I'm In Ur Suprmarket, Eatin' Yer Vegies!

Wow! 2 posts in one month! I'm improving!

Well, this post is not tech-related. But I just had to post this. This is a true story!

My family and I were at the NTUC at Tiong Bahru Plaza (that's a local supermarket for those who don't know), and my wife was looking for vegetables. She suddenly got excited and called me over to look at a particular pack of leafy greens. Only after I went over and looked at the vegetables did I understand what the excitement was about.

There was this small white frog in the vegetables. I managed to take a photo of it before my wife brought it to the nearby staff at the weighing scales. Unfortunately, said staff quickly sealed the bag and threw it in the rubbish bin. I guess it was naive of us to think they'd free the frog and wash the vegetables. :/

Anyway, here's the picture I took, edited to be a LOLfrog. I wonder if it's the first lolfrog. It was difficult to get the little frog to be focused on my handphone's camera. So the frog looks blurred. It think the camera focused on my foot below, through the plastic bag, instead. Arrrrrr!!!!!

I can't help but feel sorry for the frog. I hope it died happy, on a full stomach.

Here's another picture of the frog, taken using my wife's handphone camera.

Speaking of eating... I was back at the Expo last weekend for the Singapore Food Expo. Free samples galore... mmmmmm...

We were expecting food to be a bit less expensive there but there was no such luck. If anything, they were pricier. I guess they have to cover for all the free samples being doled out. There was all sorts of food and drinks, but we didn't stay long. Sampled some drinks and coffee, pan-fried fish, bak gua, vegetarian dishes, and I can't remember anything else...

There was also an MPH warehouse sale and Guardian sale going on. The place was packed. And I took another photo of the place I mentioned in my previous post. The one with Tux as their mascot? The shop is called Happy Chow.

Samsung Ultra Edition 8.4

Before I talk about the phone I've been using for some weeks now, I just want to talk about a couple of other things.

First off, regarding the installation of iPodLinux on my 5.5th generation iPod. I decided against this as the iPodLinux does not yet support the video decoding chip. There is mpeg playback capability in the cvs version but that is software playback. I even waited, hoping someone would add this feature to iPodLinux, but have finally given up. I also looked up RockBox and it's the same situation there. So I've given up on this idea at the moment since I have no urgent need to play music files of other formats.

The second thing I want to bring up, is regarding the 'mascot' of a small shop I saw recently. It's at the Expo MRT station. And it looked very familiar! I was surprised when I first noticed it. Here's a picture I quickly snapped.

That's the cute, round version of Tux! I wonder if there's some sort of copyright violation here...

On to the phone. I've had this phone for some time now and would like to record my impressions of it. I got it for cheap when I signed up for SingTel Mobile last month. I just need to point out, I'm not a power user. I didn't even buy a micro SD expansion card for it. With that in mind, let's jump in.

The phone is thin! 8.4 mm! But it doesn't feel small enough to be uncomfortable. Handphones nowadays are small, I feel uncomfortable holding them. Feels like I would drop it any moment. The Samsung Ultra Edition 8.4 feels just nice for me. And it's thin enough to slip in any pocket. So, physically, it's very attractive. My only gripe with the physical layout is that the connectivity/charging jack is located on the side. It's 1 single port for everything. It's not really a problem when you are just charging or connecting to the PC, but it's weird when you use the earphones that come with the phone. the cable juts out from the side, so your pocket needs to be wide enough.

This brings us to the included accessories. Samsung gives you a USB PC connection cum charging cable, a regular charging adapter, earphones, and installation CD. This is good. Everything you need. So if you have no Bluetooth on your PC, just plug in the cable to download photos and videos. I like that the USB cable can charge the phone as well. What's not so good is that you need to install the PC Studio to get the phone to connect and do anything. Also, the earphones supplied do not sit well in my ears. I'm not certain if it's just me, but they fall out as soon as I turn my head to fast. So I'm constantly holding the buds in my ears when I use them to listen to songs. I looked ridiculous. I wish they gave you an option to use your own earphones/headphones.

Right, on to the usability and performance. I use SMS more than voice on my handphones. So text messaging is important to me. I'm happy to say I could switch from my sony ericsson to this phone without much problems. The buttons aren't too difficult to press. I just wish the default button on the navigation portion didn't try to connect to the internet everytime. It has T9 auto completion which I love, and even Pinyin for chinese characters. When you need to enter special symbols, you need to switch to Symbol entry mode. A minor annoyance I find is the way you have to select contacts to send text messages to. I don't mean when replying, but when you compose a new message. It assumes by default that you may send to multiple contacts. First you press a button to see the contact list, then find the contact and choose 'Select'. When you are done, you have to choose options, and select 'Save'. Only then can you send the message. Too many button presses for my liking.

Another thing I look for in a handphone is the camera. Has to be decent enough since I sometimes like to snap pictures or videos of my kids when we're outside. The Samsung Ultra Edition 8.4 has a 2 megapixel camera. The pictures look pretty good but seem a bit too bright sometimes. Indoors, it doesn't perform as well in dim lighting conditions. The camera itself takes time to turn on or switch from still shots to video and vice versa. But these are all expected from a phone camera. My biggest complaint so far is that your hand must be rock steady to take pictures. In fact I snapped 2 pictures of the Tux logo i saw in the shop I mentioned above. One of them was so blurred you can't make anything out. This problem seems to lessen when you decrease the size/resolution of the pictures you take. I suspect this has to do with the fact that the phone is so thin. I take more shots to compensate and I still get some beautiful photos as a result. I just don't expect to be able to capture fleeting moments anymore. Oh, and the phone actually has 2 cameras that you can switch between. One facing the user as it is actually a 3G phone and supports video calls.

Voice calls are clear enough for me that I don't have problems even while riding on the train. The default ringtones and message tones might not be loud enough to be heard, though. I change my ringtone for an annoyingly loud sound which I can hear even while listening to music on the train. So that's not really a problem. However, the message tone cannot be easily changed. You cannot use your mp3 as a message tone. It only accepts Samsung's mmf format. So unless you know how to convert to this format, you're stuck with the stock tunes the phone comes with.

One thing I like is the number entry display. The one that shows up when you start entering a phone number to call. You can switch the styles, although there are only a few available. The stylized font and quill animation always amuse me. Of course, I normally just go to the contact list to make a call so I don't actually get to use it all that often. The display itself is clear and big. Samsung's display are one of the best, I think. Although for 3G use it may be considered small.

The main disadvantage to this phone would be the battery life. As I said, I'm not a heavy user. But I find myself charging it too often as compared to my previous phones. Since I also use my handphones as an alarm clock, this is important to me. The first few days I forgot to charge the phone and it just shut itself off. So I didn't get up on time for work.

As for the other features of this phone, they are quite normal of today's phones. I did not get to try out the 3G data features, because I'm too cheap. But I have no problems with the other operations of the phone, and applications like media player, calculator, etc. In fact the menu system with numbered shortcut items is very nice and handy. The directional keys can also be configured as shortcut keys.

All in all, a decent phone for a casual user like me. I am always amazed that they can fit all this on such a small space. After all, the battery and keypad itself takes up half the phone. But maybe I won't keep it for long. I can't stand the camera and battery life. :)

Edit: I posted more shots using the Samsung Ultra Edition 8.4 here.

Edit: By request, am posting a picture of the phone which I lifted from somewhere.