Galaxy S2 ICS 4.0.3 Review

Recently I upgraded my Galaxy S2 to Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3 from Ginger Bread 2.3.6. I grabbed the DXLP7 firmware from xda, and upgraded through Odin. It was painless - even though I started the process with only 42% remaining battery. The upgrade was complete in about 5 minutes, with all my previous apps and settings intact.

Only piece of advice, the upgrade does loose your home page settings. It will help if you create screenshots of your phone before upgrading.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised with the brand new OS, it almost gave me the feeling of having a new phone. There are numerous small upgrades which makes life easier. Though all is not as great as it could be, it is definitely recommended.

Here's my review of the new experience.

Positive -
1. Video/Voice chat in GTalk is finally here in Galaxy S2, officially. Also the interface is revamped as it is the new ICS app.
2. Inbuilt data usage meter/limiter which is very well done indeed. This may well put 3G Watchdog out of business.
3. Folders have small icons of apps inside them.
4. Upload/Download arrows have been added for Wifi connection as well!
5. Improved contacts sync API enables third party apps to integrate better - also now you see which apps have synced with a contact in contact list as icons. (However all is not good on contacts front, read on.)
6. Much better browser. The only thing missing is ability to reflow text when zoomed on the fly. Also you can now install Chrome beta which is exclusive to ICS.
7. A hoard of Developer Options which give you a very good glimpse of what is happening within the phone. Some, like warning when an app takes up CPU cycles for long time, or show CPU usage overlay, are useful to even non developer power users.
8. Face unlock - gimmick, good to have nonetheless.
9. Ability to show a message in locked screen, is useful if your phone is lost and some good soul comes across it :)
10. Rotation animations - Like the Galaxy Tab, now when you change the orientation, whatever is on your screen rotates with a sleek animation.
11. GMail interface is revamped with the new ICS GMail App.
12. Cool screen rotation animation added when you rotate your phone and an application changes from portrait to landscape, or vice versa.


Negative -
1. Contacts & Phone (dialer) are now separated. There is no quick way to move to phone dial pad from contacts anymore! In my mind, this is the biggest and only dumb decision made for ICS.
2. Call recording libraries not implemented yet. There's word that even the call recording giant Total Recall cannot record calls on ICS. If call recording is something you need, do not upgrade.
Update - workaround exists to solve this issue.
3. Contacts now has all (unwanted) gmail addresses. Also I used Social Hub to sync Facebook contacts since it provided pictures, but now it is not supported anymore - I use the Facebook app to sync contacts, and the picture sync does not seem to be working properly.
Update - you can use this free app to sync contacts with hi-res (or optionally low-res) pictures.
4. Camera focus and shutter sounds are no longer linked to System volume (or any other volume), both now play either at max volume (if phone is not on mute), or don't sound at all (if it is on mute).
5. Google Talk now either has option show all friends sorted by name, or to show only 'popular' friends sorted by availability. There's no way to see all friends sorted by availability. Big step back.

Watchouts - it may seem some things are missing, but fear not - merely how to do this has changed.
1. Screenshot - Previously it was Home+Power. Now it is to press Power+VolumeDown simultaneously and hold for a second or two.

Galaxy S II vs Nokia N8, Apple iPhone 4, Samsung Galaxy S

Galaxy S2 is probably the best smartphone available to consumers to date. Consequently I did some research on the device, keeping its mind its close competitors. Below I post my review of the phone for me and others as a quick reference.

Pros -

+ Dual Core 1.2 GHz ARM processor. For comparison, Galaxy S has a Single Core 1 GHz ARM processor. This is very fast for programs optimized for Dual Core (eg. web page browser, programs that manipulates/rotates images like Google Map, image browser, etc.). Even for programs which are meant to run on a single core, the phone will supply plenty of power since the single core speed is higher than most other phones.

+ Interface driven by Android 2.3 coupled with the superfast CPU is very responsive for the end users. There is not a moment when the phone feels that it slowed down even a little.

+ NFC, or Near Field Communication. This is right now only one of very few phones that support NFC. NFC is a protocol, through which the phone can communicate with another phone or device which is NFC aware when they are brought close to each other. It is designed to operate without the requirement of having to manually pair with another device. This tech is used by Google Wallet to authorize payments - where instead of swiping a card, you wave the phone in the authorization machine and (type in your PIN in the phone) to authorize a payment.

+ USB to Go - Not only can you connect the phone to computer as a USB device, you can now use the phone to host USB devices. That is if you have a USB pendrive or hard disk, and you want to transfer videos or songs to the disk from the phone, you can do it without needing a laptop.

+ Camera - The phone sports a decent 8MP camera with dual led flash. The picture quality is good, and it is capable of capturing 1080p videos, which also seem to be of decent quality. If you need a camera with more megapixels, Nokia N8 provides you with a 12MP camera. But megapixels don't mean all, and where Samaung trumps Nokia is in the interface. It is worthy to note here that Galaxy S sports a 5MP camera which takes picture of very decent quality, though for some strange reason it has no flash! Here is an indepth review of the camera with picture samples.

+ Super AMOLED is Samaung's proprietary technology to provide even crisper display at lower power. The phone also has Gorilla Glass, which can stand its share of torture. However don't push it too much, as it may not be completely unbreakable.

+ Android 2.3 with all its goodies, the phone is bound to attract any gadget freak. The interface is crisp, responsive (even to your tilts and shake!) and intuitive - a feast to behold. It already comes with some great software, and it is easy to get some more great applications installed on the phone based on your liking. The ever  increasing appstore has lots of very good free applications that you can load. This already has better variety than Apple Appstore, primarily because Google designed it to be much more friendly towards software developers - with checks to ensure writing apps for Android is fun and not frustration.

+ Other goodies include 16GB inbuilt memory, digital compass, acceleration sensor, support for viewing running Flash based webpages, predictive input of text through touchscren swype, and more.

Cons -

- Back button seems to give trouble for some people, where it goes back twice when you press the button, instead of once. Though this seems to happen rarely, it appears to be a design fault in some phones.

- Random restarts happen spontaneously on the phone. This has been pretty much traced to SD card, and could be due to the positioning of the SD card which pushes the battery slightly out. To resolve that you may insert a piece of paper to ensure the battery is always connected. This could also happen because of other reasons, like corrupted applications on SD card.

- Google Maps voice guided navigation does not work on many countries(!!). This is very strange and slightly troubling, since navigation is one of the primary usage these days of buying a smart phone. While Google seems to be mute on reasons for this, I surmise that this has to do with managing load on their servers. Unlike most other GPS, eg. Nokia Maps or Sygic, Google's navigation works by requesting Google to plot the route instead of doing so offline on the device. The solution seems to be to install Brut Maps, a free navigation software that uses Google Maps data, though there are unofficial hacks to enable navigation in Google Maps for your country.

- Battery - Many users have reported that the battery life might be much lower than expected. This could be due to requirement of conditioning of the battery which may require using the phone for some time.

Competitors
Apple - provides a stable phone, interface is practically as good as S2. While Apple offers a good platform for developers, this is where Android excels, and hence you can expect to find more free and paid quality apps and games for Android than iOS. iPhone 4 has higher resolution (960x640 vs 800x480), but lower screen size (3.5" vs 4.3"), kind of defeating the purpose and acting more as a gimmick. iPhone has no external card slot, nor USB2GO. Also it does not have support for NFC. For those conscious about looks, iPhone weighs more and is slightly thicker and bigger. Prices being nearly the same, there is a good difference in the features and looks - which makes me swing much in favor of Galaxy S2 over iPhone 4.

Nokia - unfortunately made many big mistakes and now is paying for it. Symbian, the OS in which this phone runs and on which you develop apps, was no where near as developer friendly as Android. It was clumsy to code in it, and it required you to buy a license to even make your apps install without requiring to get a phone hacked. Also the reviews of Nokia Care are generally pathetic, and it appears that most of the Nokia Care centers hire underpaid executive resulting in unprofessional experience, both in terms of attitude of representatives and in relation with damaging your gadget. They also didn't get any kudos for their decision about a year ago to make navigation free, while completely ignoring customers' plea to support all but recent devices back then. All these are not good sign for a company, and typically mean that the organization is interested more in short term profits rather than long term commitment to the customers. My recommendation will be to steer absolutely clear from Nokia till they can get themselves together to fix their issues, which will take time.

Samsung Galaxy S - would have been a phone I'd love to buy, despite it's much slower and has lower RAM, internal memory and camera resolution (picture quality is very good at 5MP). The price is only half or less than Galaxy S2. However that phone does not have certain features, including any kind of flash for the camera, which is a deal breaker for me! Why, Samsung? Anyway, other features it does not have are NFC, USB2GO, out of the box Flash support in websites (though Youtube has special support).

Verdict
There are some hiccups (mentioned above), and though they are rare it cautions warranty. But if you are looking for best smartphone now, go right ahead, you wouldn't likely be disappointed!

Nokia N79 vs N82

I recently got my hands on an N79. Before buying, I already had a preconception of what to expect based on the reviews and specifications I gathered in the Internet. S there were many more changes than what I had mapped in my mind. It was a more or less a nice surprise.

N79 has almost all features that are there in N82. In short, what I had in mind was the following equation:

N79 = N82 - Xenon Flash + FM Transmitter.

While that is more or less true, I found that there is a lot more in there about it.

N79 Pros

1. FM Transmitter - It can be accessed and turned on from the menu of the music player on the phone. It can then transmit the song to the frequency you want instead of playing in the phone. It also works with GPS - if you're listening to a song over FM and using GPS navigation, the instructions will be audible over the song. Although there were some hiccups with one of the beta version of the Maps, it now appears to be fixed.
   
2. Comes bundled with many commercially licensed applications - SMS Timer is a special mention. It pops up a message whenever you click the send button after composing SMS, which lets you send it immediately or choose a future date and time when it will be sent. Also worth mentioning are the Oxford English Dictionary, Indic SMS and Wavesecure apps.
3. The Radio now has Internet Radio built into it - a feature can be added to N82 free of cost from Nokia site.
   
4. Can read out SMS - an ability added to the Feature Pack 2. This facility cannot be added to N82 through additional software as of now.
5. Has better 'GPS Data' - where instead of seeing bars for each satellite you see all of the simultaneously, and even where they are positioned relative to you
   
6. Has two led flash lamps - while not as bright as the Xenon, they have specific advantage because Xenon flash cannot be kept permanently on. For example, you can now keep them on while videos, or use a third party software (eg. Brightlight) to use them as flashlight
7. Camera now has record location feature for videos as well.
8. [Need to check if side scrolling is allowed in the RSS reader now]
   
9. Naviwheel - You can now move your finger around the d-pad to navigate menus - iPod style
10. FP2 adds effects to the menu which are pleasing to the eye - eg. menu interactions and auto rotate features are now animated
11. Has stronger battery - 1200mAH verses 1050mAH of N82
    
12. Comes with 4GB card while N82 comes with 2GB card

N79 Cons

1. In N82, you could zoom in and out a picture by using the 5 and 0 keys. So far I could not find any keys for doing the same in N79 in the gallery. However it is there when you Edit the picture, but it is definitely inconvenient to first go to edit menu and then use the zoom keys. If there is no workaround, this is probably the most annoying omission in N79. Update: You can use the Volume Up/Down buttons to zoom out/in a picture in the gallery.
2. Absence of Xenon flash - Disadvantages are you don't get as bright flash as Xenon, and you cannot take high speed pictures anymore (Xenon lamp burst lasts for about 1 millisecond allowing you to take still picture of high speed objects in the dark). However this disadvantages are partially (or totally depending on your judgment) balanced by the advantages of a LED lamp discussed on the previous section. (If you want more reasons why the LED flash is better, you can read the article here.)
3. Internal storage and RAM - N82: 100mb storage, 128mb ram, N79: 50mb storage, 72mb ram. What that means is you are more likely to see the 'out of memory' message when you are running too many apps simultaneously - though 72mb should be more than enough. However only 50mb storage means you have to be choosy while installing applications to the phone memory. Unfortunately this might be a problem, many Nokia applications (eg. Ovi Maps 3 with 5mb footprint) do not give you the option and by default install on the phone memory. However, with 50mb you should still have enough storage to load these apps, especially if you remove the useless ones that come with the phone - eg. all the N-Gage demo games which take up a lot of space.
4. N79 does not have inbuilt 3D Accelerator - all the 3D games you play will have to be rendered directly by the CPU through software and hence are likely to suffer in performance. Also N79 has a single processor (albeit little faster clockspeed of 369MHz) while N82 has two processors (of 332MHz each). So the N82 will be better at multi-tasking, whereas the N79 will outperform N82 while running a single app with high demands on the CPU.
   
5. Does not have Barcode reader, though it can be installed separately free of cost.