Apple will continue to win because their stuff just works…
By Troy Saxton-Getty
A routine update to our staff Samsung Galaxy S II this morning bricked the new phone, it’s useless…Apple stuff just doesn’t do this, that’s one big reason they own planet Earth
I knew going in this was a risky update, because with Android it always is…… Even us IT types are just flat unable to recover, imagine a basic user.
This upgrade was a general maintenance release….
Samsung Galaxy-S II – Awesome Super AMOLED Plus display – A new Android favorite @ dropSKIP
by Troy Saxton-Getty
We have been waiting to have our socks knocked off by a new Android smartphone, it’s been a while since we have been excited in this category, the HTC Thunderbolt gave us our last jolt of excitement but the world of Android has been pretty bleak since then, we’ve tested several new Android handsets but nothing has been worthy of a fav until now.
Enter the new Samsung Galaxy -S II! With it’s amazingly bright and beautiful 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus display.
Samsung Galaxy-S II
We’ve been using the phone for a few weeks every day and with the recent update to 2.3.6 OS the Gingerbread install is really clean and Samsung’s little tweaks in the UI and layout make it a nice interface, they call it TouchWiz and it’s now version 4.0.
On Android we have a special place for HTC’s Sense UI interface and all the nice improvements they bring to the base Android however the Samsung presentation of the basic Gingerbread UI is nice, crisp and easy to use. You tend to only notice these little differences when you use the phone in-the-real-world for an extended period of time vs a quick product review, something dropSKIP doesn’t do. Using these products in our day to day lives we get to find the things that work and don’t work that you wouldn’t notice is a basic one time review.
One of the things we noticed in day to day use is the “tablet” like features based on the orientation landscape vs portrait. For example, in landscape mode, the email or text message reader will shift into dual pane mode, giving you the ability to select, read and move on like the iPad. Sounds small, but in dealing with a multitude of messages from different accounts or a high volume of messages, this feature is fantastic.
Dual Pane email and messaging view
These are features usually reserved for tablet layouts with larger screens, even the HTC Thunderbolt with the latest Sense UI interface doesn’t offer this feature so it can’t be due to just having the larger screen real estate. (both screens are the same size)
The larger format Android phones have an advantage here clearly over Apple who’s smaller but amazing screen just doesn’t have enough space to pull this off.
iPhone 4S compared to the Samsung Galaxy-S II
You can see the size different in the above photo pretty clearly as compared to the iPhone 4S, the extra size really does make a difference.
We like this handset for a few reasons, speed, performance, slim width, large and very colorful screen and overall feature set, including an 8MP camera.
Our test unit was fully loaded with 9 email accounts, movies, tv shows, games and lots of other content and it performed flawlessly, the battery life was pretty impressive since this thing has a huge screen and even watching movies over Netflix streaming on 4G, the battery held up better then any of our other Android handsets. Another nice thing about the newer models of phones is charging time is getting better to, however clearly the iPhone wins on recharge speed almost twice as fast getting to 50-60% than other models due to their quick charge technology.
The Samsung Galaxy-S II is very thin, making it easily pocketable front or back regardless of screen size, however I would be careful sitting on it in a back pocket.
Samsung Galaxy-S II back
Similar to the Motorola Droid models, the phone isn’t the same thickness on both ends to house the loudspeaker, it does however make it easier to grip and isn’t really an issue.
The Camera is one of the best we’ve used outside of the iPhone 4S, our gold standard by a long shot, however if that is a 10, this is a solid 8 out of 10. Color accurate, white balance in auto mode is accurate in and out of natural lighting, the flash works well and with a 3rd party app, makes a great flashlight.
The video recording is quite remarkable, even when pushed to a full 1080p, again, smooth and nothing noticeable in the recording.
The front facing camera is 2MP and works well for video conferencing.
If you are a huge HTC Fan you can get some 3rd party add-ons like the Thumb Keyboard from Beansoft and Beautiful Widgets to get the Sense UI main screen and weather “like” view and you won’t feel too bad not having Sense UI. As a Sense UI fan, I would be happy to share our list of add-on’s to get a non-HTC phone to feel like it really has Sense UI 3 all the way around.. comment here for the list.
Beautiful Widgets
With the Beautiful Widgets add-on, be sure to search for an updated skin which you will find many, but the ones that have the highest download rates are the ones that look similar to HTC’s Sense UI, I am glad these guys are keeping this product going, really useful stuff and only a few bucks.
We’ve also dropSKIP tested the Samsung with drops from 3, 6 and 9 feet onto standard office carpet without a case or screen cover. It held up without an issue, no parts flew off, the battery cover stayed on it and the battery stayed in it, from 9 feet that is the most usual occurrence. We haven’t done the dropSKIP concrete test as of yet, but will do it a few more months into our next testing regiment once we find a cool case and screen protector we like, we do like this phone bare at the moment.
On our performance testings, streaming video, switching to an incoming call, returning to video, checking text and email the unit worked flawlessly without a CPU hiccup, no stutter, just smooth and useful, a great use of CPU power when needed. A 1.2GHz ARMv7 dual-core processor makes it run smoothly.
We also ran our “heat it up test” and couldn’t get the handset to warm up to the touch much, unlike some of our earlier tests where the handset is almost uncomfortable up to the ear, and in some cases, even in our hands. Cooling is very efficient and heat generation is low.
The Samsung Galaxy-S II has some other nice features like sensors to determine it’s setting face down, a tilt-zoom capability the allows zooming by simply tilting the unit in landscape mode and a few others which you can turn on or off.
Browsing the web is a joy, we had to update the Adobe Flash Player and enable plug-ins, but Flash content rendered fast and the browsing experience is on par with smaller tablets. You will find it quite usable even for long browsing sessions while traveling without a computer or tablet.
We can’t say enough about this wonderful handset, Samsung has really set the high bar for Android handsets, fantastic!
If you are avoiding the Apple iPhone or just really love Android, you would be very impressed with this handheld, and don’t be discouraged because it’s not Android 3 or 4, the 2.3.6 Gingerbread with TouchWiz 4.0 gives it a brand new and fresh feel. We’ve already seen non-carrier hacks for Android 3 and 4.
A top 3 Android smartphone pick for us at dropSKIP!
As much as we try to hate on Windows Mobile 7 – With the Mango 7.1 update, we have to honestly admit, we love it…
by Troy Saxton-Getty
At dropSKIP we have been tougher on Microsoft versus any of the other mobile OS providers (ok, maybe not as tough as we are on RIM-Research in Motion) and for good reason.
The first version of Windows Mobile 7 was pretty cool but lacked the basics of the much more mature operating systems. WM7 offered some interesting new and fresh ways of looking at mobility issues for data sharing and consumption but all-in, it really couldn’t stand up to the big boys and it was truly disappointing.
Well, we have to admit, as much as we liked to bag on WM7 and Microsoft not being able to compete, Mango (aka Windows Mobile 7.1) has changed the playing field, it is a serious contender, and it’s plain fun and useful in a way that nicely fits the multi-connected individual.
We finally got the much anticipated T-Mobile Mango update last month on our dropSKIP overly tested – HTC HD7 (not the S model) and right from the beginning it had us captivated with just a few of the “500″ new features not to mention, it was lightening fast on our older hardware.
The first thing that caught our attention was the email grouping feature, most of the other OS’s offer a combined INBOX view if you happen to have multiple accounts, but this is something different, it’s much more usable, for example, on our test unit, we have 9 email accounts, 4 of which are work and business related, 3 personal and the remaining two are the “spam” and Junk accounts that end up being used for product registrations etc. With the grouping feature in Mango, we created three groups, Biz, Personal and Bulk. Each tile keeps a running total of new/unread email and it clearly denotes the unread number in an easy to see format making it super fast to get to what is important first, then less important second and so on, in a way “we” choose what we see grouped together.
Mango 7.1
The next feature we immediately fell in love with is the combined Messaging area, you can setup text messages, Facebook Messaging, Twitter, Linked-In etc. to show up in a single location just like the combined email inbox view. This is really a cool presentation and it makes the non-email reading/replying features much more useful.
In our tests between 9 active email accounts, 7+ messaging and chat feeds, we could read and reply faster then IOS5 and Android (2.x, & 3.x). Our test handset units are setup with all of our work, personal and junk email accounts combined with multiple messaging feeds gets well over 500+ items per day. We could read and reply faster on Mango then IOS5 or Android.
Last but not least, the contact-centric view, you can combine two or more contacts into a group, for example, Close Friends, Work Peeps, Family and Top Customers. This view can be setup to show you everything related to that group of contacts, Facebook feed, twitter, etc. basically anything related to the contact in the group for the services you sign up or login to. This is down right amazing, simple and makes a ton of sense and to top it off, the tile for each group has live feed update of little pictures for each contact in the group, so on the home screen, you are seeing updated photos live for each contact in the assorted group, clever & cool!
Mango 7.1 People Groups
I can’t wait to see these features copied to the “other” OS’s! Microsoft, you are back with some leading features even the others don’t have.
The Multi-tasking works very well too, simply long-press the “Back Arrow” icon and it will allow you to select between all running applications. If you long-press the Windows icon, you can speak your commands like in Android and almost a cool as Siri on IOS5.
These are just a few of the many new features we found immediately useful and actually cooler then our favorite Android devices as well as our daily drivers, a pair of iPhone4S models, one Verizon and one AT&T.
Mango Windows Mobile Update is competitive and actually quite nice…
by Troy Saxton-Getty
We finally got the much anticipated Mango update to our T-Mobile HD-7 (it’s basically the same on all carriers) and right from the first boot, pretty impressive. The first thing you will notice is the improved main Tile interface, it is much richer and way more configurable than the first Windows Mobile 7 release, it is actually very useful.
You can group email, group contact and even Messaging can be a group of text, Facebook chat and/or other instant type communication.
Mango on HD-7
Another great feature is Grouping of Contacts into sub groups, as you can see we have a Tile called Amigo’s, this is simply a small collection of favorite friend contacts (Thank you Aaron Fulkerson of Mindtouch fame for modeling 
)
The Inbox can finally be grouped or even “smart” grouped so that you can pick what you would like to see in a combined Inbox view or not. If you have multiple email accounts, you can select 3 of 6 for example to only show up in the combined Inbox view but still have separate tiles for the others.
Mango's multi-tasking view
Mango finally added multi-tasking so apps could run in the background, if you long press the Back button, you get this simple and elegant task swapping screen, simply swipe right or left to the other running application. It’s that simple.
If you long press the Camera button, even with the screen locked, the camera is available instantly. Great for practical jokes if you get your friend’s camera without them knowing. -grin
Mango took a long time to produce and release, we started to have our doubts, but with 500 new features, it is packed with new and fantastic tools, most are very practical, like cut and paste etc.
Another point of confusion is around the version number, the media and even Microsoft has called it version 7.5 previously, it’s actually version 7.1 – Mango is Microsoft Windows Mobile 7.1
If you want a simple, near fool-proof smart phone interface, the Mango release of Windows Mobile 7 really brings it all home, for a non-techie, it’s really great too. It ran really fast even on our older HD-7 Hardware, plus it’s widely available for most 7.0 models, one of our real gripes about Android updates.
As reluctant as we are to give Microsoft props, The Mango operating system update is Bad-Ass, and that is a technical term…I am saying this even with a pair of Apple iPhone 4S’s in my pocket for my main daily use. Damn, I am carrying 3 phones again…
When the HTC HD7 shipped back in early November 2010, I was excited to see something hardware comparable to the HTC EVO 4G. Although they are both made by the same manufacturer, they are very different in many ways but similar in some as well. For example, the EVO has a better camera, 8MP vs. HD7′s 5MP, the screens are both 4.3″ displays, the EVO presents 65k color vs. HD7′s 16 million. The EVO is exclusive to SPRINT running Android 2.2 and the HD7 runs the Microsoft Windows Mobile 7 operating system. For more on this, Craig Gillispie at SMARTPHONE ENVY has a fantastic article: http://www.smartphoneenvy.com/featured/face-off-htc-hd7-vs-htc-evo-4g/. These guys write great stuff on “Face Off’s of one phone vs. another”, check them out!
Our reviews are about longer term use ITRW (in the real-world), we basically port our personal and professional lives over to the device and use it in our day-to-day regiment.
I have spent years buying older Windows mobile phones only to come back to the conclusion that the experience of trying to recreate the “Big” Windows environment was just a stupid thing to try to do, about the same as Windows on a TABLET PC.
Windows Mobile 7 however is an entirely different experience, it is simple, elegant and very well designed, although it’s considered to be version 7, it is nothing like v6.5 or earlier. It is a clean slate and it’s lovely.
Over the course of the next few articles I will drill into what I really like, what’s so-so and what still needs improvement.
Windows Mobile 7 starts off with a simple summary screen, showing appointments, new email, missed calls, signal, battery etc.
Locked Screen View
A quick flick-drag of the finger upward and you’re in. (if you have a screen lock password, flick-drag and then enter the code and tap OK)
Windows Mobile 7 - Main Screen
The first thing you are presented with are these simple TILES – email, text, phone and other tile icons representing some of your apps, you can modify their order very easily, remove or add by simply holding your finger on one for a second then it breaks from the pack and you can change that specific one and, of course, repeat this until you are happy with what you have for your initial TILE organization. It is very simple.
Windows Mobile 7 - Apps screen
If you want to get to more apps than what you have on the tile screen, you can press the Right Arrow on the upper right side or simply drag-swipe your finger from right to left and you will see the All-Apps screen cleverly slip in from the right. The interesting thing here, this is pretty much the main way to navigate around the phone, left, right, up and down, a finger drag-swipe motion makes it very simple.
If I drag-swipe back to the tile screen and click an email icon you enter the email app based on the specific email account for that tile, e.g. Yahoo Mail, GMail and so on. If you use corporate email on an Microsoft Exchange Server, the ActiveSync setup is a snap, and it is very solid. On our HD7 we have 9 email accounts setup ranging from Exchange, IMAP, POP and some cloud service types as well. They all just work, no drama. Another key point, corporate calendar syncing is very stable (I know, it’s Microsoft to Microsoft). How refreshing to see a nearly flawless calendar & contact sync.
Email account view
One of the things that really sticks out nicely with Mobile Windows 7 is the use of great fonts, larger, very readable, contrast is great, really a very usable display when you are bouncing around on a bus, walking, riding in a car, etc. My initial thought was the colors seemed bland, though once you spend time using it you will clearly see why it is easy on the eye, quick to view and it just works. You will also see a reverse use of black backgrounds and white larger text as well. A Themes option in setup allows to change the primary color scheme, yeah, for you PINK fans, it actually looks pretty cool.
HD7 Kickstand
Like the EVO, the HD7 enjoys a very similar “Kickstand”, I thought this was a flimsy gimmicky thing but after having used the phone for a while, you really get the idea, it works for so many different things and it is rock solid. I wish this idea would show up on some of my other favorite handsets or cases!
To date, the best NetFlix experience on a small device has to go hands down to the HD7. NetFlix works great and it is very viewable for short content as well as feature-length movies, you can plug-in headphones or you can just prop it up on the desk and the internal speakers are solid enough for a movie break with speakers on both sides, in stereo.
HD7-NetFlix
Well, that should get us started for HD7 and Windows Mobile 7 extended use kick-off. Going forward, I will comment on specific things that work well or really need improvement and, so far, I really don’t want to admit it (as an Android and iPhone/iPad fan), the new Microsoft Windows Mobile 7 OS is fantastic, it is downright a contender and in some ways I like it better than the other “big” two.
If you are not a techie (even techies like it), but want a solid, easy, reliable and great phone experience, you should strongly consider Windows Mobile 7, seriously. The Zune media/content market is very nice. The Microsoft Apps Store experience is great, it’s new, it doesn’t have the developer following of the Apple Apps Store, but it is growing quickly.
I do have an equivalent app on the HD7/Win7 phone for all of the most used apps I have on my Android and iPhone rigs, in fact, some of them are the same app from the same developer, the Win7 App Store is growing quickly so I am not too worried here.
If you are confused on what is the best choice for you, hit your local phone store and spend some time looking at all of them, I suspect you will find the Windows Mobile 7 operating system on a nice phone like the HD7 a great choice.
Now that we have had a few days to test out the new Motorola Atrix it was time to install the Entertainment Center kit, this is an add-on option that basically builds on the Webtop (laptop like) add-on, but instead of being a laptop chassis that you connect the Atrix phone to, this is a docking module that connects to your home TV via HDMI.
It comes with a docking module, Power supply, remote, Bluetooth keyboard & Mouse:
Motorola Atrix Entertainment Center
The kit comes with everything you need except the HDMI cable, and it’s not just a basic HDMI cable, you have to get one with the MicroHDMI connector to mate to the docking module and regular HDMI to connect to your TV. For this test we connected it to our 30 inch desktop DELL monitor via HDMI.
After a little technical fiddling with attaching the Bluetooth keyboard with the basic pairing technique we were able to get it all up and running, although not too involved, someone who doesn’t understand Bluetooth pairing will have to pay close attention to the manual. It did work the first time and it took only a few minutes.
One thing that was interesting is the phone in the dock becomes a virtual mouse until you get the mouse paired on Bluetooth, so between the remote and the phone you can navigate enough to then pair the mouse and keyboard.
Once everything is paired and working correctly the phone becomes a clock and the first screen is the Media Center mode, you can also select Webtop mode (as seen above) and the experience is pretty slick. You get a little window which is an expanded display of the live phone screen, anything on the phone is available here and the larger Webtop desktop which supports a Firefox browser and some other included tools.
Additionally the dock supports external speakers through the standard audio jack, I didn’t see any optical option but it was easy enough to add our Bose desktop speakers.
My first thought was, “What a great dorm room or apartment type setup, between the Entertainment Center option and the Webtop laptop chassis this is pretty cool”.
It is a pretty zippy system running at 1080 HD from a phone over HDMI. Although it wasn’t the native display resolution of the 30 inch monitor (which is much higher then HD), it looked pretty good. on a native 1080 monitor it would look very crisp we suspect.
The idea is that you would watch TV on the included ATT U-verse application powered by HULU, listen to your music and view your photos. If it is on your phone or available over the internet, you could use this expansion kit to watch it on a regular TV. If you already have a heavy investment in Apple TV, ROKU or other media centers it wouldn’t make as much sense to buy this kit unless you wanted to add to your geek appeal, but if you don’t have that stuff, this is actually a pretty cool solution.
Next we will test HD content playback, the documentation says it will handle 1080p, amazing… can’t wait to play, oh, I mean “test” it some more!
Motorola Atrix with Entertainment Center browsing the Web
We loaded the included Firefox browser and did some website testing, it was very usable, the cool part is you can use it on the big screen, save a bookmark and get to it when all you have with you is the Atrix phone.
One phone, lots of content, 4G download speeds, multiple ways to use it; Phone alone, Laptop and entertainment expansion options. No wonder this little gem was CES product of the year for 2011.
In November I purchased a Samsung Galaxy Tab for full price after being a long time iPad user (from day one). Needless to say I was a bit disappointed with the product as it was close to the same price as my 3G iPad. over the past several months I have learned to customize it with apps enough that is is fairly useful. I have also added some great apps to my PC/Mac to make the experience more iTunes like, such as DoubleTwist. Although the experience ITRW (in the real world) isn’t on par with my iPad, it’s finally at a price point worth considering, T-Mobile recently announced a $249 price tag if you are willing to sign a 2 year contract.
When I talk to my non-gadget and gadget friends one thing is not clear to either, people keep getting wrapped up with the 2 year contract. I get it, but a two year data plan doesn’t mean your stuck with the unit for 2 years.
Let me explain:
First, at T-Mobile (and ATT) the unit is SIM chip based, meaning, you can pull the SIM out and it’s “portable” to something else if you decide to change devices. Second, if, in a year, you want to go to a different device, you can and on the same data plan contract. Huh?
What do you lose? The next device can’t be at the subsidized/discounted pricing (money off for another contract term) unless you get a new phone number (aka data plan) activated, again, on another term, like 2 more years. So if you really are bumming a year later, buy the new device full pop, move your SIM. (in the case of Verizon without SIM cards, you can deactivate the original unit, buy the new unit and transfer service) (New unit will be at full price but no contract extension)
So, the Galaxy Tab is now worth a look on T-Mobile at $249 and even $299 on ATT, Verizon or Sprint.
PS, Did I mention you can have native TEXT’ing on the T-Mobile TAB? (Geez Verizon Xoom….)
T-Mobile:
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-tab/SGH-T849ZKATMB
All Tab Carriers:
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-tab?cid=ppc_gtb_goo_Galaxy+Tab_Tab_galaxy+tab
