New Phone

After spending a year with my HTC Magic I finally decided it was time for an upgrade (or rather that I was finally able to), so I upgraded to the Samsung Galaxy S.  Initially I was hoping to go for the Google Nexus One but contract prices weren't quite in the right ball-park for me, but after seeing the Samsung in use with someone who I work with I figured I'd take a shot.

Initially I was concerned that I would find the phone to big for practical use but in reality it's a good size and feels nice to hold.  I've been using my phone as a e-book reader since I first got my HTC Magic and the larger screen on the Samsung makes reading them much easier.

One thing I was eager to try was the camera.  I've always been disappointed by camera phones, although the quality of the images are sometime fairly good the shutter response speed has always been a huge disappointment.  So I headed off to Markeaton park with the family and with a little trepidation fired up the camera app and started snapping.  The camera app doesn't review the pictures after each shot so I took a few before checking and I was pleasantly surprised.



The quality of the photos on the Super AMOLED screen were more than impressive and then shutter response was really quick, still not quite as good as a real camera but close enough that I wouldn't be worried about using my phone as a camera when I'm out and about.  One very small gripe here though is that even though the phone supports multi-touch the camera app uses the phones volume buttons to manage the zoom functionality.  Where the camera does redeem itself though is the touch-focus function, so after framing the shot you can just tap the part of the scene you want to focus on and the phone does the rest.

So next I moved on to the video, this was also very impressive for a phone and the quality during recording and playback was as good as the photo's I think.



In terms of general use I'm very impressed with the phone, the battery may not lost to long but I've come to expect that from modern smart-phones and I've gotten into the habit of charging while I'm at work.  One trick I did find was that turning of automatic syncing overnight means that the battery is barely touched overnight so I don't have to worry about the alarm not going off (besides I have my 6 month old alarm to wake me up anyway).  It would be nice to be able to remove some of the pre-installed apps but with 2Gb of internal storage I'm not to concerned.

So this far and so good, I'm impressed with the phone and as always I'm more than impressed with the Android operating system, I'm not sure when Froyo is coming to the device but I'm looking forward to seeing what it brings.