[Galaxy S I9000 General] BlackSeries:
Firstly let me say that part of the reason I bought a SGS was the wealth of useful information in this forum – so thanks to everybody for all the great info. I’ve had my SGS for a week now so here are my initial thoughts. Please bear in mind that I’m coming from an original XDA II so its quite a change. First my reasons for choosing the SGS. I originally was going to get an HTC Desire but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t bond with it. Bizarrely the one thing I didn’t do was Desire it – if I had ended up with one it would have been purely a rational decision. Anyroadup whilst I was prevaricating I heard about the SGS and one look at the screen it became clear that it would be my next phone. I know a lot of the reviewers don’t like the plastic shell – and to be honest when I initially took the back off I was a bit shocked how thin it was but once its clipped back into place the whole phone feels sturdy and has a lovely “worn bar of soap” feel to it. It fits beautifully in the hand and is a real joy to use - it’s a beautiful object (to my eyes) as well as very useful. Again, having come from a stylus world the touch screen is a revelation. As far as I know nobody has mentioned how great the screen is to touch. I’m not sure if it’s covered with something but it feels sort of soft even though I know it’s solid lump of glass. The whole interaction is great. I’m getting to grips with the OS. At first I thought what is all the fuss about Android there didn’t seem much depth to it – but I’m now learning as I go along that the phone is so configurable. So far my only disappointment has been the PC connectivity element. Having come from a very old Windows Mobile device I have been rather shocked at the rather cumbersome PC – Phone connection software Kies. I do all my work in MS Office and Outlook and I just want all my current work to sync with the phone when I connect it up – or I thought by now it would sync over Wifi or Bluetooth. But no, you have sync Contacts and Calendar separately and to transfer all the Word and Excel docs to the phone you have to use a different connection method all together (Mass Storage) which is a bit of a pain and does seem at odds with the sophistication elsewhere in the phone & OS. Come on Google there must be loads of people like me who use commercially sensitive information everyday who don’t feel comfortable uploading it all into the cloud and just want a straight PC – Android sync. The ThinkFree app that comes with the phone is great at reading and editing MS Office docs – so no complaints there. The only other niggle is the US centric daily briefing, I had hoped that you could insert your own news & weather feeds into the widget but so far I’ve not seen how it can be done – so I’ve switched it off. After a week of ownership I’ve downloaded about 30 + apps, I love Swype and it has probably not remained idle for more than 20-30mins at any one time except for when I am a sleep. I do charge it everyday but so far it has not dropped below 60% during the day so I’m very pleased with the battery performance. I absolutely love this phone and the screen still amazes me every time I switch it on.