One Minute Video Tutorials.

This week my mission from the Samsung Mob!ler team was to create a tutorial on how to use three of their Hub Services, the Game Hub, Reader Hub and Music Hub.

I decided what better way to show just how simple these services are to use, than create little one minute video tutorials that anyone can follow.

So here goes!

Game Hub:

My Top 5 Game Hub games:

1. N.O.V.A Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance HD
2. Let's Golf! 2 HD
3. We Rule
4. We Farm Safari
5. GT Racing


The Readers Hub:

My Top 5 Readers Hub things to read :)

1. Esquire
2. The Independent
3. Prague Pictures
4. The House at Miller's Court
5. T3

Samsung Galaxy Pro vs RIM Blackberry Bold

Picking a new phone is not an easy process. Do you want a smart phone or a thick one? Do you want to receive email or do you struggle sending a text message?

There are many phones and devices out there that market themselves as being true all round phones, trying to creep into every market out there be it the business market or the busy teen texter.

Two of these phones are the Samsung Galaxy Pro and the RIM Blackberry Bold 9780

Both of these phones have a similar form factor, sporting full qwerty keyboards and landscape screens. But that is where the similarities end.

The Galaxy Pro is a slightly wider yet thinner and lighter phone giving it much larger, easier to use keys and a larger easier to read screen than the Blackberry. Another advantage of the Galaxy Pro is the LCD TFT touch-screen, making it easier than ever to make selections on screen and browse the internet.

The Samsung Galaxy Pro utilises the fast growing Android operating system where as the Blackberry runs RIM's proprietary operating system. This gives the Galaxy Pro unrivalled customisablilty and access to the 270,000 apps on the Android market place. Although the Blackberry has a similar service, the Blackberry App World is in comparison has a meagre 16,000.

That said there are some advantages to the Blackberry. It supports Blackberry's very popular BBM service, allowing Blackberry users to communicate across countries for free. Although there are some cross platform alternatives to this service for Android users, they quite frankly aren't as good.
Another advantage of the Blackberry, is the status light that flashes when the Blackberry is on standby, allowing the user to easily see if they have missed a call or notification, a feature which would greatly benefit any phone.

With an easier to use keyboard, a touch screen and greater battery life it's clear to see the winner of this comparison. Although the Blackberry has specialised features such as their BBM service, anything the Blackberry can do the Samsung phone can do as well, if not better.

Samsung Galaxy Sii

I've been very fortunate to receive a brand-spanking-new Samsung Galaxy Sii from Samsung. If you, like me, thought that the first phone was special, this is something else.

I will have a review up shortly, I'm just in the process of editing it, however with end of year exams looming it's taking longer than I would like.

However, here is a mock advert I have created for the phone as part of the Second mission in this second wave of missions :)

Mission 7 - BOGOF

They say the best inventions in life are the simplest, are born out of necessity. I can't necessarily sing. Fact.


Imagine an application that could listen to you sing. Not only listen to you sing, but train you to sing better. An application where you can browse hundreds of songs, buy them then download them to your device, and then be taught to perform them well.


Imagine an online leaderboard where you could compare how well you did at singing "Donny and Marie Osmond's Greatest Hits" with your friends, or people you despise, or even people you may never meet and despise. Imagine all this with backdrops of crowds who react to your every key change, your every word. 







With Voice Coach on your Galaxy Tab or Android powered Samsung device, your dreams may one day become your reality.

Mob!ler Mission 5 - Gaming on the Galaxy Tab

N.O.V.A HD Review on the Samsung Galaxy Tab

Mob!ler Mission 4 - Samsung Galaxy Tab (First Impressions)

Having finally got a day off from the endless cleaning of patients teeth, I took the opportunity to visit the Arndale Centre in Manchester to have a play with the much hyped Samsung Galaxy Tab.


On first impressions it's clear that Samsung have gone to some considerable effort to make the Galaxy Tab look and feel like a premium product. The rounded corners and bevelled back make the product pleasing to both the eye and touch. When you see it, you'll want to pick it up and play with it.


The build quality appears very good; it feels sturdy and the plastics used on the back lack the slightly cheap feel of the Galaxy S. With a 7 inch display the Galaxy Tab is portable too. Putting a demo product into your pocket in a shop is generally discouraged although I'm sure it would have fit on my inside jacket pocket with ease. It made other larger tablet pc's look a bit silly when you consider how it's going to be used by most people; on the move. One thing I did notice however was how many fingerprints the device had on the screen before I even picked it up. I don't know if some particularly greasy customer had had a play before I arrived, but it's something worth mentioning.


The screen (despite the poor photo) is very bright and crisp. The high resolution of the display makes reading text very comfortable and I could envisage myself reading pdf files which don't display properly on my ebook reader, without eye strain. I started up a sample 720p video on the device which it played without skipping a beat, and was very impressive.


The Android 2.2 interface was very smooth and applications opened nearly instantly. Web browsing was good fun, and I can see the potential for online newspapers and magazines to be viewed on it. Pinch to zoom is enabled and moving around the webpage was like floating. If you haven't tried web-browsing on a tablet device yet, give it a go!


Text entry is the one area I feel lets the Galaxy Tab down. Although it should come equipped with Swype, I couldn't seem to find an option to enable it on the demo version I tried. I am looking forward to see how my opinion of this changes when it is enabled on the tablet.


Overall, from my very brief hands on with the device, I found it very easy to use.  Combined with it's smooth interface and nearly limitless uses using apps from the android store, one thing is for certain: you won't want to put it down.

Mob!ler Mission 3 - Samsung App Review

This weeks task was to review an application on the Samsung App store on my Samsung Galaxy S.

The Samsung App store contains about 21 applications currently which includes things such as games, a Flixter movies app, a very good voice recognition app and more dictionaries than any man could ever need in a lifetime. It's very easy to navigate and everything on there is free. A nice feature is that once an app has been downloaded it is hidden from view in the app store, allowing you to get a better view of the range of dictionaries you've yet to download. 

I was going to review "Krazy Kart Racing" however I decided "Krazy" wasn't actually a word and without knowing its meaning, I didn't want to end up with a boring kart racing game and therefore a boring review. In order to find out what Krazy meant, I decided to review a dictionary.


The English Dictionary was my application of choice and upon it's installation I discovered that it was based upon the Collins COBUILD Advanced Dictionary. I wish I could tell you what the word "cobuild"meant but the dictionary struggled here offering only a description of a "hard silvery-white metal" which transpired to be Cobalt. 

Searching for words is very easy. Upon opening the application you are confronted with the screen in the picture to the left. A search bar at the top, your keyboard of choice at the bottom and the words you are searching for in-between the two. As you type, the list of words changes dynamically and soon enough the word you were searching for appears. This save time by not needing to input the entire word you're searching (for example in the middle of a heated game of Scrabble). Another neat feature is that you do not need to spell the word you entered correctly for it to appear on the list; the dictionary will bring up words closest to what you have entered.


I decided to test the dictionary by putting in a plethora of profanities, all of which it had answers for. It was during this that I discovered that my nickname needs changing and also a feature whereby if you are unsure of what a word means in a description, one long press on the word will bring up a menu whereby you can lookup the word. You are also given the option to copy the word to your clipboard.

It's not only single words that can be searched for, common phrases are also available. I decided to search for the word "Krazy" in order to find out if I was missing out on the Kart Racing. The first entry that came up was, albeit coincidentally I'm sure, "Ku Klux Klan". I'm glad I chose the dictionary.


To sum up, this dictionary actually works surprisingly well. The interface is very responsive and searching for words is very rapid indeed. It's not as good on long journeys as the Kart Racing game and will impress less people. As a reference tool it is second to none.