Samsung is famed for its media phones, the Galaxy S2 being its first major success, now being capitalised upon by the Galaxy S3 and the massive (and massively superb) Samsung Galaxy Note 2. Samsung has got a lot to live up to then.
Initially
we were a tiny bit sceptical, the lower specs of the Samsung Galaxy S3
Mini not lending itself to a phone that can create and consume media.
Obviously
the big disappointment here, when comparing to its high end brethren,
is the poorer screen. Thankfully it is still bright enough, with a
superb viewing angle, that it doesn't detract from the entire
experience.
A quick note to the internal storage, we mentioned on our Samsung Galaxy S3 review that the OS took up 5GB of space.
Thanks to the optimisation of Jelly Bean
and other measures, this has been cut to 'just' 3GB on the Samsung
Galaxy S3 Mini, but that does mean the 8GB version only sports 5GB
internal storage.
Storage has always been where Samsung has beaten
Apple, and now HTC and Google. Yes, we know that the Cupertino brand
has up to 64GB of storage, if you can afford it, but the Koreans have
taken the microSD route, enabling you to throw oodles more space its
way.
As for the free headset, Samsung has also managed to create a
perfectly decent set of earphones. They sit comfortably and come with
varying sized ear buds, and sound clear without having to reinvent the
experience.
Music
The first thing to notice is that as
soon as you connect your headphones to the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini, the
preinstalled media options all pop up in the notifications bar,
providing very easy access to YouTube, Music Player, Video Player, Video
Hub or FM Radio.
It's a little touch, but one that we're pleased
Samsung has thrown in, as it helps make the media experience seem a lot
smarter, a lot more intuitive. Firing up the music player and you are
greeted with a rather attractive piece of software, albeit just a fancy
stock Android player. This
also brings up a little bar in the notifications area, as it has on
Samsung Galaxy phones for years. From here you can Play/Pause and skip
tracks. There is also a widget to accompany it, which again we were glad
to see. Our only slight disappointment was the inability to control
directly from the lock screen.
Within the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini's
music player are the usual shuffle, repeat and something very strange
known as the Music Square. We've seen it before, and basically it ranks
your music by its tone, so that if you're after something Calm and
Joyful, the Galaxy S3 Mini will pull up the song you want. It's a little
hit and miss at the moment, but we'll keep an eye on it.
The
music player also offers an impressive array of equalizer settings, in
an area Samsung has termed Sound Alive. There are quite a long list of
settings, such as Pop, Rock, Jazz through to Virtual 7.1 and Concert
Hall. There's even a custom setting, should you really feel the need to
go to town with it.
Another area we were taken with was the DLNA
options. Opening the music app to begin, you are faced with the standard
Android options of all your music, playlists, albums, artists, the
aforementioned music square, folders, and nearby devices.
It's
the nearby devices tab we've found most interesting, as it can access
the media folders of DLNA enabled devices on your network. Again we
found it easier to stream content from the Samsung Galaxy S2 to other
devices, but streaming was superb.
From within the settings
screen, you can set the play speed from 0.5x to 2x speed, which doesn't
add a whole lot of functionality, but is a nice hark back to the days of
vinyl records. It also shows that should your tracks have embedded
lyrics, these can be called up (not from an online database like on
Motorola devices).
Samsung has also provided the ability to have
the music turn off automatically, ideal if you need something to just
help you drift off to slumber-land.
In all we're really impressed
by Samsung's efforts here. Yes there are tricks that maybe we have seen
on other devices that we would love to see here, but then we don't want
another round of patent wars. FM
Radios are now becoming an almost standard feature on modern
smartphones, and the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini is no exception. As always,
you need some headphones plugged in, though that doesn't mean to say
that you can't play music through the rear speaker.
In terms of
functionality, the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini found every station we
expected it to. The app interface is also well designed, and we loved
the ability to record the station, for playback later.
What we see here are a few screenshots gathered from the latest build of TouchWiz, confirming rumors of Smart Scroll functionality in the Samsung Galaxy S4. In actuality, the screens we see here are from the Galaxy S3′s Android 4.2.1 firmware, but it goes without saying that this is indeed the version of the software we will see on the GS4.
You can see that Smart Scroll and Smart Pause have a range of setting that can be adjusted, tailoring the eye-tracking specifically to the way you want to use it. This includes which applications function with the feature, speed, and acceleration. Smart Pause will automatically pause video content when you look away from your phone.
It’s good to know that after introducing the new feature (as well as Smart Pause) on the Galaxy S4 that it will make its way to older Galaxy versions. We might expect it on the Note 2 as well.
With the popularity of wireless networking, the term Wi-Fi is often synonymous with access to the Internet. In fact, our seasoned editor Scott Stein compared how fast the new iPhone 5's 4G LTE Internet speed was with his "home Wi-Fi," which is a skewed comparison at best. To be fair, most of us use "Wi-Fi" as a shortcut to mean our home broadband Internet connection, and Scott just wanted to say that his was really lame (no offense, Scott) when compared with the iPhone 5's 4G LTE speed.
In this post, based on many questions from readers, I'll clarify the two and provide answers to other connection-related questions. Among other things, knowing the difference between Wi-Fi and Internet connections can help you troubleshoot problems at home and purchase the right equipment for your home network.
