Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 Review

February 28, 2013 / Guttu / 2 Comments

A couple of weeks back, The battery of my tab, Spice Mi 720, died. I am so used to the tablet that I had to substitute it with a new one. I was confused because of the options available unlike last time. Then I dedudced to the two best tablets avaible, Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 and iPad Mini. The only thing that stopped me from buying iPad Mini was the lack of calling facility. The choice left was Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. It’s been a year since it’s launch and it is still one of the most popular tablets available. Reviewing it now may be pretty useless as you’ll find hundreds of reviews of this tab. This one is written after 3 weeks of usage.

Package content
The package contains Tablet, Charging cable with USB connector at one end. It comes with 2-pin Indian type plug with USB socket where you’ll have to attach the previously mentioned cable for charging. Standard white colored earphones with mic and buttons for receiving calls and volume. There is no cover or case provided with the package. You’ll have to buy one yourself. I bought one fron nCase which I feel is a great value for money.

Hardware
Tablet has a 7″ screen which is smooth and very responsive. It weighs around 345g without case and 400g with case. It is powered by 1 Ghz dual core processor with 1GB of RAM. 230MB of that RAM is dedicated to graphics. The one I bought has 16GB internal memory with approx 12GB usable. There is microSD slot to expand memory upto 32GB. The SIM slot is normal and you don’t have to trouble yourself to get the micro SIM. There are two mics, one each on short side. Two speakers placed at bottom, volume control and power button on one side and all of these are poorly placed. Let me tell you why.
If you are watching a video in landscape mode, Your hand will cover the speakers thus resulting in low volume. They are placed ideally for portrait video playback and gaming. Not suitable while using landscape mode. Secondly, The power and volume controls are placed such that you’ll accidentally press them while using apps in portrait mode. The only work around this problem is to hold the tab in the bottom area instead of central.
The display is crisp 1024×600 capacitive screen. It is very responsive and games and videos look great on it. There is a sensor to auto adjust brightness of the screen. It works most of the times but I highly suggest you to find your comfortable brightness and manually set it. My main problem is the touch buttons for Home, Back, Window manager and app menu. These buttons reduce the screen area by 6-7 percent and interfere while you are typing. They should have placed the buttons outside the screen. I guess it’s Jellybean to blame for this.
There are two cameras, with front camera having VGA resolution and back camera with 3.2 megapixel. Photos have decent quality. You can add some effects using the Photo editor provided or maybe use it in some video via the Video editor app.
When it comes to connectivity, this tablet has it all. GSM, 3G, Bluetooth, Wi-fi, Tethering. The big advantage is you can use the SIM calling feature. The GPS is quick in getting the location and quite accurate even without the internet and in airplane mode. What it lacks is using it as mass storage. There is media and photo transfer mode but it doesn’t let you anything to copy on device. It’s certainly convenient but I can manage without the feature.

Performance
When it comes to performance, All I want in a tablet, is a good battery life. Because most of the apps would run smoothly on any current generation tab. During the past 3 weeks, The average battery life in one charge was 22-24hrs approx. You can watch 6hrs of DVD quality video, 10hrs of 3G, 30hrs of music, 5 days of standby. 3.5hrs are required to completely charge the battery. Though it has USB cable, Tablet doesn’t charge on connecting to PC/Laptop USB socket. The purpose of USB cable for charger is a mystery.

Apps
While my previous tablet was bundled with crapware, This tablet isn’t loaded with much apps which is way better than loading with crapware. But I at least expected them to bundle Facebook and Twitter. Instead there’s an app for a zombie filled social network, Google+. It is bundled with Reader’s Hub app which allows you to read paid Newspapers, Magazines and Ebooks. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support epub or mobi files stored on tab. Polaris Office is the app I liked the most. It beats QuickOffice anytime and it’s fully paid version. Also I liked the video player which supports subtitles and Music player which supports lyrics. I had to install the rest of the apps like Adobe Reader, Cool Reader, Catch Notes etc. to make it productive for my use.

To buy or not to buy?
This seems to be the best tablet and worth every penny. But a little more would have justified the price tag. Case or cover, Better rear camera (5MP or maybe 8MP) or maybe a LED flash instead and a couple of paid apps should do. Still I doubt any other tablet is available out there with the same features at lesser price.

Spice Mi – 720 Review

October 1, 2011 / Guttu / 63 Comments

The war of Tablets is on. Every week you see a new entry in this category. Every manufacturer is trying to get ahead in the race but in the end consumer comes out as winner. The reason is the competition between manufacturer’s which has dropped the tablet price and have made it affordable. Right now you can get a decent tablet at around 15k. When iPad was launched, I wanted to own one. If not, at least one tablet. Last month, HP Touchpad went on fire sale. I was very disappointed as I couldn’t get one. So I started looking for a tablet and I found Spice Mi-720.
Like every gadget, This has it’s pros and cons. But it’s pricing and features makes you forget the cons. This is a very decent tablet priced at Rs 11990/- on Flipkart. It was delivered in 3 days flat. Let’s look at it’s features and accessories.

Package contents:

The package includes one tablet. You’ll have to charge it before you use. Don’t search for the battery. It’s already in the tablet. A two pin DC 5V charger. Three pin charger would have been nice. There is a stereo headset for music and calling purpose. One Micro-USB cable to transfer contents from and to PC. No need to install any software. One leather pouch which was white in color. And lastly, User manual and service center list.
I expected the tablet to come pre-charged. It will just vibrate when you try to switch it on. It takes around 2-2.5 hours to charge. Stereo headset were disappointing. If you are an audiophile then throw the headset into trash and get another one. Maybe the manufacturer’s intention was to provide this for calling purpose only. In that case, it’s fine. The leather pouch, Well.. Who provides a white leather pouch in a country like India? It’ll get dirty quite easy. Tablet fits quite comfortably in the pouch. Flip it and you can use the pouch to dock the tablet. Useful when typing or using maps. It has got magnetic lock to ensure safety of tablet. It’s designed well except one thing that you can’t use the secondary camera for video calling when it’s in pouch. Continue reading →

WordPress Plugins – How many you use?

January 12, 2009 / Guttu / 7 Comments

Every software is incomplete. There is always something to add and make it better. So is the case with wordpress. Thanks to the plugins and I can customize wordpress without much knowledge or no knowledge of coding. Some plugins allow you to turn wordpress into a full fledged gallery. You just need to upload and activate plugin. That’s it. Good thing with wordpress is, if any plugin goes wrong just delete it’s folder and your blog runs back normal.

So why I am talking about plugins today? This is not a blogging blog or WordPress hack blog. For many days I was searching for a good plugin. A plugin that can list my watched movies on a page and it should be easy to update, edit, rate. But I am a movie buff and watch a lot of movies. I am too lazy to write review of a every movie I watch. This is Nonsense blog and not a movie review blog. Hence I wanted a plugin where I can write a short review, a link to movie page, ratings out of ten and possibly comments by user. I didn’t get the last option though.

While doing a search I found a plugin that fulfills my needs. That plugin is WP Movie Ratings. I have just installed the plugin and testing it. That is why I am not giving out the link for the movies page. I also have to update that page with some movies. This plugin will free me from posting reviews of movie unless I find it too good or too bad to watch.

I don’t like to use many plugins with any software. They slow down the performance of core software. I couldn’t resist this one. I crossed the ten plugin mark with this plugin. Now I use a total of eleven plugins. It’s difficult to remove any one of these. How many plugins do you use??

Backup Weekend

November 23, 2008 / Guttu / Leave a comment

It’s been almost a month since I backed up my data. So I thought of doing this today. Was busy the whole day creating backups. Whenever I do backup I make sure that they are easy to find later on. Due to this fact, I have to go on renaming files with a particular file naming format I created for my backups. That makes it easy to read.

Just for example, when I create a backup of movies (Yes the DVDrips of course) I have this format for the file name.

MovieName.YearOfRelease.avi

Now I know how old the movie is just by reading the file name. I make sure along with the movie file goes the subtitle file also. Though I watch all movies without subtitles, there are some points where I don’t understand words spoken. Subtitles come handy here. They are also useful for a foreign language movie.

While renaming I keep in mind that the file names don’t have space in them. Spaces are no trouble now. Gone are the days of DOS. Still I replace them by a dot. I find long file names unnecessary. I try to keep them as short as possible. This keeps the index data small though it’s size is already negligible.

The use of above tips is when you have your crashed but have safe data. Almost all data recovery software’s use a DOS based interface which spoils the file names. These tricks help you to keep them to a certain extent. I used to take backups every week. That habit is gone and I want to revive it.

Then I use a software to catalog the files. This way I don’t have to search the CD’s and DVD’s by manually checking them. Just after burning, I catalog it. I use WhereIsIt for this. Also the CD or DVD is named with a marker pen with same name as I save it in catalog. I search through the program. I check the results and I get the name of CD or DVD where my required data is stored. Spending just a little bit of more time makes thing easier.

Many things still to be backed up including the blog database. See ya later..

Building Traffic

September 12, 2008 / Guttu / 3 Comments

For the last two months I have trying to build up traffic to this blog. I made changes to increase traffic. Registering to Entrecard was a boon to my traffic. But I was and am always aware that the traffic is not targeted. They are users who come and go just to fulfill some requirement. There is a small percentage of that traffic which is really interested in blogging. Such visitors are difficult to get but once you get they stick to you.

Of course you need to write good to keep them attached to your blog. This month I want to totally depend on my 280+ posts to get traffic to my blog. I want to see how many users really get to my blog without having to force them. I want to quit entrecard as it suxx xD now due to some changes in it’s policies. They believe it will prove to be good. But every now and then they are hitting a nail in coffin. Just have to wait when will be the final nail in coffin?? I cannot quit entrecard instantly as my 20000+ec are hanging there. I am playing “Hangman” there now. :bandit:

I’ll be totally idle and out of blogging world you can say. I want to give more attention to content and content writing. Eventhough it’s nonsense, you should be able to understand that it is nonsense. Theme for four days a week has created some good reputation. I saw one blog copying my idea of “Tuesday Readings”. :whistle: There will be more coming like that. I don’t mind them.

To all the visitors and readers who are reading my blog and read this blog till this line, please be patient for some days. If you have a blog I’ll be replying to you soon. I am gone nowhere. Just a small hibernation. I’ll be writing but not promoting. Consulting and studying better ways to write blog. If you have tips for this dumb guy then you are always welcomed. :kiss:

P.S.: I removed all ads and all advertising. Not much earnings for last two months. I should have done that before.

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Category: Techie Stuff