My Rant about Android and Samsung

I admit that I am a total gadget freak and a technology addict and this means every year when the wrappings of the latest smartphone come off or some other hi-tech gizmo hits the market, I of course begin to drool and also instantly check my bank balance to see if I can even think of affording a new gizmo and more often than not a paltry bank balance leaves me depressed. 

But this has not deterred me (thanks to my totally selfless wife that is ready to gift me anything I ask for...what more can a man ask for..) from making some purchases over the last year that are, lets face it both expensive and no where near being necessities for ones life. The first one was the Samsung Galaxy S2 which I brought last year (through Flipkart) and I followed it up by getting my wife to buy me a pair of Bose noise canceling head phones for my birthday.

Now aimless as this post is going to be, the biggest complaint I have with moving from an iPhone to an Android powered device, apart from the crappy battery life is the absolute agony that one has to go through to get an Android upgrade going. Of course folks can look at me and tell me that if I were a tech freak, I should have already 'rooted' by Galaxy S2 and got the upgrade to the latest version of Android (4.0.4 aka Ice-cream Sandwich), but I prefer to not to dig around too much with my phones and prefer the upgrade to come through the normal channels. Having said that, ICS was released months ago and Samsung promised that its flagship Galaxy S2 smartphone would get the upgrade by Q1, 2012 and we are well into Q2 and there is still no update from Samsung on when poor old Indian users like me would get the upgrade.

I tried to complain on Twitter to @Samsungmobile and also tried Facebook but no one seems to bother. At this stage I am seriously thinking of jumping back to the iOS bandwagon the next time I buy a new phone.

All this, again brings me to the question: Where is Android heading? Given that its a free license product, it has resulted in severe de-fragmentation of the Android market with hundreds of manufacturers rolling out Android phones at different price points, and with different versions of the Android OS. All this makes the process of upgrading users to newer versions on Android that much more painful and I guess that pain is not going to go away anytime soon. That may be one of the main reasons why it is rumoured that Google may be opting to build out its own walled garden through Google Play just to get out of this mess that Android seems to have created.

Samsung have built a kick ass phone in the Galaxy S2 but I feel they have screwed up big time with a bloated peice of junk called Samsung Kies (similar to iTunes) to allow users to sync data from their computers to the phone and to manage upgrades. I have had several hair tearing experiences with Kies and dread using it every time there is a new firmware upgrade available.

This is where Apple scores over everyone else. With iOS everything you do, be it using the phone, buying apps or upgrading is totally simple so much so that even a kid these days knows how to run an iOS upgrade. There is a lot to be learned for companies like Sammy from the master. With that I guess I will stop my rant on Samsung and Android until I have new stories to tell about how my ICS upgrade went (whenever that happens!)

Gadget Splurge!

I have spent a significant amount of money over the last month gratifying my needs to have the latest in fancy tech gadgets and while one side of my mind goes tut..tut..on this splurge the other side is as delighted as a 5 year old kid getting lots of candy. For the moment I have let the "kid" part of my mind take over and indulge in the small delights that the functions of these gadgets seem to bring.

Once again I would have to thank dearest mom from whom I very shamelessly took 10K for the purchase and of course the only other person I can think of who seems to give me anything selflessly without any thought..my dear wifey! My contribution to this entire splurge was 5K. Yeah I know..shameless but I still love it :-)

Apart from the new iPad2, the latest addition to hit Gannu's gadget family is the Samsung Galaxy S2. A phone that I can only describe as 4.3 inches of total awesomeness! I ordered it on the 5th of July via Flipkart and as always Flipkart's delivery and service was impeccable. I got the phone delivered to my doorstep on 7th afternoon. (I did spend a good part of the afternoon looking through my bedroom widow at the apartment gate and checking if my package had arrived).

I read a lot of the S2 reviews and although I more or less knew what to expect, the first thing that blew my mind was just how incredibly light the phone was. Yes the back cover is very flimsy and plasticky but that is just a small price to pay for the phone is super slim and light. The display is out of this world. I cannot even compare the iPhone 3G I have with me to this one.

The biggest difference is however on the total experience of using the phone. Being in Apple's walled garden the last few years will mean that navigating around the Android world will take time getting used to. So I now have a device on the iOS platform and one on Android and hopefully I will get the best of both worlds. 

I was dreading moving my contacts from my iPhone to the Galaxy S2 and found a pretty east workaround. I copied all my contacts from the iPhone to my Outlook Contacts via iTunes. I then downloaded Samsung Kies and then synced all the contacts from Outlook to the S2. 

Speaking about Kies, I have to say that although Samsung have built a super phone, the desktop software that accompanies the phone (Kies) is totally crap! It's slow, and a horrible effort on Samsung's part to give us something that they think matches iTunes.

I also had a very hard time updating the Android version using Kies. The phone was not recognized during the upgrade and several reboots later it suddenly seemed to work. I will have to figure out an alternative to using Kies.

The iPhone is now being prepared for use by mom! The missus still prefers using the Nokia I gifted her last year. 

The integration with Google is of course totally bullet proof and if Google+ is anywhere near successful as Facebook, I believe the integration advantage that Android brings with it, will allow Google to reap rewards big-time. I still haven't analyzed the battery performance on the phone. I just completed charging up the phone this morning and will see how long it lasts.

When it comes to the intuitiveness of the OS, I still think iOS is ahead but Android is not far behind and I am looking at having a long innings with the S2, that is if some other mouthwatering piece of gadgetry doesn't show-up down the line which is today's world is almost unthinkable.