ICS Easter Egg

Hi guys, I was reading on some random website about Android in general, and came across a very cool Easter Egg for Ice Cream Sandwich. If you don't know what an "Easter Egg" is, well, that's basically a hidden feature the developers build into software, which you can get to by doing something specific. It has no real function, it's just something cool (and I guess to keep the developers from boring themselves to death).

The ICS Easter Egg is a very cool one, and here's how to get to it:

First, go to the settings screen, and tap on "About Phone" at the bottom, here you'll see this:

Now, repeatedly tap on "Android version", which after a while will bring you here:

Now, that's not all of it :) go ahead and tap and hold on the Ice Cream Sandwich droid there - enjoy!

Till next time!

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ICS New Feature: Data usage

I've been playing around whenever I get the chance with my Galaxy S2 since I upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich, and one new feature I'm crazy about is one where you can limit the amount of mobile data your phone is allowed to use!

So, without further ado, here's how to get to it: First, tap on the button to the left of the home button, which will bring up the following menu (you'll notice that it looks different to what it previously did...):

Tap on Settings, which will bring you to this screen, which also happens to look slightly different now:

The settings are now in various groups, which makes it a bit better to navigate. Anyway, the option we're looking for here is "Data usage" - so go ahead and tap on that, which brings you to this section:

As you can see, from here you can turn Mobile data on and off, and set a limit and even when this cycle is in effect. You can drag around the various lines and things you see there, to customize it exactly how you want it. This is the one feature I really missed from Gingerbread, so I'm really glad it's now included by default.

Scrolling down even shows you which apps use your data:

Very handy indeed, now you can see which apps are the big data hogs, and delete them if you find they are the ones you don't really use!

As I discover more cool features, I'll let you all know!

Till next time!

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The default Galaxy S2 Browser

Ok, first off, I'm terribly sorry for not doing any posts in April so far. Those who're from South Africa, will know that in April we have lots of public holidays, and even regular work has been slow (the same pretty much every year!).

So, I asked in a poll what you guys would like me to review next, and you selected Browsers. So, I'm going to be doing 3 separate reviews on the following browsers:

• Stock standard one that comes with the Galaxy S2
• Dolphin (see the Dolphin Browser review here)
• Opera Mini

Now, I've been pretty much using the standard browser on my S2, and I must say, I'm pretty much happy with it. It doesn't have issues displaying the sites I like to frequent, and I've even done some online banking with the regular "desktop interface" of my bank's website (that will be the same interface that desktop PC's will have when doing online banking).

In fact, it works so nicely with that that I don't even bother to register for cellphone banking at all, I can just do it with my regular browser!

Here are a couple of screen shots of the standard browser in action:

Since the Galaxy S2 screen still isn't the size of a tablet or regular PC, what happens when you browse is the address bar get hidden from sight. To see the address is easy though, you simply swipe down, and there it is.

One thing that I'm not that fond of though, is you have to "press" the bottom left button on the phone itself, and the tap "windows", which opens up the list of open windows you have:

When I do the review of Dolphin, you'll see how they handle that.

Other than that, I couldn't find fault with the default browser. It handles Flash, SSL and has a whole bunch of settings also, here're the list of settings available for it:

As you can see, lots of settings so that you can tweak how it functions for you.

Zooming in can be done in 3 ways - you can double tap somewhere, and the browser zooms in on that part. If it is text your double tapping on, then it will fill that text to the screen width. Sometimes, if the website you're viewing doesn't have a mobile friendly stylesheet, then the text will still be too small to actually read it.

You can zoom in manually by pinch-zooming also, but like I said above here, the text doesn't fit in the area you're viewing automatically, so you'll have to scroll sideways to view the content when zoomed in.

Another funky way of zooming, which in my opinion is just a gimmick, is you tap two fingers on the screen at the same time, then you tilt the phone itself - this will then zoom as you're tilting the phone. I find that only cool for showing off the phone :)

So, in my opinion, if you don't use your phone for all of your internet browsing needs, then the stock standard browser does the job, with its few minor annoyances. 

If you do, however, use your phone a lot more for browsing, then I'd recommend getting something else... I'll be looking at Dolphin next, as well as Opera Mini.

Keep well, and until next time!

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Upgraded to 2.3.4

With my Samsung Galaxy S2's built in Update method, I updated my phone to Android 2.3.4 a week or so ago.

I'm happy to report that it was quite straightforward to do, and you don't have to do it via Kies at all, you simply do it from the settings section of the phone.

Here's a quick tutorial on how to go about it:

First, go to Settings and scroll down to the bottom:

At the bottom of the list, you'll see the option for "About phone" - go ahead and tap on that:

This shows you all the info of your phone, and at the top is the option to do a Software Update for your phone. Tapping on that one gives you:

From here, just hit Update at the top, and follow the on-screen instructions. That's unfortunately as far as my instructions can go, because I've already updated mine, and when I try it, I simply get a message telling me there are no current updates available.

Just note, the update does take several minutes to complete, and while the update is in progress, you won't be able to use the phone (make and receive calls) at all. Make sure your phone is charged before you do something like this...

Till next time!

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Use your Galaxy S2 as a Portable Wifi Hotspot

One very nice feature of the Galaxy S2 (and some other phones in the Galaxy range), is the ability to use it as a portable wifi hotspot! This is fortunately very easy and simple to set up!

Go into your phone's settings:

There, tap on "Wireless and network", which brings you to this screen:

Here, tap on "Tethering and portable hotspot", which takes you here:

Now tap on "Portable Wi-Fi hotspot settings":

On this screen you can enable your wifi hotspot, and also configure the security settings and stuff like that for the phone:

I'd highly recommend using WPA2 PSK as your security setting, otherwise anyone in range can connect to your phone, and with the ludicrous data rates out there, this can get costly, REAL quick!

Now simply connect with your laptop/tablet/other cellphone to your phone's wifi hotspot, enter the password, and you should be good to go! Very handy for if you don't have a 3g dongle or built-in 3g in your laptop. Also if you're in South Africa, free wifi hotspots are a very scarce thing - also, the ones that do exist almost never work!

Enjoy!

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Galaxy S2 Photo Editor

The Galaxy S2 comes standard with a very decent photo editor app, called, wait for it :) - "Photo editor" - very handy for a few quick touch ups, cropping or rotating. It's not a full Photoshop type app, but for every day use, it does the job nicely!

In this post I'll quickly go over all the features it has - starting the app, allows you to select which image you want to edit:

You can either select an existing image, or take a new one... Once you've selected the photo you want to edit, you'll get a neat interface with everything you need right there:

The most basic feature any decent photo editor app must have is a rotate one, and luckily, this one does! It also includes "flip horizontally" and "flip vertically" features:

The next one you'd need would be a cropping tool - we always get stuff like fingers or bystanders that spoil the photo, so cropping the pic can easily fix that. It can even turn a crappy photo into a MASTERPIECE!!!

This little app also have several selection related tools and features, which allows you to make edits to only certain parts of a photo:

At the bottom you'll see a back and forward button, so you can undo and redo any steps you take... Next to that you have a paint pallet icon, which gives you options to play with the brightness and contrast settings:

The magic wand tool gives you options to make some blur related changes to your selection (you need to make a selection first for this to work):

The final tool in the list gives you some other effects you can apply to your pic:

So there you have it, that covers the stock standard "Photo editor" that comes by default with the Galaxy S2 - it's got enough to allow you to do the basics, but it won't be used by professional photographers :) (they'll anyway rather use their PC or Mac)

I'll have a look to see what alternatives to the standard photo editor there are out there, and maybe do some reviews on them too.

Till next time!

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Music Hub Still not in SA

Yes, if you live in South Africa, and plan on getting the Samsung Galaxy S2 for it's "music hub" feature, don't because it is still not available locally:

Yup, very annoying! At least the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa forced Samsung to remove the advert for the music hub on their website - see that article here.

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Some more photos

It's been quite a while since I've posted on my blog, so sorry about that :) - got crazy busy the last few weeks, we took a week long holiday, and clients always see that as a big catastrophe, and starts sending lots and lots of work our way!

Anyway, here's some photos I took with the Galaxy S2's camera while we were on holiday down the Garden Route - I really like the panorama feature :)

(Swellendam Mountains)

(Cave at Mossel Bay)

(On the Outeniekwa Pass)

(Buffalo Bay)

(this tree is between 600 and 800 years old apparently - 36 meters tall, and circumference is 9 meters)

Still very impressed with my phone's camera - really handy to have when you don't have your regular one close by...

Till next time!

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Cool free live wallpapers

One of the very sweet features of the Galaxy S2, and Android phones in general, is there ability to display live wallpapers - if you don't know what this means, it's basically an animated wallpaper, but not just simple animations like GIF files for example - these can be interactive and feature some very cool effects and so on.

I did a quick search, and found a few very cool ones, and best of all, they're all free!

EDIT: I've just done a post with some more awesome, FREE live wallpapers :)

First one is a very nice Koi pond, with live (digital though :) fish that you can feed, and when you touch the screen you see the ripples in the water, which is quite nice. Here are some screen shots (but these don't really do it justice, best would be to just download it and check it out yourself in real time!):

In the last one I tried showing the ripples in the water, but it didn't work that well.

Get it here

The next one I have is 3D FireFlies - this one also looks great. Here are some screen shots:

Get it here

After that one I have Inferno Galaxy, which looks like a space scene that's on fire. Very cool! Here are some shots:

Get it here

My second last option is Snowfall live wallpaper:

Very pretty (a bit girly though, I like the much more manly Inferno Galaxy YEAH!! :)

Anyway, get it here

And the last one I checked out is some nice clouds with LIGHTNING - who doesn't like lightning hehe:

I took about 20 shots just to get a decent lightning flash, these were pretty much the best ones I could get.

Get it here

There you have it, 5 really nice Live Wallpapers for your Galaxy S2/Android phone. Now, I can imagine some of these can be quite a battery hog, but I don't have any stats on those. I do charge my phone every day, as the battery doesn't last, so for now I'll leave one of them on and will let you know if it makes that big a difference.

If you have some Live Wallpapers you'd like to recommend, feel free to leave a comment!

Cheers, and as always, till next time!

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