Dvir Reznik | The (old) Blog

Yesterday at 7pm the Samsung Galaxy campaign was launched, with Nitzan Brumer and myself as the first 2 participants. The goal is simple: updating twitter/facebook/both status for 48 hours, at intervals of 30min tops, using the #samsungalaxy tag. The prize: We get to keep the Samsung Galaxy, first Android based phone in Israel. The ‘X-Factor’: various treats to keep us awake and updating. Which means I can sleep, but only for 25min at a time. OR, build a Rubi program that will twit for me…

Either way, I need to find some ‘time-fillers’, so instead of sharing with you how I feel about ‘The 2009 Fall Season‘ or ‘the situation‘, I decided to give a short preview of Samsung’s latest device, that at a first glance has a very good chance of becoming my ‘iPhone Killer‘, unlike Nokia’s N97, which I reviewed only 2 weeks ago.

The good

• Android is more like iPhone than anything else I’ve seen. It starts with the homepage (3 of them actually), drag-and-drop and device speed (Qualcomm CPU @ 528MHz). There’s definitely a ‘cool-ness effect’ to this phone.
• Cellcom and Samsung Israel did a great work on the Hebrew interface of the Galaxy. Menus appear as they should, no Bidi mistakes, keyboard layout is also great, very similar to you laptop/pc.
• Google integration is super – as one should expect from a device running Google OS. Enter your username and password and every piece of data you stored at the G-cloud comes to your phone: Calendar, Contacts, Emails, GTalk, YouTube (you can define the Auto-Sync options). On the other hand – I feel a bit exposed knowing all that data is just ‘sitting’ there…
• Android Market cannot match Apple’s 65,000 apps, but it’s getting there. Easy to search and navigate, includes ‘My Downloads’ to keep track of your installs and some very cool apps!

The bad

• The chassis of the Galaxy doesn’t match the iPhone or even N97 standards. It looks cheaper, not as ‘flashy’. The 6 keys at the bottom have no back-light, which makes it somewhat difficult to operate in the dark.
• I haven’t found a way to ‘Close’ an app. Clicking on ‘Back’ takes you one step back, but the app stays open in the background – consuming battery and 3G/Wi-Fi/GPS.
• Battery life. Although the device is not small (115x56x11.9mm), and packs an impressive specification, the battery is small. And coupled with the last bullet, working on 3G (wifi is less consuming for some reason) results in about 5 hours – not enough, and quite disappointing.
• Single ‘notification’ alarm – for anything other than an incoming call. When you enable Twitter/Email/SMS notifications there’s no way of telling the difference – you must check.
• No front camera for Video-Calls.
• Camera is ok (5MP, Auto Focus, LED flash), but doesn’t match the N95/97 – in both picture and video quality. Also, I couldn’t find any ‘Zoom’ option when capturing, which is a bit annoying. There’s ‘Crop’ in ‘Gallery’, but why disable ‘Zoom’ to begin with?

Summary
The Samsung Galaxy seems like an excellent answer for people looking for a non-iPhone Touchscreen device, that has roughly the same specs, in a less-expensive-Google-packaging. My fiancee liked it better than the N97, not to mention the various apps. The Android Market is definitely the ‘wild-card’ of this phone, and is the ultimate testiment to the power of the community – the variety is huge, and you can find applications to satisfy (almost) any wish.