Monthly Archives: May 2011

If you are a person who likes to input data and communicate on a smartphone using a real keyboard your choices are limited. RIM is the king of keyboarded smartphones and has built its hardware, software and everything else BlackBerry related around this setup. For all of the problems RIM is suffering, data entry and sheer speed of use are unquestionably at the peak of the smartphone market at this time, and a lesson for some others to learn from. The smartphone world is dominated by slabs of screen and finger touch phones that bring with them the kind of data entry that cannot keep up with the specifications powering them. What is the point of a 1.2GHz dual-core processor if it takes too long to type a simple email reply? There is a massive drive towards faster processors, clever screen technology and all sorts of other bits and pieces that let you do almost anything with your smartphone, but data entry has been left behind by most hardware manufacturers and software developers. To be fair to Apple, the iPhone keyboard is very good, but people like me still hanker for a hardware keyboard for the simple reason they are quicker and easier to use.

Nokia, HTC and others use hardware keyboards from time to time and the results have been mixed. The landscape HTC keyboards on Android phones have been less useable that they should be given their size. Windows Phone isn’t optimised for landscape yet, which hasn’t stopped some manufacturers releasing phones anyway, and the Nokia phones often have excellent keyboards fronting Symbian, which is the main problem for me. Hardware and software should complement each other and every part of the operating system should fit every feature of the hardware, and vice versa.

There are countless examples where this does not happen and they all have one thing in common; the HTC 7 Pro home screen does not switch orientation when the keyboard is pulled out which is unforgiveable in a +£400 smartphone. Yes, Windows Phone 7 does not support landscape, but that is no excuse for making such a device. The HTC Desire Z supports Android more fully, but the keyboard itself can be tricky to use and is extremely flat when pulled out. The commonality they share is that one company makes the software and another makes the hardware, and this is all too obvious.

Software and hardware only work seamlessly in iOS and BlackBerry. The iPhone has no physical keyboard of course, but the software is designed to blend perfectly with the hardware it is running on. There is of course far too much written about Apple software, to the point that every aspect of the interfaces is drooled over, but you can’t deny how well it works with the single home button and touch screen. It’s also hard to deny how well BlackBerry OS works on a front-keyboarded smartphone, but it hasn’t been as successful on touch devices like the Storm and Torch. BlackBerry smartphones like the Curve and Bold remain the only phones that take full advantage of the front-keyboarded form factor.

And then the Samsung Galaxy Pro arrived.

The Galaxy Pro is on average priced at £249 from the likes of Carphone Warehouse, but 3 is currently offering it for just £149 + top-up which puts it in direct competition with the Curve 8520. At first glance it looks like a pure business-centric unit, but that does not mean that teenagers won’t be buying this phone like they have so much of the BlackBerry range. The combination of a keyboard and an emphasis on social networking alone is likely enough to turn the heads of many and we could see this phone selling very well if the current price point becomes the standard.

It is a curious mix of a professional form factor married to relatively cheap materials, but somehow it retains a likeability factor in use. It looks metallic, but is covered from head to toe in plastic and is extremely light which offers a sense of the budget sector it is aimed at. It is quite odd, but follows the current trend for Android handsets to use fairly cheap outer materials to create lightness. It seems that lightness is becoming a fascination with Samsung, Sony Ericsson and others and while this is beneficial, it can make a phone feel slightly cheap.

Keyboard

The keyboard benefits from the wide form factor and the keys are larger than on most competing front-keyboarded devices. Looking at it, it is easy to expect a clunky and difficult experience, but it works very well indeed. There are some quirks such as the @ key being located on the left and a small space bar, but the build of the keys and the mechanical action of each overcomes these quite easily. The space bar is a mere two keys wide, but I have yet to miss it so a small thumbs up for creating a smaller space bar that actually works.

Overall, this is one of the best keyboards I have used on a smartphone and there are significant advantages to having one built in. The QuickLaunch feature makes opening apps super quick. For example, press the search key and ‘C’ and the calculator opens immediately and you can also define different apps for each key. It reminds me of the BlackBerry method and this is far from a bad thing. The only other addition is the use of 4 arrows keys which you can use to navigate in the home screens and in web pages etc. There are times when this is useful, but I did find myself using the touch screen quite a lot which is surprising because on the BlackBerry Torch I hated jumping between the keyboard, the trackpad and the touch screen.

The keys just above the keyboard are real keys as well which also work well; menu, home, return and search are standard although the placement would benefit from swapping home and menu in my opinion. As with most things though, a short period of time makes them feel perfectly natural and you will soon get used to them. The on/off button is strangely placed on the right-hand side and there are no call start / end keys which makes sense when space is considered- how many people will make and receive enough calls to justify using space for two keys that rarely get used?

This is a very good keyboard and care has been taken to make sure that the space available has been used effectively. It is one of the highlights of the Pro and I don’t think many people will be disappointed with the data input mechanism available here.

Screen

The screen is potentially the Achilles heel of the Galaxy Pro when you consider the specs; at 320 x 240 pixels and measuring only 2.8” you would be forgiven for believing that it will make for a poor Android experience. There are of course compromises to be made, but over time I have managed to get around most of them. Don’t get me wrong- this phone needs a higher resolution to offer a better general experience, but I liken it to the Curve 8520 which works brilliantly with the same type of screen. The Bold 9700 feels nicer with a higher resolution, but what you achieve with both is ultimately the same.

This may sound bizarre, but I kind of like the fuzzy text look of a lower resolution screen because it makes text feel more real. I am not trying to drag an advantage out of the lower resolution here because it needs to be higher, but it does just work on the busy Android interface and the way the keys can be used to manipulate and access the system speeds everything up.

The touch aspect of the screen is excellent and I hit the right spot every time and the marriage of keyboard and touch screen works well here. Brightness is good with some washout in bright sunlight. However, I haven’t struggled to use the phone yet in any conditions and this is surprising when you consider the overall price and screen technology used. You will need to spend time working out what works best because on some third party apps such as K-9 Mail the default text display is too small to tap easily. I like K-9 Mail and so upped the text a little, but also use the arrow keys to navigate through messages, sort of like a BlackBerry. Hooray!

There is one other aspect to this screen and that is the unusual landscape 320 x 240 resolution. This offers some challenges in terms of compatibility with apps and I have noticed some, games in particular, that work on the Galaxy Pro, but in portrait mode. This means that you have to use the phone on its side to play the game with the touch screen.

That all sounds dreadful and I can already hear the sniggers from some readers. However, this still leaves Galaxy Pro users with thousands upon thousands of apps available to them and a large number have already been coded to support the landscape form. On the first day I downloaded the following-

Angry Birds (all 3 versions)
K-9 Mail
Twitter
Evernote
iPaper
Dropbox
Chess Free
BBC News
Drag Racing
Wikipedia
Pool Master
Retro Camera

All of the above worked perfectly with the exception of Chess which, as I said earlier, was turned 90 degrees. This is an example though of random apps downloaded and installed, and they all worked. I suspect some high-end games will struggle with the resolution, but at 2.8” I am not convinced many users will consider gaming as part of their buying decision.

General Performance

The 800Mhz processor will send a shiver down the spine of those whose minds can only comprehend a smartphone with ‘GHz’ somewhere in the specs. However, it all works perfectly well in normal use. When I installed the apps mentioned earlier I had them all running at once and not a blip in performance occurred.

This is not a powerhouse smartphone and will not be able to cope with multiple high-end processes running at the same time, but it will cope with almost everything any normal person throws at it. A device like this does not need a 1GHz processor, actually I can’t think of any smartphone that needs one, and the power built in appears to be perfectly adequate for this particular phone.

Camera

This is a turn up for the books. This phone makes no pretentions to offer a decent photography experience, as the specs highlight, but it isn’t bad at all. Video capture is limited to VGA (320×240) and 30 frames per second. I expected appalling results, but was surprised at how smooth the videos were. You won’t be doing much with the results, but for catching a moment it works better than expected. Example below featuring a beautiful princess…

The still camera has no flash and is limited to 3 Megapixels, but Auto focus, Face detection, Smile detection, Digital zoom, Effects and Panorama are thrown in to make the experience more usable. The camera interface is quick and easy to use and ‘quick and easy’ is how I would describe the photo taking process. It all works well and the results are not bad at all, even close-ups. Check out the examples below.

Battery

Good again. The prediction of 11 hours talk time and 620 hours standby is high, but it seems as though Samsung has decided to aim for the corporate market and produce a phone that is capable of easily delivering a full day of use. Voice calls obviously cut the battery life, but not the extent that I have seen others and I could see this phone managing two days of my normal usage which is quite intense at times. It is another area that makes me wonder if Samsung looked quite closely at the BlackBerry’s before designing the Galaxy Pro.

Software

Android 2.2.2 (Froyo) is installed and works as efficiently as would be expected. I’m not sure of this is standard or an addition by 3, but 4 icons are static on the right-hand side which makes sense given the landscape orientation of the display. It does, however, limit how much space you have to play with widgets and icons and so I quickly installed LauncherPro which worked perfectly.

The keyboard makes using many of the apps a much more productive experience than on a touch screen; messaging, the calendar and any apps requiring data entry are greatly improved and the touch screen is still there for apps that need touch to work well.

Samsung has, for no good reason it seems, bundled in quite a lot of extra software which is mostly not worth keeping. Here is a list of the extras I found-

• Memo (quite good for a very basic notes app)

• FM Radio (this has a sweet interface, but requires using the supplied headphones- they are not good at all)

• News and Weather (provides basic weather forecasting and some new feeds- not bad)

• Crazy Penguins, The Sims 3, Win Cash! And Bejeweled (not sure why these are here when the Android Market offers so much more, but shouldn’t complain)

• Samsung IM / Social Hub (these work to provide an integrated social networking experience which is useful, but could be slightly more professionally presented)

The usual goodies are here of course including Google Navigation, Maps and everything else you expect in Android and it all works as it should, but with the consideration that the low resolution screen makes some of the apps slightly more difficult to use than would normally be the case. Like most things, a few days adjustment makes a world of difference.

Call quality

The call quality to the ear is unusual, but very clear and will suffice for the majority of people. Even at high volumes there is almost no distortion and the speaker phone is not too bad either. There is a slight tinny tone to voice, but it verges on acceptable.

Signal

3G and 2G are fine and I had no problems at all. Full signal everywhere for me, but the Wi-Fi seemed a little weak. It all worked OK, but I was showing 2 bars compared to the iPhone 4′s 4 bars. To be fair it isn’t easy to believe just the bard so some more testing will be required.

Media

Don’t expect great things here because it simply isn’t designed as a pure media smartphone. Then again the music quality isn’t too bad, but you will of course have to use your own headphones because none are supplied. Video playback was acceptable, but only just because of the QVGA screen.

Conclusion

I must emphasise that when I first used the Galaxy pro I was disappointed by what I saw. It felt a little cheap and the design somewhat old fashioned, but over the following days it all started to click into place. The keyboard, screen (to a point), processor, form factor, camera and almost everything else worked as well together as I have seen in any other smartphone.

There is more than a hint of BlackBerry in how the Pro feels to use and the number of shortcuts available helps a lot. This phone is potentially very important because it proves that Android can work on a keyboarded landscape phone. Actually it does work, and it works very well, but the low resolution of the screen hampers the experience just a little and is the one area that feels lacking in a phone that offers a huge amount for the price. At £150 it is an absolute steal and puts many other budget Android smartphones to shame, but if the Orange San Francisco can sport a high resolution screen I see little reason why the Galaxy pro cannot.

The HTC ChaChaChaChaChaChaChaCha is soon to be released and benefits from a 480 x 320 pixel screen which should look much cleaner. The 600Mhz processor, 2.6” screen size and the potential for HTC to once again screw up vital areas mean that it may be a lost opportunity though. At some point a manufacturer will release an Android handset that feels as good to use as a BlackBerry Bold 9700 (they could do it today if they wanted to), and at that moment Android will gain a huge advantage over the competition. RIM will suffer greatly because the Galaxy Pro proves that Android works in this format and that means Android will find a place in the hands of those who require a hardware keyboard for quick communication and the entertainment that Android will potentially bring.

The Galaxy Pro is a very good smartphone, and particularly good value at just £150, but more than anything it shows that an even better version will be brilliant. It does what most people will need particularly well and makes for a decent alternative to the BlackBerry Curve 8520. Make it an alternative to the Bold 9700 and Google, Android and whoever makes it will be laughing. I am keeping the Galaxy Pro and can see myself using it quite often, and not many phones end up in my ‘keep’ category.

Available from 3 for £149 + top-up

UPDATE: It appears that the Galaxy Pro is already unlocked when bought from 3 on PAYG.