Categories
End User phones

Comparison of Samsung Galaxy S4 with Google Nexus5 phones – speed

nexus5 & galaxys4It’s handy working at Timico because people are always buying new gadgets to have a play with.  Jared from IT has just got himself a Google Nexus5 and we thought it would be a good idea to make some comparisons with my Samsung Galaxy S4.

The first thing I noticed about the Nexus5 was that it has a much nicer feel to it in the hand than the S4. S4 is shiny and slippery. The Nexus5 is more matt and doesn’t feel like it will drop out of your hand too easily which is a good thing when you take a look at the battered nature of my not so old S4.

We did a couple of experiments. This first video shows both Nexus5 and Galaxy S4 being switched on simultaneously. The S4 looks as if it is booting up faster but the Nexus5 comes up with the lock screen several seconds ahead of the Samsung. Not scientific but a good peformance indicator I think. In defence of the S4 it will also have a lot more applications loaded but I’m not sure how much affect that will have on the startup time.

The second vid shows a photo being transferred from the Nexus5 to the Galaxy S4. Android to Android but from different models/manufacturers. It is impressive. The file is 3.5MB.

For those of you who are interested here is a side by side picture taken with each camera:

galaxys4shoes nexus5shoes
And finally a video out take – click here (fwi really is w).

Categories
Engineer phones

Comparison of Samsung firmware load versus the base Android version

Bumped into Florian Jensen (@flosoft) whilst out and about in London doing some 4G speed testing. He has a Samsung Galaxy S3 which he had rooted with CarbonRom based on Android 4.3. He wanted to increase the phone’s performance and improve battery life.

I was surprised to see that there is a very noticeable improvement in speed. The SGS3 running CarbonRom was faster than the SGS4 which has a more powerful processor (s) running Samsung’s firmware. We did some videos yesterday that illustrate this. You can read Flo’s post on what he did here. Unless you are a serious geek (which I realise that quite a few of you are 🙂 )I wouldn’t necessarily recommend doing it yourself.

Categories
End User mobile connectivity phones

Samsung Galaxy S4 launch – exclusive

Apparently today’s the day. The Samsung Galaxy S4 launch. A quick Google for “galaxy s4 release date” produces about 29,400,000 results. Lots of people writing stuff, trying to get on the bandwagon, attract traffic to their site. Dirty attention seekers! Bet they carry advertising :).

Regular readers will know I am a Samsung Galaxy S3 fan. It is a good phone. I have been trying out the Nokia Lumia 920 but it doesn’t really cut it. It isn’t that it is a bad phone. It’s just that its User Interface isn’t as good as the Galaxy.

My concern, and this isn’t particularly a big deal, is that the Galaxy S4 will just be an increment on the S3 in the same way that the iPhone 5 is just a small evolution from the iPhone 4. We will find out soon enough.

These gadgets are getting so good that we expect each new one to be a huge leap forward from the previous. One wonders1 how much further evolution there is in the smart phone.

That’s all. Just on my way to the Information Commissioner’s Office Technology Reference Panel meeting at the British Computer Society.

No such thing as a free launch.

Ciao

1 I don’t really – just thought I’d say that.