Domain: phonesreview.co.uk
Stories and comments across the archive that link to phonesreview.co.uk.
Comments · 11
-
Re:Upgrade to 6.1?
-
Re:Early adoption problem
Meanwhile I got a Google Galaxy Nexus , and a friend got the Galaxy SIII
Galaxy Nexus faults: Microphone cuts out. Poor barry life. Random reboots.
http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2012/05/22/verizon-samsung-galaxy-nexus-problems-via-gottabemobile/
Samsung SIII faults: Build quality. Battery life. Overheating. Wi-Fi connection problems.
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Samsung-remains-deaf-to-Galaxy-S-III-build-quality-issues_id33091
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/360123/20120706/samsung-galaxy-s3.htm#.UGxA3bTIBdwThe iPhone is the worst smartphone except for all the other ones. It gets more press about what few issues there are because the iPhone is just generally more news-worthy than the rest of the phones. Good stuff and bad stuff all gets more column inches.
-
Re:Comparing 2 different things...
Saying that Android won't gain much market share is not only foolish, it's entirely false.
The latest numbers disagree with your assessment: Apple is gaining faster than Android is. And let's not forget profit per unit, where Apple is kicking the crap out of Android. But what about growth of the market itself? Well, that isn't looking too hot either. In fact, the latest numbers suggest that Android's biggest problem isn't Apple at all, but Microsoft.
If Google can step their game up and fix some the glaring issues such as inconsistent updates from manufacturers, they'll be well on their way to take the dominant position.
They obtained the dominant position some time ago, in terms of per unit sales. It's highly unlikely they'll ever achieve parity with per unit profit compared to other offerings. It's arguable that the only thing keeping Android alive is the Google brand identity; The support is shit and the platform is fragmenting. By most business metrics, the Android platform's golden age is drawing to an end. Google hasn't "stepped up their game" at any point, and they can't... because the entire Android model is a free for all. They have no control over what apps get loaded, they can't possibly test all possible combinations of hardware and software, and in fact most vendors have to work rather closely with Google to get a shipping product. Oh, and it's not cheap maintaining 20 different hardware platforms for the vendor... which is why so few stand behind their product for any length of time.
No, I don't think they're on their way to a dominant position: I think they're on their way to the shit can if they can't sort out some very real structural (read: management) problems in the overall Android platform.
-
Re:Is it really such a big deal?
How difficult would it be to place a NFC skimmer next to or on top of that Mcdonald's payment console?
The attack requires much longer than the second or two a person is likely to take swiping their phone at a McDonald's POS. If you wanted to make your scenario even prima facie plausible you could at least have proposed something like a malicious charging station. Of course then the phone would have to be laying down with the screen on in order for NFC to even work and when NFC on the S3 actually does do its thing it makes a distinct sound alerting the user. I've only read the descriptions of the attack and they aren't perfectly clear but the number 185 is thrown around in relation to how many times the exploit had to be ran before it even worked. Can the planets align just right for something like this to actually work on a profitable enough basis that you would have a chance of seeing something like it deployed in the real world? Based on what I've read I seriously wouldn't bet on it. Make it happen and I'll be a believer but like so many other seemingly daily scare-sploits that come and go in the tech press, I'll keep reminding people that for any set A number of conceptually demonstrated exploits paraded under controlled circumstances there is a much much smaller subset B of actual practical worthwhile hacks that will ever be put into practice in the real world. Not only that but in this particular instance, it depends on certain architectural weaknesses in Android 4.0.4 on the Galaxy S3 and that OS/device window is rapidly closing with no hard evidence that the exploit works on anything else.
tl;dr *yawn*
-
Re:Oh ffs
Just some points:
The S2 screen doesn't have as good of dpi as the iPhone 4S
But on the other hand, many reviews comparing SGS2 screen with the old iPhone 4 screen have put the sgs2 screen as the better one. Not sure if that will change with 4S.. From what I've read, I don't think so.
The S2 doesn't have dual antennas for double the bandwidth like the iPhone 4S
"The iPhone 4S supports up to 14.4Mbps download, which is a lot faster than the current iPhone 4. However the SGS2 is HSPA+ ready and produces 21Mbps download speed"
(from here)The iPhone 4S can stream content wirelessly to my AppleTV, while the S2 can not.
However, it can stream content to (and from.. mostly) any DLNA-supporting device.
As for some of the other points, like battery life and UI.. Well, it depens. For UI I can't say I've been missing anything, and it certainly feels pretty fluid. The battery life varies a lot on SGS2, from people reporting less than 1 day, to people reporting 7 days.. For me it lasts about two days with normal use, but I tend to recharge it every night, just to be sure.
You also forgot to mention Siri, which looks to be better voice command system than the default installed on the SGS2. (Of course, siri is not perfect either.. )
-
Re:Pictures
There's no denying that there are a lot of similarities between the two. The only thing I'll say is, however, that the comparisons made on this site sound a little biased. For instance, have a look at this shot of the F700:
http://static.phonesreview.co.uk/wp-content/phoneimages/2008/02/f700.jpgHow the hell is that not "silver rounded edges" and "a black face"? And this is supposedly Samsung's design before the iPhone, so it shouldn't have been inspired by it. It's not that much of a stretch to have Samsung build off their previous phones while taking some inspiration from its competitors (and everyone does that, in every field). You can clearly recognize the front button of the F700 on the SGS2 for instance, or the grilled speaker at the top.
The icon comparison is even worse. I'll grant the phone app and the contacts app (even though the phone is just Google's reversed on a background), but the rest are very different. The SMS icon is Google's, even, and the music player icon reminds me more of Windows Media Player than iTunes. It's also not as if most of these icons could be done in a billion different ways. They're representative of their purpose.
All of this, to me, sounds like a whole load of horseshit. Look at the phone from any angle and you'll find that it's different from the iPhone. I hope Samsung can make something more unique, for their own brand image's good, but I don't think all of this is grounds enough to actually ban sales of the damn thing. This is just Apple taking advantage of the patent system to deny competition.
I'll withhold saying anything about tablets since I have no interest in them and to me they all look alike. Otherwise, flame me all you want but I really hate things like these which present opinions as facts.
-
Re:Hopeless
What Samsung did was totally uncreative and somewhat shameless, but not illegal.
Shameless? I call it inevitable. Samsung has historically nearly always had a black bezel around their screens. As pressures to increase screen size rose they started getting bigger, and hiding keyboards in slide out bits at the bottom, and the screens continued to have black bezels, and phones... well phones come in all shapes and colours including rounded edges making the phone almost circular and the ludicrously straight edges.
So my question to you is, when the world moves to a platform that emphasizes touch, on-screen keyboards, and the pressures are to maximize usable area while minimizing the size of the phone, what would you design? Ultimately you'll end up reducing the number of buttons, and making a phone that looks like every other fucking phone.
Is it shameless that I put my computer in a grey box? Is it shameless that my nextdoor neighbour builds a house that has 4 walls and a roof just like mine?
-
Re:The second battery on an iPhone is replaceable
Care to cite your "about double" blabbering? I can prove you wrong.
IMHO you're just another fanboi who has just been beaten down like a lying bitch. I encourage others to look into the "facts" of this liar because he seems to just make shit up. -
Re:XCP on steroids!
Sony and Nintendo aren't the only ones who have botched their firmware update processes.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10368709-56.html
While Microsoft/Danger has not made any statements regarding the root cause that took out all sidekick users in North America last week, it is curious that it happened right as word was circulating that the LX 2009 model was do for an OTA update.... hmmm thats interesting.
http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2009/10/02/firmware-update-for-buggy-sidekick-lx-2009-on-its-way/
It's now been almost a week since the outage started and there are still thousands of LX 2009 owners that have missing email, phonebooks, and notes. T-Mobile sent out an urgent message to users last weekend warning sidekick owners NOT to hardware reset their phones. What many Sidekick owners I know experienced was their phones were reset remotely by either Microsoft/Danger or T-Mobile Friday morning when the outage began. Adding insult to injury, one friend noted that her Sidekick has been hardware reset remotely now no less than 10 times since the outage began. Additionally, while her network service has been restored, the phone is behaving worse than it ever had before the outage.
While I am no expert on how the Sidekick works I can make some observations based on comments my friend and other have made about their experiences last weekend:
1. The LX 2009 appears to silently store phonebook and other user generated information, and preferences in volatile RAM, rather than the Sim card or Flash. This appears to be a default configuration.
2. While both T-Mobile reps and glossy into claims the SideKick stores personal info either on Microsoft/Danger's servers and/or on the user's SIM card, my friend was unable to find any preference settings on the phone relating to this feature.3. Maybe this is a sign that cloud services are a bad idea for storing mission critical information. For many people their address/phonebook ARE mission critical.
4. Microsoft/Danger and T-Mobile may be due for a massive class action here. The sad thing is that my friend has been very happy with T-Mobile's service for years. From what she tells me the failure of the sidekick LX 2009s in North America rests squarely on Microsoft/Danger's shoulders.5. Back in May there were strong indications that Microsoft gutted the Sidekick development team shortly after the LX 2009 was shipped... http://www.zimbio.com/Sidekick+3+Ringtones/articles/171/Microsoft+Lays+Off+Danger+Employees
Could it be that Microsoft has backstabbed Sidekick owners to finish killing off the platform? By cutting internal support for critical Danger services it could easily be written off as a terrible mistake. Microsoft would clearly have good reason to take a plausibly deniable swipe at T-Mobile for forcing them to make the last Sidekick.... Other possible causes might include disgruntled ex-employee sabotage of the Danger back-end...How does a mission critical server, owned by the largest software company in the world get taken out so completely that it takes 5 full days to bring it back up? I could see this being an accident for a small startup with weak IT processes, but at Microsoft? Something doesn't add up.
Back to Sony for a moment:
It seems unlikely that Sony intended to brick PS3's with this update, but on the other hand all of the console makers tend to treat their customers like indentured licensees... so outcomes like this are sure to occur more often until some serious lawyering and lawmaking gets invoked.
My hunch is that these issues are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
-
Re:Do Telcos (in Aust) really want to sell Android
If the following article is to be believed, the Samsung Galaxy has been selling quite well in Europe (> 100000 units in the first month). Not sure about their claims of outselling HTC's combined offerings though.
http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2009/08/24/100000-samsung-galaxy-android-handsets-sold-in-europe-in-a-month/ -
iPhone VoIP SDK
There's an official VoIP SDK for the iPhone, so expect similar apps to follow from other providers. The only limitation is that you can't VoIP over the GPRS/Edge/3G data connection.