Samsung Galaxy S

Inquitus

wayne040576 wrote: »

If you had outlined these points two weeks ago when I started this thread, I probably would have got the Desire but I didn't so...

Aye but its like arguing why you should buy a Porsche instead of a Maserati We all have lovely phones, and we are talking fine lines of difference.

Spybreak

I'm still on the fence and could return my Galaxy for a Desire.

One question, is it possible to get the Desire to be "butter smooth" when scrolling lists and moving between homescreens? It might seem like a stupid thing to want but for me user experience is top priority and I don't want a phone that doesn't have a smooth UI.

Inquitus

Spybreak wrote: »

I'm still on the fence and could return my Galaxy for a Desire.

One question, is it possible to get the Desire to be "butter smooth" when scrolling lists and moving between homescreens? It might seem like a stupid thing to want but for me user experience is top priority and I don't want a phone that doesn't have a smooth UI.

The 2.2 upgrade is awesome, my phone is now smoother than a knife through butter.

Void

My Desire was perfectly smooth with normal 2.1. Now I have rooted 2.2 and there is no difference really, just got some extra 2.2 features (apps to sd etc).

Regarding the GPU thing again... I still say it's a red herring. Nothing uses the power available Desire may be less powerful with others but it's still massively overkill. Also... running Quake benchmarks etc = useless. These are normal PC apps crudely ported to OpenGL ES (replace glBegin with glVertexBuffer), they are not optimised for mobiles at all. Hardly anyone out there knows much about OGL on mobiles. I worked for T-Mobile in UK doing custom hw accelerated skins, also almost ended up with Samsung, but they were too cheap

Inquitus

Void wrote: »

My Desire was perfectly smooth with normal 2.1. Now I have rooted 2.2 and there is no difference really, just got some extra 2.2 features (apps to sd etc).

Regarding the GPU thing again... I still say it's a red herring. Nothing uses the power available Desire may be less powerful with others but it's still massively overkill. Also... running Quake benchmarks etc = useless. These are normal PC apps crudely ported to OpenGL ES (replace glBegin with glVertexBuffer), they are not optimised for mobiles at all. Hardly anyone out there knows much about OGL on mobiles. I worked for T-Mobile in UK doing custom hw accelerated skins, also almost ended up with Samsung, but they were too cheap

I disagree, noticeable improvement in 2.2 in smoothness scrolling the app list up and down, switching between the home screen and the other 6 sense screens, in 2.1 it wasn't flawlessly smooth all the time, now it is.

patch

Void wrote: »

My Desire was perfectly smooth with normal 2.1. Now I have rooted 2.2 and there is no difference really, just got some extra 2.2 features (apps to sd etc).

Regarding the GPU thing again... I still say it's a red herring. Nothing uses the power available Desire may be less powerful with others but it's still massively overkill. Also... running Quake benchmarks etc = useless. These are normal PC apps crudely ported to OpenGL ES (replace glBegin with glVertexBuffer), they are not optimised for mobiles at all. Hardly anyone out there knows much about OGL on mobiles. I worked for T-Mobile in UK doing custom hw accelerated skins, also almost ended up with Samsung, but they were too cheap

So you are saying there is no point ever having a gpu more powerful than the one in a desire?
Thats like saying buy an older pc, sure its grand.
I quite like the idea of a psx emulator, quake 3 and anything else that a faster gpu will allow. They wont be perfect but they will be better on the galaxy s, and will be on the next wave of android phones which will also have faster gpu's than the desire. Are you saying the desire wont be bettered soon?
The desire is older tech. Samsung have said froyo is coming very soon, so the galaxy s while very good now, is only going to get better.

Inquitus

patch11 wrote: »

galaxy s while very good now, is only going to get better.

Samsung have actually not said its coming soon, just that it will come.

Currently a rooted desire can avail of any number of very good Froyo ROMs with or without sense, there's not one 2.2 ROM for the Galaxy S out yet, nor is there likely to be before the official release. The Galaxy S will never get Gingerbread, official or otherwise. Its a great phone, but Samsung support their phones incredibly badly and have a huge rep for that, and as a result the Dev community generally steer clear of Samsung, in comparison to say HTC phones.

The Galaxy is a great phone, but poorly supported.

patch

Inquitus wrote: »

Samsung have actually not said its coming soon, just that it will come.

Currently a rooted desire can avail of any number of very good Froyo ROMs with or without sense, there's not one 2.2 ROM for the Galaxy S out yet, nor is there likely to be before the official release. The Galaxy S will never get Gingerbread, official or otherwise. Its a great phone, but Samsung support their phones incredibly badly and have a huge rep for that, and as a result the Dev community generally steer clear of Samsung, in comparison to say HTC phones.

The Galaxy is a great phone, but poorly supported.

Ummm...the galaxy s is out about a week. Its only starting to get released in the states, across many providers, in many different models. Saying its poorly supported at this stage is simply not true, and kinda lying. you probably mean that samsungs track record of supporting android phones is poor. We'll see how they go, most of what I've read on the topic suggests that they see the galaxy s as a chance to do things right,this time.
Saying it will never get gingerbread seems a tad mystic meg, we'll see six months down the road when it rolls out. By that time you and I will probably have newer phones

Void

patch11 wrote: »

So you are saying there is no point ever having a gpu more powerful than the one in a desire?
Thats like saying buy an older pc, sure its grand.
I quite like the idea of a psx emulator, quake 3 and anything else that a faster gpu will allow. They wont be perfect but they will be better on the galaxy s, and will be on the next wave of android phones which will also have faster gpu's than the desire. Are you saying the desire wont be bettered soon?
The desire is older tech. Samsung have said froyo is coming very soon, so the galaxy s while very good now, is only going to get better.

No I'm not saying that. I'm saying it's a red herring, and thus a TINY advantage. The performance increase isn't that much, and there are DOWNSIDES. Galaxy uses seperate chip for gpu, draws more power when it's used. It really isn't a reason to choose Galaxy over Desire...

wayne040576

On the skin thing, I dunno why Samsung tried so hard to make an interface that looks like the iphone. I got bored with it quickly and installed launcher Pro:

patch

wayne040576 wrote: »

On the skin thing, I dunno why Samsung tried so hard to make an interface that looks like the iphone. I got bored with it quickly and installed launcher Pro....

Hi Wayne, how or where did you find the clock widget for launcherpro?
It seems htc made the author remove it from the store as it allows all android phones look like the sense ui.

Inquitus

patch11 wrote: »

wayne040576 wrote: »

On the skin thing, I dunno why Samsung tried so hard to make an interface that looks like the iphone. I got bored with it quickly and installed launcher Pro....

Hi Wayne, how or where did you find the clock widget for launcherpro?
It seems htc made the author remove it from the store as it allows all android phones look like the sense ui.

http://ip208-100-42-21.static.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6992288&postcount=27

patch

Thanks for that!
For some reason the weather isn't showing up on mine, but I'll figure it out.
Edit: had to turn on google location services to get weather up.

Brian

The GPU in the Galaxy S won't make a great deal of difference with the PSX emulator since it's mainly done on the CPU.

patch

Baza210 wrote: »

The GPU in the Galaxy S won't make a great deal of difference with the PSX emulator since it's mainly done on the CPU.

Really? Ah well. Perhaps now that devs have a decent gpu to work with that will change. It runs the quake 3 demo a great deal faster than any present android device and thats without any optimising. Im sure the gpu will come in handy in lots of areas once it gets utilised.

Regarding froyo, samsung stated today that it will be released early august in korea. So its highly likely we'll have a froyo rom by then. Sooner if its leaked

mathew

I've the same experience with the Samsung interface. I got bored very quickly and installed ADW.

Everything is so customisable it doesn't make a difference what it looks like out of the box. You can change almost every bit to suit your needs.

@wayne do you not find that clock app very heavy on battery? According to my battery usage page it was just after the display in the amount it used. I uninstalled it fairly sharpish! I now have Beautiful Widgets installed.. their Home widget is perfect.

One thing I would really love for android is an app to allow me to use my phone as a bluetooth headset for my pc. Main reason is so I can watch tv from bed without trailing a huge jack cable over the floor.

thehomeofDob

mathew wrote: »

I've the same experience with the Samsung interface. I got bored very quickly and installed ADW.

Everything is so customisable it doesn't make a difference what it looks like out of the box. You can change almost every bit to suit your needs.

@wayne do you not find that clock app very heavy on battery? According to my battery usage page it was just after the display in the amount it used. I uninstalled it fairly sharpish! I now have Beautiful Widgets installed.. their Home widget is perfect.

One thing I would really love for android is an app to allow me to use my phone as a bluetooth headset for my pc. Main reason is so I can watch tv from bed without trailing a huge jack cable over the floor.

Where did you find beautiful widgets? I went looking for it on the market but could only find a live wallpaper to go along with it. Is it a paid App?

mathew

4shared

wayne040576

patch11 wrote: »

wayne040576 wrote: »

On the skin thing, I dunno why Samsung tried so hard to make an interface that looks like the iphone. I got bored with it quickly and installed launcher Pro....

Hi Wayne, how or where did you find the clock widget for launcherpro?
It seems htc made the author remove it from the store as it allows all android phones look like the sense ui.

The one in the pic is wf clock and widget

http://slideme.org/application/wf-clock-widget

I got a UK sim card yesterday and installed the Weather and Toggle widget apps which gives access to a lot of skins. Installed the paper clock yesterday:

http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.androidapps.widget.clock.skin.paper

Zagato

thehomeofDob wrote: »

Where did you find beautiful widgets? I went looking for it on the market but could only find a live wallpaper to go along with it. Is it a paid App?

It is a paid app

mathew

Yep

partyatmygaff

To be fairly honest the only apps that will ever see a performance benefit from that GPU is the likes of Quake 3 and not much else. Quake 2 has major issues with the Desire and Nexus One. Getting it to even get ingame is pretty difficult and even at that it has shockingly poor performance.

Quake 3 on the other hand (Using Kwaak3) works flawlessly on the Desire, butter smooth 3d playback so that proves that the Quake 2 port has issues with the Nexus One / Desire.

In any case, that extra GPU power will only benefit ports and other non-native Android games (Not emulators...) so its benefit in the wild is pretty limited...

mathew

Finally got Modaco ROM going. Had to upgrade the firmware to JG1, which has a problem with swype.
If anyone decides to upgrade, the way to fix the swype problem is:
Go to Messaging > Menu Key > Settings > Inpput Mode and select GSM Alphabat. The problem appears to be with when Input Mode is set to Automatic.

Modaco ROM certainly seems a bit faster.

mathew

Can anyone confirm if the CPW ones are unlocked?

wayne040576

mathew wrote: »

Finally got Modaco ROM going. Had to upgrade the firmware to JG1, which has a problem with swype.
If anyone decides to upgrade, the way to fix the swype problem is:
Go to Messaging > Menu Key > Settings > Inpput Mode and select GSM Alphabat. The problem appears to be with when Input Mode is set to Automatic.

Modaco ROM certainly seems a bit faster.

Can you point me at a good site with info for doing this?

This is my first androind phone but I've done stuff like this in the past with other devices. Are there any Galaxy specific requirements?

Thanks

mathew

http://android.modaco.com/content/samsung-galaxy-s-s-modaco-com/312383/06-jul-r2-jg1-modaco-custom-rom-for-samsung-galaxy-s-with-online-kitchen/

You have to upgrade to JG1 firmware.. Its easy to do, follow the instructions on in the link.
Make sure you back up with titanium or something first.

You probably wont loose everything.. but you cant be sure!

Once you upgrade you will most likely have that probelm with swype, so just change that setting that I mentioned and it'll all be grand

wayne040576

mathew wrote: »

http://android.modaco.com/content/samsung-galaxy-s-s-modaco-com/312383/06-jul-r2-jg1-modaco-custom-rom-for-samsung-galaxy-s-with-online-kitchen/

You have to upgrade to JG1 firmware.. Its easy to do, follow the instructions on in the link.
Make sure you back up with titanium or something first.

You probably wont loose everything.. but you cant be sure!

Once you upgrade you will most likely have that probelm with swype, so just change that setting that I mentioned and it'll all be grand

Thanks,

I was looking at that post last week but I didn't know how stable it was.

I was looking at the PDF for flashing JG1 here:

http://samsung-firmware.webs.com/WEBPROTECT-samsungi9000.htm

Did you need to have Samsung Kies running to do this? I've been having trouble with Kies on my pc. Sometimes it detects the phone sometimes it doesn't.

mathew

You dont. You just need to have it installed so the drivers are there.
It wont work at all on my laptop. MainStage just keeps crashing. I've no idea whats wrong.. but I dont have much use for it so I'm not bothered really.

If you flash csc you will loose all data. Appapertly you only need to flash pda. I decided to go ahead and flash all 3.. and lost everything.. I had it backed up luckily!

If you do want to flash all 3, the modem tar is the one to use for phone.

This guide is very good http://samsunggalaxysforums.com/showthread.php/91-Tutorial-How-to-debrand-and-flash-newer-firmware-to-your-Galaxy-S
On my laptop it came up as COM6 not COM7.. not that it makes any difference really..

droidman

Does anybody have the settings for this phone so i can send/receive MMS? I've tried the settings from Meteors site and by googling and they don't work. Meteor don't know them for this phone since it's so new but in fairness to them they tried to help anyway and the standard ones don't seem to work.
cheers

patch

partyatmygaff wrote: »

To be fairly honest the only apps that will ever see a performance benefit from that GPU is the likes of Quake 3 and not much else. Quake 2 has major issues with the Desire and Nexus One. Getting it to even get ingame is pretty difficult and even at that it has shockingly poor performance.

Quake 3 on the other hand (Using Kwaak3) works flawlessly on the Desire, butter smooth 3d playback so that proves that the Quake 2 port has issues with the Nexus One / Desire.

In any case, that extra GPU power will only benefit ports and other non-native Android games (Not emulators...) so its benefit in the wild is pretty limited...

You should check out the video on youtube comparing quake 2 running on desire compared to sgs
All thats needed is someone to port controls over from toonwars.
I still dream of Halflife getting ported, a game with less shooting and more puzzles would work pretty well on a 4 inch screen IMO.