22
Oct
galaxy-player

Back in September, Samsung announced 4 new media players, one of which was of particular interest to us - the Galaxy Player 50. Out of the bunch, the Galaxy Player 50 was the only device running Android - it's what iPod Touch is to an iPhone, a Galaxy S phone without a chromosome phone.

What we have here today is Samsung's official video ad showcasing the player's capabilities, using a hilariously crooked finger, as Wired commenters pointed out. Seriously, once you see the finger, it's the only thing you can look at - I even had to rewind and re-watch to see the player itself:

The player sports the following specs, some of which, like the camera, are quite measly:

  • WiFi (obviously)
  • 3.2 inch screen
  • Android Market access
  • FM Radio
  • GPS
  • DLNA support
  • Comes in 8GB and 16GB flavors
  • 2MP camera (ouch)
  • Android 2.1

The Galaxy Player 50 is currently up for presale in France for €200 (8GB) and €250 (16GB).

21
Oct
Screen shot 2010-10-21 at 7.39.06 PM

All together now: finally! After several broken promises and recalled updates, Samsung's just announced that Android 2.2 FroYo will be available through a "brand new version of Kies" (that's Samsung's software upgrade system) early in November for Galaxy S owners in the UK, while "all operator versions" are "expected" to be available by the end of November (hopefully that includes the "operator versions" of the Galaxy S that Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile are currently carrying here in the States). One could complain that it's about four months late, and that's likely due to the evils of custom UIs - but then again, it's better late than never, right?

13
Oct
image

This article deals with a couple of advanced topics. If you’re unfamiliar with some of the terms, hit up our primers here:

Today, Samsung updated its open-source portal with what seems to be the final Android 2.2 source code for JPM Galaxy S i9000s. This might not mean much right now to those of you running carrier-branded Galaxy S phones (Captivate, Vibrant, Epic 4G, Fascinate), but it is a positive indication of things to come and may mean that the Froyo ROMs for your handsets will be showing up sooner rather than later.

30
Sep
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All of Samsung's Galaxy S family have the same 4.0" Super-AMOLED screen, share a common iPhone-esque UI, and ... well, that's about it. The disparity between features in the SGS line has certainly caused some frustration with users; two have a flash, one has a keyboard and 4G, one has Bing (not really a feature worth crowing about), and two have front-facing cameras. Those two are the appropriately-named Epic 4G and the mothership, the Galaxy S i9000, which is mainly sold in Europe and Korea.

Considering the striking similarity in the appearance of the i9000 and the Vibrant, it's forgivable that users would confuse the two models, questioning the absence of a front-facing camera on their own devices.

30
Sep
continuum1

The Fascinate hasn't even been on Verizon's shelves for a month yet, and it looks like they're already planning on adding another variant of the Galaxy S to their lineup: the Continuum (SCH-i400). Technical details on the phone are light at the moment, but we can see in the images that it's rocking two displays - the main one (up top), as well as a small screen below the capacitive touch buttons. Engadget claims that both screens are OLEDs, with the bottom screen referred to as the "Ticker." Evidently, the Ticker displays date and time, as well as notifications and RSS updates - very, very cool.

30
Sep
SamsungTransform
Last Updated: October 6th, 2010

Assuming this leaked image is real, Sprint has got two new Android devices in store for its customers, although one of them is hardly new at all: the Kyocera Zio, which will be branded as the Sanyo Zio, and the Samsung Transform, which appears to be another Android device, perhaps even from the Galaxy S series.

The Zio probably won't fire anybody up; it was announced last March, and even then it was considered a mid-range phone. In the few shots that exist of the device, it appears to be running stock Android, and is still thought to launch with Android 2.1.

24
Sep
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Here’s something to get your teeth into. Over at LaptopMag, a whole host of Androids have been put through their paces in a grueling battery life endurance test. The goal was to keep the phones’ screens on while doing a moderate amount of processing, namely cyclically browsing a collection of web pages. Despite the supposed power savings afforded by AMOLED screens, the phones employing that screen technology fell quite a ways behind in comparison to the traditional LCD phones.

Why is that? AMOLED is supposed to only use up power on non-black pixels, right? Well, as LaptopMag points out, the majority of webpages are actually dark text on a light background, a scenario in which AMOLED actually uses more power than an equivalent backlit LCD.

22
Sep
image

T-Mobile UK is on a roll - HTC Desire Froyo update has been rolling out for a few days now, and today a mod at the same official T-Mo forum confirmed that a whole truckload of frozen goodness is coming to the Galaxy S owners as well:

Hi there,

We are pleased to announce that there will be a software update for the Samsung Galaxy S at the end of the month. This will update your phone software to Android 2.2 and will be available through the Samsung Kies PC application.

Regards
Stef
Forum Team

If you rewind your memory to the end of July, you may remember this tweet by SamsungMobileUK promising an end of September Froyo for all Galaxy S handsets:

image

Very nice to see at least 1 network is coordinated enough to follow up on the promise.

12
Sep
Image 14

Looks like both Wirefly and Amazon Wireless are up to their old, price-slashing tricks again. This time their sights rested on the brand new Samsung Fascinate for Verizon Wireless.

The Deal

The new $99.99 deal, offered by both sites, is a 50% discount off carrier subsidized price of $199.99.

While the BOGO (buy-one-get-one-free) deal offered by Verizon itself technically averages out to about the same price, if you just need 1 Fascinate, Amazon Wireless or Wirefly are the way to go. With no gimmicks, mail in rebates, or TAXES (that's right, neither of the two charge you tax), you can get the Fascinate for about half the green you would part with at a Verizon store.

05
Sep
luminescence
Last Updated: June 5th, 2012

Today, Jamezelle and I ripped apart the leaked system dump from the yet-to-be-released Verizon Samsung Fascinate and patched together six live wallpapers that are not present on other Galaxy S devices.

Like the previous Galaxy S live wallpapers, these must be flashed from a custom recovery, which also means you need to be rooted.

Download the zip below and flash it through your recovery menu like any other flashable zip. Depending on your device, the flashing process may take a minute, so just sit back, relax, and let your phone do its thing.

Do NOT try to unpack the zip and install the .apks manually - they rely on a special library packaged within the update.