Samsung Galaxy S – i9000 4/5*
£300 to buy, approx
Free from £25 a month
The first of the Samsung Galaxy S series, powered by Android 2.2 (Aug, 2011) this phone is the latest of the smartphone waves that have been titled iPhone competitors.
The ooo’s and ahhh’s of the Galaxy S:
- 16M Super Amoled display
- 1GHz CPU
- 1,500mAh Li-pol Battery
- 5.0mp camera
- 8GB internal memory
- Flash
- 4″ touch screen
Touchy feely
If you’ve never held one of the newest smartphone’s yet the first thing you will notice is the sheer size of the thing! It’s something you’ll get used to and never notice again but I could not believe how huge this phone is. After years and years of us making phones smaller we’re now making them bigger.
The 4″ screen is amazing for a number of reasons, however it is a stretch to hold the phone in one hand although it’s wonderfully thin which helps reduce the stretch of the big screen. The chrome edging is smooth and looks wonderful and the phones texture feels nice and durable. The camera is situated in a nice place so that you do not cover it with your hands when using. The bottom back of the phone curves out which I find really useless! No matter how I hold the phone I can’t find the curve to have any use, although this may just be me. Also I struggle to use the phone with one hand as my thumb barely reaches across the phone, this is annoying as I normally do everything one handed with a phone but now I struggle to write a text or email while walking the dog or doing other things. The speaker on the back is also silly as it is a hard, rough bit of plastic that sticks out. For half an hour I thought I had damaged my phone or something as I was convinced it wasn’t suppose to be there. The sound quality is superb so maybe a little compromise is worth it. The phone packs a Super Amoled display, the big shouting point of the Galaxy S. It is wonderful! I haven’t seen many other phones to compare it to, however I feel that this is going to be the standard quality of smartphones, or at least should be and while the display is amazingly impressive, so it should be! So they all should be.
Home screen
The phone comes with 7 (yes 7!), home screens that you access by swiping right. You can customise all of them simply by adding shortcuts for any application, which appear as the rectangular icon most of us are familiar with and you can also add widgets in various sizes. A lot of apps now provide widgets so it’s very easy to find one you want and will use. At the bottom of every home screen and application screens you get shortcuts to phone, contacts, messaging and applications/home. This is nice, however if you are someone who wants a shortcut-free home page you will be disappointed. I have found myself calling friends in my pocket before and I feel this is as much due to the unlocking system as well as the shortcuts.
To unlock the screen you have to press the button on the front of the phone or the one on the side and then swipe any part of the screen to the edge. I find I often press the side button on the phone as I put it into my pocket and then it must not be that hard for the screen to be swipe unlocked in my pocket.
At first I was sure that I’d never use 7 home screens, however I now have great uses for 6 of them! Here’s a quick list if you’re looking for inspiration:
- Keeping the first page simple: shortcuts to internet, email, gmail and camera.
- My organisation page: Calendar widget, Task list widget, memo, shopping list, my fitness & BBC News shortcuts
- Social networking & other internet apps: Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, WordPress, BBC iPlayer, Wiki, YouTube, Movies, Job Search, UK Jobs, My Live Messenger, Shazam, Google Search, IMDb
- Navigation, Out&About: Weather widget, Maps, Navigation, Places, Yell.com, thetrainline, RAC traffic, gvSIG Mini, Geocaching
- Shopping: Amazon UK, Tesco, Debenhams, Famous Footwear, Superstore, Google Shopper, Vouchers, eBay, Barcode Scanner, ShopSavvy
- Gaming: Angry Birds, Zombie, Run, Air Control, Paper Toss, Monopoly, Zoo Club, Solitare, Sudoku
Texting
To text you use a qwerty keyboard with or without predictive text. I couldn’t use the predictive text on this phone as I found that it kept putting the words in before I had chosen a word or finished typing, and therefore my texts didn’t make sense. The keyboard is nice and is just big enough when using the phone in portrait mode, however I do feel if anyone had fingers bigger than mine (easily done) then you might hit 2 keys at once. As I find problems using the phone with one hand, typing with one hand often results in many mistakes but with 2 hands typing is quick and easy. The .?123 key swops to numbers and punctuation marks and is very easy to navigate and remember where to find everything. I loved that the third page contains smiley faces that you touch once to insert! Very useful if you are a regular smiley user.
When typing web addresses or email addresses the keyboard suddenly contains keys such as “.com”, “www.” and “@”. Very useful unless you live in the UK, and then the lack of .co.uk is annoying but still a nice feature. And it’s nice how they only appear when you’re most likely to need them.
I have played with the voice input during texting a little and it was perfect! However I did not use it extensively.
The inbox is clear and easy to use and texts appear in conversation format with blue speech bubbles for you and yellow for the person you’re texting. Individual messages can be deleted or entire conversations. There is also a lovely feature where you swipe left over a conservation to message that contact or swipe right to call them. However this sometimes leads to accidental phone calls.
Calling
Calling is lovely and clear. All the options are touch screen and have big lovely buttons. When you receive an incoming call you have to swipe to answer, which I don’t like. I’d rather just press a button but I suppose it stops you from answering a call in your pocket as you have to be more precise. The best feature is the option to reject call with a text, which you access while someone is ringing you by swiping upwards. There are an array of template messages and you simply click one to send it, or I assumed you can program your own.
I’ve had phone calls with only 1 bar of signal and I was still able to hear the other person easily and clearly.
Internet
I use my phone for the internet regularly with an 3G bundle and using Wi-Fi. I haven’t had many problems finding connectivity and the internet always runs smoothly and at a reasonably speed, nothing spectacular. The internet runs better with apps than in a browser as expected, however I opened a number of larger sites in the browser and they loaded well and quickly and were easy to navigate by pinch and zoom. The great feature this phone has is that you can use mobile AP, meaning your phone provides wi-fi internet which you can protect with a password. This is an ever-growing use as the world of tablets and other wi-fi devices develop. This week I will be purchasing a iPad wi-fi only model and will use my mobile phone network to connect my iPad to the internet when out and about.
Games
I’ve had a variety of experience gaming on the Samsung Galaxy S from the amazing Angry Birds to a medieval tower defence game, GPS games, simple card games and a zoo game. The graphics really make the games stand out and the big screen aids playing enjoyment. All games have run smoothly and unless they require internet connection, turning off my phone data network removes any adverts. Zombie, Run had a few problems loading, however when it did start off the phone kept track of my GPS position perfectly.
Apps
The android market is substantially large now. Many companies are making apps for android and it’s the second most popular operating system. I found myself overwhelmed by the choice and all the top apps I wanted were easily sourced. However I was very disappointed when looking for a bird identification app, something I thought would be easy to find. There was only one app for birds which was a logbook type of app, whereas there is a perfect app on the iPhone. This has led me to doubt the strength of android. The choice is also a problem as I have so many apps that I don’t use as I forget they’re there.
Camera
The camera on the phone is lovely and produces good quality, bright photos. However the zoom function is poor and only increases the size of the pixels and makes the photo blurry. At 5.0mp the camera is not going to replace your digital camera yet, however it is a good alternative for the quick snap moments. The lack of flash is a disadvantage, although I haven’t found myself in a situation where I needed it yet. It all depends on how you wish to use it. However you can’t use the phone as a torch.
General use
Overall the phone is lovely to use with some great features. I adore the drop down screen. Swipe downwards from the top to access a menu/screen that allows you to turn on/off the wi-fi, bluetooth, gps, silent mode & auto rotation at the touch of a button. It also displays any notifications and if you are downloading something or syncing it shows the progress and status. Very very handy.
If you hold the lock button on the side of the phone it takes you to a similar menu in a box with options to switch the phone to silent, flight mode or turn the data network on or off. I use these every day to turn my phone onto silent, turn the data network and other features off over night or when I am at work to save battery and megabytes.
The final feature that’s great is holding the middle button on the front of the phone. This shows you your most recently used apps and a button to the task manager. In the task manager it shows you all apps that are running and allows you to end these at one touch. Quite often on smartphones there is no clear way of closing or stopping apps and many can continue running in the background so a task manager is great.
Battery – With every day use of internet, GPS and wi-fi the phone generally lasts a day to a day and a half. The battery really drains with heavy internet or gaming use and it seems to sit comfortable all day but drop before you eyes when you start to use something. I was amazed that I could actually watch the battery physically fall. However this battery life is expected from smartphones that are so tech packed and a day and a half is impressive compared to it’s main competitors.
The Niggles
There are a couple of things I’ve come across that I personally don’t like:
- You can’t set a default alarm tone; every alarm you set has one of Samsung’s various pre-set tones and you have to change each one individually
- Notification tone in settings assigns one tone to every sort of notification; to assign different tones to emails, text messages and others you have to go into their individual settings separate, there is no option for them under general sound settings
- I can’t type with one hand and find myself typing and texting on the phone less than I did with my old one because of this
Overall the phone is a great smartphone that I use every day to keep track of emails, texting, calling and personal applications such as calorie counting and social networking. After 2 months I’ve not found a hatred or a love for this phone, it is simply an amazing upgrade that does what is says on the tin. The techy in me longs to find out how it would feel to own an iPhone, however the cost was simply too much on my contract. If you prefer Android this is definitely a great contender to the iPhone to get or consider the new release, Samsung Galaxy S2.
