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!

Review: Dragon Age (Origins)

This is the first time I played a party RPG. And it was awesome.

You arrive at Lothering

It took me a while to get into the interface. When it started (I chose a human mage) the movement controls (ADSW) felt awkward - different from other first person games, even though the scene was drawn at first person. It didn't take long though to get used to it. But before even I got used to it, the story had already began. I met the mouse and the bear in the Fade. Was already curious to see how (and if) I will escape Fade (which is sort of the dreamworld in the game, also where spirits reside) to pass the test posed to me. I think there is something in the storytelling which makes you get addicted to it from the start. I encountered the Fade demon and defeated him - was surprised by who he was and how I could defeat him without using any offensive abilities. Immediately I got hooked.

Though started out smoothly (where in the first encounter you don't even have to fight to win), the fighting in the game paces up surprisingly fast. I soon found out that the game is not like taking a walk in the park - at times, the combat needs to be carefully planned making full use of the "pause and strategise" feature.

Meanwhile the story continued on. There are some rather surprising turns that happened in the first part of the game, and after that you get a kind of free roaming ability - i.e. you can choose which area (and hence quest) to cover next. When you have covered all the primary quests, you then get to continue the main storyline to the end of the game. It takes a hell lot of time to reach that stage, and it never gets boring. That's because all the primary quests are crafted with lots of details, characters, locations, environments - and a very long story unique to them. Each one of them seems like a game on its own. I am pretty sure, looking at the vast variety and spectacular difference in all angles between the primary quests, that BioWare had different teams working on separate primary quests.

Despite the length of the game, it never feels dull. There are a lot of satisfying turns and twists to keep you fully engaged in the story. And in the course of the game you will meet some very memorable characters. Some of them will join your cause and fight with you - depending on your actions. Most of the companions also have their own side quest. You will need to unlock the side quests through the course of the game - mostly by gaining their appreciation towards you by giving them gifts, or doing things that they respect.

The game also has multiple endings depending on what you choose. Perhaps because my character died at the end of the game saving the world, it was a rather emotionally charged ending for my story. And after it ends, there is a treat - which took me by surprise. It has a slide show which details the impact of your actions on Ferelden for years to come. Since most of these are tied to specific choices you made over the course of the entire game, it is quite a feast.

The "Landsmeet"

The game offers many addons, of which two add new capabilities (along with small a quest each) which you can spend your money on. One is Warden's Keep, which adds a tash for storing your equipments - otherwise you will have to sell your stuff to make space for new items, as you cannot carry unlimited amount of them. The second is The Stone Prisoner, which unlocks the most unique companion - a golem called Shale. He is very well integrated in the rest of the game's stotyline - so once you unlock him, you will never feel that he is a companion that comes from an addon.

Let me pause here and mention something, rather an alert if you have not played the game yet so that you don't miss out on content. [Spoiler Alert] There is a character called Leliana in the game. I was aware of this since the game advertises an add on campaign called "Leliana's Song", though I wasn't sure exactly at which point she would join the game. After a lot of the story passed, I became suspicious and one day read more on her. And to my dismay I found that she is supposed to join in a scene that is only triggered if you visit a particular pub in Lothering, a village which gets obliterated early in the game. And once it is gone, there is no way to get her there in your group (unless you'd like to download dev-tools and use a crude hack to modify your save file, which I didn't want to do). So if you play the game, visit all houses in Lothering till you find Leliana, before Lothering becomes inaccessible!

Pros -
+ Engaging story
+ Your actions can change the course of the missions
+ Challenging fight system
+ Lot's of spells and abilities, but smooth learning curve
+ Very long game which never became dull
+ Companion characters are good, you are bound to take liking to some of them

Cons -
- Graphics is solid and nice, but not spectacular
- Sometimes certain important items are not clearly marked, which can cause you to miss certain experiences, as serious as a companion in your quest. It may be impossible to fix later on if you don't want to start from a previous save, which may not be a great option considering the length of the game.
- Party stash needs to be unlocked by buying Warden's Keep, this should have been a native feature in the game

Overall, this is an excellent single player game - definitely one of the best that I have played. You are bound to have hours of fun playing it - in fact I will be surprised if you don't loose couple of day's sleep due to this game. Excellent and recommended.

Review of Race Driver GRID coming from NFSMW

I have had Need for Speed: Most Wanted for a long time in my computer, and I recently installed GRID. I will jot down couple of observations that I can make when I compare the two.

+ GRID has two features which are sorely missing in NFSMW, namely ability to replay your race, and damage your car. Both features were there in some other even earlier versions of NFS, but somehow did not make it through to Most Wanted.

In GRID, the replay is shown in a computer controlled camera (you can change it to one of the standard ones if you want), and as the rest of the game is very polished in visual quality. It really makes you look good!

The damage model is good, though coming from NFS where there is no damage, it takes a little time to adopt yourself for handling it. However it does not get too much in the way - as long as you avoid high speed crashes. Your car is immobilized immediately (and the race is over) if you hit the wall at 170mph. The dashboard shows which part of the car is damaged while you are driving. The only other effect I have seen is that if you badly damage one of your wheels, the car will be disbalanced and will have a tendency to automatically steer to one side which you will have to constantly counter throughout the remaining part of the race.

- There is no civilian vehicles and no cops. All the races are pure races, with closed tracks walled off with concrete blocks or blocks of car tires. The tires (as well as parts of your car) get scattered if you bump into them slow enough not to total your car. They will then remain on the track till the end of the race.

- There is no nitro boost. This makes winning more a matter of control.

+/- The difficulty is notched up, partly because of the damage model mentioned above. Also unlike NFS, the competitors here are all more serious in all levels - it is unlikely that you will find someone driving at a slower speed than yours in a long road without turns. Also it will take some time to get used to the controls and the cars, the physics is slightly different from NFSMW. Apparently it's a little more 'realistic' or 'sim' like. However after a bit of practice, you will start winning some of the races. The increased difficulty provides a sense of accomplishment when you win.

+ The game has a feature called 'flashback' which you can use a limited number of times (maximum 5) depending on your difficulty. This lets you rewind time to correct your mistakes (much like Prince of Persia series) and works beautifully in the game. This helps countering the difficulty and balance the game a bit more.

+ The graphics is just a treat for the eyes. The cars and the tracks are gorgeous, they make you want to play on just for the looks. I ended up 'test driving' the cars I own for adapting to the controls, and it was really nice. The menu system is very nice too, it's never static. You will feel that you are almost setting something into motion when you navigate through it.

+ The cars and the race types all have a different feel. It's like multiple racing games in one. You can drive 'Pro Muscle' through the city, or professional motor racing cars in 'Pro Tuned'. The cars for 'Drift' racing have a different weight setting which makes them more susceptible to drifting when you turn.

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.
   

Nokia N82: Beats all expectations!

After having taken a long time in research, I have finally bought the Nokia N82. If I hadn't got that, I would have taken the Cowon A3 (which is the media player you should buy if you want one). Main reasons not to buy the Cowon A3 is that there's no camera in it, and the support would not be easy at all since it's made in Korea, and I'm gonna get it from US.

Anyway, here follows my initial opinions about N82. It's a marvel - everything packed into a small box! I had some expectations in mind about things that it should be able to do. It does definitely meet those expectations - and does a great deal more. However when your expectations are met they always have a tendency to rise... so there are points which I would have liked Nokia to provide, or upgrade in the future firmwares.

I got a black model - you can see how it looks the Nokia site itself. Without further ado, here's my opinion on the phone.

1. Camera

Probably the strongest camera in a mobile that you get today. This mobile comes with a 5mp camera, the camera lens being provided by Carl Zeiss. Carl Zeiss is a leading German manufacturer of optical systems, which has recently partnered with Nokia to provide lenses for several of its phones. There is a lens shutter that covers the lens when not in use. When you open the lens shutter, the phone automatically starts the camera application, when you close it, the camera automatically stops.

Also the mobile comes with a xenon flash, which means that it uses the noble gas xenon for producing the flash light. Which means, that the flash is comparable to flashes in digital cameras. Any other mobile available with a flash at this time (Mid 2008) has an LED flash. The camera has auto-focus ability, so that it can shoot anything which is 10cm away to objects at infinity.

The images are tagged in the .jpeg file with current time, and optionally the location information which the phone can automatically get from GPS. The GPS lock seems faster than N95, based on some reviews I read, and also based on my observations on a brand new N95 (without 8GB) that my friend has got.

Overall, you'll be hard pressed to find any difference in quality between Nokia N82 picture and the same picture taken with a digital camera of similar resolution!

2. Sound & Media
I am not an audiophile, so when I talk about sound quality it won't be accurate to the last decibel. However, with the provided earphones I could listen to my mp3 files and the radio with excellent sound clarity. The phone has a 3.5mm jack, i.e. any normal earphones/headphones will fit into it. Needless to say I have tried my headphone at home and it does work.

The Nokia PC Suite allows you to transport files from your comp, automatically converting and compressing on request to AAC+ (for sound) or MP4 (for videos). However, I do not use the PC Suite as I found it just wants to take over my computer - hence I use the MediaCoder software which is an opensource project that organizes many conversation formats and does a better job than Nokia's PC Suite.

The screen resolution is QVGA, or 320x240, which you can think of as the only drawback. Although the picture clarity is good enough, you will have to lower the resolution of your favorite movies to watch here.

3. WLAN & Internet Features
The mobile asked for my WEP key, and that's all it required to connect to my router. The inbuilt browser is solid, supports javascript and displays full pages (eg. Digg.com) with every bells and whistles with ease.

It has a Webfeeds section where you can subscribe to RSS feeds like Lifehacker and ReadWriteWeb for instance. However the only problem I encountered with the Webfeeds is that for some reason it does not allow you to scroll right.

In the music section it also has full support for downloaing and listening to Podcasts, which was a little surprise awating for me! In my opinion the Podcasts application is more polished than the webfeeds itself. That lets you to subscribe to Podcasts, which are like recorded radio shows, for listening to them later. It has a directory which allows you to choose from many popular podcasts, as well as allows you to enter your own podcast URL. Both webfeeds and podcasts can be updated and downloaded when you have a connection, and viewed or listened to later.

4. GPS
The GPS software provided downloads once from the WLAN to get the map of your city automatically, and then onwards doesn't require the Internet connection (unless you want to use Assisted GPS). It can even search for places like nearest fuel station from the stored database without the connection. In the interface you can choose to display how many satellites are visible. It requires four to establish a lock, three to maintain a lock, although it can connect to five simultaneously.

Despite my apprehension, I found out that this works quite well in India. I'm using it in Bangalore now, and all the major cities are supported.

5. Storage, speed and others
The phone comes with a 2GB memory card. It supports hot-swapping (i.e. you can change the card without having to switch off the phone) and can support upto 8GB of memory.

Despite common fear about the Symbian OS, the speed is quite high for booting well as operating. Also thanks to the Symbian OS you get goodies like Adobe Acrobat reader, and MS Office readers in the phone.

Also it has a Bluetooth chip, but the infrared is notably missing (though I don't miss it myself). The cable that comes with it can connect the phone to a computers USB port as an external storage without having to install the Nokia PC Suite.

Negative Points
Following are some glitches I found in the phone:
a. When I subscribe to a web-feed, there is no way to scroll horizontally even when the HTML is formatted in such a way that there's text or pictures to your right. However, this problem doesn't exist with the web browser. Hopefully they will fix this in the next firmware release.

b. The camera makes a sound and indicates with a red beam from the flash whenever a picture is taken. You cannot turn the camera sound off unless you bought it from Europe. However, you can change the sound to a mere beep if you want to. The sound volume is not affected by the profile you select, so reducing volume or selecting silence mode will not stop it. As a workaround an application called Panoman that comes with the phone can be used to take photograph without the sound. Also here's a page that describes a risky procedure (that voids warranty) for those who absolutely need to turn it off. As for me, I am happy with it the way it is.

c. The organizer/calendar does not support, for example, events repeating on the 1st Wednesday of every month. Any event that repeats monthly has to be repeating on a particular date on the month only. Hopefully, they will improve the software to support this feature later as it is an useful feature allowed by the iCalendar standard.


Conclusion
I definitely got more than I expected, and I feel you'll not regret if you buy this phone as well! For more information check out the features in GSM Arena, or read the review there.