But being a Samsung Mob!ler, im interested in there mobile tech! Mob!lers from around the world are working with Samsung at IFA this week helping promote there latest product range announced minutes ago:

Samsung Wave 3
- Running the new Samsung Bada 2.0 operating system
- 4″ Super Amoled Screen
- New uni-body design

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7″ - 
- 7.7″ Super Amoled Screen
- Thinnest, lightest tablet on the market

Samsung Galaxy Note
- 5.3″ Supe Amoled Screen
- 1.4Ghz Dual Core Processor
- 2500mA Battery

Hopefully ill have some more information soon with more details about the above devices. Although, I do look forward to the Galaxy Note, it looks set to be a very interesting device! Time for the Samsung Mob!lers to shine?

For our first mission we were tasked with comparing Android to RIM. What are the phones like, how do they compare, what the best features are etc. Lets get straight into a comparison then! (I had originally tried the whole video thing! Spent a good few days playing around with the video, then decided i hated it.. So, i shall try a video for my next mission!)

Android vs RIM

To compare the two systems i need two phones! A blackberry device (RIM) and an Android device. Being part of the Mob!lers program has its perks, for this mission we were supplied with a gorgeous Samsung Galaxy Pro which runs the Android OS. Prior to having this phone I’ve been using the Blackberry Bold 9780! The Galaxy Pro has taken over as my main phone now with the Blackberry being demoted to a work phone.

In the interest of being fair, i cant really compare the two devices themselves. There both completely different, they have different processors, different amounts of RAM, different size screens and different camera resolutions. I will however drop in a little pros/cons, because that’s slightly fairer! This comparison is all about the operating systems they run

Samsung Galaxy Pro – Pros/Cons

Samsung Galaxy Pro

• The weight of the device is pretty light weighing in at only 105g! Although the Bold is only 143g, it feels remarkably lighter. 
• The screen is at least .5 times bigger. Again, this may only seem like a small amount, but when your already dealing with pretty small phones this makes a big difference.
• For me, the battery life doesn’t seem to great. It can sometimes struggle to last a whole day. Wifi, GPS and Bluetooth are all disabled, and I’m not exactly a heavy user!

Blackberry Bold 9780 – Pros/Cons

Blackberry Bold 9780

• Blackberry messenger. Its fantastic! I cant figure out why its so popular.. Probably because of the amount of users now using it. But its quick and easy to use, and i quite like the fact you can see when messages have been read! I understand there is google talk, but it just doesn’t seem as popular
• Although the camera quality itself isn’t great.. It does have a flash which is damn handy! Ill give this 50 pro/50 con.. Pro the flash, con the camera quality.
• The blackberry is rather restricted in what you can change.. And something so minute but something i find so frustrating:- When entering a phone number, it automatically saves it as a work number! I’ve only ever entered a work number once, every over time its a mobile number! So stop saving it as a damn work number.
• 3G seems to be horrendously slow.. Bit strange as 3G is 3G and it should be the same speed whatever modern phone your using.. But web browsing seemed to take forever!

Customisation

Earlier on i mentioned a sad but unfortunately true niggle of mine. That the blackberry automatically saves contacts numbers as a work phone number. Blackberrys are now growing more and more popular, and phone numbers are still defaulting to being saved as ‘work’, something which we cannot change! When buying a phone, you expect a certain amount of customisation, at least on the OS level (As opposed to sticking a pink sparkly case on the outside). Changing backgrounds and moving icons around are the basics of customizing your phone, and that seems to be where the blackberry gave up!

With the Android OS, your given much more flexibility about how you want your phone to look and operate. You can move icons around, resize icons, put icons into pretty folders, change wallpapers, add multiple screens, add widgets, add shortcuts.. The list goes on! The Blackberry is limited because of its launcher. The desktop of the phone is rather bland, only showing the wallpaper, but allowing you to bring up a ‘drawer’ which contains all of the icons neatly organised. The Android launcher is the key to its flexibility. Bored of the current launcher? Nevermind! You can get a new one. Bored of your blackberry launcher? Tuff, your stuck with it! (The launcher is what you use to launch applications. There are many different launchers for Android that function in different ways catering to the different types of users)

App Stores

BB App World Screenshot

The Android has the marketplace, whilst the Blackberry has the app world. At the time of writing this, the app world only has 38,753 apps compared to the marketplace which has a whopping 250,000+ apps. The amount of apps on each devices app store isn’t the only way to measure the app stores ‘success’, the quality of the apps is also of great importance. Apps like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Dropbox and Skype work well on all devices, i wouldn’t really say any implementation of these apps on a certain device is better than the other. But if we look through the app stores at the other apps, the app world has an awful lot less junk than the market place. This could be down to the complex nature of developing blackberry apps, but it could simply be down to the popularity of the device itself. Small developers aren’t going to target devices with a small user base!

Android Marketplace

Even if a large selection of apps on the android market place are junk/pretty darn useless, the market place easily wins out. Its really easy to use and highly colorful. The app world is black, with color only in the apps icon. Its hard to use, slow, and offers a port rating mechanism.  If you know exactly what your looking for then the app world will work just fine, but for taking a browse and having a look around, the market place wins hands down. (As you can see from the screenshots, the marketplace is more more colorful compared to the app world! I certainly know which one id prefer to long at…)

And the winner is…

I could sit and write loads more about the two OS’s… But after a quick look back i think I’ve already written far to much! All the more reason for me to skip this whole writing thing and do a video next time!

But which OS is better? Thats a matter of opinion. Both have there advantages and disadvantages, but the clear winner to me is Android. Android is such a clean, slick and speedy OS. Theres nothing i cant do on the Android and theres always going to be an app for anything and everything i could imagine! (Even if you do just want to sit around and press buttons to make fart noises)

Anyway… All of the above is pretty unimportant anyway as the clear decider between the two OS’s would have to be “Does it play Angry Birds?” Android yes, Blackberry no.. We have a clear winner there folks!

<?php
  header('Content-Type: text/xml');
  print '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>';

  function listContents($path = ".", $level = 0, $ignore = array("cgi-bin",".","..",".DS_Store")) {
    $directory = @opendir($path);
  
    while(false !== ($file = readdir($directory))){
      if(!in_array($file,$ignore)){
        if(is_dir("$path/$file")){
          echo "<folder level='".$level."' name='".$file."'>";
          listContents("$path/$file",($level+1));          echo "</folder>";
        } else {
          echo "<file>".$file."</file>";
        }
      }
    }
    
    closedir($directory);
  }

  echo "<filestucture>";
    listContents(".");
  echo "</filestucture>";
  
?>

For the 2010 Student Radio Awards (Best Technical Achievement category) I entered my ”I Love Student Radio” iPhone app. You can find the entry here which shows you what the application is and a bit more detail about how it works.

My Feedback

I was very impressed that you were about to think beyond your own student station and create a mobile application that was suitable for all student stations. I was also impressed with your work to create an XML feed of student radio stations and how that this can also be used for other purposes. Unfortunately your application was less functional than some of the other mobile applications entered.

Although i’m a little disappointed that I didn’t receive an award (I was however nominated for an award which in itself is a great achievement!) i’m pleased with the feedback i’ve received and its just spured me on to go for it again next year! Im currently working on a project i plan to enter myself along with another entry with the rest of the tech team at Radio Sonar. Congratulations go to the other award winners and Brett Jenkins, silver award winner for his Xtreme Radio iPhone app!

To find out more about the awards head on over to the awards sub-site here.

Wednesday 10th November – Demolition

Part one of my busy few days began in London (I never did get around to writing up the following few days…) for the NUS National Demo. Three coach loads of us from Southampton Solent University headed up to Westminster for the protest against the rise in tuition fees. It was an incredibly long and boring journey but we got there in the end!

We all gathered outside ‘some building’ (unfortunately i have no idea what the name of the building was or the name of the road!) ready for speeches by the NUS before we set of. The motivational speeches really got the crowd raring and in the mood for the protest! Shortly after we set off. They said it would be at a slow marching pace.. Infact it was incredibly slow! It took about an hour and a half to get from out starting point to big ben! Normally it would be no more than a five minute walk!

After waiting a few hundred metres back from big ben for more than an hour we decided to weave through the crows and head on with the protest.. Turns out there was a group of protestors sitting in the road holding everyone up! Was an entertaining 15 minutes weaving through the crowds. Numerous students chanting at the police and egging them on whilst they all stood there laughing!

We headed towards the rally point at the end of the march but were quickly distracted by a large crowd outside 30 Millibank, the converservatives headquarters. Shortly after arriving, there were fires being started and loud chanting towards those inside. It didn’t take long for this to grow into violence. Within 30 minutes of arriving, there were (suspected) students rioting and vandalising the building. The ground floor windows were all smashed in and the lobby was vandalised and full of students. Riot police were around but unfortunately had to hold back as there wernt nearly enough of them compared to the number of students there. I was in this crowd, probably only a row or two back from the violence taking place. I was in no way joining in nor was i inclined to join in, but it was a scary experience being so close to it all. We decided to leave shortly after this when the riot police decided to up there numbers!

We didn’t manage to make our way to the rally as it was finished by the time we decided to leave millibank so we headed back through westiminster for our coaches! Most of the students returned back to Solent on the coach for what seemed an extremely long and painful journey! Myself and a few others stayed around as we were staying in London for the night! After a lovely breakfast/lunch/dinner of McDonalds with the others i headed to the tube station on my was to Wimbledon.. Had to wait for about 5 or 6 tubes as they were so packed and i had all my bags with me! (Im rambling on now arnt i…)

I was being put up in Wimbledon for the night by the lovely Matt Hurst & Sarah Ghost so a big thank you to them! After a fantastic dinner in a ‘fusion’ restaurant of Chinese, indian, thai and a few others we headed back for a kip before the kaos of the Student Radio Awards the following day! I could probably write lots more about the day.. But as this is my first blog post i should probably stop about here!

It’s a bit bare at the momment! Bear with me whilst i start adding some content!