As an official sponsor of the Orange Africa Cup of Nations Gabon-Equatorial Guinea 2012, Samsung today announced the availability of the ‘Africa Cup of Nations’ App, on the Samsung South African Apps store.

Says Deon Liebenberg, MD of Samsung South Africa; “As Samsung has been a long-time supporter of African football, we felt it only natural for us to invest in such an application; the application will offer fans an opportunity to keep up to date with the latest information and results around the event, with ease and while on the move.”

The application features competitions, galleries, live scores, downloads and fixtures for the 2012 tournament and is available for all fans to download for free.

“We are committed to our customers and through this app we aim to offer the best possible enjoyment of the tournament. Fans can now follow the tournament passionately and not miss out as we understand that it is not always possible to catch all the live action. We, at Samsung, are again meeting the needs of our consumers – in this case sports fans – and are providing them with content that not only allows for great entertainment, but fuels the spirit of African soccer,” concludes Liebenberg.

Samsung recently introduced the new Notebook Series 5 ULTRA, which combines high performance with a Ultrabook casing.

On the inside the Series 5 ULTRA is powered by a Intel Core i5 processor; combined with ExpressCache system by Diskeeper and a powerful AMD Radeon HD graphics card, with which it delivers high performance packed in a thin and light form factor.

“Based on in-depth market research and consumer surveys, we propose a new type of Ultrabook which will change the perception of Ultrabooks among users. Our findings strongly indicate that consumers demand more than just thin and light devices, hoping for a satisfactory level of daily performance and storage, as digital files become larger. The Samsung Series 5 ULTRA will be the first to answer these needs,” said David Song, Senior Vice President, IT Solutions Business at Samsung Electronics. “The latest Samsung knowhow  has been applied  – our Series 5 ULTRA positions the device for today’s fast changing media environment by adding greater value for consumers through a more balanced product concept.”

“The Series 5 ULTRA is a further step to demonstrate Samsung’s commitment to coming up with ways that continue to meet the day-to-day consumer needs by producing the best products,” adds Suria Pretorius, Product Manager of Notebooks at Samsung Electronics South Africa.

Performance (more…)

As 2011 draws to a close we thought it might be a good time to look back and see what products we really enjoyed using in 2011. Some of our choices might be controversial, but hey, horses for courses. Let us know what you think in the comments?

Best Phone: Samsung Galaxy S2

Even the most ardent fans of iPhone have to agree – the Galaxy S2 is a truly great phone. It is very fast, is built well (despite being made of plastic), the screen is beautiful, the camera is excellent – the list goes on. Pricing is also pretty good, and the phone is still great several months later, which you cannot typically say of the Android phone marketplace. You cannot go wrong. Not even Samsung’s bigger and faster Galaxy Note could change our name. Now we just have to get our hands on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Close second: Apple iPhone 4S. Expect our review in the new year.

(more…)

OK, so another month, another best Android phone out there. This is partly to blame on the massively quick development with Android and the constant competition between the manufacturers. In recent months Samsung seems to be having the upper hand, with the great Galaxy S2, and the recently released Galaxy Nexus.

The Galaxy Note is different however – it aims to combine the use of a phone with a tablet, and it includes a stylus as well, something which is relative scarcity since the arrival of capacitative screens. This “phoneblet” is truly huge – if you ever look at your current smartphone and think the screen is too small, or if you think your tablet is too big, you might want to give the Galaxy Note a serious look.

Design and Build

First off – this phone is massive. Or this tablet is small? Either way you look at it, the Note is good deal bigger than any phone you might be used to. (more…)

One of the major criticisms of Android phones of late is the apparent lack of official updates that land on the devices. Where some other operating systems keep on upgrading existing phones even a few years after production, Android users in many cases will not get any updates at all. There is a variety of reasons for that – one of the major reasons being customized interfaces or skins that need a lot of work from the manufacturers to be rewritten for new software versions. Luckily Google brings out one reference device, called the “Nexus” about once a year with the launch of major operating system upgrades, and these phone typically get new software updates before any manufacturer.

The latest phone to have the Nexus moniker is Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus – a phone that keeps a pure Android interface free of any skins, and more significantly, the first phone to officially ship with Android 4.0, called Ice Cream Sandwich. If the whole iPhone hype is not for you, the Galaxy Nexus makes a very compelling argument.

“Samsung and Google have closely collaborated to push the mobile experience forward. We are pleased to deliver the best and latest Android smartphone experience for customers with GALAXY Nexus. We will continue to move forward with the Android platform to provide the most compelling consumer experience in the mobile world,” says Paulo Ferreira, Head of Mobile Product and Business Solutions at Samsung.

“Ice Cream Sandwich demonstrates the Android platform’s continued innovation with this release which works on phones and tablets seamlessly (and everything in between). Features like Android Beam and Face Unlock show the innovative work our team is doing, and GALAXY Nexus showcases the power behind Ice Cream Sandwich,” said Andy Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile for Google. (more…)

South Africa was lucky enough to be amongst the first countries to get the new Samsung Galaxy Note device, and they put a great amount of fanfare behind it’s launch. So we headed through to Sandton to attend, and the Galaxy Note did not disappoint.

In case you have not heard of the Galaxy Note – here are the details. Even though it is a smartphone, it is clearly skewed towards users who want to use their phones more like tablets. A huge 5.3 inch display means that this is by no means a small phone. If you have small hands you have to think of this phone as a two handed device. But that nice big screen carries a big advantage – it can carry a massive 720p resolution. It is one of the highest resolutions on any smartphone out there (1280 x 720 pixels) and photos and videos look brilliant on the phone.

Despite the large size, the Note is really very thin.

The other advantage that the Note has is a stylus which can be used for notes and handwriting recognition. (more…)

Samsung was pretty quick on the tablet market to compete with the iPad, but their first 7 inch device was not received too warmly. While the shape and size was great, the Android 2.x operating system was just not properly implemented for the new higher resolution of a tablet, so some apps just did not work too great in the tablet world. (You can read our review here)

Of course since then Google has released Honeycomb, its tablet-focussed version of Android, and Samsung has released some pretty great Android Honeycomb tablets, primarily focussing on a iPad-matching 10 inch screen (See Albert’s review of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 here). But what if those 10 inch tablets are perhaps a bit unwieldy? Luckily Samsung has now released that great 7 inch form factor of the first Galaxy Tab with the tablet – dedicated power of Android 3.2 Honeycomb. (more…)

Microsoft today showed us a bit more of their new Windows 8 operating system – and while it really is a very ambitious project, the clear attention was given to the tablet interface. It seems Microsoft is not bargaining on tablet / phone class dumbed down operating systems for tablets – they are going to put the full Windows experience on these devices, but with some more touch friendly controls. Risky move?

Windows 8 takes a lot of the aspects which makes Windows 7 so good and simply takes it further. It is all about speed, in fact they showed off Windows 8 running on a rather old Lenovo S10 netbook with a lowly 1GB of RAM. On closer inspection it seems Windows 8 uses even less system resources to run than 7, but the difference is not major. But netbooks are old news – we now want ultrabooks and tablets right? So Microsoft has had to keep up.

So the rest of the presentation rather focussed on a new Samsung Tablet that was loaded with Windows 8 and its new Metro style touch layer. The interface is truly new – it does not follow the same UI principles as iOS or Android, and that familiar Metro / Windows Phone inteface looks remarkably good on a wide screen display. Animations and typography looks brilliant. After looking at some videos it is clear that speed was especially important – but you should keep in mind these tablets are running Core i5 processors (and they sport a fan vent to get rid of heat)…

Microsoft is going to make Windows 8 available for a range of hardware – not only standard laptops and desktops. Even though the developer preview was shown off on Intel hardware, Windows 8 will be made available on ARM processors (similiar to what your smartphone uses), so expect major increases in battery life. This is of course a major undertaking – Microsoft has to make one OS that runs on everything from tablets to desktops with massive high res screens. Compare this with Mac OS X Lion, which only needs to be made for key few machines in Apple’s stable, and you really understand why Windows 8 is actually quite incredible.

Microsoft is releasing this developer preview today, and users can go download it. But the product is still very unfinished, and requires very specific hardware to actually try out the new touch based features. But there are a few things that can be seen right now:

Boot time: Microsoft has massively cut down on boot times with Windows 8. Regardless whether you run a brand new monster of a PC or an old netbook, expect boot times to be cut in half.

New Touch Centric “Start Screen”: This keeps the familiar Metro interface that was launched with Windows Phone. The user is presented with customizable “tiles” that can hold any type of notification you want – unread mails, calendar info, RSS feeds for News, etc.

Full Screen Apps: Yeah, this was taken from the iPad. But that is a good thing. Clicking on the tiles takes over the entire screen for the app being run, but the operating system buttons can still be brought up. And the current tablet hardware will sport a button to take you back to the start screen.

Internet Explorer 10: This can be viewed in the new tablet style interface, or in the old “desktop” centric interface we all use. The tablet “tailored” interface makes the website take over the screen, and additional swipes make buttons appear.

What is interesting is how different Microsoft has to approach the previews of Windows 8 compared to how Apple did it with Mac OSX Lion. Microsoft is handing out the developer preview more than a year before the release of Windows 8, where Apple only gave select developers beta access a few months before release.

The thing is that Microsoft is more reliant on developers to now get ready for the new touch tailored view of Windows 8, so it gives them really early access it. Microsoft’s strategy to use a full Windows operating system for tablets is risky, but brave nonetheless. What we should keep in mind is that iPad 3 will be out already by the time Windows 8 ships, with iPad 4 not too far away.

Do people still need full operating systems on their portable devices? Only time will tell…