Chp 315. My new Samsung Galaxy S Android

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life an Android phone.”

- Charles Darwin (with a little modification)


Two weeks I’ve been using my new phone now, and I still can’t get over how utterly amazing the phone is. Samsung Galaxy S. Currently running on Android 2.1 OS with 16GB internal memory, 32GB expandable and 1 freaking GHz processor!

A year ago, none of us would have guessed a mere phone could come up with this kinda config. And its 4" super AMOLED display guarantees that it has the best screen display in the entire phone market (currently).



29K. Bloody expensive. But totally worth it. Sure I've been eating plain roti and dal every day since I bought this phone, but believe me, I do not regret it. And there were times when my friends made fun of me because I did not have balance on my prepaid card. Lolz. A 29 thousand bucks phone with less than 1 rupee talktime balance is not something you come across every day

I did a lot of research before buying this phone. Although I wanted to get the 12K range of droids because phones never last long in my hands, my mind was secretly fixed on the Galaxy S, HTC Desire and BlackBerry Bold2, which all fall in the same price range.

I wanted a Bberry because most of the people in my office have one. Cheaper than the Galaxy S, sporting a Bberry kinda makes you a part of an elitist club, supposedly. But eventually I didn’t opt for it because I am not the kind who needs to stay connected all the time. Push mail feature didn’t appeal to me that much and I’m not that active on social networking sites. If you DM me or @Mizohican me on twitter, I won’t feel bad seeing your tweet 2-3 days later and replying only then. Plus all the people I know on BBM would be people I know professionally and not people I would want to chat with free of cost from anywhere across the globe. And data encryption is the least of my worries.

But mainly, I had a horrible experience browsing through blogs and discussion forums using a BlackBerry, and those ARE the places where I spend at least 70% of my online leisure time. Hence it is really important to know the kinda person you are and the things you do online before selecting a particular smart phone.

The HTC Desire was a strong contention though. It wasn’t until the very last minute that I finally decided to go for the Galaxy S. I had one of my closest pals from Engg college days advice me on which one to go for. He was my tech guru back then, who seemed to know everything about… tech. When he says buy this, we don’t ask why. We ask how many.

This is the first time I didn’t take his advice. Really sorry Paul Johny. He advised me to go for the HTC Desire rather than Galaxy S. But Desire wasn’t launched in India then, and I really couldn’t wait any longer for my dream phone.

Now apparently the HTC Desire is available in India for 27.5 thousand only, cheaper than the Galaxy S. [Source: Chhanga, who made fun of me when I lost my phone and then ironically lost HIS mobile phone a few days later. Poetic justice. Bwahahahaha.]

So coming back to this topic… from the time I’ve bought this phone, I’ve been spending all my time downloading tons and tons of free games and apps from the Android Market. In fact my girlfriend asked me if I love my phone more than her. Damn, I really shouldn’t have hesitated to answer a question like that.

Now our love story is pretty much like this


[source: Cyanide & Happiness]

But of course, to make everything alright again, all I’ll have to do is show her this mashable.com link: iPhone Owners Have the Most Sex Partners [STUDY] reported by OkCupid.com. According to this “study”, iPhone users have the most sex partners, followed by Blackberry users. Android users come last in this study, so to all the girlfriends out there -> make sure your boyfriend buys an Android phone. Geek FTW!



Yeah one of those rare moments when you can show off for not scoring

Browsing through sites is amazing with this phone. It’s fast, and automatically switches to Wi-Fi from gprs when it detects one (something that my previous phone refused to do). Like the iPhone, expanding and minimizing a homepage can be done smoothly by parting your fingers on the screen, and the view changes immediately depending on the angle you hold the phone. The best part is that I get a clear view even under direct sunlight because of its AMOLED screen, something that most phones cannot do.




[Don’t mind the bad quality pics above. They’re taken from a BlackBerry.]

The video quality is crispy clear too. The video cam comes with HD video recording and watching a movie on this phone (which can take any format like avi, mp4, wmv, etc.) is a new experience altogether. Amazing I tell you.

It also comes with a 5MP camera, but frankly speaking, I am not the type who goes for a good quality camera on mobile phones, so this is not really a plus point for me. When I go out with friends, there’s always somebody with a digicam. If you’re the one with a good cam, chances are, you will appear the least in all the photographs because you’re busy clicking the cam. Better to be in a pic than take one aye? There’s no flash on the cam, but like I said, I don’t care.

Apart from that, there are loads of apps in my phone, like access to over 50,000 E-Books by Tolstoy, Homer, Conan Doyle, Dan Brown, Nabokov, Kamasutra, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Margaret Mitchell, complete Twilight series, Nora Roberts etc etc (stop drooling Jerusha, Aduhi, Kukui, Mesjay etc), thousands of free games guaranteed to keep you occupied throughout the day, dog whistle that actually works (yes, I tried it), GPS map that’s accurate like hell, various android based SNS clients for facebook, twitter, last.fm, orkut, blogger, wordpress, skype etc etc. iPod styled music player, sms and call faker (love this!), feature to sync my phonebook with my contact list from Facebook, Orkut, gmail, yahoo, outlook etc and merge similar accounts together, and even a “road sms” app, where you can type your sms and see the ground you’re walking on at the same time at the background, so that you don’t fall into a manhole while smsing! Lolzzz!

It also has FM, listed by TECHIrony as one of the advantages Samsung Galaxy S has over iPhone4. Well, to me, this is quite trivial but they had made quite an interesting comparison nonetheless. Click here to view their study. Below is their comparison.



According to “Bright Hub!” [Android Market vs iPhone App Store] the iPhone Store has over 200,000 applications and games, while the Android Market has roughly over 50,000. But Android is slowly (and surely) catching up, with more and more phone companies manufacturing Android based phones.

Mashable, in their post 6 Free Android Apps That Will Make You Drop Your iPhone also mentioned about how much easier it is to customize android phones, and listed out six outstanding free Android apps you MUST install.

This is the future my friends. Putting an i before your name is no longer cool. Bye bye iKim. Hello Kim-droid. You can now even install the open source Android OS to a closed source iPhone! Lolz! PC World: How to Install Android on Your iPhone Cheers everyone. Happy droiding.


Ps. If you’re an android user, what are your top 5 free apps on your phone?