Gone Horny

Yes, it was a long time coming. I had been planning to get the new phone since it was announced, skipping the iPhone 8. To my surprise, Anita wasn't keen to upgrade, sticking to her 7 Plus for the time being.

The couple of departures from the iPhone of the past were obvious right of the bat. The first being the disappearance of the home button. This created space for bazel-less display. Rather than having a fingerprint reader at the back of the unit similar to the Nexus 6P, Apple went with Face ID, using the front-facing camera to deal with unlocking of the phone. And it worked perfectly even on the first few hours if using the phone.

Next was wireless charging - and for this I used the charger from Samsung. It worked a treat.

The bonus would be the camera. I had a different entry specifically on the camera. Excellent snapper and it could handle 4K at 60 fps. I had to use iMovie on my Mac for post-processing since Final Cut Pro can't handle the new file system yet to process the movies.

The main downside was using the Face ID while mounted to dashboard. You had to look at the phone when you unlock ...

So far, I had no major complains. The battery life was also excellent. 256 Gb is an awfully large storage to fill. The phone was blazingly fast.

Taking a Peek

Finally I get to hold it in my hands. Huawei had just opened their flagship shop at Pavilion Elite this morning and later in the afternoon I gave it a visit. Had a few minutes with the P10 Plus and the camera looked promising. Very slick, especially the monochrome shots. All 20 MP of them.

My experience with the P9 had been a mixed bag as the camera function lacked the finesse of the iPhone. It didn’t capture the geolocation as readily - in fact most of the time that data was missing and I had to enter the locations manually - and the name of the camera when uploaded onto Flickr was rather confusing. Again, I used an app to alter the metadata before uploading.

The jpg coming from the camera was amazing though and I was able to do a lot more alteration with aperture once uploaded onto my Mac Pro. The exposure latitude was wider and the lens was definitely very sharp - and I dare say sharper than the iPhone.

Hopefully the upcoming iteration would have addressed those issues. Let’s see what brings when the actual unit was released ...

The Edgy Camera

iPhone had always been the go to smartphone for photographers. It gave a consistently pleasing results, and with each iteration of the phone, the results kept getting better and better. It is a given that any flagship smartphone would come with a great camera.

The Lumia series then redefine the concept of a cameraphone. I own a Lumia 930 and the results had always been fantastic. But the main drawback with the Windows platform, was the lack of software, although the Windows 10 looked promising. Hopefully more apps would be available of the likes of Snapseed and VSCO cam for a bit of post-processing.

Even the Blackberry - at least on the Z10 - had a decent camera. I really like the output from the phone, but it was grainy and blotchy on low light. It also relied heavily on post-processing as the out-of-the-camera result wasn't always that great.

Then came the Android. They tended to be a mixed bag. Sony tended to have great sensors for their camera. LG was not far behind although I was disappointed with the Nexus 4 - which was made by LG. Oppo made great hardware and screen, but their camera was always so and so. The we came to Samsung. They were improving over the years and the output from Note 3 and S4 was pretty decent.

The S6 edge was a different beast however. The 16MP - or in my case 12MP since I use the 3:2 format - snaps I was getting from the phone had been mind-blowing. Yes, they tended to be oversaturated one minute and subdued in another, but overall I was not expecting it to be this good. I would have bought the phone on the camera alone, let alone the scrumptious screen and form factor.

The jpeg had issues in high contrast situation struggling to cope with a wide dynamic range, but it held its own pretty well. On par if not better than my iPhone 6 plus in most situations although it occasionally tended to underexpose indoors. The iPhone tended to get the exposure right compared to the Samsung. Low light performance? Astounding. However, I still rated both the iPhone 6 and the S6 lower than my Lumia. The Lumia could challenge even a half-decent compact cameras at times.

At the moment, I was pretty happy with the results from the S6, and paired with Snapseed, it was definitely worth a look as a compact travel shooter. As they say, the best camera was the one you have with you at the time.

At the edge

I had been impressed with the review on the S6 since the announcement was made. It was a toss up between this new Samsung flagship or the HTC M9.

Having owned the M7 and Galaxy Nexus and S2 previously, I was familiar with the strength of both lines, but clearly the Galaxy S series had moved along quite far, compared to the HTC.

So, I did a free order and picked up my phone last weekend. I went for the S6 Edge. Although honestly, apart from the slicker form factor and bigger battery capacity, there were not much deterrence between the standard S6 and the Edge. The specs were identical.

After a couple of days of use, I was struck by how comfortable the phone felt on my phone compared to my staple, the iPhone 6 Plus.

The Edge was just blazing fast and the Lollipop OS just sang! There was no lag which I could detect although I hardly put any skin on the system to compliment the standard Samsung interface.

I use the standard Google app - Mail, Calendar and the rest. Of course the first thing I did was download Facebook, Twitter, Feedly, 2Do, Instagram, Flickr and VSCO cam among others. Then I went about putting the phone through its pace.

A couple of things was plain obvious from the start. Yes, the screen was gorgeous and reception on LTE was fast. But unexpectedly the camera and battery life were the features which impressed me the most.

The home button, cum the fingerprint recognising buttonLet's start with the camera. 16MP with optical stabilisation. Sound basic, but that's double the amount of pixel on the iPhone camera. And the results were just fantastic. Hands down, out of the camera they were better jpgs compared to the iPhone. Almost at the level of the Lumia 930, but with better post processing apps to chose from.

The app of choice so far for image post-processing was Snapseed. The newly updated 2.0 version was just amazing. I can't stop admiring the camera output and I have yet to explore its full potential.

The second thing which impressed me was the battery life. I had been reading reviews that due to high resolution screen and small form factor, battery life was limited. I have yet to experience such a drain so far. At least compared to the Nexus 4 and M7. Or even the Oppo Find 7 which carried the same.screen resolution - although on a physically larger-dimensioned screen.

I have a wireless charger placed at my clinic and I just put it on the tray while seeing patients. No issues. And setting up emails were a doodle, but I was still using the basic apps for them. None of those fancy app or Samsung's proprietary programs. They were just too fiddly.

One major criticism I had out of the box was the keyboard. They were just lame. Fleksy soon fixed those up. If only they could make some similar to my Z10 - which I still use for emails at home - then the S6 Edge would be perfect!

These were still my early impression but I think this phone would be a hit, especially for the power user. I have set up my Feedly account to connect to my bitly service, so expect many updates on Facebook coming soon!‎

The 5S Has Landed

So, the 5S has landed on our shores. And Low Yat had a few units available. It didn't take long for me to get hold of a 32Gb grey unit. Decided against the gold. Too obvious, but they were available. There were plenty of 5C units of various colour on display as well. But I think it won't be long before the 5S ran out of stock. They were flying off the shelf really fast.

No news as to when the local units of 5S and 5C would be made available at the Apple retail shops. Until then, the phone would thrive at places like Low Yat.

First impression? The fingerprint sensor worked much better than I thought. I have yet to program my nipple to unlock the phone. I programmed Idlan's thumb and he was well impressed. The phone was also snappy. Camera was good, but ineould need to take it for a ride - tomorrow I guess before I could compare it with my HTC One.

I also updated my Celcom SIM. Theoretically I should be able to surf on LTE speed similar to my HTC One on the Maxis network. At work in Subang, the LTE speed on the HTC was bang on. Uploading photos onto Flickr was blazing. Downloading was something else. At my home in Gombak, I have yet to see an LTE signal detected on my HTC. The fastest was HSDPA. But not in my study. It was only EDGE down there.

Expect more update on battery life, the camera and of course some cases over the coming days.