Zenus GALAXY S2 SKIN AIR JACKET MONOCHROME Review

It a strange irony that I chose to produce this review first before an official Samsung Galaxy S 2 Review but it obvious this review will be shorter, and sexier too. Then again, if you wanted great photos of this case, its all over the place, no need for me to illiterate again. For those of you who decided they fell in love with the case, it may be good to know what considerations you will have to take when you are using this case. This is what this review will focus on.

First thing first, everyone knows this case is sex. For the rest who think otherwise, its the official photos that does it injustice. I was pitting this against the Prestige Pearl Lizard Bar Stand, and had quite a bias towards leather. Having found this at Mobile Fashion at the top floor of Junction 8 (Bishan, Singapore) instead of my P.P. Lizard, along with various preference for this by the peers I requested the opinion of, I decided to take the plunge. I’m glad its going to stay on for a long time.

The real product does more justice than any official pictures, as it feels and appear more slim and sleek in real. I chose black over grey or white, and I feel it certainly gives that much more kick.

The case is very thin, and may feel like it is prone to high impact damage, but nonetheless holds well for daily use and some minor impact. I do not hope to chance upon an event where its integrity will be put to the test, but who knows? Problems aside, it really is the thinnest I have seen and a whole lot sexier than I expected.

 

The case clamps around the side of the phone and does not employ a over-cut like most silicone or soft case do, which means the screen is not really lifted off during a flat fall. This also means that the phone is prone to seperate from the case more easily as the clamping force is not from the glass face but from the sides. It takes a certain finesse to handle the phone with this case knowing that this are probably issues during a drop.

The much coveted ‘carbon fibre leather’ part which is at the back serves its share of orgasm as it should, but it should be noted that it has its own slight issues. The ‘CF’ plate does not sit flush with the rest of the surface, and slighly lifted, creating a relief which may be clipped off by a careless finger nail. The height of the relief is minimal however, and very improbable that something will really rip it off.

The physical buttons on the side aren’t augmented by rubber, so there is a hole cut-out for it. The size and depth of the hole do not pose too much problem for the buttons them self, while the cut-out for the 3.5mm audio jack is sufficient to support most plug size as compared to the soft case cut-out. Feeling physical buttons are certainly a luxury these days.

 

Finally, the phone is generally sitted well into the case, but the bottom part tends to have abit of free-play and looseness in the fitting such that bottom of the phone may rock inside the case ever so slightly.

 

Having said some of observed issues, none of them are glaring or obstructive in function and purpose, and the sex appeal from the case should be carried forward easily nonetheless.

If the form catches your eye and you’re on the fence, just get one. At SGD35.90 its a worthy thing for your already sexy S 2 to wear.

Samsung Galaxy S 2 Strip Down Review

A very nice article I found here, from CareAce about a very detailed review of the new Samsung Galaxy S 2 stripped down.

Beauty, Brains, and Muscles: The Anatomy of Samsung’s Galaxy S 2

By Brian on June 15, 2011 at 6:38 pm Posted Under: Android

One month after the release of the Galaxy S 2, Samsung has sold over 1 million units worldwide, and that doesn’t even include North America! The phone has received universal critical acclaim and holds the seat as the de facto king of smartphones.

Samsung’s new DIY Galaxy S 2 kit, ages 5 and up!

So what makes the Galaxy S 2 so desirable? Well for starters, it has a gorgeous 4.27 inch Super AMOLED Plus display that provides amazing contrast ratios and it’s packaged in a body that is a mere 8.9mm thin. But we’ve seen the same display on the Droid Charge and we’ve seen a very similar body on the Infuse 4G: so what elevates the Galaxy S 2 to the next level? Well my friends, that question can be answered by looking at the guts of this device and Samsung has done us a great service by giving us an exploded view of the anatomy of this super phone.

Judging a Book by its Cover

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Contrary to what mother taught us, you wouldn’t be wrong to judge this book by its cover. But just in case, here’s the full breakdown:

1. 4.3″ Super AMOLED Plus Display

The 4.3 inch display of the Galaxy S 2 is 14% larger than the original Galaxy S, and the improved Super AMOLED Plus displays adds 50% more sub pixels (12 versus 8) eliminating the granulation found on older PenTile AMOLED display while increases outdoor visibility. The use of new organic materials has also reduced energy consumption. Sweet: more screen, less battery drain.

Yum, high-tech sandwich

2/3. Samsung TSP (Touch Screen Panel)

If you somehow have yet to upgrade to a touchscreen smartphone or live in an Amish Paradise, then you know how responsive and tactile Samsung’s touch panels feel. Made with what feels like a paper thin (but super strong) layer of Corning’s Gorilla Glass, Samsung’s TSP combines high durability (keying test: >50 million times), clarity, transparency (>92%) and multi-touch.

So simple you can make it at home. Not.

4. Chassis

4a. Front

The 4.3-inch widescreen display is complemented by a narrow bezel surrounded by a 0.1mm lip around the front glass which prevents the display from touching when laid on a flat surface.

4b. Rear

The chassis had to be carefully engineered to be thin and durable while accommodating the mainboard, camera, speaker and battery.

5. Rear Cell Front

Samsung’s rear cell technology, as can be seen in the illustration, is a magnetic shielding frame that helps improve reception

7. Battery Cover

The rear panel on the back of the Galaxy S 2 is a mere 1/10th of a millimeter thick and is dubbed ‘Hyperskin.’ With its micro-patterned surface, the Hyperskin battery cover is not only scratch resistant, but textured for maximum grip. No more dropping your soft touch plastic or aluminum backed phones.

8. Sim Card and MicroSD Slots

Rather than have two plots of device real estate dedicated to these two cards Samsung has built a double-decker slot with the spring-loaded microSD slot being placed right beneath the SIM slot.

Good luck reverse engineering this China

9. Main Circuit Board (Motherboard)

This is where the Galaxy S 2′s brains and muscles get together and go to town on all your mobile processing needs. The mainboard is a congregation of over 700 pieces of Samsung’s finest technologies that answer to  slightest command.

9-1. 1.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor

The Galaxy S 2 is powered by the blazing fast 1.2GHz dual-core Exynos chipset. The Galaxy S 2 can do things that single-cored devices only wish they could do: full 1080p HD video recording and playback, 60+FPS of 3D gaming (as seen below). With up to five times the processing power of traditional single core processors, the Galaxy S 2 brings a full multimedia experience to the palm of your hand.

The Mighty Exynos CPU and Mali GPU

9-2. 21Mbps HSPA+ Radio

Compared to existing 3G network speeds, the Galaxy S 2′s HSPA+ radio will allow up to triple the speed with 21Mbps download speeds. Take a look at our speed test comparison between AT&T 3G, 4G and Verizon 4G LTE.

9-3. NFC (Near Field Communication) Chip

NFC is an ultra low friction, wireless communication technology that allows the phone to communicate with anything with an NFC tag. What does this mean? Simply put, it allows you to use the Galaxy S 2 as a payment card, transportation pass, and information scanner. Samsung’s Nexus S was the first device to take advantage of this next generation, wireless short-range communication technology.

9-4. 16GB Internal Storage

The Galaxy S 2′s internal SD card can store up 4000 songs (4MB) as well as plenty of HD video.

9-5. Bluetooth and WiFi

The Galaxy S 2 is Bluetooth 3.0 capable running at 23.3Mbps; up to 8 times faster than BT 2.1. The Galaxy S 2 also supports mobile access point functionality allowing users to connect other devices through the hotspot. Using Samsung’s AllShare and Kies Air, users can transmit data between their computers and the Galaxy S 2 as well.

9-6/7. Gyroscope and Accelerometer

The phone’s accelerometer relays information about the device’s orientation allowing it to auto rotate, perform motion based commands and control gaming features.

TouchWiz 4.0 at CTIA

10. High-Capacity Battery

Compared to the original Galaxy S, the Galaxy S 2′s battery capacity has been increased by 10% from 1500mAh to 1650mAh. Always had your phone die out right as you needed it most? Well now you get 10% more time so stop complaining! Check out our how to extend battery life article.

Wireless TV on your phone complements of the DMB antenna

11. DMB Antenna

The DMB antenna allows users who are in a DMB enabled region to watch television through their phone. Unfortunately we won’t be getting this feature due to the absence of such an infrastructure in the U.S.

The chips that run the imaging, proximity and ambient light sensors

12. 8MP Camera and Image Sensor

The rear-facing camera on the back of the Galaxy S 2 is a huge improvement over the previous Galaxy S version. The new Camera unit is capable of full 1080p HD video capture and photography, and features a 100 lux LED flash.

13. Front Facing Camera and Proximity Sensor

The front of the Galaxy S 2 sports a 2MP front-facing camera as well as proximity and light sensors. The proximity sensor detects when the user brings their face to the phone and automatically turns off the screen and the ambient light sensor detects varying light levels and dynamically changes screen brightness saving precious battery life.

MicroSD Card and Home Key controller

14. External MicroSD Card

Add another 32GB of memory and bring your grand total up to 48GB with a high capacity MicroSD card.

15. Home Key

The Galaxy S 2 takes from its ancestor the same physical home key button. Although according to a recent leak, it looks like the U.S. variants will have 4 capacitive buttons found on the Samsung Infuse 4G.

Dual mics: one for your voice, one to cancel out others’

16. Microphone Module

The Galaxy S 2 is loaded with 2 mics, one for your voice and the other to cancel out ambient noise for better call quality. The microusb controller is also attached to the main mic board.

17. Vibration Motor

The 3.5mm headphone jack as well as vibration motor are both nestled together.

No, that’s not a miniature barbecue grill

18. Antenna and Speaker

The Galaxy S 2 is a quadband (GSM 1900/1800/900/850) phone and is capable of working on AT&T and T-Mobile if bough unlocked in the U.S. The speaker panel is located in the small chin at the bottom of the phone just like on the Infuse.

Judgement Complete

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Now that we know what’s on the inside, I think it’s fair to say that the Galaxy S 2 is one book that we can judge by its cover: the phone is pure awesome, through and through.

HP DM4

If you want spanking fresh new pictures of the DM4, go to a website that is selling it. If you want a no-gloss-over-bullshit-fluffy pictures fresh from a user, they are right above.

Fortunately for me, the picture and the product differ little, except for a little defect on the mousepad that arrived with it. The pad was slightly lifted on right bottom corner, and had a weird feeling when in use and clicking. Promptly resolved with a warranty repair.

Now, to the meat of things.

We can see an i5 model along with the ATI Radeon 5450. As much as it is labelled i5, it is nothing like the multicores on the desktop variation. While satisfactorily fast, it still leaves me wishing for abit more when i pit it against my quadcore 9650 desktop at home. Nonetheless as a mobile platform, with abit of space and performance management, it gets by pretty well for an impatient person like me. Coupled with the 4 gig RAM option, it manages photoshop and illustrator cs 5 pretty well, loading them in 9 seconds. Featured with the DM4 is a switchable graphics between the integrated intel model, and the ATI Radeon 5450. The Intel card is for typical use and power conservation, while the ATI is for gaming. Pretty neat feature that allows you to change at any moment, except when the ATI is engaged in 3d applications such as games. The ATI manages medium settings for starcraft 2, so I’d call that decent, though its no trouting monster amongst laptop. If you want those, go for ASUS G73.

The island keyboard is just screaming “BACKLIGHTING” and really if it was included it’d be absolute pleasure. I however don’t expect a mid range laptop to include that nonetheless. It does provide a very good feeling for typing. Clean fast crisp keystrokes. its media buttons are integrated to the F1 to F12 keys, and by default the media keys operate in priority instead of the F1 to F12 function. For its cost however, it has nice aluminium etching desgin on its surface, which makes garskin look like child’s play. Very good choice of aesthetic indeed. Enough said. To be seen and no needed to be described.

Many have compliant about the uselessness of the mouse pad’s multitouch functions, which I would say it functions, but its accuracy of execution is certainly a far cry from that of a Mac. So is the tracking during the operation of the multitouch.

Right next to the mouse pad is a the fingerprint reader. By far it is rather accurate, erring just a tad slightly on being too sensitive to register a correct print, and a wrong print certainly won’t get through. The reader is also associated to a program included which helps you log in sites by using your finger print, and it does this by saving the username and password while tagging these information to the sites which you designate as authorized for finger print access. Neat feature.

The IO ports avaliable to this laptop is standard fare other than the eSATA/USB 2-in-1 port which required some strength to plug and unplug. Otherwise, it is just plain genius to have such a option, even if I have yet to utilize it. This bring us up to a total of 3 USB port, and quite a good number to work with for a laptop of this size.

Screen comes in a glossy coat which may tend to be irritating when put to use against strong light or any kind, but the screen brightness at max level can more than make up. Usually. Clarity of the screen does not of any kind of complaints and are pleasingly sharp in almost all cases of use. I may personally find the colors requring a tad more saturation at worst, otherwise its perfectly fine as well.

One of the main attractiveness to this laptop lies in the aluminium etching design on the screen-side cover and the palm rest area. It certainly even make mac owners turn their heads, quite literally, from my experience. However the one very unfortunate thing about this is that if ever in its life time it has the sad chance of meeting an unfriendly bump from an object sharp enough, a permanent scar is likely to stay, and a very obvious one at that. I now 2 of these and I am still searching for a way to alleviate the unpleasant form. Do take care with where you place your DM4.

HP has an entire suite of maintainence and tuning software but I find that they are slightly buggy. For the most part they are just GUI which helps to link to individual microsoft tuning and maintainence software such a disk defragmentator and merely helps you execute them all together or seperately, for all these options simply use windows 7 onboard programs to perform their task and do not offer any significant improvements beyond them. HP also included by default the ability to back up your laptop either from its backup drive or by creating restore disks, which I think was really important as I have used it more than once already.

All in all this package is more than satisfying for the poor student squeezing every ounce of productivity out of every penny, and supports enough hardware to run starcraft 2 considerably after the other 3-D software that has to function, and considering the added styling to laptop, it really has my vote as a very cost efficient option to mobile computing.

UPDATE: After a year of use thus far, its functions and speed has not deteriorated by much, nor its charging capacity (provided you take care to remove the battery whenever we are plugging in and the battery is full).

Razer Lycosa: Dismantling And Cleansing

Razer has made a remarkably feature optimized common use keyboard, bringing with a beautiful gloss finish, one USB connector, mic and headphone 3.5mm plug, a touch pad media panel, and that oh-so-sexy blue backlit keys with a flat profile rubber coating. Posting a review right after this.

But so the same problems always occur, even with something as sexy as this, its really got “the day of the month once in a while”. Things do get under the keys and that irritates people who appreciate well-made art as such (read: me). Having had the courage and foolishness to dismantle everything without so much of a second thought, well what do you think I did?

Introducing the blue LED lit panel and touch pads~

Razer Lycosa Touch Pad

So how did I get here?

The solution, as with most case, lies in the back of the keyboard. Gee this is idiot-proof: remove all screws.

You see that white round sticker in the middle of the keyboard? That’s a Warranty Protection Sticker.

Sticker Removed=No Warranty.

The way to go about this (unproven as of yet, thankfully) is to take it off from the edge of the sticker with your nails. Nice and slowly, like the wrapping paper from the present that your crush gave you. Place it somewhere you can remember too. Remove the screw under the sticker.

Now with every screw out, you can pry open the keyboard begining from the side where the wrist rest is attached to. Work your way gentle across the keyboard to the point where the wires exit the keyboard. That’s where you need to undo the locking clips by opening up the keyboard like a clam. where the hinges are on the both sides beside the wires. Then you will see the LED panel and touch pad panels (described as touch pad assembly here on) along with the silicone spring pads .

Left: Main Board. Top: Touch Pad assembly. Right: Media Touch Panel. Black block in the middle of the picture pin connection between main board and media touch panel.

What you see above is what you get removing the back cover off. A long touch pad assembly with silicone spring pad (hidden from view) connected to a main board via ribbon connectors and silver taped to it. The main board also connect to the media touch panel via pin connectors. You will have to remove the main board from the media touch panel gently. Try to to be gentle on the pins and still maintaining the position of the silver tape on the main board and touch pad. Set it aside, and then we can begin to remove the silicone spring pad and media touch panel.
I thank Razer for making a one peice silicone spring pad. I had a terribly great time with INDIVIDUAL spring bits from other keyboards, and I lost some of these bits too, but with the Lycosa this is not an issue.

Silicone Spring Pad. Media Touch Panel (right)

Remove the spring pad from the screw thread column slowly and gently. Patience and precise careful work are great things to have all the time. Then unscrew and remove the media touch panel as well and set aside.

Unscrew the media touch panel, and we will finally have the the key plate isolated.
Its gets a little tricky. You have to remove all the long keys. By that it means all the keys that are long and have a supporting metal bar attached to it. These are the left and right shift, enter, numpad enter, zero, minus, and backspace. All long keys are held by a primary column that has clip lock and another or a few supporting columns that do not have these locks, so do look carefully and push out at the right columns.

Metal Supports And Long Keys

You will see below what I have removed.

key plate and removed keys. some other non-metal-supported keys like a, g, h and numpad period are removed to allow water to flush thru better

There’s already some lubricant grease between the metal key supports and the plastic holder for the metal supports on the key plate, so you may want to either remove that completely or flush the key plate with water anyway and leave it there, drying just the area around it.

You can choose to remove more keys so that the water can flush out everything under the keys more efficiently.

Dry out the keys with a towel. You can then begin to remove some of the keys to dry the underplate to aid in quicker drying. I personally won’t recommend using a blow dryer for long durations or at high power, as heat may cause the plastic to soften without you noticing it, and may also cause the rubber coating on the keys to shrink too much in differnece, causing a seperation with the key itself. Nonetheless everyone is entitled to try and I would welcome your report=)

Its a long tedious task to dry it but it will be well worth it. Drying it well is pretty important if you do not want to cause your metal supports from rusting. Make sure you can dry as much seperate components as much as you can as your time (or patience) allows.

Well, I’m sure most people are able to assemble what they diassembled, but in any case, I will go thru it.

1.)All dried, place silicone spring pad onto the key plate. Watch for matching holes before you try to press it in.

2.)Map the main board + touch pad to the screw thread columns slowly and gently. At the same time concurrently, ensure that theScrew back.I hope you enjoy your fresh and new Lycosa once again.

Disclaimer: Modification and disassembly is carried out to the owner’s own risk of damaging and voiding of warranty. If you are not cofident and unsure, do try other more superficial solutions

Genesis

I’m Glenn, and I love my toys.

I can’t get enough of it, and ever have enough of it. Curiosity and plain fasicnation drives my 6 (yeah 6) senses to take, hold, twist, switch, toggle, click, press, mix match and muck around, and then I finally open up some of them simply to figure it all out, and it sometimes don’t end up as I wanted it to. But hey, isn’t that the way the world works?

Here you get to see what I am or had owned, and if were wondering if any of these works for you, well, lucky you, I’ve taken the bite on these already.

Feel free to email me at glenncain009@gmail.com to know more.