Samsung Galaxy S III: Features which make it Unique

The Samsung Galaxy S III has been announced with much fanfare. So what has changed in Samsung Galaxy S III that is different from Samsung Galaxy S II? The Display? The Processor? The OS? Yeah.. Yeah.. All of those have changed. The Galaxy S III now sports a ‘Super AMOLED HD’ display. The processor is now quad-core and the phone now comes with ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ as the default OS.

All of these are fine and yes they represent an improvement over the previous Galaxy. But, the real improvement shows up in the following features:

Smart Stay

More and more smartphones are being manufactured with 4.5+ inch displays that have made many people want to read articles, magazines or books on their smartphones. The Samsung Galaxy S III is no exception as it has a 4.8 inch display that will enable people to read them without any problem. But, how many times have you been faced with the following situation: You are reading an article and suddenly the display turns off. You had to press a button or touch the display each time to wake the screen up. Samsung has taken note of such a situation and has come up with a smart solution. It has put the front camera to work. If you have enabled the ‘Smart Stay’ option, the display doesn’t turn off while you are looking at it

Pop-Up Play

You are watching an interesting video and you just remember that you have to send out a short e-mail urgently but you do not want to stop watching the video. While previously this wasn’t possible, worry not, as Samsung has addressed this situation too with ‘Pop-Up Play’. This feature allows you to play a video in a pop-up window that can be dragged around the screen while you are interacting with other apps. So you want to continue watching a video while you are browsing through that photo gallery, you can happily do it now!

Direct Call

You are sending an SMS to a person and suddenly you feel that it is better to talk to them. Now, how many times has this happened to you, courtesy: Your Girlfriend!! Now, you can just hold your phone to your ear and the phone will automatically dial their number. This makes you avoid cancelling the message, going to the contact list and dialing their number. Pretty handy, isn’t it?

Buddy Share

You have gone on a trip to a place with your friends and you have captured many photos using your smartphone. If your friends want those photos too, you normally upload it on a cloud storage site and give your friends the link to download the photos. But, the buddy share feature lets you avoid that complicated process. When you have tagged your friends in the photos, you can send those photos instantly

Social Tag

You are browsing through the photo gallery and you suddenly want to view what the current status messages of people in the photo. Woah! This is one feature that even many people wouldn’t have even thought about. With the help of the Galaxy S III, it is now possible.

All the above features, which the Samsung Galaxy III comes integrated with now, present an indisputable case that smartphones are increasingly becoming smarter. It now remains to be seen how much smarter they can become in the coming future.

Stay Tuned..!!

Why do Android Phone Manufacturers Need to Update their Phones?

The other day, my roommate wanted to know how he could connect his 3G enabled android phone to his laptop in order to just surf the internet. I asked him to go the 'Settings' application on the android phone and enable 'Tethering'. When he went to the 'Settings' application, he couldn't find the option. So, I immediately checked out the android version he was using and I found that it was Android 2.1 (Eclair). As you guys would be knowing, tethering capabilities have been enabled in Android 2.2 (Froyo). So, I had to look up the internet to find out what were the alternative options that I could adopt to enable tethering. While some websites prescribed me to root the phone (which my friend was dead against. Obviously, since that nullifies your warranty!!!), one other website prescribed me to download a simple application to enable wireless tethering on an Android 2.1 (Eclair) phone.

There are a lot of people out there who wouldn't go through this painful process of finding out what their smartphones in fact offer and what they do not. They wouldn't know whether their smartphone would be capable of tethering or not. If the phone is updated to a better version which provides more features they will easily spot it and use it. If the phone isn't updated, they just accept the fact their smartphone is in reality, not that smart!!! It was decided at a Google I/O conference that manufacturers will support devices until 18 months after their release, but I hardly see that happening. A case-in-point is my roommate's phone. He purchased his android phone one-and-a-half years back and it still hasn't been updated from 'Eclair' to 'Froyo'. In the age of 'Ice Cream Sandwich' such news sounds like blasphemy!!!.

You don't need an expert to tell you that what's going is on not right. People purchase their smartphones investing a lot of money and they expect it to get updated to the latest versions at least for a reasonable period of time. I had a 'Nokia E71' previously (I have an Android now!!!) and even 2 years after purchasing that phone, I used to receive updates (Long live Nokia!!). I still have a sense of attachment with that phone and even today, my father uses it and he is very happy.

Let's look at the whole issue from 2 perspectives: the 'Customer' and the 'Mobile Manufacturer'. As far as the customers are concerned, the example I quoted above is what makes them develop a sense of 'TRUST' towards a brand. This is what makes them 'LOYAL' to a particular brand. There are plenty of people, even today, who will swear by a Nokia phone even though other manufacturers have surpassed it in terms of features integrated in their smartphones. When customers become loyal to a brand due to the immense satisfaction they have had from using it, in the future, if they want to purchase a phone, they will consider the same brand from where they had purchased earlier.

As far as the mobile manufacturers are concerned,  they can derive a lot of value from the customers due to the sense of loyalty that they develop in people. Just to make this point more clear, movies like 'Avatar' and 'The Dark Knight' haven't become 'Top Grossers' just due to the high ticket rates or the movie being watched by more people. The reason that they became 'Top Grossers' is because they had attracted 'Repeat Audience'. That is the exact reason why they had become so commercially successful. If you want an analogy with respect to the 'Smartphone' industry, you can always remember the company from Cupertino which has shown that it will take care of its customers who had purchased its phones even 3 years back. That is where the current crop of android phone manufacturers should aim. Otherwise, it is a known fact that smart people will buy only those flagship phones from the android phone manufacturers, that they believe would be updated in the future.

Stay Tuned.!!



What does a Google Tablet mean?

“In the next 6 months, we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality” – Eric Schmidt

The above move from Google had to come sooner or later. Most of us will agree that the year 2011 was the year when Google pushed really hard to bring out a competitor to the hugely successful iPad. Has Google been successful? Let’s look at some numbers for finding out answers.

According to a recent report that was published by IDC (International Data Corporation), Apple’s iPad leads the tablet market share with about 61.5% while Google’s Android tablets took the second place with 32.4% and Samsung having the highest market share (among Android) with 5.6%. So, a group of big names like Samsung, Motorola, HTC, Asus etc. who supported Android couldn’t quite match up to Apple’s iPad which continues to dominate the tablet market even today. From the start of 2011, when everybody witnessed the much awaited XOOM tablets from Motorola to the end of 2011, when everybody saw the latest Galaxy Tabs from Samsung, Google has never been able to produce a worthy competitor.  Why?

The answer mainly lies with respect to ownership of hardware and software. As I already said in my previous posts, Apple is always in control of both of its components that make up the tablet: Hardware and Software. So, it precisely knows how to produce a tablet that contains software that can take the maximum advantage of the underlying hardware. This was what was lacking in Google’s tablet strategy. The fact is that Google has always been producing software (with not much of a great idea regarding the hardware’s cohesiveness with the software) which was being modified extensively by other android-tablet manufacturers who put that software onto the tablets. Google never really worked closely with any of the manufacturers as far as tablets are concerned when it ideally should have, as Google is not responsible for the hardware part of the devices. The reason that people can see a great phone like Google’s Galaxy Nexus today is because Google hasn’t left any stone unturned in its desire to produce a phone that can take the user experience to a next level. It has coordinated really well with partner companies like Texas Instruments, Samsung etc. and the result now is there for everybody to see.

So, does it now make sense for Google to produce its own tablet? Absolutely. Many experts have always believed that the stock ROM offered by Google is always better than the modified ROMs like Touchwiz and Sense in terms of general zippiness. There is some truth in these opinions as evidenced by the benchmark scores that the devices get and the kind of lag that some people experience in tablets being produced by manufacturers. The latest truth comes in form of stock Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) running in the Galaxy Nexus. Thankfully, Google has realized this and is now wasting no time in bringing to market as what Eric Schmidt said "the tablet of the HIGHEST quality". Go Google.!!

Stay tuned..!!

The Truth about the 'Core'

So, do you absolutely have to have a dual-core phone to enjoy the best experience on a smartphone? The question might be a one-liner but the answer is not quite simple.

You need to take note of the fact that most of the dual-core phones that are being launched in the market right now are actually running the same operating system: Android. Is it a coincidence?? Probably Not. For knowing the reason, you need to get to know about the companies a little deeply.

Most of you opine that Apple’s phones are cool. I know many of you use it for the kind of oohs and aahs that it draws from the surrounding crowd rather than truly knowing why you need it. But the kind of image that Apple has developed in the minds of consumers has a good grounding.

Apple is responsible for both the components of its smartphone and tablet devices: The ‘Hardware’ and the ‘Software’. Yes!! Apple manufactures its own hardware (Though it procures individual components from other manufacturers, it is consequently responsible for its own hardware) and also software: the iOS operating system. The software isn’t Open-Source. It is Proprietary and only controlled by Apple. So, Apple, in control of both the components that make up its smartphones, knows how to design its software to complement its hardware or how to design its hardware in order to complement its software. So, it is able to offer a complete package and hence you can feel that in all of its phones. Usually, you can see zero lag while operating Apple’s phones as the software is optimized for the underlying hardware and that hasn’t warranted a more powerful smartphone. Hence you did not find a dual-core processor in an Apple phone (until iPhone 4S) when other manufacturers were going hammer and tongs releasing dual-core smartphones. In summary, you have only 1 kind of software i.e. iOS and it only runs on one kind of hardware i.e. Apple’s devices. This approach works for Apple as they have full control over the final output. They have generated, are generating, and will generate huge profits with such phones but the market reach is going to be less.

Now, take the example of Android. It is an open-source operating system and the stock-build of Android is delivered by Google. Google is only responsible for the software part. Android is an open-source operating system and manufacturers are free to customize ‘Android’ to suit their own phones. Samsung has its own skin called ‘Touchwiz’, HTC has its own skin called ‘Sense’ and Motorola has its own skin called ‘Motoblur’ and so on. These different flavors of android are not being optimized extensively for the underlying hardware. In fact, ‘Froyo’ (Android 2.2) and early versions of ‘Gingerbread’ (Android 2.3) don’t even recognize the true power of dual-core smartphones. It is only the latest version: Android 2.3.5 which can actually take advantage of dual-core power being offered by the smartphones. The other build of Android: ‘Honeycomb’ (Android 3.0) also supports dual-core but that operating system is for tablets. The latest build of Android: ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ (for both smartphones and tablets) will hopefully have plenty of dual-core optimizations.

But, there are problems for ‘Android’ which is actually making it compulsory for manufacturers to make dual-core smartphones:

• The software is being run on low-power hardware (some low-powered smartphones) which is allowing lag to creep in.
• Very few manufacturers are using the vanilla version that Google releases and developing their own versions with heavy customization which, according to most of the experts, is actually slowing down the performance of ‘Android’. This is also leading to the problem of ‘Fragmentation’ due to which ‘Android’ is not presenting a consistent user-interface across all the smartphone devices.

In summary, there are several versions of the software: Various ‘Android’ flavors and there are several kinds of hardware: Various smartphone manufacturers. This is not to say that such phones are bad. Manufacturers are releasing their own flavors of android because they are adding extra features to make their phones unique. For example, you can find beautiful 3D transition effects in ‘HTC Sense’ that is unavailable in stock-builds that Google releases. In fact, such beautiful effects are even absent in the iPhone. But, it is just that with such a whole lot of varieties of hardware and software, ‘Android’ is not able to actually utilize the single-cores fully which is warranting manufacturers to go for dual-core smartphones.

Similar to the iOS, Microsoft’s OS for mobiles:  Windows Phone, also doesn't mandate a dual-core smartphone. Microsoft is not exactly responsible for the hardware on which it runs its software but it has stringent requirements for the underlying hardware and all the companies which use this OS have to adhere to the requirements. It also has designed its OS in such a way that the OS does not necessitate a dual-core smartphone for providing a high-quality end user experience. Eventually, Windows Phone will also get dual-core processors but that will be mostly for providing extra features.

In all the mobile operating systems, ‘Applications’ or ‘Apps’ as they are being popularly called, are the core. Absence of applications is what led to the downfall of ‘Web OS’ which is another great operating system. Thankfully, developers are also realizing the fact and they are developing games that can actually take advantage of the dual-core power of the smartphones. So, you won’t be able to play HD games on your single-core smartphones as they are being designed keeping in mind the raw power of dual-cores. Also, features such as shooting 1080p video @ 30 fps and the ability to connect smartphones to HD Televisions and play 1080p content are also only available on dual-core smartphones.

So, if you are going to use a mobile phone and do not value ‘Geeky’ features like those listed above, single-core smartphones will be more than enough to satisfy all your wants. If you want proof, you can check out the latest Nokia Windows Smartphone: The ‘Lumia 800’. It is powered only by a single-core 1.4 Ghz Qualcomm processor but it has a very-fluid and gorgeous user interface. But, if you do buy a dual-core Android smartphone, you know that it is not going to go waste. J

Stay Tuned!!!