In an effort to go completely paperless, I was presented with the problem of needing to sign a document that was emailed to me and send it back. Without having to print out the form to sign it nor needing access to a scanner or fax machine to send it back, you can simply take a picture of your signature, and then using free tools you can insert it onto the PDF and email it right back!

Since the time this guide was originally written a couple of years ago, thanks to commenters and software updates, there are now much easier methods to add your signature to PDFs for free (though, you can still follow the old guide if you’d like, but it’s more complicated than it now needs to be).

Note, like with the old guide, the below may look a little complicated at first, but that’s only because I explicitly go through each step/click/etc. Once you read it and try it, it’s a lot easier and quicker than it may look.

Method 1 – Adobe PDF for Android/iOS

Perhaps the easiest way to sign PDFs would be to use Adobe Reader for Android or iOS. Of the many new features in the latest version, one is being able to add a signature to PDFs; unlike using the Nitro PDF Reader (the other new method discussed later in this post), you use the touchscreen of your mobile device to add your signature directly – there’s no need to have a separate image of your signature ahead of time.

• First, open the PDF that you want to sign with Adobe Reader on your phone/tablet/mobile device and tap on the Editing tool button along the top:
  
• Then, tap on the signature tool (the fountain pen icon) up top, and tap in the general area where you wish to draw your signature. If you already had a stored signature, you’d have the option to “Add Signature”, which would place your existing signature, or “Edit Saved Signature”, which would bring you to the signature window.
  

  Otherwise, if you don’t have one already stored, you’ll be brought directly to the signature window:
  

• Here, you’ll do what you’d expect – simply use your finger (or stylus) and draw your signature.
  

  Once you stop writing for a second or two, an option bar will appear which allows you to either clear (erase) the signature or change the thickness (I personally prefer the 1pt thickness). You can also change the thickness once it’s on your pdf.
  

• Click “Save” and it will appear where you originally tapped on the PDF. If you then tap on the signature, you are given a few more options: resize, move (by dragging), thickness, color, opacity, or simply delete it:
  
• Once you’re satisfied, all you need to do is tap anywhere else on the document so the signature is no longer selected and Adobe will resave the PDF with your signature. Done!
  

Method 2 – Nitro PDF Reader

This next method is by using the latest (free) version of Nitro PDF Reader, and no other software is necessary. One of Nitro PDF Reader’s useful features is that it allows you to import an image of your signature and stamp and resize it onto a PDF without having to do the all the editing from the old method (screenshot of the pdf, adjusting the color and brightness, creating a transparent background, etc) – here’s how you do it:

• Download and install Nitro PDF Reader.
• You still need to get your signature in digital format. My preferred method is simply signing a piece of paper and using your phone to take a picture of it and sending it to yourself
  

  (In particular, I like to use DropBox for Android which now has the convenient option of automatically uploading pictures taken with your phone to your DropBox account for easy access to your photo from your computer)
  

• Using Nitro PDF Reader, open the PDF you want to sign:
  
• From the main ribbon bar, click on QuickSign –> Create New Signature:
  
• Click on Browse to upload the image of your signature:
  
• Once you import your signature, depending on how well of a photo you took, you may have some “extra image” (black smudges) in your previewed signature:
  

  To fix this, you’ll have to either try to take a better photo, or (and I know I said you wouldn’t need any other software, but…) simply crop out any part of the image that isn’t your signature by using your favorite image editing software. For example, in MS Paint for Windows 7, simply select your signature (zoom out if you have to), click Crop,
  
  and save it:
  

  Now, once you upload this cropped version of your signature, it should look much cleaner in the Preview window:
  

• Now, give it a name if you want (useful for if you store multiple signatures), and I would suggest applying a password to it if you choose to not delete it after you use it (so someone can’t just open up your Nitro PDF and start signing documents as you):
  
• Once you click Save, you will be brought to the main ‘Manage Signature’ window (this is where you can edit or delete your stored signatures).
  
• Once you close this window, your mouse cursor will be replaced with your transparent signature. Hover around to where you want to place it and then left-click once which will place it on the PDF. (you can actually place it anywhere because you can move it around once it’s placed).

  Once it’s placed, it’ll be highlighted in blue and you can move and/or resize it:
  

• Once you’re satisfied with where it is and how it looks, simply double click on it and it’s finished!
  
• Now simply re-save the PDF (file->save/save as) and you have a signed PDF (and your signature is stored within Nitro PDF Reader for easy access to sign future PDFs).

Of these two methods, using Adobe Reader mobile is the easiest, though using the Nitro PDF route gives a more ‘true’ signature because it’s using a picture of your actual signature; Adobe Reader doesn’t have the ability to record the variable width/thickness of your pen strokes like an actual pen/pencil on paper. But either way, both are much better methods than I described quite a while ago and work great for adding your signatures to PDFs.

So there you have it, you were able to bypass having to print, sign, and scan (or fax) a document! Have a simpler (free) way to add a signature to a PDF? Did I miss a step you can’t seem to get passed? Perhaps you know of a way using a non-Windows OS? Let everyone know in the comments!

(caveat emptor, this guide is in no way meant to act as a way to forge, or otherwise impersonate, someone’s signature!)

After waiting for what seemed like forever, I woke up this morning to find a notification for an ICS update for my Galaxy Note!   After downloading and updating, I’ve noticed that there are some neat features that are now available;  some may simply be because of Android 4.x, some are from the Galaxy Note Premium Suite, and others may be just new to me but I never noticed before.   Of these new changes, below are a couple that I thought were notable (ha)

for those wondering, I have an international Galaxy Note (N7000) which had

• PDA: N70000XXLC1
• PHONE: N70000XXLB2
• CSC: N70000CPWLB2
• Product Code: GT-N7000ZBADBT

and it was rooted by following dr.Ketan’s guide from xda-developers.  The OTA update failed (I think because I am rooted), so I instead used mobile odin pro to update using the N7000OXALPY firmware from samfirmware.com in order to have it actually work, while also preserving my root.   After the update, I have:

• PDA: N7000XXLPY
• PHONE: N7000XXLPT
• CSC: N7000OXALPY
• Product Code: GT-N7000ZBADBT

Pen hovering and it’s icon:

With the latest update comes the ability to use the s-pen to utilize cursor hovering events.   You can also enable the Hovering Pen Icon from Settings –>  Pen settings,  which “when pen tip is near the screen, the hovering pen icon is shown on the screen” (notice the tiny circle in the screen shot – that’s the hovering icon):

This is quite a nice feature, for example, because you can hover over items on websites or flash objects that utilize the hover event such as expanding menus:

(main navigation menu from www.slickdeals.net)

It also makes using the S-Pen for drawing and cropping a bit easier – since then pen is not 100% pin point accurate (not to slight it, just being honest), it helps let you know where your ‘”mark” is going to be before the pen touches the screen.

That all being said, you don’t need to enable the icon for the hover event to work – it just makes it easier to see where your “cursor” is while hovering.   When enabled, the icon appears on the screen starting when the pen is about 1/4 inch away.

Better UI for Email conversation view:

Prior to this update, whenever I enabled conversation view within the (non-gmail) Email app, every message was bold when not expanded.  This effectively made it impossible to tell if there were any new messages in the conversation without expanding the conversation first.  After the update, however, conversations are only bold if there are any unread messages in the conversation.  Finally!

Galaxy Note Premium Suite:

There’s actually a pretty good video about this that Samsung has already made.  I originally thought this was going to be released as a separate update, but looks like they just ‘upgraded’ it into a full ICS update!  This basically consists of quite a few “S” app upgrades (S-Note, S-Memo, Samsung Hub etc):

However…

Unfortunately, there is one feature that no longer works which is being able to take a screen shot by holding the home button and then pressing the power button.  Doing this now will only bring up the ICS recent tasks menu:

You can still take a screenshot using the s-pen (holding the s-pen button and tap+hold on the screen) or by doing a palm swipe on the screen, but I miss the simplicity of just pressing the buttons.

Have you noticed any other changes that I may have missed?  Perhaps there are general ICS updates that stand out on the Note?  Sound off in the comments below!

I purchased an Intel X25-V 40GB SSD a while back, and with Windows 7 installed, I quickly found myself needing to find ways to free up space.  I especially ran into a problem as soon as I upgraded my memory from 4GB to 8GB, and even worse when I went to 12GB;  because the pagefile grows in direct proportion with the amount of memory, I soon was left with less than 1GB of free space.

Therefore, I searched around for ways to clear up large amounts of space and here are a few that I found most effective (and of course, this would work on any Windows 7 system, regardless of hard drive type or size):

1. Disable hibernation:

If you don’t use the hibernate feature, turn it off – it’s a quick and easy way to save a bunch of space as it creates a ‘hiberfil.sys’ file in the root of your C drive to dump the contents of your memory for when your system hibernates.  For example, if I were to disable hibernation on this machine, I’d clear up about 6gb of storage space!  (note, in order to see this file in explorer, you’ll need to enable viewing hidden/protected operating system files)

To disable hibernation, open a command window with administrator privileges by right clicking Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator

and type:

powercfg –h off

You probably won’t see any sort of confirmation, but if you look back at the root of your C drive, you’ll see that hiberfil.sys is gone and you now have a lot more free space.   (thanks to www.howtogeek.com for showing how to do this!)

2. Clean up your WINSXS directory:

In trying to find things to delete to free up space, I ran across a program called WinDirStat which helped me find files and directories that were taking up a lot of space – besides the hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys, one of the largest culprits was the c:\windows\winsxs directory which was initially taking up 10.2gb on my machine:

With that info in hand, I found out that the winsxs directory basically holds files pertaining to installing of programs, windows updates, and items like that (more information can be found at this post from blog.tiensivu.com).   Anyway, there’s a way to clean some of this up by running a command to delete some of these files.  Depending on what updates you have performed (such as Service Pack 1), this may not do anything, but go ahead and try.

The tool you will be running is the “Deployment Image Servicing and Management Tool” – when I ran it, it shrunk my winsxs directory from 10.2GB down to 6.8GB which freed up another 3.4GB.  To do so, run an elevated command prompt again (like with disabling hibernation above), and run the following command:

dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded

(as mentioned, depending on your setup, you may not have any service packs to clean up, in which case you’ll get a message such as the one below:)

3. Move your program installer files:

Every time you install a program, there’s also an ‘uninstall’ file that is left behind that will let you repair/uninstall that program.  As it turns out, a lot (all?) of these files are stored in the \windows\installer directory and can take up a lot of space.   What you can do is move these files to a different location so you can free up space (and if you need to uninstall, upgrade, change any of those programs, simply move the files back before hand).  Navigate to the C:\windows\installer directory and sort by file size. 

Now, you probably could just move all of these files, but I just chose to remove the larger ones that would free up the most space.  If you want to know what program uninstaller you are moving (so you can move it back in case you want to edit or uninstall it), simply right click it, select properties, and choose the Details tab.  For example, “140e3d3.msi”, weighing in at ~102MB, is the uninstaller for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.4RC: 

So, you would just simply move it off to another other hard drive to free up 102MB!  Continue to do this for any other files you want to move to save more space.

Do you have any other quick and easy ways to free up space on a Windows 7 installation?   Or perhaps you have some that require a bit more effort or ways to make the initial Windows 7 installation smaller to begin with?  Sound off in the comments!

Just bought a Dell Inspiron 1121 (11z / M101z) and want to know how to upgrade the memory or hard drive?  Unlike a few netbooks from the Dell Mini line, it’s quite simple on the 1121 and all you need are a couple of screw drivers and about 10 minutes – keep on reading to learn how!

Video Guide:

Text Guide

First off, Dell has an illustrated guide on how to access the memory and hard drive here: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins1121/sm/index.htm.   I’d suggest using that to supplement my guide (it’s what I used!) if you have any questions.

Upgrading the memory:

1.  Remove the battery, unscrew the memory door screw, and remove the memory door itself:

2.  Push the clips on either side of each of the memory sticks and the memory stick should pop up a bit. Then simply pull/wiggle them out. 

To put the memory back in, simply push them back into place (you know it’s all the way in when you cannot, or barely, see the gold contacts of the memory stick), and push it down into the clips.  Screw back on the memory door and you’re done upgrading the memory!

Upgrading the hard drive:

1)  To gain access to the hard drive, you must first remove the keyboard.  To do this, start by removing these three screws on the bottom:

2)  Now we need to start pulling the keyboard out.  The easiest way to start this is by using a screw driver (or any other small tipped object), and push the keyboard out through one of the screw holes you just worked with and grab it from the other side when it’s pushed out a bit:

3) With your finger holding a corner of the keyboard out, proceed by sliding your finger to the other side and getting the other corner loose. 

It’s important to note that there are 4 clips holding the keyboard in at this point (and 5 tabs at the bottom):

You can probably just pull up on the keyboard to get the two top tabs (red) loose, but you may need to use a credit card to put in between the keyboard and the chassis to get the bottom two clips loose:

4)  With all 4 clips overcome, slide the keyboard up towards the screen a bit (to clear the bottom 5 tabs) and flip the keyboard over the palm rest.  Note, don’t pull the keyboard too far away from the computer as it is still attached via a ribbon cable:

5) At this point, you could remove the hard drive as is, but I think it’s better to remove the keyboard entirely (just so you have less chance of pulling the keyboard out and damaging the cable).  All you need to do is flip up the tab holding the cable to the motherboard (the black part of the tab is hinged to the white part, so with minimal force, just pull it (rotate it) up and to the left – watch the video if you are unsure – and the cable will be free):

6)  With the keyboard completely removed, all you need to do is remove the two screws securing the hard drive in place and pull it to the right, then out:

7) From here, just simply remove the 2 screws on either side securing the drive to the drive caddy, replace it with your new hard drive, and screw it back in:

8)  Place the hard drive and caddy back in it’s place, slide to the left, put back in the two hard drive screws.  Then, place the keyboard upside down on the palm wrest, flip the ribbon cable upside down so you see the white line,

place the ribbon back in the connector, and rotate the latch closed:

9) Almost done – flip the keyboard around and start with making sure the tabs slide under the chassis, press on the keyboard around where the 4 clips are, replace the 3 screws underneath, and you’re done!

And there you have it – relatively quick and painless to upgrade the memory and hard drive.  If you’re looking for some memory upgrades, here are a few options:

Any thoughts to make this easier or want to know how to dismantle or upgrade any other part of this laptop?  Let me know in the comments!

I originally planned to write this review a couple days after I received my Galaxy Note in late October, but I decided to wait.  After using it for the first couple minutes, I didn’t like it as much as I hoped because it’s larger size made it feel a bit awkward to hold and use with one hand (at least, in my hand). It just simply didn’t feel right.  At the same time, however, I was genuinely excited by it’s specs and feature set such as 1280×800 resolution, 1.4GHz dual core Exynos processor, huge battery, stylus, camera, etc.  I didn’t want to not like it.

So, I decided to give myself time to try and get accustomed to it and then see how I felt about it after having used it for a while.  After a little over two months of usage now (a little longer than I had originally planned), I’ve really put the Note to use: traveling to France, Germany, and the US, multiple long train/plane rides, many days of using it as a sat nav, using it as a portable media player, extensive web browsing, playing games, etc. 

Note (ha), this review is going to focus on it’s physical size, as that was pretty much the only thing I did not like.  The GPS is fantastic (best from any phone I’ve used), battery life is great, performance is snappy, etc, but it was the fact that it was so big that really put me off. 

So, has using it for two months changed my initial impression?  Read on (or watch) to find out!

It’s size:

It’s big.  And that’s just exactly what everyone, friends or strangers, say whenever they see me using it: “Whoa, that’s a big phone!”, “Is that a phone?”, “Dude, does that fit in your pocket?” (yes, it does).  And it’s that which seems to be the main factor that makes people like the Note or not, which makes sense and I agree with, to a point.  Again, it’s big, but with that there’s a question to ask which is: is it a big phone, or a small tablet?  It is indeed too large to be a true one handed device (at least, for my hands), but you need to keep in mind that it’s not necessarily meant to be one.  Every phone you’ve likely been using in the past has been a phone that fits nicely in your hand, so it’s going to be a big change (yes, I know the Dell Streak is of similar size and if coming from that phone, then you already know what it’s like). 

As shown in Samsung’s own ad, they too say it’s not just a phone, but also a tablet: 

When I first heard about the Note, I thought – this sounds great – it has a huge, high resolution screen unlike other phones (such as the Galaxy S 2, iPhone 4S, etc), so it’ll be awesome for browsing the web and watching videos while still being pocketable – and indeed it is!  I’ve used it now on long haul train and plane rides, while on vacation, at home on the couch and in bed, and it’s wonderful for media and browsing.  I also had the hope that it could be my all-in-one device, meaning, I wouldn’t need to carry around my laptop and/or tablet (either the original 7 or 10.1 Galaxy Tab) in conjunction with my phone when traveling.  Normally, I would take my tablet (or Dell 11.6” 1121) when on vacation or taking long train/plane rides to be my main movie/tv show player and web browsing machine, as well as my phone for maps/gps, music, and games.  I saw the Note as being the opportunity to combine my laptop and phone into one device. 

So has it’s size met my expectations and desires?  Yes, but also a bit no.  As mentioned earlier, it’s not necessarily meant to be a one handed device, though I’ll admit that I was expecting (or hoping?) that it would be.  With my Galaxy S 2 (and all other smaller phones), the way I hold a phone is by having the bottom of the phone rest on my pinky, with my other fingers wrapped around to the other side, which then leaves me free to use my thumb to get everywhere on the screen:

With other (non Galaxy Note) phones, I am able to hold them in my hand and reach my thumb up to swipe down the notifications menu, reach to the top right corner app on the home screen (though just barely on the SGS2), and reach the ‘back’ button in the bottom right corner. 

However, on the Galaxy Note, this is not quite possible for me.  Now, I say not quite possible, as opposed to flat out not possible, because I can still reach up and pull the notifications menu, or tap the top right corner app on the home screen, etc – I just can’t do so without having to shuffle it around in my palm or without loosing my firm grip on the phone.

For example, here is how I ‘normally’ hold the Note (and any other phone) when just simply using it:

However, when I need to reach the top/top right of the Note, I have to slide it down my hand a bit (and therefore no longer have it resting on my pinky) in order to do so:

Okay. That all being said, for the first couple days of using the Note, I wasn’t all that happy with needing to adjust the way I’ve always held a ; it didn’t feel right to have to change my ‘phone grip’.  However, after using it for a while, I’ve found my self holding the Note differently without giving it any thought, I simply hold it differently to compensate for it’s size and go back to my ‘old phone grip’ when using any other (smaller) phone.  I simply slide the phone up and down my hand/fingers to reach the places I couldn’t reach with the way I’ve held phones in the past and it has become natural to me.  

Is it pocketable?

Yes.   I don’t wear baggy pants, though also not skin tight or skinny jeans, and I don’t have a problem with it.  It easily fits in my pocket, doesn’t restrict movement, and is easily removed from my pocket. 

It even fits in a shirt pocket:

Size comparisons to other devices:

Here are just some simple photos of it next to other devices:

iPhone 4s, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Tab 7

iPhone 4s vs Galaxy Note thickness

Conclusion

Update 20 Jan: Samsung has just released an update which makes the keyboard more one-handed friendly: http://phandroid.com/2012/01/19/new-samsung-galaxy-note-update-brings-better-support-one-handed-typing/

In short, after taking a few days/weeks to really get used to handling a larger phone, I have zero issues with it’s size and now am that much more satisfied with the Note.  Do you have a Note and also had initial reservations with it’s size but now you’re okay with it?  Or perhaps you never got used to it?  Let folks know in the comments below!

However, that’s when I came across http://joel.thegoodmanblog.com and found that you can simply put the bios files on a bootable USB drive and update the bios that way.   However, I had a bit of trouble finding the correct boot files so I figured I’d elaborate on his post in case anyone else has any troubles:

1. Download the following:
   • Latest bios from www.foxconnsupport.com (943F1P06 is the latest as of 2 Dec 2011) and extract it,
   • Windows 98 System Files (for creating a dos bootable USB drive) and extract it,
   • HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool (which allows you to use the win98 boot files to create a bootable USB drive that will get you to a dos prompt to run the bios update) and install it




2. Insert your USB drive (or SD card, etc) and run the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.  Note that you may get a permissions error:
   
   To get around this, right click and Run as Administrator:
   




3. In the HP tool: select your USB drive (A),
   choose FAT32 (B),
   check “Quick Format”, “Create a DOS startup disk”, and browse to where you extracted the Win98 System Files (C),
   click Start (D),
   and click Yes (E)
   




4. With that done, you now have a bootable USB drive (if you have hidden/protected files visible, you should see “COMMAND.COM”, “IO.SYS”, and “MSDOS.SYS”):
   
   What you want to do now is copy over the extracted files from the bios zip (you only need the .ROM file, AFUDOS.EXE, and DOSFLASH.BAT):
   

5. Safely remove the flash drive from your computer, plug it into your Foxconn, and boot it up.  While it’s booting up, press F11 to bring up the boot options and select your flash drive.  You should then be presented with a Windows 98 boot screen for a second and then be at a command prompt.

   From here, you want to type in ‘dosflash.bat’ and then press enter:
   

6. The bios updater should do the rest automatically (calling afudos with the required parameters) and once it’s done, you should be presented with a “CMOS checksum destroyed” and “Program ended normally”:
   
7. Almost done – now you’ll want to reboot (and remove the flash drive).  During the first reboot, you’ll get a message saying “CMOS Checksum Bad” and you’ll want to press F2 to load the defaults – otherwise, things like not being able to specify the sleep mode will not be possible (not sure why, but just do it!):
   

And that’s it – you’ve just flashed the bios!  (thanks again to joel.thegoodmanblog.com!)

With the introduction of the iPhone 4S, I’ve been keen to see how it compares to one of Samsung’s flagship devices, the Galaxy S 2.  Of the many aspects of both phone to compare, I was most interested in which had the batter camera in terms of both videos and photos, so I tested them out!

Let me start by saying I am nowhere close to being a ‘great’ photographer, so when I take pictures, I pretty much just frame the shot and click.  Sure, I know enough to manually adjust ISO and shutter speeds (when using a camera that allows it) to try and compensate for certain lighting situations, but that’s about all I know.  In other words, my observations of which camera is better should be taken with a few grains of salt (someone else may have been able to frame my sample shots better/etc to make them turn out better); think of me as just an average person taking photos/videos with their phone (because I am!). 

To try and make as true of a test as I could, I strapped both phones to a piece of double cardboard (one right above the other) and had both cameras vertically lined up.  My idea was that this would allow them to take as close to the same photo/video as possible:

Videos:

Both devices have a maximum video resolution on the rear camera of 1920×1080 – however, the Galaxy S 2 allows you to adjust the recording resolution to lower resolutions as well (ie, 1280×720, 640×480, etc) whereas you are stuck at the full 1920×1080 on the iPhone.  While by itself that’s not really an issue, it could become one once you start to add apps, photos, and music.  On the iPhone, each second of video takes up approximately 2.89MB (that’s about 173MB a minute), and given that there’s no expandable storage options, I would have liked the ability to take lower quality videos (if even at 1280×720) if I wanted to conserve space.  

That being said, after taking a video of the same scenes with both cameras, it’s my opinion that the video quality of the iPhone is better than the Galaxy S 2:

(note that in the video above, I had to make some adjustments during editing to try and have a good even ‘cut’ between both clips and therefore had to push the SGS2 clip up a bit in the frame – that’s not an issue with either phone but rather the way I took the videos with my ‘cardboard rig’)

The colors on the iPhone are less washed out, bright scenes (like when looking directly at the sun) don’t create as much ‘lens flare’ (is that the right term?), it focuses much faster and accurately, and with its video stabilization there’s much less jitter.    The Galaxy S 2 does have a couple advantages, however, such as being able to choose lower resolutions to record at, having a slightly wider angle, and a few different color effects (sepia, negative, b&w, etc). 

Photos:

They’re very close and it’s hard to say which one produces better quality photos overall.  As with videos, the iPhone 4S can only take shots at it’s maximum resolution of 8MP (3264×2448) whereas the Galaxy S2 (same max 8mp res) can take lower res shots; though, unlike with videos, I can’t think of a situation where you’d ever want to take lower res shots, so that’s a non-issue to me. 

Here are a few sample shots (iPhone 4S will always be on the left, Samsung Galaxy S2 on the right):

Here we have a simple shot at the streets below my balcony.   In this particular example, the colors are more vivid on the SGS2, while the tree line where it meets the sky seems less washed out on the iPhone (but, perhaps that’s because there was ‘less’  bright sky in the field of view on the iPhone while it was focusing, thus helping the resulting iPhone photo?)

This is taking a picture of the side of my building with the bright sun just around the corner (to see how it does with light and dark objects in the field of view). Other than the iPhone making it’s picture a tad brighter, they both look the same.  (iPhone was ISO-64 1/1905s exposure, SGS2 was ISO-32 1/1479s exposure)

In this room, it’s fairly dim, so I figured this would be a good ‘indoor’ photo test.  The SGS2 photo is a bit darker and looks a bit noisier even though it was shot as ISO-400 and 1/17s exposure vs the iPhone which was at ISO-800 1/15s exposure. 

Here I tried taking photos inside my very dark bathroom.  As in the previous photos, the SGS2 was a bit darker though I’m not sure if it looks noisier or if it’s just cause it’s simply darker, but the iPhone shot does look slightly better (if not, at least brighter) and both images had the same iso/exposure as above. 

Here we have the same dark bathroom photo only this time with the LED flash enabled.   This time, the Galaxy S 2 seems to have taken the better photo as it’s a bit brighter while also sharper with more defined colors.   The Galaxy S 2 was at ISO-125 and 1/20s exposure with the iPhone 4S at ISO-250 and 1/16s exposure. 

One last shot is of my cat on the duck mat.  The two were very close here, and only upon zooming far in does it look like the iPhone’s photo is ever so slightly more clear – but either way, they’re almost the same.   Galaxy S 2:  ISO-125 at 1/17s, iPhone 4S: ISO-200 at 1/20s.

Software/Camera app:

Both phones have their advantages over the other in this department.  The great thing about the iPhone 4S is it’s zero shutter lag and it’s ability to access the camera from the lock screen.   For the shutter, as soon as you tab the shutter button, the iPhone almost instantly focuses and takes the photo – however, on the Galaxy S 2, it takes about a second to focus (or sometimes longer if it’s poorly lit) and up to another second for it to take the shot.   And for the lockscreen, I absolutely love the ability to access the camera by double clicking the iPhone home button and tapping the camera icon and very much dislike the fact that I have to unlock the screen and wait for the camera to load on the SGS2:

Then we have the Galaxy S 2 where one of it’s main advantages over the iPhone 4S is it’s numerous photo and video mode options.  While the iPhone 4 just has the ability to show a grid or use HDR,

the Galaxy S 2 has a multitude of features such as smile/blink detection, panaramic, beach, sunset, fireworks, manual ISO/white balance/exposure/color effects:

To see all of the features, be sure to check out my in depth review of the SGS2 and scroll down to the camera section. 

Conclusion:

When speaking strictly about quality from the photos and videos I’ve taken the past few days, the iPhones 4S has the better camera.  The iPhone’s videos are much smoother thanks to it’s stabilized lens, and the photos (on average) come out to be a bit more clearer/sharper.  It’s not substantially better, nor in anyway is the camera on the Galaxy S 2 bad, but it’s still better.   That being said, I’ve been using the S2 for 6 months now and have been plenty satisfied with it as a camera when I don’t have my ‘real’ one with me.  The Galaxy S 2 does, however, win in the category of feature or the camera with it’s ability to take photos and videos at varying resolutions, being able to manually choose the ISO/exposure/white balance/color options, as well as various scene settings such as beach/portrait/fireworks/sunset/text/etc. 

In the end, based on the photos and videos I took above, it is my opinion that the iPhone 4S does have a better quality camera/lens.    Do you have one of the devices and think otherwise, or perhaps you agree?  Do you have any sample shots or videos that you’d like to share?  Any questions or requests for me to take better samples or comparisons?  Let me know in the comments!

As a Samsung Mobiler, a few of us were invited to attend and promote the Samsung “GALAXY Note WORLD TOUR in Europe” launch event in London to show off the GALAXY Note and GALAXY Nexus – and as any sane person would do, I accepted their offer!  We were all there for about 5 hours and below is a description of what the event was like for us Mobilers

Before the event started:

The event was held this past Thursday evening at the Battersea Power Station in London:

At a bit before 5:00, I finally was getting close to the power station, where I’d soon start getting educated on the devices, and I finally started to see some signs letting me know I was on the right track:

Once I got through two security checkpoints (my name wasn’t on the list!), I met with our Samsung Mobiler contact and was shown to a trailer where I met with other UK and German Mobilers to start the pre-event training. 

First, we were each given a Note to play around with while a Samsung rep showed us around all of the features and highlights the Note has to offer:

This was my first time actually seeing and handling a Note, and my first reaction was surprise at how light the device was.  I currently own a Galaxy WiFi 5.0 and was expecting it to be the same ‘chunkiness’ as that, but was pleasantly surprised when I found that it was quite thin and light (yes, I compared specs before arriving, but it doesn’t really mean much to me until I actually have it in my hand).  

After we went through a few minutes with the Note, we had some folks start showing us the Nexus and a few of it’s neat features as well

One thing that really stood out was some of the new features with Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) seemed to be taken from various roms I’ve used recently, such as being able to re-size widgets and the TV-Off animation when turning off the screen – very interesting.  

The one thing that stood out the most for me was the deeply integrated data management within ICS which allows you to closely monitor your data usage – you can set usage alarms, shut off mobile data once it reaches a certain amount (perfect for those with data caps), and even monitor each individual app’s data usage and set caps for each:

After our short training (to bad we couldn’t take one of each device!), we all changed into our Samsung blues (a shirt they gave us), and started to walk toward the main entrance.  It was neat to see that they lit up the power station blue and even slapped a GALAXY Note logo along the entire wall: 

The event:

First thing upon walking in, we checked our bags/coats at the front, and then we were promptly brought over to the product demonstration stations where we would be showing the event goers the Note and Nexus after the show:

After a bit of talking and grabbing some free food and drinks, we were seated and the show began with an interesting dance routine:

Then, we were all introduced to the GALAXY Note which has been designed to try and bridge the gap between Smartphones and Tablets:

(by the way, wouldn’t it be nice to have such a large display like this in your living room?)

We were then shown through a bunch of the features that the Note brings, most notable, of course, is the S-Pen, which they had @Liam Brazier use to draw a live image of the power station during the presentation:

Next up was a bit about the GALAXY Nexus, which is the first device to have Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich):

The phone itself really does look great, and all the new features that come along with Ice Cream Sandwich are going to make it difficult for me to eventually decide on whether to get the Nexus or the Note…(if only I’ll get one of each from Samsung – here’s to wishing!). 

The rest of the presentation went on to talk about the specs of each device, some sample scenarios of people using them in every day life, as well as a list of launch dates such as the following:

After the presentation was over, the curtains went up to the left of the room to show the demonstration booths. This allowed folks to get some hands on experience with both the Nexus and the Note, while us Mobilers helped show them off as well as doing a few interviews:

After a few hours of this, the event started to wrap up, we grabbed our belongings from the coat check, and went on with our lives. 

Final thoughts:

This was the first, big product launch event that I have been to (other than the Galaxy Tab 10.1 at PC World a few months ago) – and it was quite an experience.  It was great being able to get some behind the scenes training as well as be able to show fellow phone enthusiasts these new devices (especially before they were publicly available).  It’s definitely going to be a toss up as to which device I may end up switching to once both are available, seeing as how they both now seem to out class my amazing Galaxy S 2 (though, don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great phone!).   

One of the many aspects of this event that I enjoyed was to be able to meet some people behind a few of the sites that I follow, such as the folks from Android Central (check out their hands-on review of the Note from the event!).

Is anyone else stuck in deciding between which new Samsung device to get, or perhaps it’s no contest and you’ve already settled on one?  Were you at the event as well and have something to share?  Sound off in the comments!

It’s time for another Samsung Mobiler mission – this time we’re to document being active or ‘sporty’ with one of our Samsung devices.  I chose to focus on talking about using the Galaxy S 2 as a camera to take photos while hiking.

Camera:

I simply don’t like having to carry many things when I’m out hiking or walking around.  I recently bought a Canon SX30IS, which is basically a watered down DSLR (it is a big camera) and after going on a few hikes with it, it was just too big and bulky to carry around.  Now, I’m not saying that the SGS2 takes as good of pictures as the SX30IS, but it takes good enough pictures that I’m content with it’s image quality to use in lieu of a stand alone camera. 

For example, last weekend we went on a walk to Hadrian’s Wall where I had my SGS2 along with me and here are a few sample shots taken along the way:

A lake along the path

Part of Hadrian’s Wall

Sycamore Gap from Robin Hood:  Prince of Thieves

Steps over the wall

As you can see, the pictures are actually quite good (at least in my opinion), and what’s great is that since the phone is so light, I can barely tell it’s in my pocket.   I do sometimes have to pre-focus on a darker area if I am going to take a picture where there’s a lot of light (such as the "Robin Hood" tree above), otherwise it focuses on the sky and makes the tree very dark, even though it then makes the sky almost completely white. 

I also went on another walk/hike up Mount Snowdon, where I again took the SGS2 along (as well as the SX30IS).  I constantly found my self being bothered to take the full sized Canon out of the bag, putting the strap on my neck (as to not get in front of the lens), remove the cap, etc to the point where I gave up using it and instead used my SGS2 most of the time.  For shots that I ended up using both for, besides the Canon having a higher resolution, the qualities of the two were actually pretty close for the most part:

You can of course tell that the SX30IS is better (sharper and what I consider to be truer colors), but the SGS2 still produces good images.  Unfortunately, those are the only two images that I ended up having that were similar enough to have direct comparisons, but here are some more samples of the Galaxy S 2 while hiking up the foggy and rainy Mount Snowdon:

Now, granted, take my opinions about the SGS2 being a good camera with a grain of salt – I’m no photographer by any means, so I likely could have used better settings on the Canon to make the pictures look even better, but even so, the SGS2 took images that I am happy enought with to be okay if I don’t have another camera with me.

Do you have a Galaxy S 2 and have taken some great pictures to share, or perhaps you are not as pleased about it’s quality? Do you take yours around while being `sporty` or `active`? Sound off in the comments!

Being a Samsung Mobiler has brought another opportunity for me to get my hands on many Samsung devices such as the Galaxy S 2, Galaxy Pro, and Galaxy Tab 7.  Next on the list is the 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 3G+WiFi Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet – check out my thoughts below!

Specifications of reviewed unit:

(taken from samsung.com)

• 256.7 x 175.3 x 8.6mm (10.1 x 6.9 x 0.34in)
• 565g (1lb 3.9oz)
• Pure White
• 10.1” widescreen, 1280×800 WXGA TFT LCD, 149 pixels per inch
• 1GB (RAM), 16GB (ROM/storage)
• HSPA +21 850/900/1900/2100
• EDGE/GPRS 850/900/1800/1900
• WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n with dual band support (2.4ghz or 5GHz)
• Bluetooth 3.0
• WiFi Direct
• 1GHz Dual Core Tegra 2 processor
• 7000mAh battery, rated up to 9hrs video, 72hrs music
• Rear camera:  1280×720 HD video, 3MP auto focus photo with LED flash
• Front camera:  640×480 VGA video, 2MP photo
• Video playback:  up to 1080p 30fps with codecs:  WMV9, WMV7, WMV8, H.264, MPEG4, Xvid, DiVX, H.263, VP8
• Audio playback:  MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, RA with stereo (2) speakers

What it looks like:

Here we have the front and the back:

The top with power, volume rocker, ear phone jack, and simcard slot:

The bottom with the usb/charging port and mic:

And of course the sides, each with their own speaker:

Specs compared to other tablets:

Here’s an on-paper comparison to a few other tablets of similar size:

As you can see, they’re all pretty close in terms of specs.  The Tab weighs in the lightest and thinnest, the Transformer has the highest ppi, and the Xoom has the highest megapixel cameras. 

Included apps:

Along with the “standard Android” apps (such as gmail, gallery, google maps, navigation, etc) Samsung has included a few additional ones as well:

• Polaris Office:
  
  Polaris Office is essentially a lite version of Microsoft Office. 
  

  It allows you to create/read/edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, and it’s actually pretty good at it.  It’s pretty limited on what features you have in creating, but I haven’t run into any docs that haven’t been able to render correctly when viewing them here (though, perhaps I just don’t have access to any complicated word/excel files!)
  
  It’s great for creating or editing a document when you don’t have access to a PC (it’s helped me a few times while on the train when responding to a work email or two). 

• Samsung Apps: 
  
  This is basically a Samsung app store.  From the few apps that you can actually download from here, many appear to be either available in the standard Android Market or are relatively useless (at least in my opinion), so I honestly don’t see the point of this. 
• Pulse: 
  
  This is a fancy news reader, and it’s actually quite nice interface.  You see your various feeds in the homescreen (images and all), and it will even automatically update with new feeds periodically. 
  

  Once you tap on an article, it gives you a split pane interface for reading:
  

  You can also add in any RSS feed, as well as import feeds from Google Reader:
  

• Pen Memo:
  
  This is basically a note taking app – just use your finger to draw directly on the screen, or open up the keyboard and start typing away.  You can choose the thickness and color of the lines that you draw, and it’s pretty straight forward.    I honestly never find my self drawing a note, but it is something I regularly use to type out notes (grocery lists, todo-lists, etc)
  

• Samsung Music Hub:  
  
  This is Samsung’s music store.  It’s about what you would expect, you can browse for music (by album, artist, popular), or you can of course search. 
  
  To be honest, I don’t see much benefit of using the Music Hub over Amazon MP3 (which is generally cheaper). 

Web browsing:

Browsing the web is really great on this device – having a 1280×800 resolution screen, just like a laptop, really makes the browsing experience just as if you were using a computer.   For example, viewing Engadget, you don’t need to horizontally scroll and you can view the page just like you would expect:

I’ve also not had any problems performing any tasks that I would normally do on a full PC – for example, within Dolphin browser on my Samsung Galaxy S 2, tagging doesn’t work, however, no problems in the built in browser on the Tab:

Final thoughts:

All in all, the performance and experience is similar to other 10” dual core Android tablets in the market that I’ve tried (Transformer, Xoom, etc).  What mostly differentiates the Tab is that it is lighter and thinner than any of the other tablets I’ve used, it has a 3G option (which most don’t have, yet), and that there are no other ports (such as USB or MicroSD). 

One thing to note is that a few people have mentioned having the “Newton’s Rings” issue which is where you get what looks like an oil slick effect on your screen.  Mine actually developed this problem last week, and after I put it in the fridge for a bit, the problem is minimal now and it only happens if I press the screen a bit hard (there’s a YouTube video about it here).  However, Samsung seems to be replacing those that have had this problem, so as long as you don’t mind dealing with the issue if you happen to get it….

Do you have a Galaxy Tab 10.1 and want to share your comments?  Thinking about purchasing one and have any questions?  Let us know in the comments below!