Samsung Galaxy S Maxis10 Review Part 2 – Perfect For The Social Media Addict

The reason why anyone would want a smartphone these days is just so they can update their status anytime, tweet about something exciting that has just happened (not necessarily what others may consider to be exciting) or even take a quick snap of the silliest thing and putting it up on the world wide web immediately!

I used to wonder if humans in the past knew that there would come a day where the one thing that they need almost as much as food, water and oxygen would be the MOBILE PHONE.

Ever felt like you lost an appendage when you forgot to bring your phone out for the day?

I know I have. 🙂

From this revelation, I had wondered what would be the next big thing that people could not possibly live without! I think facebook comes pretty close to becoming a necessity these days. 🙂

The Samsung Galaxy S integrates all my social media needs extremely well! Almost every single thing in the phone comes with an ability to share on Facebook, Twitter and any other applications that you have downloaded like WordPress, Flickr, Picasa..etc.

Do have a look at the three videos below (split up into three parts because the file was too big for lousy youtube!) for a tour of the social media tools available on the Samsung Galaxy S! At the same time you can see how fast you can switch between screens. I really love the touchscreen, it’s extremely responsive. Granted, it responds mostly to the pads of your fingers, much like the iPhone. With my Satio, I grew accustomed to using my nails to tap. Not sure how they differ, technically, but oh well. 🙂 Human beings are able to adapt to any strange new conditions.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The photos below might be similar to the video but you know, there are always those of you who are too lazy to click on videos! (Shame on you! All my effort to record, delete, edit, upload..ughh)

Since I have not done much of a tour around the interface, here’s the draggable notification bar. It has the wifi, bluetooth, silent and vibration options at the touch of a button. When a new email comes in, it will appear as a tiny logo at the upper left hand corner. If it’s a facebook notification, there’ll be the facebook logo instead and if it’s a new mention from twitter, then a little bird sits at the upper corner there. 🙂 Just drag the bar down to access your latest email/message! I LOVE IT!

Boo. I’m unpopular like that. T_T

Alternatively, with the always-reliable options button on the lower left hand corner of the phone, away from the SUPER AMOLED (yeap just have to say it in caps) screen would allow you to also check your notifications (same functions) and edit your apps, search for something within your phone, change your wallpaper and go straight into settings. Side track: Going into settings to tweak your phone to function the way you want it is very much hassle-free. Doesn’t induce any headaches at all!

I have Facebook for Android installed but IMHO the interface is ugly like shit. I mean hellooo.. where’s the heart in this? In my old Xpera X1, there was a facebook app that opens to reveal floating profile pics in tiny balls, clumping together and bouncing off each other softly, slowly, sort of in a Brownian motion and almost like they belong in Avatar, you know those floating dandelions that is the life of the blue people yada yada yada – in short, it was very nice. 🙂 But what sucked about that app was that it can take forever to open. Sometimes never.

So…. ugly application, fast loading time. Okay lah. Can lah.

It loads photos from my albums pretty fast too.

Alas I still prefer to use Facebook Mobile. The fonts are prettier on the android phone! 😀

The touch site loads really fast too. The Samsung Galaxy S has a pretty awesome browser. Is it javascript when you have notifications popping up and stuff? If so, then well, the javascript thingamajig on this phone out performs any browsers that I havee ever used before. Even the Opera Mobile which I have tried on WinMo and Symbian. Meh. Doesn’t cut it for me.

And we have the Full Site! Somehow the full site disappeared from my Satio after a month or two. God knows where it went to. 🙁 Even when I could somehow access it, I can’t tag people. It’s so important to tag people in photos you know! What’s the point of going mobile when you have to go home and turn your computer on just to tag some faces? Boooo.

But the browser on this one allows me to load the full site completely AND tag photos immediately. HEARTS!!

It does however freeze up when I try to tag people within wall posts or status updates. 🙁 Can’t have everything. Sigh.

Zooming in at a rather comfortable magnification level with double taps.

Back to the facebook app, the profile page is quite okay! Can even upload photos immediately. 🙂 Click on the camera icon to either snap a picture or upload something from the gallery.

Don’t you just love the media interface? *Drool*

As you can see from some of my pictures from within the phone, I have become quite a fan of the phone camera’s vignette function.

So let’s say we want to upload this emo shot of a rainy day, as seen through my side view mirror.

See the options you have? I am like literally spoilt with choices!! In my old phone, I forgave it for all its shortcomings because it was touted as the best cameraphone available in the market. I had to email all my photos to my facebook mobile email address or twitpic email address, but that was okay. It was fine. BUT NOW, now.. I have all these options. How can life ever be the same again!?

After choosing, say, facebook, this is the screen you’ll see immediately. Nifty huh?

Or wordpress, instant blogging! The tiny icon you see at the bottom of the ‘add’ button would be the photograph that we would be adding to your wordpress blog. I have yet to find out if I can put in more photos at a go.

And to twitter…! It generates a twitpic.com address for you. You have to select the option of either using twitpic, yfrog or tweetphoto when tweaking with your twitter application’s settings.

Now, a quick look at twitter. I was initially using Twitter for Android but since it sucks some serious balls by not having the option of replying all, I jumped onto the bandwagon which was Touiteur, which is appararently pronounced as Twitter in French. *shrugs*

The Twitter for Android application however does send notifications faster than this Touiteur and Touiteur takes quite a while to load. 😐 But it has very good features!

By clicking on a random tweet, this is what you’ll see.

You have the option of replying to everyone or be selective with your replies too.

Not quite a good example of links, but clicking on any of the twitter usernames will bring you to their profiles. If there’s a url within that particular tweet, it will appear here as an option for you to click on.

There is a bar at the top for you to drag down if you wanna tweet something or attach a photo or share a website.

Oh look I have an email! *feels popular*

YAYY.

On the second page of my homescreen, I have this thing called Feeds and Updates. I was messing about with the phone, removed the Daily Briefing thingie where there’s a weather report on my area (sungai petani – 5 years here, I should know the weather by hard now. It never changes much.) and accidentally activated this Feeds and Updates thingie. I initially thought it was the social hub thingie because my friends’ tweets and facebook updates are published in a steady stream.

I’ve still yet to figure out how to access the social hub like how it is advertised on the samsung website. By clicking on Facebook and twitter, I’m brought to the mobile versions of both my accounts.

Here’s a pre-installed application that I tend to use a lot. Since I’m too lazy to open my facebook or twitter app, the Write and Go application is really useful!

It looks like some notepad but it is more than that.

Here’s a short demo of the swype keyboard. I wanna do a video blog and a post on the swype function later!! Not yet though. Just some teaser here first. 😛

I don’t know la, just simply typing.

Satisfied with your witty status/tweet, you hit “Update Status” and this pops up. Check those that you want updated. Convenient right?!!

Though it’s my study week but I still have to come in for a few more clinical sessions to issue a crown and a cast partial denture to two of my patients. Some of my classmates were hovering around my phone because they have seen me raving about it on facebook far too much that they decided to punish me by kidnapping my phone. They had a good time playing some puzzle game where you have to fit blocks in together to match a certain number or something. Most of the boys were very impressed with the Swype keyboard. It is seriously a breakthrough in technology! I also showed them the Google Sky application, which is really beautiful. I’ll show it here later. Need to study for two more exam components in the coming week. 🙁 Sigh. So, will have to take things slow.

All right, now that I’m done raving about the integration of social media tools on the Samsung Galaxy S, here are the photos I have taken with the phone since my last review:

Vignette in Mono colour. These are decodens, which are available on The Sticker Monster (for those who are visiting for the first time, it is my blog shop where I sell stickers, bling blings and decoden. Basically scrapbooking materials and cute things girls use to decorate their phones) and  I was half way packing an order for a customer and thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it make a lovely picture!” It sure as hell did!

I think this is prettier. Vignette in Warm tones.

My outdated Santa Claus decoration which glitters and swings when I take sharp corners. <3

Taken with Sush who came up to Penang to visit her family. This was in Top Shop, Gurney Plaza and apparently she is not used to seeing such big denominations as the prices in Pounds don’t look that daunting.

Back in Sungai Petani, Kedah, a meh sunset at the traffic lights.

Vignette in normal mode. That’s Brenda!

Thank god my crown is ready!! My patient would be very upset if her crown was not ready in time. Happy to report that she was very pleased with the colour of the tooth as it matched her adjacent teeth very well!

These are articulators. We use it to replicate the bite of the patient so that we can set the false teeth accurately when making dentures.

A view from the dental technology lab.

That’s Cze-Yin checking on some of her lab work.

Me, in full dental regalia presenting to you an empty dental chair in our polyclinic. We have 36 bays there and patients come from all over for the free dental treatments at our dental hospital.

Cze-Yin looking so decent.

Got bored while waiting for my patient to come. This is Vignette in Mono.

You get to do some comparison. Vignette in warm mode.

Vignette in cool mode.

Vignette in normal mode.

It’s quite cold here in Sungai Petani these days with the constant rain. I love it when the mist envelopes the surrounding hills behind my university.

Another wet day at AIMST.

Just a random shot. Yeap, I bought a car charger for the phone.

I meant to take a picture of my dinner which was Chicken Cordon Bleu at Secret Recipe..

Artsy fartsy shot of Brenda’s arm and what’s left of her Tom Yam Kung.

Porridge at my favourite cafe near my rented house here in Kedah! Century egg porridge with bits of oysters, spring onions and chicken slices. DELISH!

Another day at the clinics. Sigh. Last day in fact. My patient’s cast partial dentures are ready. Yay.

Hurriedly flagged everyone over from all corners of the clinic to pose for this photo. For most of us, (unless the poor sod has to come in tomorrow to continue with some left over treatment, sucks to be him/her) it was our last day in the clinics, tying up loose ends. In the month before our study week, we were rushing against time to fill up our quotas and so here we are, on a Thursday, when we should be at home sleeping studying, issuing our finished bridges, crowns, cast partial dentures, acrylic partial dentures, completing the final stages of our root canal treatments etc.

Came home at 4 something to study some orthodontics before dinner and felt quite down (no reason, I think I might have bipolar disorder), out came the chocolates of hypocrisy to cheer me up:D

Testing out the so called Beauty function on the camera. It makes your skin looks softer and I think it gives a teeny weeny bit of gaussian blur to the picture. 🙂 I am not being perasan about the Beauty function k. I also wish it wasn’t called beauty. I had some battering to my self esteem the day before. Anyone heard of this stupid forum called my kopitiam or summat? They took my creating fake double eyelids post and laughed at my photos. Oh well. Not like it’s the first time it has happened for that post. Some forums in other countries have expressed horror at how I ‘mutilate’ my eyelids to make them appear to be double eyelids, but it’s really not a big deal. I didn’t even bother because I thought it was in a country far far away, it won’t matter. But then when it’s somewhere closer to home, I had to do something. I’ve made that post private already… I won’t allow my reputation to be ruined in the hands of stupid shallow males who type with intentional spelling errors only to get hurt again. Especially when my concentration should be elsewhere like exams…and.. eheh, reviewing a phone…….. among other things. 😀

If you must know, yes, I did stand up for myself by telling them that I was insulted etc. The people at the forum didn’t believe it was me. Some even asked me to fuck off. Luckily the moderator was kind enough to remove my link and my photos from that particular thread. The forum makes very mean comments regarding everything else under the sun. For some dark humour that does not involve you, I guess it makes for great entertainment.

EH WAIT. This is supposed to be a Samsung Galaxy S review!! Sorry, sorry. Back to the phone.

A picture of Lie Yuen’s dinner. Banana Leaf Set! Vegetarian somemore!

My sinful Briyani Chicken dinner set. 😀 Mmmm!

Oh and here’s a HD video treat!

A tiny tour around my dental tech lab at uni:

That’s all for the second part of my Samsung Galaxy S Maxis 10 review. 🙂 More to come!