Been a wild ride, but now I have a new phone!
Well, I’ve certainly been busy these last few months.
Work is been keeping me busy and I’ve been revisiting my education, getting some new certs.
I’ve also been picking up my Warhammer 40k gaming and adding to my Orks (Currently assembling another Trukk). I will do an article showing my forces now with some pics soon.
Also, my phone was lost (Or stolen, still cant tell). This meant police reports and insurance forms etc, but thankfully that’s something I’ve been quite prepared for.
Still, it disconnected me from a lot of my social life while I was using my old backup device. In the end, the insurance sent me a cheque and said “Buy a new phone”.
So I bought a Samsung Galaxy S II, and I’m very impressed with it. This is my first Android phone, and here is a quick rundown of the specs of said mobile device:
-HSDPA+ 21Mbps / HSUPA 5.76Mbps
-EDGE / GPRS Class 12
-Quad Band GSM 850/900/1800/1900
-Quad Band UMTS 850/900/1900/2100
-Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread)
-Dual-core 1.2GHz CPU
-4.3″ WVGA SUPER AMOLED ‘Plus’ screen
-8MP rear, 2MP front cameras
-Format Support: MPEG4, H.264, H.263, WMV, DivX, Xvid, VC-1
-Recording & Playback 1080@30fps
-Wifi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0+HS, USB 2.0 via Micro USB
-MHL to HDTV connectivity via USB port
There are a few things I’ve been particularly interested in regarding this phone. One of them is the MHL to HDTV connectivity.
What this means is that the Galaxy S II can output (using a special cable) from the USB port directly to a HDMI port on a HDTV upto 1080p. There are a few videos on yourtube like this one and this one that demonstrate how this is achieved, but I’m very interested how this could work together with the DLNA capability of this device.
So far I’ve been usign it for a week and I cant complain apart from a few niggles that I’ve worked around (Like the Samsung ‘Hubs’… Really Samsung, what’s the point?) and I’m particularly impressed with the phones ability to play all the media formats I’ve thrown at it. That combined with the very obvious absence of iTunes, and it’s brilliant. Just plug it in, drag and drop, disconnect. Nice.
One thing I must say that I’m unimpressed about, is Skype (I know this is not a mark on the ‘phone’ but still). I’ve written before that I use Skype a lot and it’s big on my list of must-haves, but I’m not impressed with how Skype has developed (Or not developed, to be more to the point) their Skype client. There are giant threads on the official Skpe forums complaining about this as well as elsewhere, but there is hope!
That hope comes in the form of the recent purchase of Skype by Microsoft. A lot of people have lamented this move by Microsoft, but I see it as a stategic and smart decision, well worth the $8.5 billion they paid for Skype (Which is well over Skype’s worth considering it was sold for 2.7 billion just a few years ago). The focus point here though is the userbase. Lets face it, Skype has over 170 million users, and ~25 million concurrently using the service at any one time. This is going to be big, especially as it is clear Microsoft intend to integrate Skype into their Lync platform. Unified comms? Yes please! And what is Unified comms without multi-platform? I have faith, lets see if it pays off.
More to come.
FollowKMan 