Pinoy Reviews

Thanks to a friend of mine, I was able to get my hands, albeit briefly, on the Samsung Jet. The Samsung Jet was launched during Samsung's unpacked event. What was that event? I honestly don't know but it may be Samsung's attempt at generating an iPhone-like buzz on their new products--unfortunately, the event went by without so much as a stir in the blogosphere. Anyways, let's dive right through

Design



The Samsung Jet has a 3 inch screen but mind you, it's resistive not capacitive. Like most of Samsung's new high-end phones, the Samsung Jet sports Samsung's AMOLED screen and colors are just so Vibrant. As for the design of the device, there's really nothing new except the center button which is not a directional pad but a back button. The volume rocker is on the left and on the right there's the camera button and a dedicated button which brings up the new Samsung Cube interface.

User Interface

The Samsung Jet makes use of Samsung's TouchWiz interface which if you're an Omnia user, you're already familiar with it. However, this time, the interface is REALLY fast and responsive. I hardly notice that it's a resistive touchscreen. The UI is definitely comparable with the iPhone in terms of responsiveness.

Messaging

Although I like the UI of the Samsung Jet, I really don't like its messaging capabilities. For one, in portrait mode, you only have a choice between the alphanumeric keypad or handwriting recognition, no QWERTY keypad. If you turn the phone in landscape mode, that's when the QWERTY keypad pops up which is really a bummer since I really don't text in landscape mode. Also, I wished Samsung tweaked their messaging app a bit kinda like on Symbian or Windows Mobile wherein you can see the sender's name while you're typing instead of bringing you to a new typing window everytime you try to type a message.

Multimedia, audio quality, camera

Multimedia-wise the Samsung Jet delivers. First off, the AMOLED screen is just perfect for viewing videos plus the Jet can handle DivX videos straight up without the need to convert it. It can play a 600MB video file without a hitch thanks to its super fast 800MHz processor. The speakers need a bit tweaking though as it's not as loud as it should be even at full volume. Of course, you really won't be using your Samsung Jet as a boombox so speaker quality is a non-issue for me. Audio quality through the headphones is great though. Very rich sounds. As for the camera, the Samsung Jet has an 8 megapixel camera with smile detection, face detection, etc. Image quality seems the same with the Samsung Tocco Ultra Touch S8300 although image quality becomes a bit washed out in low light conditions.

Connectivity

The Samsung Jet has a lot of connectivity options. You have 3G/HSDPA, WiFi, USB Connection, and it also has a GPS. I wasn't able to test the GPS since it doesn't have a software that supports Metro Manila but the web browser is okay. The web browser, I think, is Samsung's own proprietary browser. Samsung's browser lets you view up to 5 webpages and has a multi browser bar which you can use to enter webpages or search using Google or within your webpage.

I admit, I tend to flake out a lot. Maybe that's why I'm better suited as a freelancer. I always have a hard time keeping up with my boss's deadlines. However, even as a freelancer, you still need to deliver your posts on time. So what's a girl to do? Thankfully, technology has a way of keeping this simple. There are a lot of task software available on the Internet and if you already have Microsoft Office Outlook has a built-in to-do list.

Problem is that not all PC ship with MS Office and if they do, Outlook is often left out so if you just want a task software, going with Outlook means you have to spend more than $100 for a simple task software. There are a lot of stand-alone task software on the Internet. I tried out FruitfulTime and I ended up liking it much more than Outlook's To-Do list.

FruitfulTime has much more functions, you can set reminders, prioritize your tasks, password protect it, automatically save it, or even save it on a USB disk so you can access it anywhere.

I haven't tried out other task software since some of them has limited functions and FruitfulTime is the only software I could find that has a full trial version. But whether you're just a simple student, a frelancer or an entrepreneur, managing your tasks should be something on top of your To-Do list.

I know what you're thinking, with the Worldwide Financial Crisis still going on, investing your money on stock brokers may not be such a hot idea right now. But then again, the toll of the financial crisis on stock markets around the world seemed to have died down and with some stocks in the US market such as Apple, gaining strength, investing in stocks rather than putting your money in banks wherein deposit interest rates have recently gone down, seems a much better prospect, right?

If you’re still dipping your toes in the online stock trading world, here’s a good place to start: Trademonster.com. Trademonster.com is an online stock broker that provides a user-friendly online trading platform. Aside from that, Trademonster’s online trading platform is integrated with constructive educational resources such as webinars, articles and interactive courses.

Aside from the free educational resources, the other two features that Trademonster have over the competitors are: 1) A free stock simulator which lets you practice before making any live trades, and 2) $7.50 flat fee for trading stocks.

Aside from stocks, you can also trade options, mutual funds, and bonds on Trademonster’s online trading platform. Trademonster’s easy to use online trading platform is even rated 4 stars by Barron’s, a financial news magazine.

In fact, there have been a lot of positive reviews of Trademonster from investing sites that I’m tempted to open a PaperTrade account just to learn the ropes of Online Trading. Trademonter’s online PaperTrade account is the stock simulator I was referring to a couple of sentences back. It let’s you trade without you risking your assets.

I’ve been thinking a lot about E-Trade too but ever since I’ve heard about Trademonster, I’m more inclined to try out the latter. Hmm, I wonder if I could afford Apple’s stocks even in a simulator?

I have recently been looking for robotic vacuum cleaners on the net.If you've been an internet addict for ages, you've probably heard of robotic vacuum cleaners which made wave several years back. The most popular of the robotic vacuum cleaners is the Roomba from iRobot.

The Cheapest Roomba I could find is from their website which sells for around $200. However, if I factor in the shipping price plus if I get unlucky and some Customs Official at the post office charge me for customs duties, it would probably set me back around PHP20,000. I've seen a similar robotic vacuum cleaner at Handyman which sells for less than 20k. I forgot what was the brand but I'll probably buy locally considering that there's no service center here in the Philippines for Roomba vacuum cleaners.

Anyways, robotic vacuum cleaners will greatly help lazy a**es like me who can't sweep their floors once in a while. These type of robotic cleaners can be scheduled to clean your floors and uses sensors so that they're not stuck into once place.

So I'm trying out a new blogging platform, Quickblogcast from Godaddy. I have recently purchased a new domain but I want to host it on another blog platform aside from Blogger. I know wordpress is the most logical choice but setting wordpress up on my own webhost seems a bit complicated for me.

Quickblogcast is the next logical choice for me since I already bought my domain from Godaddy, I can try out their quickblogcast application for free. Although Godaddy's hosting services doesn't really rank on top of other website hosting reviews I thought I might still give it a try.

Well for one, they've recently updated their Quickblogcast interface and it's much snappier although I've still experienced some slowness specially when I'm trying to write a new post. The new post module takes a few minutes to load compared with Blogger which only takes a second before the "create a new post" module appears.

If you're familiar with CSS, you can edit the CSS template of quickblogcast but there are no options to add more sidebar widgets. There's also a huge banner ad on top of your blog that might bother some of your readers.

Overall, Quickblogcast is Okay but not better than Blogger. I might try out other website hosting from web hosting review's list of best blog hosting if the hosts offer a free trial or something. Hey, I'm not going to spend even just a few dollars on a service that's crappy.

So, after seeing this thing at the MWC 2009 and knowing that the Samsung i8910, formerly Samsung Omnia HD is still months away from release, I thought I might settle for this, at least until the i8910 is released.

What's Great

The major selling point of the Samsung Tocco Ultra for me, is its GORGEOUS AMOLED screen. The colors are truly rich and vibrant, almost HD-like. I tried watching a few downloaded DivX videos (in HD) and watching it on the S8300 and I have to tell you, it's like having a mini HDTV on my palm. Even the audio quality of its speakers are great. I tried listening to a few MP3s and the surround sound effect is really something. No tinny sound, just pure quality music. Oh yeah, you don't have to convert ANY videos. The S8300 is already DivX compatible so if you're fond of downloading DivX videos, you don't have to convert it. I tried watching a 358MB video and there's no blockiness or buffering or anything.

Next stop is the user interface. I'm a bit torn about it. For one, it's a capacitive screen so it means it responds to your skin and not to pressure. On one hand,compared to my Omnia, browsing through the widgets homescreen is really easy and the screen is responsive. The lightest touch and the widgets would move around. The bad thing is that I think the screen is a bit TOO sensitive. I want to press a widget to launch an application and the screen thinks I'm still trying to move that widget. Maybe it's just me and my fat fingers but I never had that problem when browsing my sister's iPhone.


I don't know if this feature is present on other Samsung phones but you can actually change the font of the messages. Of course, it's not like the person you're sending the message to would see the fonts you have used but it adds a bit more class when you're viewing your messages.

The camera on the Samsung S8300 Ultra Touch is 8 megapixels. Like the Samsung Omnia, there are a lot of camera options such as face detection, smile detection, autofocus, image stabilization, etc. It has a LED flash which is pretty useable under low light conditions. Again, image quality is great and colors are evenly reproduced.

The overall design is really nice. I like the brushed metal effect and the red and black color combination is classy. The web browser is a NETFront browser which I didn't like much. I prefer the Opera Mini browser which I would definitely install once I have the time.

What's Bad

Sadly, as with all other mobile phones, the Samsung S8300 Ultra Touch also has its faults. For one, I didn't like typing messages on it. Although it has a slide-out keypad, the keypad is flat, with no recesses to separate the numbers so I always end up pressing two numbers at the same type. Also, there's no physical backspace button to erase messages. The button in the middle is only for taking you out of an application and doesn't double as a backspace for messaging purposes. Also, when I hold the backspace button a second longer, I ended up deleting whatever I have written. It gets frustrating sometimes. Also, I would have preferred a QWERTY keypad on screen rather than a phonepad. Typing on a phonepad on a capacitive screen is hard.

Also, the GPS on this device is not useable. There's no included software plus it takes a LOOONGGG time to lock in on a satellite signal. It made me wonder if there's really a GPS chip on this device. Also, there's no WiFi which would have been a great and useful addition rather than the GPS chip.

Conclusion

Well, the Samsung S8300 Ultra Touch is definitely a GREAT multimedia phone. Music player and video playback is great and the 8 megapixel camera is perfect for those "Kodak moments". It's also a good fashion phone. It would definitely turn heads when you're in a coffee shop (for those who likes to flaunt their gadgets).

If you have Alcohol 120% and Azureus running on the same PC, chances are, you might have encountered Azureus immediately closing after opening files with file extension torrent or by simply opening Azureus.

I have noticed the problem when I ran some debugging tools and found that a some files with the file extension dll associated with Alcohol 120% was causing the problem. This file was the AxShlex.dll. If you don't really use Alcohol 120%, you can just uninstall the application and Azureus should work. Otherwise, if you want to keep Alcohol, you can rename AxShlex.dll to axshlex$$$.dll and this should fix the problem. Cheers.