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…

Goodness, Samsung seems to be carpet bombing the smartphone and tablet right now – they will now have smartphones and tablets of all shapes and sizes. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is already pretty great (read Albert’s review here), but there are always people who preferred the original Galaxy Tab’s 7 inch size – it is roughly the size of a notebook, whereas the 10 inch might be too big for some people’s tastes.

The biggest complaint of the original Galaxy Tab was that its operating system was not necessarily made for tablet implementation, something which bothered us as well. “Half-baked” was an apt term. Now that great size can be combined with the power of the Honeycomb tablet. Samsung also threw in a 1.4Ghz dual core processor, and a massive 5,100mAh battery, giving up to ten hours use. Running Android 3.2 it is also running the latest TouchWiz skin, which we are still on the fence about. Guess we have to try it out. (more…)

With the current spread of Android devices it has become increasingly difficult to choose the best one out there – each manufacturer has a seemingly better phone than the next. HTC has the Sensation, LG has the Optimus Black and Samsung has the super speedy Galaxy S2. And this will probably be different 60 days from now. That is just the nature of the Android phone business. Have to hand it to Android, at least users have choice. And if you are in the market now for a new smartphone, the Galaxy S2 makes a very compelling case. But is it the best smartphone out there right now?

Design and Build

Upon taking the device out of the box, I was taken aback that Samsung keeps on trotting along with the plastic build, even on their high end flagship device. I thought this was not a good start. But holding it in hand makes you realize that despite the casing, the phone is incredibly solid. No flex, no creaking. Just an very rigid thin body, with a glass front. It feels like a definite step up from the first Galaxy S. But still, for a phone that competes in the high end smartphone market, the more concerning buyer might look down on the plastic build. However, if you keep you phone anyway in a case, the lighter weight should be a good thing. Horses for courses.

The overall design of the S2 is very simple, with a great minimalistic design when viewed from the front. It is quite large, but not unwieldy. Its super thin – even thinner than the iPhone 4. But it is quite broad with a its large display. When off, it looks like a sleek black slab, and all shiny glass. The rear is dominated with a textured black back cover, and then the rest is typical shiny samsung plastic, which I am not crazy about.

Button layout is simple, with a single hardware button on the front, with two capacitative buttons on its sides. You will find the volume rocker on the left, and the power button on the right. On another review, one of our concerns with the Samsung Omnia 7 design was the placement if the power button which falls right under the index finger when you hold the phone with your left hand. With the Galaxy S2 Samsung continues that trend, but at least they firmed up the button a bit.

In terms of connectivity, Samsung keeps it simple on the S2. A micro USB charger port is found on the bottom, which is good. (Samsung, your proprietary dock connector on the Tab is stupid, take a note from your phone division. Who are you kidding?). On the top you will find the headphone adaptor, which gives very decent sound quality with a good set of headphones. Simple, yes. But that is how it should be.

Display

This is the party piece of the Galaxy S2. If you want to win someone over on the S2, you just have to put on the phone. The screen lights up, and the capacitative buttons light up as well. The beautiful black design almost transforms with the super bright new OLED display. Sure, we love the Apple Retina display on the iPhone. But that is because of the resolution. But with the S2 it is all about the brilliant contrast. Blacks are just that – blacks. Not grays. This means that the Android UI looks stunning with all its blacks, and small things like animated wallpapers look incredible.

Photos and videos look brilliant with excellent refresh rate. Viewing angles are a big step up from previous OLED screens, and viewing the display in sunlight is actually pretty OK. And with this size screen you might actually use your phone to watch video. One of the great things about OLED is that once the display shows black, that portion does not consume battery power. That means that if you dabble with mostly dark screens, you actually save power. Nifty.

Innards, Battery Life

The other reason why people should opt for the S2 is down to the specs. This is a phone that was built for brute speed. It has a dual core 1.2 GHz processor. This might not seem like a big jump from the Galaxy S’s 1GHz, but that “dual core” part makes all the difference. There is just no slowdowns when using this phone. Web browsing is brisk, animations show no dropped frames, etc. The sad part is that every other Android phone feels slow after you have used the S2. Sure, this will change over time as the compeition heats up and the software stack becomes more complicated, but right now there is nothing close to the S2.

Storage wise the phone ships with 16GB internal memory, but you are free to expand that with the MicroSD slot. You get a 2GB MicroSD card in the box, but that can be replaced with up to 32GB. That should sort out your storage needs.

I have also mentioned how thin this phone is, and it becomes even more amazing how they fit all this processing power into the phone when you consider it still sports a removable battery. So despite other manufacturers refusing to create removable batteries (or is Apple the only one?), Samsung somehow managed to do it. Battery life was OK – it gave me about a day and a half of usage before it needed a charge, but I am quite a heavy user (I had syncing on all my accounts enabled all the time). I am pretty sure that if you are not using your phone all that much you can stretch it to two days. Or if you play around with the settings…

That thin but powerful chassis has one disadvantage however, with the phone becoming noticeably warm when just doing normal things like web browsing. Guess that dual core has to let go of some heat somehow. But it is not really an issue.

One small thing I liked was that the SIM slot can easily accommodate Micro SIMs as well, which is great for someone like me who have to switch from other phones time to time.

Camera

First off, I am not someone who goes on too much about a phone’s camera. Yet, I want a phone that can quickly take a picture in variety of lighting conditions, with fast shutter response, and low noise. The Galaxy S2 ticks all these boxes. Photos are crisp, and seriously detailed with good colour. And despite the 8MP sensor, the pictures do not carry too much noise. Flash performance is good as well.

Video performance is even better – Full HD 1080p resolution at 30fps. Videos look incredible, especially in decent lighting. But you must be warned – 1080p video chows storage faster than you would believe. If you plan to record a lot of video, get a nice big memory card… Yes there is a slot.

Android

I tend to prefer Android installs that are not too covered with skins and extra apps. In fact, I prefer a stock Android install. Luckily the bundled apps on the Galaxy S2 are pretty good, and the TouchWiz interface is not bad at all. Yes, it still looks like a iOS copy with the square app buttons, but being Android, you have complete control whether you want that interface or not. TouchWiz has a few nice touches – like an app drawer on the home screen, very similar to iPhone, and very nice looking widgets. Goodness, you can really see why Apple is a little peeved with Samsung. “Patents” are one thing, but putting this skin next to iOS really makes you see the similarities. But that is a matter for another day. Or courtroom.

Samsung’s made a few great enhancements on the phone though. For example – to zoom into a webpage – put two thumbs on the page, and pull the phone closer to you. Yeah, it does not have to be your thumbs, but it works well enough. Battery monitoring which changes certain settings based on battery level is something that should ship with every phone. Brilliant.

The phone ships with Gingerbread (2.3.3) right out of the box, so you ought to be fine for now. But one of the disadvantages of Android is that you never are fully guaranteed to keep getting the latest version of Android in the future. Nice thing about Samsung is that they are pretty open about the fact that they are working with CyanogenMod, so if you are willing to hack a bit, you will be safe with the Galaxy S2, and can probably start getting custom ROMS soon enough.

Android fanboys might smirk at this, but most of all I was impressed by how much Android has improved in the last year. While I regularly review Android phones, this was the first phone where I felt the hardware caught up with the software. Small things – like installing and launching apps are much, much faster than in the past. Frame rates are incredible, and app and game speed is brilliant. And since Android development has grown so much, you can really pretty much count on most apps you need being available on the platform. And the apps actually look good these days. It is no longer a case of iPhone only have the good apps. Those days are gone.

Conclusion

I was very surprised by the Samsung Galaxy S2. Even though my smartphone platform of choice is not Android right now, I can fully agree that this is most probably the best smartphone on the market today. Android has taken significant strides in the last year, and it really is a great platform. If you are not yet fully vested in another platform, you can rest assured that this phone will serve you well. While not necessarily oozing quality with its all plastic build, it is very well put together, and a significant step up from most other Samsung plastic phones.

The performance is incredible, the software stack is fully customizable in future, and battery life and camera is pretty good as well. There is very little to fault with this phone – and the current offerings by the cellular providers seem to be very good with Galaxy S2.

Well done Samsung, you have a winner on your hands.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v (also known as the P7100) is a piece of hardware with an unfortunate story behind it. That little extra “v” means that this Vodafone exclusive differs from the Galaxy Tab 10.1 that will start appearing on South African shelves in the next month or two. Will you be worse off with the 10.1v than the retooled, sleeker 10.1?

The long, drawn out story is that Samsung had already begun the production run for their just announced 10.1 when the iPad 2 was unveiled (click here to see our review of the iPad 2). Samsung was so impressed by the form factor of the new iPad, that a decision was made to retool the 10.1 to make it the thinnest tablet yet. Some deals were made, and it was decided that the “old” 10.1 was to be a Vodafone exclusive, under a new name – the 10.1v (hey, they had to do something with the stock). Now that the sleeker, retooled 10.1 has surfaced, Vodafone has decided that they’ll offer both the 10.1v and the 10.1 (at least until 10.1v stock runs out). So, have you been shortchanged if you’ve already gotten yourself a Tab 10.1v? Will it be a bad idea to pick up a Tab 10.1v if the price comes down? The answer might surprise you.

Physical Features
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v measures 246.2 x 170.4 x 10.99 mm (2.39 mm thicker than the retooled 10.1) – this sounds bigger than it looks. At 589 grams, it’s much lighter than expected. This isn’t a bad thing, though. It’s easy to pick up and comfortable to hold for extended periods of time.

The solid sheet of Gorilla Glass covering the 10-inch display, front camera, and proximity sensor is set into a grey metal rim, with the power/lock button, headphone jack, and one of the pair of stereo speakers on the left side of the device. The right side holds the SIM slot and the other speaker. The bottom is home to Samsung’s proprietary dock connector in the center, and a volume rocker and microphone can be found along the top of the device. The buttons are pleasantly responsive, but you won’t find yourself accidentally locking the device or adjusting the volume. That being said, the position of the volume rocker isn’t optimal. I’d have preferred it on the right hand side of the device – within easy reach.

The back is a hard, textured black plastic that looks (and feels) very durable. There’s a slightly recessed oval in the center of the back that holds a silver disc that sports the Samsung logo. Apart from being a nice aesthetic touch, this recession also gives you a more secure grip. The main camera and its accompanying LED flash also lives on the back of the device.

Both the form factor and the materials used to construct the Galaxy Tab 10.1 are pleasant enough, but it does feel a little cheap compared to something as solid as the Motorola XOOM.

Display
The Tab’s 10.1-inch TFT Capacitive display, running at a resolution of 1280×800, is more than adequate. It doesn’t bring any technological breakthroughs to the table, but it’s definitely on par with what’s out there at the moment.

Brightness is good, and colour reproduction is quite faithful. The responsiveness of the (multi-point capable) touch sensor sometimes felt like it couldn’t keep up, but this may be a software issue. There was also, unfortunately, a little backlight bleed visible with dark colours.

Performance And Battery Life
The Dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 proccessor, paired with a GeForce GPU (all held together by NVidia’s Tegra 2 chipset) is mostly the same configuration found in all of the other Honeycomb tablets out there at the moment. In-app performance is generally very good, with almost no lag present. Games run with relatively high frame rates. The general Honeycomb interface, however, does feel a little laggy and slightly unresponsive at times. This may be down to the fact that this tablet is still running Android 3.0. All in all, though, the Galaxy Tab 10.1v’s performance is nothing to scoff at.

The 10.1v is powered by a massive 6860mAh Lithium-polymer battery. It takes ages to charge, but the inverse is also true. To say that this battery is impressive would be an understatement. With moderate use, getting more than a week’s worth of battery life was easy. (more…)