. The latter is a rocker-styled control where the shutter key is tangibly raised. It can be half-pressed too to handle auto-focus.

All the above-mentioned controls seem quite easy to use in both single and two-handed use scenarios.

A press and hold on the back key launches the Cube menu, while a press and hold on the Cube brings up the Task Switcher. A press and hold on the Lock key is an alternate way to lock the phone – to unlock it, you’d have to press the Lock key, which brings up a screen showing the time and date, and then there’s a peg you have to slide to fully unlock the phone.

One rocker on each side plus a hardware back button

That’s not how the buttons on the right were originally placed – the top key was the back key and the rocker combined the shutter key with the lock key. The top key has the advantage of being easier to press than the top part of the rocker and “back” is used much more often than locking the device.

The new arrangement is not as comfortable but Windows Mobile does give you some tweaking room in customizing which button does what (though you can’t change the functionality of the lock key so simply swapping the keys’ functions in the Settings is out of the question).

The top houses a 3.5 mm audio jack and a microUSB port that is protected by a cover. The phone charges via the microUSB port, which is quite useful as you can skip the charger when traveling if you have a computer with you.

The microUSB slot and the audio jack

The 3.5mm audio jack is definitely a nice feature despite lacking a protective cap to hide it from dirt and grime when it’s not used. There also used to be a power button on the top of the phone, but now turning it on and off is done by the End key and locking is handled by the dedicated lock key.

The bottom is not very interesting – only the microphone pinhole is there.

The bottom has little to show

The back is rather plain with its simple black plastic – no fancy looking back cover like the one on the Samsung S8000 Jet. The back houses the camera lens and the flash plus the loudspeaker grill, which has a small nub so the speaker isn’t muffled when you put the handset flat on a desk.

The 5 megapixel camera lens is unprotected from smudges and scratches as it has only a slightly raised edge surrounding it and the dual-LED flash just below it.

Both the camera and the nub are on one side making the device rock side to side when laid on a flat surface. The lack of stereo speakers is a shame, especially given that otherwise the device is a very capable portable media player.

The back looks bare and cheap

Under the back cover, you’ll find a 1440 mAh battery like the one in the original Samsung Omnia and the SIM card slot as well as the microSD card slot. However, the ample internal storage does go some way to make up for not having the memory card slot placed externally on the device.

The microSD card slot is hot-swappable but under the rear cover

The build quality is quite solid. The back cover is not held by any complicated release systems but is still quite stable and there are no audible creaks or unusual sounds. The front buttons don’t wobble and have very satisfying feedback.

Samsung I8000 in the hand

The Samsung I8000 weighs in at 117 grams and its rounded edges make it seem thinner than it really is. Overall, the top edges of the display may be a little hard to reach if your fingers are not very long, but the device is still reasonably pocketable and perfectly ok to handle.

User interface

What we have on our hands here is the first Windows Mobile 6.5 device that has ever come to the office. Depending on when Micorsoft decide to release the new OS on the market, the Omnia II will ship with either 6.1 (with a guaranteed free upgrade) or it will come with 6.5 straight out of the factory (like our unit).

The Samsung I8000 Omnia II is the first Windows Mobile 6.5 device we have the chance of reviewing

So we guess if you are among the early adopters, you may or may not have the chance to enjoy 6.5 from Day 1. Still, Windows Mobile 6.5 is supposed to be made available in late September or October so there shouldn’t be a long wait involved.

But back to our test Omnia II. If you just took a brief look at the device you probably wouldn’t know that it is running Windows Mobile anyway. Samsung have installed the latest reincarnation of their proprietary TouchWiz UI on top and have done an amazing job of customizing all WinMo screens and options below it.

That’s why we will first concentrate on the proprietary TouchWix interface. The scoop on the goodies brought by Windows Mobile 6.5 will follow closely afterwards.

Samsung Widget Plus

The changes made by TouchWiz this time around run so deep that if you don’t turn the overlay off you will barely realize what kind of Windows device you are holding in your hands. Unlike the pre-release unit that we previewed back in the day, the underlying OS is nowhere to be seen this time (except for the telltale Start button up in the left corner).

If you are familiar with the TouchWiz UI you wouldn’t be surprised to find that the Samsung i8000 Omnia II actually has three different homescreens. They can be alternated by finger sweeps going from one side to the other.

All three screens are there for the user to fill up with widgets. You can also assign different wallpapers to each homescreen to tell them apart more easily.

The widgets are numerous mini applications or shortcuts to different parts of the user interface, sitting in the tray on the left side until dragged to the screen.

The available widgets vary quite a lot – from digital clock, through a mini image browser and profile manager to the CNN news application. You can also download additional widgets via the – yeah you guessed that right – the Download Widget.

Even the shortcuts bar you will notce at the screen bottom down here is a widget itself.

The TouchWiz UI with its widgets homescreen is well familiar now, but this time they are even more advanced

The customized Samsung “main menu” (that you open through either the Start button or the Cube key) is spread over several different screens that you can alternate between via sweep gestures. The total number of screens is limited to 10 but you can freely reorder icons around just like you would on an iPhone.

Speaking of which, this whole Main menu has a really flat iPhone-like structure, in unison with Samsung’s recently released feature-phones. This approach gives you a simpler what-you-see-is-what you get interface but at the price of complicating the navigation a bit.

The four screens of the TouchWiz main menu

The colorful interface offers two sets of icons, with the default one being the better-looking in our opinion. You can of course also change the color scheme if you like.

The alternative TouchWiz main menu icons

Touching the status icons top of the screen opens a set of large thumbable graphical buttons that give you quick access to the connectivity manager, the battery status detailed info and the system volume control. Of course toggling volume levels by pressing the volume rocker on the left but it doesn’t hurt to have it here too.

The large status icons are quite handy

Samsung have also preloaded the device with a nice and thumbable TaskSwitcher that obviously allows you to switch among applications and end some or all of them should you need so.

The Samsung 3D Media gate

What is it with phone manufacturers and cubes? They seem to think this is the pinnacle of UI design on touchscreens and Samsung have unsurprisingly jumped on the bandwagon. Back in the day, the cube interface of the HTC Touch received pretty positive reviews (ours included) and they’ve been the fad ever since.

Unlike the original HTC cube however, the one on the i8000 Omnia II is mostly in charge of the multimedia features on the handset.

The Samsung 3D Media gate is an intuitive six-sided cube UI that you flick on screen for quick and easy access to six key features, such as Main menu, Camera, Photo album, Music player, Video player, Games or web browser.

The 3D Media gate

The Cube rolls smoothly and usability is on a very good level indeed, reminding us of the responsiveness of the LG S-class user interface. But if you are not into flipping cubes, all the shortcuts to the content you’re looking for are available as small icons at the bottom of the screen.

The music and video player have been nicely revamped. The browser button displays your bookmarks in an innovative “card-flipping” manner and starts the default web browser (whichever that is) once you have made a selection.

Each of the apps has a nicely revamped interface

The Favorite Contacts app allows you to place shortcuts to all your favorite numbers and make them easier and quicker to dial. To be honest though, launching the cube, flipping it to the favorite contacts side and touching a contact doesn’t seem all that quick way to dial to us.

Strangely enough the motion-conrolled multimedia UI Motion Gate isn’t present on the Omnia II. It was present on our pre-release unit and it was present with the 3D Media gate on every device we’ve seen with it so far. We guess it came time for them to part ways.

Bear in mind though that the actions of the Cube key and the back button are programmable so you can set them to activate any application or even scroll one way or the other instead of their intended purpose. You get two actions per key – one activated by a short press and the other triggered by a press-and-hold.

You can also choose whether the lock key should be the only one used to turn on the phone’s display. The alternative option is to use any of the hardware keys for the purpose.

Windows Mobile 6.5 runs smoothly

As we mentioned, only after you switch off the TouchWiz customization you can get to the underlying Windows OS. Normally, we wouldn’t attempt doing that at all, but this time it’s Windows Mobile 6.5 we’re talking about here. We just had to get to it.

A new homescreen

You probably know from all those screenshots that have appeared online that the default WinMo 6.5 homescreen consists of a scrollable list. What you may not know, unless you’ve watched a bunch of demo videos, is that some items of that list are in fact side-scrollable.

By scrolling sideways you gain access to different phone features from one single item. For example scrolling the Getting started item sideways allows you to set the clock, email account, device password, Bluetooth, custom wallpaper, custom ringtone, upload music or finally even remove the Getting started item for good once you’re ready setting up the essentials.

The getting started tab allows you to set up some of the basic feautures of the phone

Another example is is Pictures, which allows you to browse the thumbnails of the photos in your gallery by side sweeps. Touching a photo opens it fullscreen in the photo album.

Some of the tabs available on the default Windows homescreen

Tapping on the music tab will start the media player. We would have preferred it to launch the Samsung Touch player instead as this is certainly our weapon of choice for listening to music on the Omnia II, but we guess that could be tweaked by Samsung later on.

The Clock item provides you with information about the current time and date as well as displaying the operator logo. Clicking over it brings you to the default windows alarms screen. Once again we are sorry that it doesn’t open the proprietary Samsung application instead as it is a whole lot nicer.

The Text and email tabs display an indication if you have received a new message or an email, while at the same time providing you with a one-click access to the message composer and the inbox respectively. You can scroll previous messages or other mailboxes by the usual side sweeping routine.

Calendar tab monitors your appointments for the day and allows you to quickly set a new one. The today screen in the calendar gets opened if you press it.

The final tab is reserved for the Internet Explorer Mobile favorites. Just as one might expect pressing any of the bookmarks opens it in the web browser.

Moving on to the main menu

Pressing the Start menu icon at the top right no longer opens a drop down menu full of shortcuts. Instead it opens what we like to call the new Windows Mobile “Main menu”. It’s got icons ordered in that oh-so-popular honeycomb pattern that so many people can easily recognize as pure WinMo 6.5 stuff thanks to numerous official and leaked screenshots.

The honecomb pattern of the main menu

In the new main menu you’ve got all the installed programs plus shortcuts to the settings menu. That Settings menu has also received a facelift and displays icons in the same honeycomb structure.

The settings menu is also redesigned

The perfectly flat structure of the Main menu can surely get a bit clumsy in time due to the huge number of icons piling up (iPhone users with loads of apps installed will know what we mean) but still we’d prefer that over the confusing experience that so many Widows Mobile new adopters have enjoyed in the past.

BlackBerry Storm 2 9520

2010-05-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

RIM are a company with style and simply hopping on the touchscreen bandwagon with another iPhone wannabe just wouldn’t suit them. They certainly realized the importance of having a full-touch device in their portfolio but wanted a clear and legible BlackBerry imprint on it.

BlackBerry Storm2 official photo

The BlackBerry Storm 9500 was a truly intriguing device but never really managed to find its place in the new market it was built for. Too bold and unusual for the BlackBerry-loyals and yet too conservative for the rest of the world, it didn’t quite get the results it was hoping for. But the successor might use the publicity the first Storm generated for its own good.

Key features

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and 2100 MHz 3G with HSPA support
3.25″ 65K-color capacitive touchscreen of 360 x 480 pixel resolution
Improved touchscreen experience with piezo-electric touch feedback system
3.15 MP autofocus camera, LED flash
BlackBerry OS 5
Wi-Fi and built-in GPS with BlackBerry maps preloaded
2 GB internal storage and a hot-swappable microSD card slot
Landscape on-screen keyboard is as close to hardware keys as we have seen on a touch phone
Nice looks and great build quality
3.5mm standard audio jack
Accelerometer sensor for screen auto-rotate
Bluetooth v2.1 and USB v2.0
Document editor
Good audio quality

Main disadvantages:

No email support without BlackBerry Internet Service account
Interface not as quick as competitors’
Chubbier than most touchscreen phones with similarly-sized displays
Mediocre camera
No FM radio
No web browser Flash support
No dedicated video-call camera

The good news is RIM decided to honor the Storm2 with a few upgrades over the original. However, none of them seems to be absolutely crucial so the greatest responsibility falls on the brand new piezo-electric touchscreen. The missing link between touchscreen and a hardware keypad is what many keen texters must have been waiting for. Or at least that’s what RIM believe.

The BlackBerry Storm2 9520 views

Now, the SurePress screen didn’t work out particularly well on the first Storm and a second failure might herald the demise of the entire series. So the BlackBerry Storm2 knows it needs to impress the audience or it might take a spot in history for all the wrong reasons.

But first thing first, let’s check out what you get when you buy a shiny new Storm2. Unboxing follows after the break.

Retail package

Considering the high price tag we find the BlackBerry Storm2 retail package fairly modest. There is no memory card included and the supplied one-piece handsfree looks second-rate. There is a leather carrying case supplied so it’s not all bad.

The Storm2 box contents

The other items in the box are a charger and microUSB data cable. As you can see in the shots, there’s also a user guide and a CD with the software required for synching your handset with a computer and that’s all.

Design and construction

The BlackBerry Storm2 9520 sports some nice design improvements over the original Storm. For one, the four keys at the bottom now blend with the display and are part of the consistent touchscreen experience, not to mention the illusion they create of an even larger display. Also the side keys are now black instead of silver and are much more inline with the general styling of the device.

The rest of the design pretty much sticks to the original, the metallic battery cover and the sleek top with invisible buttons still our favorites. Combined with the solid weight, the nice exterior gives the Storm2 the feel to match the price tag.

Most of the front of the BlackBerry Storm2 9520 is taken by the magnificent 3.25″ piezo-electric display. Its picture quality is among the best we have seen from RIM and this is quite an achievement given the consistently good BlackBerry screens.

The 360 x 480 resolution is hardly remarkable as we can easily think of a number of handsets that come with several times the pixel count but the image quality is splendid. The contrast and brightness are top-notch, easily among the best we have seen on an LCD screen.

The sunlight legibility is also great, the display easily maintaining readability and colors even in the brightest sun.

The 3.25″ display of the Storm2 has excellent image quality

Now for the really interesting part – the piezo-electric technology that stands behind the touchscreen operation. If you don’t have much experience with either of the Storm devices you might be led to believe they use the same clicking screen but that would be wrong. OK, not totally wrong perhaps, as the user experience is similar, but the improved performance of the Storm2 is certainly welcome.

The screen surface is a regular capacitive touchscreen, which responds to the lightest of touches, bare fingers only though (no gloves or stylus).

However, the Storm2 interface uses the tap-to-select and press-to-confirm logic. So, a tap will only highlight an app or a menu item. If you want to activate it, you will need to apply some pressure and push the whole display down.

On the original Storm the whole display was one regular big-ass button. Now with the piezo-electric enhancement, the screen now is much softer to touch. The piezzo technology is also said to allow multi-touch input, which wasn’t possible with the SurePress on the original Storm.

You’re not to expect pinch zoom or anything on the Strom2 but multi touch support is quite relevant to typing – think two-key combos like Shift + whatever. The reduced effort will also make sure your fingers are less tired after longer typing on the handset.

Because the Storm itself takes part in the display movement, pressing it down isn’t possible when the phone is off – the screen won’t click unless you power it up.

The new technology of the BlackBerry Storm2 9520 brings both positives and negatives but it’s pretty clear where its strength lies. Typing has never been a touchscreen forte but the Storm2 is the closest you will get to a hardware QWERTY keyboard. Quite a lot of users complained about their hands getting tired after writing a few emails on their original Storms but we guess the situation has notably improved.

Anyway, the whole clickable screen thing only makes sense perhaps in BlackBerry terms. What makes a BlackBerry handset is messaging after all, and QWERTY and adding touchscreen to the equation shouldn’t change things much.

But in regular touchscreen terms, the extra step (tap-to-select, press-to-confirm) is more of a disadvantage. In any case, we would strongly advise to try it in person before dropping the cash. And this will involve at least an hour or two of typing and navigating, not just a 5 minute trial.

Design and construction (continued)

The four controls on the front panel are operated in the exact same way as the display. Those include the Call and End buttons, as well as the Menu and Back keys.

The keys are also (kind of) touch-sensitive

On top of the front panel of the Storm2 we find the earpiece and the LED indicator. The status LED notifies of missed calls and messages, low battery and charging.

The earpiece and status LED are on top

The left side of the BlackBerry Storm2 9520 hosts the microUSB port and one of the convenience keys. There isn’t a cover for the data jack so dust is likely to accumulate.

The microUSB port and the left convenience key

The default function of the left convenience key of the Storm2 is voice commands, but you can change that as you see fit.

On the right, we find the other convenience key, a 3.5mm audio jack and the volume rocker. The 3.5mm audio jack is exposed too. The convenience key is a two-step button, which suggests that it is best suited for its default purpose – operating the autofocus camera. Yet if you aren’t much into using your phone camera (which is likely if you are looking at the Storm2 at all) you can assign it a different functionality.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to assign two applications to it despite it being capable of handling them on half press/full press.

The right side view: volume rocker and 3.5mm audio jack • convenience key and lanyard eyelet

The BlackBerry Storm2 9520 loudspeaker grill is located on top of the handset, between the two hidden keys. Those take care for switching the Storm2 on/off and muting the handset. The on/off key also locks/unlocks the display.

The loudspeaker is flanked by the two invisible keys

The bottom of the Storm2 is very plain with the microphone pinhole providing the only entertainment there.

The Storm2 mouthpiece

The back hosts the 3.15MP autofocus camera and the LED flash. You shouldn’t expect miracles from the shooter given its specs and the RIM track record in imaging.

The 3.2 megapixel camera is complemented by a LED flash

Under the solid metal (me likey!) battery cover hides the 1400 mAh Li-Ion battery. Given the ample capacity it’s little surprise that it can last for almost two full days under fairly heavy usage (about 2 hours a day of fiddling with the phone and 30 minutes of calls).

The 1400 mAh battery is sufficient for the Storm2 power needs

The microSD card slot is also here. It is fully hot-swappable and has no trouble handling the largest memory cards currently available on the market (16GB). The only problem is you will have to open the cover each time you access it but we consider it a fair sacrifice for having one less aperture on the surface.

So, as you might have sensed we are delighted with the build quality of the BlackBerry Storm2 9520. There is no wobbling display, or gaps between panels or anything else to raise questions. The handset just radiates sturdiness.

The Storm2 fits nice in our hands

BlackBerry OS 5 goes touch

The BlackBerry Storm2 9520 runs the new, fifth, version of the company’s proprietary OS. It brings a couple of nice new extras to the touchscreen-operated Storm, unlike most other BlackBerry devices which benefited very little from it.

If you have been keeping track you would know that we aren’t in love with the BlackBerry OS looks but, in all fairness, the touch implementation is a bit better. The little 3D touch to the icons and the few nice transitions look better than what the 9700 Bold has to offer.

Touch makes the BlackBerry OS look better

The BlackBerry OS 5 also introduces kinetic scrolling which greatly facilitates handing of longer lists. The automatic rotation is also supposed to be faster now. Those upgrades have also made their way to the original Storm via a firmware update so they aren’t Storm2-exclusive.

Unfortunately, very little has been done about the tons of plain ugly text-only submenus that can still be found in the BlackBerry Storm2. Even with the slickest theme applied you are still just a couple of clicks away from these eyesores.

Unfortunately, there is still a lot of work to be done

And with the Storm2 we aren’t talking hardcore business users only – the target audience has now widened and might include some people that, you know, might have an eye for the aesthetics. Touchscreen handsets need to provide nice user experience or else their existence is pointless.

Coming with a generally new touchscreen platform took quite a lot of R&D effort, but they should have saved some for the UI polishing. We really hate it when nice ideas fail only because of negligence. But we digress.

The homescreen is pretty well organized with 8 (by default) shortcut buttons placed at the bottom and all status icons at the top. The profiles can also be accessed straight from here, as well as two other features that you choose to assign to the convenience keys. Tilting the handset to the side doesn’t bring a landscape mode of the homescreen but opens the main menu instead.

You can enter the main menu by simply turning the handset landscape

The BlackBerry Storm2 has a menu structure completely different from any other touchscreen handset on the market (save for the original Storm of course). Unlike the iPhone’s what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach, you have a menu button here, which revels a list of context-sensitive options. You might want to spend some time learning what is available where if you are a newcomer to the BlackBerry world.

A press and hold of the menu key brings up the task manager

We are pleased with the Storm2 performance. Lagging was very rare and the handset seemed pretty stable for the time of our review. There was only one restart in about a week’s time and that’s not bad at all. RIM doesn’t provide any information about the CPU inside the Storm2 but either it is faster than the original Storm or the new version of the OS is better optimized to make the device feel snappier.

Phonebook: this is Spartaaaaaa

Sorry, we just couldn’t help it – the Storm2 Spartan phonebook graphics really brought it out in us. The unlimited capacity and the decent functionality is of course what matters more but, again, the overall experience counts too.

Not quite the looker this phonebook, is it?

The search line color has been changed from black to white in the new 5.0 version but that hardly makes much difference.

The contacts get listed alphabetically by first, last name or company in one of those black and white lists that we warned you about. You can search contacts by gradually typing a name like on almost any other phone.

You can put your contacts in one of two categories – personal and business and then filter your phonebook accordingly. There is also grouping available this time and you can create as many groups as you like.

Editing a contact gives you a vast number of fields which are organized in several sub-groups. You can also replicate some of the fields (those that you are going to need anyway) as many times as you like.

Telephony fares much better

Getting some eyesores from the phonebook we went over to inspecting the Storm telephony and we were in for a nice treat this time.

We really dig the Smart dial feature, which works when inserting contacts in messaging too.

The BlackBerry Storm2 9520 in-call screen offers four large and easy to press buttons plus five shortcuts to features you are most likely to need during a call. Those include notes, calendar, contacts, dial pad and home screen. Well that last one might not be what you need during a call but it’s the quickest way to an application that is not on the list.

The Storm2 in-call screen

BIS messaging only

The BlackBerry Storm2 9520 can handle all common types of messages – SMS, MMS and email. It also has the BlackBerry instant messenger preinstalled.

The Storm2 has a fairly simple and easy to use organization of messaging and all messages are composed through a common editor. The good news is that version 5 of the OS also introduces threaded messaging to help you organize your inbox even better.

The Storm2 message editor

It’s about time we discussed the text input methods available on the Storm2 in more detail. The handset offers a choice of three different keyboards and we did find them all quite pleasing. Those are the same as on the previous Storm, except that now that less effort is required to push the screen your fingers are less tired of long typing.

Let’s start though with the regular multitap keypad. Its predictive writing works much better with the touchscreen because you can easily select the word you’re looking for from the suggested options. That aside, it works as good as any other multitap keypad, only the keys are even larger.

It’s multitap for the traditionalists…

The good old BlackBerry SureType keypad is already making its way on several other platforms and that’s for a very good reason. It’s easy to use and if you master the AutoText (that’s the BlackBerry T9) you might as well match the QWERTY typing speeds at times.

…SureType for the BlackBerry faithfuls…

The nice thing is users are free to choose whether the SureType or the multitap keypad should appear by default in portrait mode.

There’s also a portrait QWERTY keyboard but we don’t think it will be a very popular option. Its keys aren’t big enough for large handed users and if you really insist on the QWERTY layout you would do way better tilting the handset to the side and getting the real keyboard experience.

…portrait QWERTY for the ones with really small fingers…OK, we said it: the real keyboard experience. The landscape QWERTY takes slightly more than half the screen height and comes in a four-row layout. Keys are large enough and with the display sinking on every press you can really speed your way through tons of text. The feedback provided is both visual (blue halo when a key is touched) and physical and with the two combined you get excellent results.

… and the real deal – the landscape full QWERTY keyboard

In general, this is a virtual QWERTY keyboard but it gets as close to a regular press as we have seen. What’s more, it’s less tiring on the fingers as the phone itself helps you push the screen – the piezo-electric technology works like power steering in cars.

So far so good with the BlackBerry messaging department – the handset behaves beautifully when it comes to text input. Now the catch: out of the box you can only set up BlackBerry Internet Service email accounts on the Storm. This means that without a proper Blackberry service plan the handset is just a plain email-less device and globally there are quite a lot of carriers that do not support BIS yet.

Music player does the job

The BlackBerry Storm2 9520 music won’t get too many wows for its looks but it does a fairly decent job. If you are mostly about listening to music and not really into fiddling with different player options then you might feel just fine with it.

The Storm2 music player

The music player sorts the music library automatically by artist, album and genre and you can search your tracks by gradual typing. You can also create your own playlists in no time.

There’re equalizers too and different appearance settings this time

Album art is also supported and there is a single track repeat option. Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in the background. You can then go back to it via the task manager or the main menu. Strangely enough, there’s no indication of the currently playing song on the home screen.

A great video player

Watching videos was one of our favorite activities on the BlackBerry Storm2 9520. The great picture quality, the ample screen and the good number of supported codecs make the handset a decent portable player.

The video player usually works fullscreen with the virtual buttons only appearing upon a tap on the display.

The Storm2 makes a good portable video player

The best part about the Storm2 video player is that it comes with DivX and XviD support. We had no trouble playing most of our test videos on the handset, which is better than most of its RIM stablemates.

So in most cases you will only need to upload the video to your Storm2 and start the player – no converting necessary.

Passable image gallery

The image gallery of the Storm2 is nothing spectacular, being hardly any different than the one we saw on its predecessor a year ago. It does pretty well overall with the 100% zoom shortcut earning our appreciation.

The Storm2 image gallery

The gallery has standard functionality including thumbnail and list view of the images. It also offers finger gestures, meaning you can browse pictures by sweeping your finger across the screen. You can also zoom in on a photo by pressing the screen and sweeping with your finger. Opting between portrait and landscape mode is automatic, thanks to the built-in accelerometer. All you need to do to switch modes is to flip the phone sideways.

Looking at a single photo

We are particularly happy with the zoom to actual size shortcut on the BlackBerry devices. This gives you a quick and easy way to review photos in the finest detail possible.

Overall, picture browsing is decently fast but the zooming is on the slow side. There is some lagging even when it is handling 3 megapixel photos, let alone if you upload higher-res images.

An average 3 megapixel shooter

The BlackBerry Storm2 9520 is equipped with a 3 megapixel autofocus camera and a LED flash. We are used to expecting next to nothing from the BlackBerry cameras so when one actually produces average photos we are nicely surprised.

The camera interface is still on the worse side of devices we have tested. Since the display has the same aspect ratio as the camera sensor, the readings that appear at the bottom cover a part of the viewfinder and impede proper framing.

The camera options are also pretty uncomfortable to access as there are no shortcuts on the screen meaning that you have to dig in the menu. Not that there are too many settings you can apply, but still.

The camera UI isn’t really user friendly

The best part (or rather the only good part) of the camera is undoubtedly the image-geotagging, which allows you to automatically record your location in the images EXIF data.

The few other settings available are: white balance, color effects and digital image stabilization. There is also the obligatory picture size and quality.

The image quality of the BlackBerry Storm2 9520 is about average in the 3 megapixel league. It’s about the same as on the Bold 9700 and close to what the other manufacturers offered a few years ago.

We are not enjoying particularly good weather around the office these days so the camera samples might seem even worse, but actually the amount of resolved detail is acceptable. The noise levels are acceptable for a 3 megapixel shooter in those kinds of conditions.

Contrast is OK, though hardly impressive, and the colors could have used a tad more saturation but they aren’t too bad overall.

Here go several samples so you can judge the image quality yourselves.

BlackBerry Storm2 9520 camera samples

Uninspiring video recording

If there is one thing that is generally worse than a BlackBerry still camera that would be the BlackBerry camcorder. Yet the Storm2 isn’t completely hopeless offering videos with a maximum resolution of 480 x 352 pixels and framerate of a good 30fps.

The camcorder viewfinder

There is still way too much compression applied and the colors seem a bit too dull but let’s not get too picky. In the BlackBerry world any video where you can tell a person from a bus is considered good.

Videos are captured in 3GP format and if you fancy, you can apply various color effects. The LED flash can also be set to work as a video light.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S

2010-05-14T06:29:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Competition is certainly one of the things that make the Android OS so much fun. There are already several manufacturers involved in the Google OS game and each of them has already released a flagship that aims at the peak of the food chain.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S official shots

Samsung might be coming a tad late to the party but they are obviously entering with a bang. The I9000 Galaxy S packs a display of the greatest technology that the mobile world has ever seen and a pretty big one at that. A snappy 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, HD video recording and a sweetly slim waistline make it look like the real deal in the eyes of every real geek.

Let’s take a look at the other features that the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S puts to the table.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S at a glance:

General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/1900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone
Dimensions: 122.4 x 64.2 x 9.9 mm, 118 g
Display: 4″ 16M-color Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 480 x 800 pixels
CPU: Samsung Cortex A8 Hummingbird 1 GHz processor
OS: Android 2.1 (Eclair)
Memory: 8/16GB storage, microSD card slot
Camera: 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with face detection and touch focus; 720p video recording at 30fps
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack
Misc: TouchWiz 3.0 UI, built-in accelerometer, multi-touch input, proximity sensor, Swype text input

As you can see the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S specs sheet is long enough to be considered high-end. What’s even better is that it manages to put something on top, namely the large 4” Super AMOLED display, which should become the new thing to beat if it has the performance of the Samsung S8500 Wave unit.

The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S at ours

The TouchWiz-like Android customization still had some performance issues on the Galaxy Spica so we will have to see if those are fixed for the Galaxy S. We are also yet to check out how the new 1GHz Samsung Cortex A8 CPU compares to its Snapdragon peers in the Android environment, but we have a good feeling about it.

At any rate the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is a fine piece of mobile technology and we are as eager as you to see if it will actually manage to top the charts or end up in the chasing pack. So let’s not waste any more time and head to the hardware part of the preview where we’ll examine the Galaxy S ergonomics.

Design and construction

Simplicity is usually the key when designing a high-end multimedia powerhouse, but the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is a bit of an exception. The dotted back of the phone is definitely an attention-grabber but we’re not exactly sure if it will be everyone’s cup of tea.

We will let you decide whether you like it or not by looking at the studio shots of the phone.

What we aren’t particularly happy about the all-plastic body of the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S. It is so prone to fingerprints and smudges that only a few short minutes spent with it are enough to turn it into a greasy mess. A flagship smartphone deserves better and if Samsung though metal was too much at least the plastic used for building the Spica would have been a nicer choice.

Moving along, the oh-so-marvelous 4” Super AMOLED display of WVGA resolution dominates the front of the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S. Just as we hoped the unit has performance identical to the smaller, 3.5” unit mounted on the S8500 Wave and since bigger is always better when talking about displays, we now pronounce it the new king of mobile screens.

The Galaxy S 4”Super AMOLED display will rock your world

In case you have missed the Samsung S8500 Wave preview, let us remind you what the Super AMOLED technology is all about. It retains the amazingly deep blacks that characterize the other AMOLED displays but does away with the top glass panel to vastly improve viewing angles and sunlight legibility.

Indeed, the most beautiful display to look at indoors doesn’t lose its charm when taken outside and into the sun. The viewing angles are also bordering on perfection with the Galaxy S display performing as if it was printed on paper.

The sensitivity is as good as is to be expected from a capacitive touchscreen unit. The gentlest of touches is enough for a click to be registered, but gloves and styluses are a no-go.

Below the display sit only three keys – it’s a relatively low count for the Android family. The touch-sensitive settings and back buttons are on either side of the tactile feedback home key.

The three keys below the display

A long press on the settings key activates the search field, just as if you had a dedicated search key. As usual pressing and holding the home key activates the task switcher.

The transition between the touch-sensitive screen and the touch-sensitive keys is nice and seamless but the tactile feedback button might be a little confusing at first.

The power and screen lock/unlock key on the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is placed high up on the right side of the handset. It’s certainly not the most comfortable place for that button as it is a bit hard to reach and also not the first place where we would look for it (still Samsung are consistent with its placement on many phones). Then again, this might just be another thing that just needs getting used to.

The power key is high up on the right side

Unfortunately there’s no dedicated camera key on the Galaxy S, which is a pity given the pretty decent camera.

On the left we find the volume rocker, which provides enough pressing area and good enough tactile feedback to make usage trouble-free.

The volume rocker on the left

The bottom of the I9000 Galaxy S packs nothing but the mouthpiece.

There’s only the microphone pinhole at the bottom

On the top of the phone is the tiny plastic lid that covers the microUSB slot and the unprotected 3.5mm standard audio jack.

The microUSB jack is covered with a plastic lid, unlike the 3.5mm audio jack

We complete our trip at the blue-dotted back of the phone. This is where the 5 megapixel camera lens and the loudspeaker grill are located. There is no flash of any kind so low-light photography or video capturing is basically out of the question with the Galaxy S.

The 5 megapixel camera lens and the loudspeaker grill are at the back

The microSD card slot is under the battery cover but luckily is hot-swappable. The battery cover is pretty hard to remove and you need to apply some extra pressure but it’s no biggie.

The microSD card slot is under the battery cover, but is still hot-swappable

The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S looks and feels quite sturdy. The general ergonomics are also decent as long as you are able to live with the size, but that’s something you know you are signing up for right from the start. The weight of the Galaxy S is impressively low for the size and it’s noticeably lighter than any other touch phone with a screen above 3.5 inches that we’ve laid our hands on.

The Galaxy S held in hand

Android and the TouchWizard of Oz

The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is the third Android phone by Samsung and the second to get the TouchWiz treatment. Compared to the Samsung I5700 Galaxy Spica, the transformation is more pronounced – and it’s better than vanilla Android. Ok, the changes may not change the user experience profoundly, but we just like to see new stuff and we’re already getting bored with Android looking almost the same on devices from different manufacturers.

The TouchWiz UI running on top of Android 2.1

The customizations start from the homescreen where you get up to nine panes to populate with widgets. Unlike the HTC Sense, you don’t have to use all the screens all the time so if you don’t need that many deleting the extra ones will speed up the navigation.

Up to nine panes can be added to the homescreen

The option to select a default homescreen like on the Galaxy Spica is unfortunately gone.

Also, with the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S, the default homescreen is the leftmost not the central one, so navigating around calls for a lot of swiping. Things might be different in the final version though.

Samsung have also added 8 widgets of their own, available under “Samsung widgets” when adding content to your homescreen. Those include three different clocks (Calendar, Weather, Dual and Stock clocks).

There’s also the Feeds & Update widget (shows status updates from social networks), Days (lets you snap a photo of something and displays upcoming events and notes, great for a reminder) and Buddies now, which is similar to Photo contacts.

The Samsung widgets

Next, the Galaxy S has four buttons docked on the bottom of its homescreen, which stay at the bottom even when you open the menu. The rightmost button is the Applications button, which brings up the menu and the other three you can change with whatever icon you like.

The four default buttons lead to dial pad, contacts, messaging and applications

The main menu consists of side-scrollable panes, much like the homescreen, instead of a vertical scrollable grid (like in vanilla Android). You cannot add new pages, but new ones become available when the old ones fill up.

An interesting feature is that most of the preloaded apps have a grey rounded rectangle for background and the ones you’ve installed have a blue rectangle behind them. While editing the menu, you can uninstall applications (only ones you’ve installed) just by tapping them – the only way to remove an app used to be by going through the Applications section of the Settings menu.

Additionally, the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S packs all the updates brought by Android 2.1, like several new widgets and Live wallpapers as seen on the Nexus One – so, no need to envy Nexus One users for the animated homescreens, but keep in mind that this puts a strain on the battery.

The Live Wallpapers are one of the goodies that Android 2.1 brought

The task switcher has been left untouched by the TouchWiz changes, but the notification area has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and sound toggles on top. These are quite handy when you need to turn on or off one of these features – no more digging through the Settings.

Even better – if there are no known Wi-Fi networks available, a notification appears that lets you pick a network. This makes connecting to any Wi-Fi network a breeze.

The lock screen has been TouchWizified as well – it offers the Smart Unlock functionality. It allows you to assign letters to certain apps – you can draw a ‘B’ on the lock screen and that will unlock the phone bring you straight to the browser.

Overall, the changes that TouchWiz brings to the table makes Android easier to use – the docked icons are the fastest way to launch the most commonly used apps, the toggles in the notifications area let you easily switch off unneeded features to save on battery usage, adding more homescreens only as you need them is better than having 5 (or 7 in, uh, certain UI mods) mostly empty screens. In short, we like what Samsung have done with the place.

We’re not using a finalized version of the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S for this preview but the interface is smooth and fast. There is no sign that the hardware is struggling with the software and the software spares no effort to animate each transition.

The applications work consistently well – from the camera through the gallery to the document viewer, everything feels very fluid. By the time the software is finalized everything should be running smooth as silk.

Mind you, the lagging that may be noticed at times occurs when closing apps and isn’t anywhere to be seen when the app are actually running, which points to the fact that those have more to do with the early firmware version of our unit, rather than hardware limitations.

We ran the benchmarks on the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S but the finalized software might be more optimized so we won’t publish them just yet. The Galaxy S runs on a 1GHz Cortex A8 processor – Hummingbird – but when we put it head to head against the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 and its 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, the Galaxy S came out on top.

It won by a small margin, but still it won. The Samsung Galaxy Spica and HTC Legend turned in understandably lower results. We’ll have to see how the Galaxy S compares to another member in the 1GHz club – HTC Desire – but like we said, we’ll wait for the final version.

The HTC Legend is still unbeaten when it comes to graphics and the Samsung Galaxy Spica is ahead of the Galaxy S too – but keep in mind that they only need to update about a third of the pixels that the Galaxy S has to work with.

Text input, Android meets Swype

Text input is not usually a particularly exciting part of a preview but the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is different. It features an on-screen QWERTY keyboard by Swype in both portrait and landscape.

The way Swype works is instead of tapping on keys you sweep a finger across the keyboard. To “type” quick, you need to put a finger on the Q key and sweep over to U, then I, then C and all the way to K. There’s a visual trail that marks your finger movement across the keyboard.

It doesn’t matter if the trace goes over other keys, in fact you can’t help it. But Swype recognizes the word you intended to enter with surprising accuracy – it correctly guessed “xylophone” without breaking a sweat.

Swype is a novel way to type

The high precision means that even fast sweeps will be recognized correctly, so you can enter text very quickly and keep the error rate low at the same time. With shorter words, there might be several combinations possible – in that case Swype simply prompts you to pick which one you meant. It has a pretty big dictionary built-in, but you can teach it new words too (just type them out the regular way and it will store it for next time).

There’s an excellent tutorial, which shows you step by step how to do everything with Swype – capitalizing, punctuation, writing “soon” rather than “son” and a few other tricks.

Swype is very unobtrusive – it presents the user with a regular-looking QWERTY keyboard, on which you can type by tapping the keys the old-fashioned way. Swype is cool though once you get the hang of it.

We think that Swype is a great improvement over the regular virtual keyboard and we’d like to see it in more handsets. Most importantly though, it’s there if you like it – if not, you don’t even have to turn it off or anything. Just type instead of sweep.

Gallery impresses with 3D, disappoints with downsized images

The Samsung I9000 Samsung S gallery is identical to the one found on the Nexus One. It automatically locates the images and videos, no matter where they are stored. The gallery packs cool 3D effects and transitions, which we find rather attractive.

Images and videos placed in different folders appear in different sub-galleries that automatically get the name of the folder, which is very convenient – just like a file manager.

The different albums appear as piles of photos which reorganize in neat grids once selected.

The gallery certainly is a looker

Alternatively, you photos can be organized by date with the help of the toggle in the top right corner which switches between the grid view and another view, which separates photos into different piles, according to when they were taken.

In grid view, there’s a date slider, which can also be used to find photos taken on a certain date.

When you dig down into several sub-folders, you can use the use the tabs on the top of the screen to jump back several levels to the folder you need (similar to how, say, Explorer on Windows 7 works).

The gallery supports finger scrolling or panning so you can skip images without having to return to the default view. Just swipe to the left or to the right when looking at a photo in fullscreen mode and the previous/next image will appear.

The pinch-zooming is also available here thanks to the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S multi-touch support but you can also use double tap or even the +/- buttons.

Looking at a single photo

Strangely, you can’t zoom images up to 100% of their resolution. Obviously the gallery displays only downsized versions of your shots and you need to transfer them to a computer if you’re into pixel-peeping.

Video player eats DivX/XviD and 720p videos for breakfast

The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is among the best performers in the Android family as far as video playback is concerned. In addition to packing a dedicated video player app (though playing videos through the gallery is still possible) it also has DivX and XviD video support, which is very rare in the Google OS family.

Performance with higher-res videos is great – it played 720p videos like a champ. Small wonder, considering it can record 720p videos. There’s no TV-Out but thanks to the DLNA support you can still stream videos and photos to your DLNA-enabled TV or media player (any PC with Wi-Fi and DLNA-capable software would do too).

The Galaxy S video player is the best Android has seen

The interface of the video player itself is as simple and as it could possibly be. You get a list of all videos available on the phone and the controls while playing a video boil down to play/pause and skip buttons, as well as a draggable progress bar.

Camera

Android is keeping out of the megapixel race and the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is no exception – it packs a 5MP camera, which seems to be the norm for higher end Androids. This one’s pretty bare though – no flash, not even a shutter key.

The user interface is standard Samsung for the most part – and that’s not a bad thing. It’s easily thumbable and offers readily accessible scenes and shooting modes. It features geo-tagging, face and smile detection too.

At first it appears that the lack of a dedicated shutter key and the virtual shutter key that’s not even half-pressable are to the detriment of the camera but once you get used to it, Samsung’s solution is very good.

You use the touch focus feature to focus on your subject and tap the shutter key – the camera auto-focus is among the fastest we’ve seen. This makes focusing on the subject (and possibly reframing the shot to observe the rule of thirds) by half-pressing the shutter obsolete. You frame the shot how you want it, focus on what you want and snap the photo – it takes some getting used to, but in the end it’s a great solution.

The image quality is not the best in the 5MP range. There’s a fair amount of noise in the photos and even though the image processing algorithms suppress it, they also smear out the fine detail.

Images are also slightly underexposed but at least there is no clipping in the shadows and highlights. Anyway, we’ll delay final judgment until we see the finalized version of the Samsung Galaxy S software – a few tweaks here and there could improve the quality.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S camera samples

Video recording

The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is in the elite club of mobile phones that captures 720p video.

Videos are captured in 1280 x 720 pixels resolution at 30 fps – unlike the Samsung i8910 OmniaHD and the Sony Ericsson Vivaz, which capture videos at 24fps. The amount of captured detail is good, noise levels are low – the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is a worthy replacement of those pocket HD cameras.

But there are still things in the software that need to be worked out – videos can run up as much as several megabytes per second of video. The data rate will probably be reduced to something more reasonable in the final version of the software.

We would like to apologize for the poor video sample that we are giving you below. Unfortunately due to some bug of our early pre-release unit most of the videos we took got accidentally deleted and this is the only one we have left.

Final words

The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is certainly a remarkable handset. Its software might need a bit more tuning before it hits the shelves but its hardware is already impressive enough.

Certainly having the best display in the business will attract quite a lot of customers by itself. Now add the HD video recording that the Galaxy S holds against its competitors and you get yourselves a pretty decent deal.

We wouldn’t go as far as saying that Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is the best Android handset just yet, but it’s certainly in contention for the throne. And if Samsung manages to polish up the already really nice TouchWiz UI before the Galaxy S gets released officially it will certainly become the handset to beat.

Even more, it’s expected that it will hit the market in about a month, which is even sooner than the Samsung Wave planned release. It will easily be your first opportunity to get yourself a SuperAMOLED HD-flaunting smartphone.

It’s pretty clear that Samsung’s first attempts of an Android-running flagship is a success but the jury is still out on whether or not it’s the uberphone that can make up for the delay as its competitors are already on the market.