The Samsung Galaxy S. Hailed as one of the best android phones around. With a processor out to kill.
When the time came to renew my plan, I was initially thinking of getting a Blackberry, but eventually I was... convinced to get the Galaxy S instead after hearing that blackberry accessories are some of the most pricey around, since the price plans cost about the same anyway.
But it kind of slipped my mind that for the same monthly figures the purchase price of the iPhone 3GS would be 50 bucks cheaper than the Galaxy S.
ANYWAY...
So here I am, with my first ever Android phone. So far I'm happy with the whole experience.
The lag was minimal, and happened solely during loading times (sometimes even while loading messages), and none for the animation and transitions.
A certain web review pointed out a few 'bugs', one of those being the contact list showing both contacts from SIM and phone after the SIM contacts transfer, but I found out all you need to do is go to the settings, and uncheck some checkboxes :)
One rather serious 'bug', whose occurence I can't replicate, unfortunately, was that the SMS text box sometimes "remembers" the intended recipient even after I've switched to a separate SMS thread, so I ended up sending a message to the wrong person. Since this error wasn't reproducible it might not have been a bug, but instead the product of my own first-time-user folly.
Thank God it wasn't a message to my girlfriend.
After frequent 'trips' to the Android Market, here are some of the apps I've downloaded so far that I'm completely happy with.
Paper Toss. OK maybe I just wanted to feel like an iPhone user at that particular moment... anyway, this popular app works just as well with the Galaxy S, with zero lag.
BatteryTime Lite. One-stop app for all the info you need on what exactly is going on with your battery now, since the user interface of the Galaxy doesn't present me with a way to find out even the percentage of my battery life I have left.
The brilliant part is that it can run as an ongoing application so the battery life is ever present on my status bar. Then again this might have consumed a little more of my battery in the process, but I never bothered to find out :)
Facebook for Android. Nuff' said.
Smooth Calendar. True to it's name, this is one smooth app. It shows as a widget on the main screen. Compared to Samsung's very own Daily Briefing widget, this baby occupies less space and pulls a lot more information from my calendar. Less is more.
Sticky Note. How I missed the days of ol' school Sony Ericsson where I was actually allowed to post notes on my home screen. With this app I can do just that. A small post-it carrying the title as an icon on my home screen, maximising to show the contents of the note upon a tap.
Best is, I can post multiple notes at the same time. Useful!
Scientific Calculator. You need this when you're dating a Maths Major. Or so I thought :)
Yahoo! Mail for Android. I can now manage my campus fellowship's official email account on the go. And the UI is not too bad!
The Straits Times. Works and loads a lot better than the Channel NewsAsia app I tried downloading before this.
SG Buses. My Iris clone army :D Allows bookmarking of bus stops and buses. Asking Iris no longer seems a chore.
Jsandbox. Japanese input program. Comments on the Android Market says it's useless and it needs kanji input. Turns out it's both useful and can input kanji. All this app needs is for an instruction manual to come with it, because I only figured out how to use it at the very moment before I gave up.
Thrilled that I can finally type messages in Japanese!
