Samsung galaxy S for business - does it work for you?
Samsung galaxy S for business - does it work for you
?
The Samsung Galaxy S is the latest and greatest phone by the Korean electronics giant - Samsung. It looks like a pure consumer phone but with the distinction becoming ever more blurred and just a matter of finding the right apps for you, we thought that we would review the phone with the business mobile phone user in mind.
The Galaxy S represents a real milestone for both Samsung and Google, as it's the most powerful and feature-rich phone on the market at the moment, edging the HTC Desire plus adding the marketing clout of the Korean electronics giant.
But with Apple stepping up its game with the iPhone 4, Android and Samsung need to come out with something special to prove that they can produce a phone that can test the might of some of the best smartphones on the market, As always we are reviewing the Samsung Galaxy S with the business mobile phone user in mind, so this is what we thought onn first impressions:
The Samsung Galaxy S is a sexy phone, There is the luxurious 4-inch Super AMOLED screen to the teeny 9.9mm frame, it's a phone that looks and feels like quality, but bear in mind that it is not small - most Smartphones have a 3.5 inch screen.
The Samsung Galaxy S currently runs on Android 2.1, but Samsung has already confirmed that it's set for an Android 2.2 Froyo upgrade.
The front panel of the phone has two touch sensitive buttons and one physical - these work as usual, with the menu and back keys to the sides of the large clickable home key - this feels reminiscent of the i-phone 3.
Apart from that there's just the 3.5mm headphone jack and micro USB slot on the top of the phone, and the power/lock button on the right hand side.
The camera on the back is fairly small - but at 5MP it matches the new i-phone 4 as well as many of the other latest smartphones, but as there is no flash and it is not a practical phone for all business users as many of you will be taking shots of products and whiteboards in dark meeting rooms so a flash is always handy.
In terms of usability the Samsung Galaxy S is incredibly responsive on the touchscreen. We found that we didn't make mistakes when typing as with some of the earlier touch screens, the phone reacts simply to any finger touch to the clarity of the OLED technology used, Android looks and works better than ever before on this phone.
Also running on this phone on top of the Android OS is the touchwiz 3.0 overlay which really enhances the performance.
The Samsung Galaxy S has a great range of icons on the homescreen that link to the applications you use and need and almost makes the menu redundant - see how many apps you can fit on there! To make use of these you simply open the menu and long-press on an icon to install it on the expansive screen.
There's a 1GHZ processor alongside a dedicated graphics processing unit (GPU) on the Samsung Galaxy S so browsing and streaming work extremelly efficiently so if you need to send regular emails back to the office with attachments you are not going to have any issues at all.
Google have also just announced that they are bringing many of their business services such as google adwords, Google Analytics, Doubleclick and Adsense to mobile meaning that you can use these on the move and can make sure that your campaigns do not get out of control when you are out of the office.
Not particularly for business mobile phone users but the music player is superb - it's probably the best out there on the market which is great if you are in the media/music industry.
Incredibly there is SRS virtual surround sound as well as cover flow navigation - the audio reproduction is clear, and while the speaker can distort at high volumes, it's perfectly adequate.
The video playback is also something that makes the Samsung Galaxy S probably the market leader - not only can it downscale HD footage to play on the WVGA screen (and make it look great with the contrast ratios offered by the Super AMOLED display) but you can also send it out to your big screen TV using the micro USB slot - incredible.
It can play MP4/DivX/WMV/H.264/H.263 file types - and we're sure AVI can be chucked in there too. It flattens Archos' Android device which is surprising enough alone.
The internet is also great on this phone - in the near future there will be a Flash 10.1 upgrade which will make it even better, but for now it copes really well with fair sized sites - at least as well as the HTC Desire, which we thought a few months ago was the best out there for browsing speed.
As well as all of this there are the smartphone essentials - pinch to zoom, text resizing and quick loading of any web page. The accelerometer is also almost instantaneous.
The Android application store (not the store just a guide to the best apps) has thousands of applications available for download at the moment, including many focused purely on the business mobile phone user such as Locale which allows you to automatically set the phone to not ring based on GPS location or ServerUp which allows IT staff to keep track of their server status when out and about.
Also included as standard in the Samsung Galaxy S is the Aldiko eBook reader which is good and clear on the screen - but a little testing after more than a short read.
Another handy function on the Samsung Galaxy S is Swype, this lets you trace out a word on the keyboard without actually typing the word on each key separately.
We quickly got to grips with this function and found it to be top notch, it's nice to find a new way of messaging and it is a great idea which actually works well in practice too.
There is of course the standard Android integrated Exchange and social networking as well as the Samsung Social Hub that sits on top. This allows you to access all types of messages (e-mail, text, VM and SNS) and to respond directly without dedicated apps, it works as a hub for all communications. You can also pull in all of your contacts and manage your calendar there - really useful for setting up meetings and communicating with colleagues and clients.
Overall, this is just a beautiful phone and one that works incredibly well for the business mobile phone user. However the opening price is 35/month on Vodaphone when you take the phone for free so not different to the i-phone cost, but you do get what you pay for here.
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