The Samsung Galaxy S has proved itself to be a bit of a powerhouse to me over the past week and this leaves me pondering on where the smartphone market is going next. There is so much talk about the iPhone 4, iOS 4 and iPad at the moment and that will lead many to believe that there is no alternative, but there surely is.
The recent releases from HTC and Google (HTC) are great smartphones, but they do have problems in sunlight and less than stellar cameras. These factors along with the ever changing Android OS may perplex some potential users and take away the simplicity the ‘I’ products offer. However, it is not as straightforward as that and Samsung appears to be taking the fight directly to the competition with its latest smartphones. The screens (Super AMOLED) are at the forefront of these phones and are a leap up from what we have seen before. Is the iPhone 4 screen better? Possibly, in some areas, but that does not mean that the Super AMOLED screens are not very, very good in almost all conditions. The size of the screen on the Galaxy is an advantage as well and at 4” makes watching videos and playing games a pleasure.
General performance has been excellent and so is the camera. The absence of a flash may look like a big omission, but I can’t remember the last time I took a photo on a smartphone in poor lighting and the included flash helped at all. Nokia aside, almost none of the other smartphones have great optics in poor lighting so it’s not the end of the world, but it is still a curious decision on the part of Samsung.
Android is growing up nicely and has reached the stage where it could almost become too complex for new users to enjoy their first few days with it. I applaud Samsungs decision to include extra apps, but even I got confused at times and did not know which one to use next. There is little doubt though that Android is on a roll and as each new revision is released, phones like the Galaxy are well placed to embrace the improvements and offer a rounded experience that is not far at all from the iPhone.
To conclude I have to say that the Samsung Galaxy S is a better smartphone that the iPhone 3GS for my needs; it has expandable memory, a better camera, a better screen, better battery, better voice and signal quality and works in all of the places a smartphone should. I can’t say at this time how well it competes against the iPhone 4 until I get my hands on one, but this particular smartphone is way up there on my list and for today at least is at the very top.
Available from Clove for £452.38.
Hello,
I have just bought the iPhone4 and am seriously thinking of returning it for the Galaxy S. I ALMOST bought the Galaxy S anyway, but this new problem with the iPhone4′s phone reception has spoiled the aura for me about the “good design” of the iPhone4. Now it feels like style over content. There are some very good points about the iPhone, a smoother interface than Galaxy S, but that does not equal the plethora of features where Galaxy S surpasses iPhone:
you cannot play divx xvid mpeg4 wmv, and apple does not support adobe flash!
you cannot play flac or ape uncompressed audio files
you cannot have home screens filled with active widgets
you cannot drag and drop music to and from device
you cannot use any old usb cable to charge the phone and have to use itunes and quicktime to sync
you cannot have a spare battery
you cannot put your HD videos you shoot on a SERIES of external memory sticks (when you go on holiday, for example)
hmmm
mark.