iPhone with it's ubiquitous interface

One thing I really impress with Apple is their creativity and marketing. They are able to inject much ideas on a phone which really brings much wow to all of us. Pinching (another word for zooming in iPhone), land scape mode with auto rotate, intuitive menu design and colours … are just some of the fun features which you can’t find in any phones at that time. Even before Apple roll out iPhones to network carriers, Apple has been doing intensive marketing for their new phone. The Macworld Expo which Steve Jobs did a demo on the fruit phone is very interesting back then. Guess what, they got itself free marketing by having this video of the demo spread around the internet by link exchange and word of mouth. I still remember viewing that video and immediately, “I must get this phone” is what appears in my brain. But wait, Apple is known for its overpriced product, new phone like this wouldn’t be cheap. And yes, it’s pricey. It cost and arm and a leg without subsidy from network carriers. Apart from that, it lacked basic features like MMS, retrieving SIM card info and that includes all your contacts which you saved in your SIM, 3G, pathetic camera, custom ringtone…etc, thus making the first version of iPhone a no no to me. But Apple has been upgrading their iPhone consistently since then; added 3G support, better camera, faster processor, and better LCD screen just to name a few. What we have now is iPhone 3GS, a big upgrade software and hardware wise compared to the first version of iPhone.

Android OS

Android phones on the other hand, is kinda different from the iPhone. First of all, it’s an open source platform. Secondly, it(the OS) was developed by Open handset Alliance and it’s up to any manufacturer to implement any hardware they want. The end result was, a very customizable platform where manufacturer can easily use this OS on any of their new phones as long as it meets the hardware requirements. So, you can have a budget phone with Android installed and another one with all the high end features. Even better is, the Android can be skinned with customizable menu. Take some of the Android phones as example; HTC Hero, Sony Ericsson Rachael and Moto Droid. 3 of them are different in the UI design as HTC and Sony Ericsson re-design the whole UI on Android while Motorola decided to use the vanilla version of Android 2.0. While being open source, this OS is not as intuitive and fun-looking compared to iPhone’s proprietary OS which is version 3.1 now. To be honest, it was quite plain and boring. But that changed after looking at the Sony Ericsson Rachael’s UI (below).

Impressive? Ya, thats the same feeling I had back when I first watch iPhone preview demo.

Same as iPhone OS, Android lacked basic features in the earlier version though not as much as iPhone. But with consistent updates from Google, many of the features were added in every new version. The newest version Android 2.0 is very impressive. It supports higher resolution, optimized for faster hardware speed and better virtual keyboard. Sony Ericsson Rachael is based on Anroid 2.0 for your info.

As usual, I detailed out both platform in simple point forms.

Why you should get iPhone?

• Good internet device. Its mobile Safari browser tops every other mobile browser.
• A true smarter-than-usual-smartphones (sorry Samsung Jet). Has over 100,000 applications available for download and has very good build-in organizer applications.
• Top notch user interface, fool-proof in other words. You don’t have to spend whole day to configure certain settings.
• Great design; either physically or internally(the OS). Appealing for fashion conscious and show-off types alike.
• Very good touch interface and user input. With capacitive touch technology and a 3.5″ screen, giving inputs to the iPhone is non other than just contact your finger and the screen only. The keyboard is well designed and big enough (landscape mode) for swift email/sms typing.

..and why you shouldn’t.

• Overpriced. If there are no subsidy from telco, this phone cost a premium and it’s certainly not worth for that kind of hardware specifications.
• Poor audio output. For this beautiful phone, having lower-than-low-end speakers is certainly worth to give Apple a slap in their face.
• Poor call quality. Many have complained since the first iteration of iPhone, Apple simply never listen.
• Customization sucks. Skinning the OS or at least having different themes was not possible. Guess what, you can’t change the message tones and you’ll be bored with the default tones.
• Poor multimedia capability. Mp3 and video playback is sucks and it doesn’t support a myriad of common video and audio codecs.
• No Flash support. What? Yeah, having a great browser minus the support for Flash is certainly an Achilles’ heel for the iPhone. This limits to only capable of browsing plain&boring websites on the iPhone.
• No GPS. Another what? You are paying a premium for this phone and it doesn’t comes with GPS? Relax, there is A-GPS. If your position is badly covered by your telco’s signal it basically means nothing as A-GPS needed data from the internet.
• In summary, your iPhone is basically dead without internet connectivity.

Why you should get Android?

• Better hardware specifications. Supports higher resolution both camera and screen, and faster processor 1GHz like the SE Rachael.
• Decently bundled Google applications. Gmail, and Google maps with free directional navigation make it the winning key for Android 2.0 phones.
• Customization is better. You can get different themes and skin and you can customize your own tones.
• Google voice support.

..and why you shouldn’t.

• Applications from Android Market might not compatible with your phone. This is contributed by the fact that there are different hardware configurations for the same OS.
• Phone designs might not as appealing to some.
• A great variety of phone models and brand is confusing.

As confusing as it is, both platform has its pros and cons. Apple controls the hardware implementation which results having pathetic hardware specifications; high end smart phone with 3.2 megapixels camera only? Knock knock Jobs… But on the other hand, the brilliant human-device interface (the iPhone OS interface for your sake) + loads of apps available on Apple store, makes the iPhone an appealing choice for tech freaks who are looking for a smartphone. If you’re looking for a phone which packed a punch for its multimedia prowess, iPhone indeed sucks here. Forgot to mention, iPhone’s call quality is below average. >> next page
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Roughly 1.5years back, ATI introduced the Radeon 3 series. It was an upgrade and speed bump for the Radeon 2 series which based on the same architecture R600. The 3 series from ATI wasn’t that competitive agaisnt the Geforce 9 series. But ATI lowered their price and compete in the middle and lower end segment. The Radeon 2 series  from my opinion, wasn’t a good product. It was reminiscent of the Phenom K10 architecture. It only starts to shine when AMD/ATI make a transition to 55nm manufacturing process for its 2400 and 2600 graphic processing unit. We can get cheap mainstream graphic card back then like the 8600GT from nvidia or the 3670 from ATI.

In the mid of 2008, is an even better time for graphic market. This is when ATI introduces the R700 family of graphic cards. The spotlight is on ATI 4850, the fastest mainstream at a reasonable price at that time. Performance was close and faster in some cases than the Geforce 9800 GTX which priced higher than the 4850. Nvidia couldn’t afford to lose market and lowered down their high end product to mainstream prices to compete with 4850. From top to bottom, ATI 4 series(R700) own all the performance crown in every segment. It was indeed a good year for ATI and a better year for consumers.

Ok, enough of history lesson. Today we have the Geforce GT200 series, the ATI 4 series (R700) and 5 series (Evergreen). The GT200 wasn’t really shine untill nvidia migrate the manufacturing process to 55nm earlier this year (or the very end of 2008). It was too hot and too expensive to produced using the 65nm. While ATI doesn’t have any new graphic other than the 4770 and 4890 for the first 9months of this year. Therefore, with competitive pricing from nvidia and the newly improved GT260 and GT285 later on, ATI would have to lower their prices as well. A very good first half of 2009 for consumers I would say. To sum up for today’s graphic card market, starting from the oldest to newest graphics family and from low end to high end segment:

ATI R700 family of GPU (Graphic Processing Unit), Radeon 4 series:

• The 4650 and 4670 remained the best bang for buck in the lower segment.
• Scant availability of 4830 means it is in the process of phasing out. And with the price that is almost similiar with 4850. It’s best just to forget the former and get the later for more performance at just slightly few bucks more.
• The same goes to the 40nm Radeon 4 series – 4770 GPU. Worst is, 4770 is getting pricier than 4850.
• The most popular card of 2008 – Radeon 4850 is getting pricier, no thanks to the fact that this card is getting lesser due to low production from ATI. But anyway, is still the best lower mid range card for today’s standard.
• With strong competition from nvidia GTX260, the Radeon 4870 is tied with GTX260 at the same price range. It’s hard to recommend either one, it boils down to which game you played most. But I would recommend 4870 as it is faster in most games, if Phsyx matters for you then GTX260 is the one to go.
• Radeon 4890 while just an overclocked version of Radeon 4870,  was more overclocker friendly than 4870. With 30-40% higher selling price than 4870, 4890 has the upper hand in performance after maximum overclock. But if you’re not into overclocking, it’s best just to settle with nvidia GTX260 or 4870 or maybe the new Evergreen 5850( more on it later).

Nvidia GT200 GPU

• Lower end for these family of GPU is better be left out for recommendation list. However, the newly released GT240 which is based on 40nm and doesn’t require extra power connector is the one to look for. But since it couldn’t be found selling anywhere in stores and with unknown price yet, this segment had AMD’s Radeon 4650/4670 won hands down.
• GTX260 is only worth for your penny if you are looking for GPGPU applications . Else, just go for Radeon 4870.
• In the range of high end GT200, it’s hardly recommendable for anyone. With ATI’s Evergreen took back the performance crown at competitive pricing, I don’t see reasons to get the GTX285. The GTX295 is still reasonable choice as ATI Radeon 5970 is simply overpriced.

ATI Radeon Evergreen GPU (R800)

• There are no low end cards in this family of GPU yet, but expect AMD/ATI to release Redwood early next year (January possibly). My speculation is, given the performance that we see from this new Evergreen architecture, this would make 9800GT and GTX240 irrelevant as Redwood will be position at that price range. It wouldn’t replace 4650/4670 initially, but expect it to do so by end of next year.
• Juniper is the latest mid range card from AMD/ATI. It is basically half of horse power from Cypress(see below). The 5770 is almost as fast as 4870, but in some cases it was actually slower by few frame rates. Well, that doesn’t concern me with an extra added feature like DirectX 11 and bit streaming. 5770 vs GTX260 vs 4870 at the same price range, I definitely be going for 5770.
• The fastest single chip GPU fall into the hands of Cypress. There are two variant, 5870 and the cut down version 5850. Though 5870’s performance is remarkable, but its price is a bit on the high side no thanks to the non-competition from nvidia and the limited stock available. 5850 on the other hand is really the card to get this year, having performance which is faster than nvidia GTX285 with lower price tag. But it faces the similiar problem with 5870 as well, is very hard to get this card and some shops actually marked up the price above market level.
• ATI/AMD decided to name their dual chip Cypress as Hemlock with their high end named 5970. Boasting two 5870 chip in one card, this is a beast. The 5870 is already insanely fast, having two of them makes nightmare to nvidia. While having the fastest frame rates in all games, this card is not for the faint hearted. Prepare to churn out a big hole in your bank account for this card.

So there you have it, a detailed summary of every discrete graphic families available in the market now. But many of you have guessed, why it isn’t a good time to upgrade your 2-4 years old graphic card now?( thats a different story if you are getting a new PC man )  Well, first of all, availability problem causes some of the most popular graphic card to hike up in price. The Radeon 4850 and nvidia GTX260 is actually pricier than few months back. The new Evergreen graphic from ATI is even in the worst case here, the Radeon 5850, 5870 and 5950 have very little available globablly. Inadvertently causing some stores to mark up their prices. While the cheaper variant of the Evergreen; 5770 and 5750 is just slightly better in the position. The lower end card like the Radeon 4670 and 4650 are still available and getting very affordable these days, but if you are upgrading your graphic card, you won’t get these cards right? My advice, is actually worth to play the wait game just for few more months now. This is what will happen: ATI will ramp up production for their Evergreen graphics family in January, the lower end Redwood will show up Q1, nvidia Fermi will show up by March best case scenario. It’s a very interesting 1st half. If Fermi perform half as good as what nvidia claim, that would be already enough to make ATI lower down their pricey Cypress and Hemlock, and price wars ignite. It’s good for the consumer in the end, you see, im not a fan boy in either side. I’m a fan boy of any side which can produce cheap, efficient, and high performing card, and I believe everyone should.

Friendster acquired by MOL

“Friendster finds a welcome buddy in Malaysia” , “Friendster Ships Off To Malaysia”, “Friendster found a new home in MOL”, are just some of the head line of the story. There are analysts saying this acquisition is positive, well, I do disagree on that. 

Anyone living in non-stone age-era should know that Friendster is no longer the social networking of choice among every Earthling. Though it(Friendster) was the one that defines social networking back in 2001, it was superseded by Myspace and Facebook years after. A quick check on the user database shows that majority of Friendster’s social networkers are made up of Asian. South east Asia make up a big chunk of the big pie.

Friendster claimed that there are over 100million registered users. While this is true, it was in fact kinda misleading. There are 100million users indeed, but what are the numbers for active users? Active users simply were defined as those that update their profile at least once every few months, log in every day, send messages across network, add friends, chat…etc.  I used to login Friendster everyday a while back. But since my friends asked me to migrate over to Facebook, my Friendster account remained in hibernate mode. None of my Friends ever forward message or did anyone added me in Friendster list since n-years ago (n = 1 or 2 years probably).

The thing is, it was not a good deal from my opinion.  They need to come up with something to entice internet networkers. Spams, viruses and malware are some of the major reasons people stay away from Friendster. Apart from these, advertisement is also one nuisance which kinda irk me in Friendster. Advertisements are ok, but please, make it small. The ads were done in heavy flash content and covered half of page in some instances.

All in all, what’s the outcome of the acquisition is yet to see. Analyst would say this is a good move while I bet to differ. Well, I could be wrong in some way. But one thing is for sure, Friendster is losing market share(networker share to be precise) every minute to Facebook.

The administrator menu can be accessed by keying in *#5239870*#. After that, select option No. 4 Internals. It’ll prompt you for a Master Key. Key in *#7092463*#, and enter Confirm thereafter.

To check your memory status, select the no.2 option Debug settings > no.7 Memory state > no.1 Current memory state. You will see Total heap Mem, Total allocated mem, Allocated mem and Fragmentation level.

Here are some explanations:

• Total Heap Mem: Possibly the RAM size of Jet.  It was amount at 122MB. You are seeing it as 119,900K as it was in Kilobytes, converting (multiply by 1024) it to MB will be equal to 122MB.
• Total Allocated Mem: I still couldn’t figure out the meaning of this. This memory is static and wouldn’t change with any applications opened and closed. Possibly the memory allocated for the Samsung proprietary OS.
• Allocated Mem: The amount of memory that you are using right now. Done some test by opening few widgets and applications and this amount will be slowly increasing. I’ve done a test by opening a large heavy flash content website in the Dolphin web browser and switch to Current Memory State via the task switcher.  I can actually see the amount is increasing over time and finally it reaches 110K before giving me error on insufficient memory resources. Keep in mind that this figure doesn’t update in real time. You’ll have to click the back button and access that menu again to see the updated figure.
• Fragmentation level: No idea of this. Fragmentation means nothing for solid state memory. But anyway, this figure stay at 0% at all time.

What you need:

• PC with internet connection.
• wireless adapter installed.

A USB or PCI wireless adapter is a real bargain these days. PCI variant is cheaper, but I prefer USB type as it gives me more flexibility. Flexibility in the sense for better wireless coverage.

The idea of this is real simple, you get the internet connection from the modem to your desktop PC through LAN port and you broadcast and share it using wi-fi or wireless network connection.

The steps are simple:

• Make sure you’ve got ICS enabled. ICS stands for Internet Connection Sharing in Windows XP.
• Go to Control Panel > Network Connections, right click on the Wireless Connection (which is probably offline if your internet connection comes from LAN) and click on the Advanced tab. Tick the option “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection”. Select the correct Home networking connection on which your PC is connected to the Internet.
  

  how to share internet connection - advanced tab

• Click on the Wireless Networks tab after that. Click on the Add button under the Preferred networks. You will see something like the picture below.
  

  Setting up wifi ad hoc connection

  Key in your preferred SSID. SSID is the name that will be seen by others wifi enabled computers. Tick the option “This is a computer-to-computer (ad hoc) network; wireless access points are not used”. Key in a network key if you want to have a secure wifi connection and to prevent others from intruding your wifi network. You will need to key in a 5 or 13 characters key or 10 and 26 characters in hexadecimal format. Click OK when you are done.

• Click OK to exit the Wireless connection properties. If you ticked the option “Connect even if this network is not broadcasting”, your wireless adapter will connect itself to start an ad hoc network even when your wireless adapter is not connected to any computer or devices.
• Double click your wireless icon, go to General > Properties. Set the IP address for your wireless adapter under Internet Proctocol (TCP/IP) to 192.168.0.1 and DNS 255.255.255.0, the rest just leave it blank. You must set this IP and DNS for sharing your network.
• When all is done(you can see the your wifi icon below the taskbar as online mode), you can connect to this ad hoc network through your notebook or others wifi enabled PC in your home.

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However, there are plenty of web hosting services available out there. Just type in the keyword “web hosting service” in google and you’ll be bombarded with millions of results. Choosing one web hosting service which offers great reliability is crucial, as you might lose a lot of visitors if your site is downed often.

I’ve come across few of them, and I just plan to list down my top 3 favourites. Each of them has their weaknesses and strength; one offers great reliability but comes at a slightly higher price, the other one offers the cheapest web hosting service while another one sits just between reliable and affordable.

Below are the list of cheap and the best web hosting services:

• BlueHost – BlueHost I would say it’s the more expensive among the top 3 here. Though it was expensive, it got the best customer service and high uptime of 99.9%. Which is relatively good considering some of the top blogs in the blogosphere uses this service. Recommended for serious web designer who needs good services and uptime or for any blogs with high traffic volume. You can’t mind the extra fees for that. At USD 6.95/month (regardless of how many months you sign up) the cost was reasonable, for more info, please visit the website here.

• Webhostingpad – If you are new to blogging and you are serious with your blog ( generating revenue I mean ), but you can’t afford of more expensive hosting service. I would recommend you to try Webhostingpad. It’s good for any new bloggers as well as it was better to have your own domain and hosting with minimum spent on it. The uptime is not 99.9% as guaranteed, it would be something like 99.1%. Which is still good considering for new blogs or site, the traffic won’t be that huge for the first year. At   USD 4.95/month (for 1 year) or USD 2.75/month (for 2 years) or even the freaking cheap USD 1.99/month(for 3 years), this hosting service is the best bang for buck! Don’t sign up the 1 year package, get the 2 year package at just an additional of USD 6.6 only!

• Hostgator – Hostgator is sandwiched between the more expensive BlueHost and the cheapest hosting Webhostingpad. The reliability can matched with BlueHost but come at cheaper price (after coupon discount). If you want something in between cheap and reliable, Hostgator is the way to go. The price is at USD 66.72  (1year package) after discount. The longer you sign up, the cheaper per month the price is.

Instant Messenger Robot demoed at International Robot Show in Taipei August 5, 2009

It is not something really new, as this fully utilized the speech recognition technology. However, this piece of Pokemon (well, it sure looks like one from that famous anime), able to detect speech pattern and send as a message in text format over the internet via the Microsoft Messenger software. One thing I do concern about was, how accurate is the speech recognition? The last I remember using the Vista speech software, it did give my mouth a full 2hours gym and finally give it up. I end up cursing more than speaking to the microphone.

The AMD Sempron 140

Just when you thought Phenom II X3 (or some X2s) are the best bang for buck by having free cores (yeah, literally), hold on, as Sempron 140 will likely to be the next bang for buck by having a free “core” unlockable core by costing just half of Phenom II X3, well more than half actually.

Kudos to a Thai moder from Vmodtech. Where by simply using a supported motherboard with Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC), basically any motherboards with SB710 and SB750, you’ll be able to unlock the extra core. Hmm…that’s a great deal considering this cheap babe cost just USD40 (can’t see it anywhere in local stores though )

By tweaking the voltage and maybe installed with a better heatsink, this guy was able to achieve a whopping 3.7GHz! That’s an extra 1GHz from the default of 2.7GHz and another extra 1 core. 1GHz and 1core, seems like a good number to get a winning lucky number for some gambling .

I see a good budget deal by having this unlocked Sempron 140 and 780G as a good combination for internet, simple gaming and multimedia needs. But not much are into overclock or unlock in this case, so it’s better left for budget overclockers.

Anyway, I’ll wrap up here and this link will let you see more details of this Athlon II X2 440 (ya, this is what the unlocked Sempron 140 becomes).

*Sempron 140 is a new budget processor from AMD where it has 1MB of L2cache and clocks at 2.7GHz. It was derived from a faulty Athlon II dual core processor, but of course as many agreed that AMD make some non faulty Athlon II into Sempron 140 for marketing purposes.

The new AMD 785G chipset

The days are numbered when IGP (integrated graphic processor) offers miserable graphic performance. Thanks to AMD, we got a very solid IGP solutions with the 780G chipset released last year. A year later, which is today, AMD bumped up and inject the 780G with extra speed and some tweaks here and there. And voila, we got the 785G.

The new 785G supports any current Phenom II, Athlon II and the older brethren Athlon X2. The 780G will be phased out once 785G is in full production swing. 785G will be positioned between 780G and 790GX, but will eventually replace 780G.

Motherboard with AMD 785G chipset will come with SB710 southbridge. The SB710 southbridge is a an improvement over the SB700 southbridge. It’s basically a SB750 southbridge (which comes with 790GX) minus RAID 5 support, which is not much an issue considering majority of users never use RAID at all.

However, one issue with the 785G is the lack of support for 8 channel LPCM over HDMI. The older 780G and 790GX doesn’t have 8 channel LPCM support and many were hoping AMD to upgrade a little for this new 785G chipset. A bit of disappointment for those planning to do a 7.1 channel HTPC system. Well, for most of us, a 2 channel is already sufficient enough for a great audio experience.

Some of the improvements over 780G are:

• Faster graphics with AMD HD 4200 graphics
• DirectX 10.1 support
• ATI stream technology
• Universal Video Decoder 2.0(UVD)
• AMD powerplay

With AMD HD 4200 build in to 785G, we can expect DirectX10.1 support. However, clockspeed remained the same at 500MHz. But 785G motherboard usually comes with DDR3 sideport memory, so we can see some extra frame rates over 780G.

For those working on Microsoft Powerpoint or using the Cyberlink’s Espresso media converter, you’ll be delighted to have 785G as your working companion. With ATI Stream, expect to see substantial performance improvement where it offloads the processing power to the 40 stream processor at 500MHz each. More than 2times the performance gain without upgrading the processor, how’s that? More applications will be taking advantage of this ATI Stream GPGPU technology in the future.

Watching HD videos just got better with UVD 2.0. With additional features for BD video like picture in picture, dynamic contrast and better HD post processing.

Another big improvement is the AMD Powerplay. It dynamically adjust the clockspeed of the chipset anywhere from 60MHz idle to 500MHz full load. The new Powerplay adjust the clockspeed constantly depending on the work load on the GPU. Think of it as the Cool n Quiet feature of Phenom II. A greener PC indeed.

This new chipset has been released by AMD on the early of August’09 and expect to see the availability at your local store soon. Pairing a budget Athlon II (don’t be fooled by the Athlon name, it’s a Phenom II in disguised without the L3 cache) and 785G can be seen as a perfect couple stealing market shares away from Intel’s G41 and nvidia 9400 IGP solutions, but not for HTPC enthusiast.

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Samsung Jet

There is a new Jet in town. Featuring a high power Jet engine @ processor at 800MHz, this Jet is a new touchscreen phone from Samsung. It was claimed to be smarter than a smartphone. While I do agree that it was smarter than LG Arena. But smarter than a smartphone? Well, lets take a ride on this Jet.

On the first look, this phone features a 800×480 resolution at 3.1 inch AMOLED touchscreen. It is an improvement over some other phones which still uses the old TFT LCD technology. AMOLED’s advantage over TFT is its colour reproduction where it can produce sharper and more vivid colours. However, under direct sun light, I could barely read the menu from the screen. This is a common problem which existed over a vast range of other touchscreen phones.

Samsung Jet with new Touchwiz 2.0

The phone features a resistive type touchscreen technology. It’s not as responsive as a capacitive ones like the iPhone and LG Arena. But Samsung did much to the touchscreen sensitivity and I found it to be on par with iPhone’s capacitive touchscreen.

Upon booting up the Samsung Jet, you’ll be greeted with Touchwiz 2.0. A new version of Samsung’s touch interface. The left side of the screen features a widget bar, which reminds me of Windows Vista. YouTube, weather forecast, shortcut to Google, music player, are just some of the available widgets there. Scrolling down the bar will reveal more of the widgets.

Tapping on the menu icon on the lower right brings up the, erm… menu of course. It consists of three pages. Flipping to the next page is as easy as sliding the screen to the left or right. Much like a design copied over iPhone’s one.

Typing a text on a touchscreen phone is a serious concern for me as there were no tactile feedback using the virtual keys. Samsung Jet offers multitap input, handwriting recognition and QWERTY virtual keyboard in landscape mode. I’ll rule out the handwriting recognition as it couldn’t effectively recognize my handwriting accurately. The multitap was functional but slow. It will never matched with a true multitap keys. It was slow but it get the job done in the end. My favourite is the QWERTY virtual keyboard. With a smaller screen as compared to iPhone, the keys were smaller. I would have thought that mispressing keys is as prone as LG Arena QWERTY keyboard, but I was wrong. I find the accuracy of pressing the desired key is near to 99%. But in the end, using a QWERTY keyboard covered more than half of the screen, typing a long SMS or email wont be such a good experience as you only get viewable lines of less than 5.

Holding the cube button on the lower middle brings out the task manager. It lists out the opened applications and you can switch between applications from this menu. The design of this cube button is misleading as I initially thought that it brings out the cube shortcut interface.

The cube interface which is called Media Gate 3D user interface, is reminiscent of the S class UI from LG Arena. Instead of offering 4 sides only, Samsung Jet’s cube interface can be accessed through all 6 sides of the cube. The 6 sides of the cube offer shortcut to multimedia prowess of Samsung Jet. Such as the movie player, music player and the Dolphin web browser. To access the Media Gate interface, you’ll need to press the little button on the side situated just on top of the camera button. A little bit odd design as both the Media Gate button and the camera button look more like a volume controller.

The back of Samsung Jet

As far as multimedia capability is concern, Samsung Jet is no slouch. It features 5MP camera which is the standard for mid-high end phones. The 800MHz makes it fast and responsive when navigating over menus and widgets. However, Media Gate 3D cube is not as responsive which is a letdown considering when this phone is powered by a 800MHz processor. Capturing video can be done at a maximum resolution of 720×480 at 30FPS in MP4 format. >> next page
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