Most of the attention of the technology loving world has been lavished on Apple and Samsung over the last two weeks, partly because they are the two largest smartphone vendors in the world and are currently actively competing against each for the top spot, but also due to the fact that they are currently locked in a fairly bitter legal dispute in California to resolve whether or not Samsung did indeed "slavishly" copy the design of the iPhone. As entertaining as the court case is, and as enjoyable as the information that it is unearthing, we should really try to step away from the fact that two of the industry’s largest names have had to go down this route and instead concentrate on the wonderful products they both offer.
With a larger-than-life 4.8” Super AMOLED HD display, a quad-core Exynos chip, 1GB of RAM (2GB in some variants), 8 MP / 2MP optics and being based on Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich, Samsung’s latest flagship smartphone - the Galaxy S III - is undoubtedly amongst the most powerful smartphones available today. It’s selling like hotcakes too, with over 10 million units sold in just two months since release (that’s about 190,000 units sold every day).
The Samsung Galaxy S III was one of the most highly-anticipated Android releases of this year, but after numerous purported sightings and inaccurate images of the device's final design, it was of much surprise that the device didn't ship in black. Sure, many vendors alter and omit various colors along the way, but the black shading of the device had been a standard feature of both the original Galaxy S and its predecessor, the immensely-popular Galaxy S II.
UK fans of Samsung's Galaxy S III now have two more handsets to choose from, with the popular handset available in two new limited edition guises that take advantage of the company's London 2012 Olympic sponsorship.
Jelly Bean (4.1) is Google's latest and greatest Android release, and while many of the newer devices will be seeing (or already have seen) an OTA update of the buttery new operating system, it now appears the Samsung Galaxy S II - an oldie but goodie - will also be treated to the tasty new firmware.
Before Ice Cream Sandwich, manufacturers put their Home, Menu, Back and Search buttons in different order just to differentiate themselves from one another. Companies like Samsung even went head and removed the all-important Search button* altogether which results in a different Android experience.
CyanogenMod is the most popular aftermarket custom firmware (AKA custom ROM) on Android for one very important reason: it receives constant support from the community, enabling owners of old smartphones to try out the latest versions of Android and allowing owners of the latest smartphones to ditch their smartphone manufacturer’s custom skin for a more vanilla Android experience.
Have I told you about the sheer variety of launchers available on Android? If you’ve read previous posts by yours truly, I’m sure you’ve already hear me this. There are all sorts of launchers that cater to different user needs. You’ve got ones that promise the best performance, ones that offer the best set of features and ones that claim to offer the best of both. Other launchers are usually ports of customized launchers from OEMs like Samsung, HTC, LG and Motorola.
If you've seen one of Samsung's ads over the last year or so then you'll probably already know that the Korean firm has not been too shy about poking fun at Apple. In fact, Samsung has even seen Apple's customers as fair game when putting its ads together, making fun of the people who line up outside an Apple store for a new iPhone, for example.
Fans of the Samsung S III are receiving an update to the handset they love so much, with the smartphone maker pushing a new version of software out. Only available for the international version of the hugely popular device, the update weighs in at around 73MB and does not offer any additions that will blow your socks off. According to the literature though, users will be in for an increase in stability, which is always welcome.
