Its our pleasure to be able to welcome a guest review from our friends at My Social Agency a UK based Digital Marketing Agency. Much thanks to them. Please give them a visit and discover how Social Media can change and enhance your business. You can also follow them on Twitter @MySocialAgency.
By Mark Mitchell / Cormac Reynolds, My Social Agency a UK based Digital Marketing Agency.
Samsung’s Galaxy SII has become increasingly prominent in the premium phone landscape and has topped Android best sellers and phone best sellers lists for most of 2011. The Samsung’s ability to be greater than the individual parts that it is composed of make it such a highly acclaimed device.
The phone’s diminutive size is one of the major factors in its popularity,; at 8.49mm it’s slimmer than the iPhone 4S, yet it still manages to offer a far larger screen area of 4.3 inches. The device is also extremely light weighing in at only slightly more than 100g and it is also quite an attractive phone, taking certain cues from the iPhone 4’s design. It’s only qualm would be the fact it is made of plastic and not aluminium like many HTC‘s and other devices and so doesn’t have the same quality feel aesthetically.
Of course power is also a factor with the Samsung and its 1.2GHz Tegra 2GPU as well as its powerful GPU ensure it is more than willing to give. The graphical processor is more modern and powerful than that of even the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The phone’s 1GB of RAM ensures it has enough short term memory to cope and its expandable memory can be extended to 32GB thanks to the micro SD card slot.
Running on Android 2.3, the device utilises its large processor to ensure it is far from sluggish and there is certainly little lag from the Samsung. Google’s operating system is a smooth one and offers most of what you would expect from even iOS 5. It’s a smooth and sophisticated operating system that combines well with the Samsung TouchWiz user interface and makes for a nice phone to use.
One of the strongest points on the Galaxy SII, one of many, is the Super AMOLED Plus display. The phone’s pixel resolution of 480x800p is no problem as the brightness of the screen overcomes and preconceptions about the displays ability. The Super AMOLED Plus screen is amazingly brilliant. Colours are extremely bright and dynamic and blacks are deep and whites are sharp. It is clearly evident that Samsung’s years of making top class screens for TVs has been put to use here. Watching video is extremely exciting and the size of the display, alongside its dynamic ration make it great for browsing.
The camera is one aspect of the phone that really cooperates well with the screen. The 8mp camera is excellent and the 1080p recording ability creates fluid, vivid pictures that show up well on the bright screen and really wow. Like many other Samsung’s the Galaxy SII is strong in the camera area.
Though the phone is 4G enabled, the high speed broadband network is not available in the UK as of yet (available in major markets in the US.) However, it does have a 14.4MBps connection for current broadband, meaning should you get the connection it is blisteringly quick. NFC is also available on a number of the current models of the device allowing you to pay for goods with your phone, thanks to the chip.
Overall, the Samsung Galaxy SII is an extremely capable device that doesn’t really let down in any area. Sure it is made of plastic, but it still feels very strong. Though, we’re sure the processor, screen and operating system more than make up for all of that.
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So you’ve got data and files scattered across your computer at work, your laptop at home, your tablet, and your smartphone. You decide it’s time to upload everything to the cloud and get it all in one place yet accessible from all your devices. Your first question is where to start? There are so many cloud services out there it’s hard to figure out which one will work for you and which one will give you the most.
Here at TecWhat, we have several favorites that allow us to upload, download, share, exchange, and sync files. When choosing a cloud service, we look for integration to all our devices and operating systems, how much storage is free, and which offers the best and easiest desktop solution and smartphone app. Additionally, other considerations are complete accessibility from anywhere, the ability to share our files with others, and ease of use.
4shared– 10GB Free with the ability to go to 15GB with email verification. For the storage allotment, this is the best we’ve found. A free 15GB is hard to come by. In addition to the desktop app which allows you to upload and download files in batch, you can configure various folder locations to access from Windows Explorer, where you can add files that are synced immediately. This integration with Windows Explorer makes things simple without the need to open the desktop app.
The web app looks a little clunky, but is easy to use because of this. You can upload and download, in batch if needed, from the web app so you don’t need the desktop app installed on every computer you use.
The iPhone app is simple and easy to navigate. Files and photos can be uploaded but only one at a time. On the iPhone, 4share offers a secondary app called 4photo that allows you to manage your photos.
üWindows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Symbian
CX– 10GB Free with up to 16GB with friend referral. I have just recently started using CX and have found it to be quite user friendly. When installing the desktop version, it places a folder, CX Sync, on your desktop by default and you add files or folders to it as you would any other folder in Windows Explorer. Sync is automatic.
The CX website seems more Web2.0, including a dashboard to gloss over all your latest activity and a social profile to paste your picture and your top social media sites.
The iPhone app is easy to navigate and allows for tagging and favorites. Unfortunately, you can only upload one file or photo at a time.
üWindows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, and coming soon for Android
Dropbox – 2GB Free with the ability to go to 8GB with friend referral. Dropbox is one of my favorites; it integrates seamlessly into my everyday life on my Windows PCs and my iPhone. I have a single Dropbox folder that I can fill with countless folders and files, at least until I’ve reached my storage capacity. Like CX, it’s just like working with files and folders in Windows Explorer. It’s this kind of ease that make is so wonderful and popular.
On the web, Dropbox is simplistic yet elegant. The clean look of it makes it easy to use and share your files.
What sets Dropbox apart from the others it that it readily integrates with other iPhone apps allowing you to add files from those apps directly to your Dropbox account. Additionally, you can upload multiple photos in one batch.
üWindows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry.
Windows Live Mesh & SkyDrive – 5GB of synced storage on the 25GB SkyDrive. Even though these are actually two products, I only count it as one because they work together. Now, I miss the original Windows Live Mesh beta, which gave you an astounding 50GB free (If I remember correctly,) and would sync between any Windows PC and the Mesh cloud. Windows Live Mesh 2011 will sync any folder or set of folders of your choice, on your computer up to 5GB and store it on your SkyDrive. I like this because it offers a good backup of my files and I can easily edit my Microsoft Office files online. Unfortunately, this is primarily a service for computers, not smartphones or tablets.
üWindows, Mac
Honorable mention,
GoAruna – 2GB Free with ability to earn bonus storage via friend referral. The only reason GoAruna did not make it into our top 4 is because it has desktop app that reminds us of the File Explorer from Windows 3.11. It doesn’t have the same integrations into Windows Explorer that the above services have. It does offer integrations with more devices though.
üWindows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Palm, WindowsPhone, Nokia
üMaximum file size: 100MB
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Samsung’s Galaxy SII has become increasingly prominent in the premium phone landscape and has topped Android best sellers and phone best sellers lists for most of 2011. The Samsung’s ability to be greater than the individual parts that it is composed of make it such a highly acclaimed device.
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