Hardware:

After the build quality disaster that is the Sony Ericsson Arc, my biggest fear was that the SGS II would be the same: super-thin and cheap build, resulting in a very unpleasant feel in hand. But, my first contact with the phone was actually a pleasant one. I took the phone out of the (very small) box and the phone actually felt quite good. Sure we still talk plastic here, but the build quality is really nice. Nothing like you could break it with some brute force. And WOW, that thing is ultra thin! 8,49mm thin that is. I felt that Samsung has hit the nail on the head with the extreme thin, yet 4,3″ big device. The feel in hand is perfect.

The front of the phone is dominated by one big piece of glass, spanning over almost the whole device, and the most breathtaking screen I have ever seen on any device. Samsung promised a lot with it’s new screen tech and boy, have they delivered. This 4,3″ super AMOLED plus brings black levels and eye-crushing colors unlike anything I have ever seen. Yes you can nitpick now, and say that its 800×480 pixels resolution is less than the HTC Sensation, but that’s pretty much the tech audience of today: “Sure the SGS II has this resolution, but device XYZ has a better one, so it’s not that good”. Pah, sure, grow up. You know what? I don’t care, the Galaxy S II screen is perfect as it is, and i don’t need the extra few pixels. Speaking of the display, this was one of the major factors why i actually skipped the HTC sensation. It is absolutely brilliant for all day to day tasks, even in sunny conditions, as I have tested last weekend. Pictures, Videos, even browsing around is nothing but fun on this gorgeous piece of touchscreen. I absolutely love it.

Underneath the screen is a physical Home button, with a capacitive menu- and back-button on either sides of the home one. On top of the screen you find the phone speaker, front facing 2MP camera and light-sensors. The whole front is kept in black, which makes the device a lot more stylish in my opinion, and in different lightning somewhere even difficult to tell where the screen ends and the device begins. lovely. Furthermore, Samsung has worked on the coating of the front, as the SGS II is not as much as fingerprint magnet, than any other device I had so far. The sides of the SGS II feature the power-/screen lock button on the right, the volume keys on the left side, a 3,5mm audio jack on top, and the microUSB charging- and data cable connector on the bottom. All very clean, the phone never feels too overloaded. I would have appreciated a physical camera button on the SGS II, but Sammy probably went with the masses here and skipped it, relying solely on a touch cam shutter button.

Turning the screen around, reveals a very welcome surprise, as opposed to Nexus and Galaxy S – the battery cover this time has a nice texture, making the device a LOT more grippier to handle. The battery cover itself is a touch of nothing on this device and is actually quite scary when pulled off, but placed on the device it sits super tight, so I don’t have issues with that. The speaker sits on the slightly raised lower part of the SGS II, being very slightly curved. It’s loud enough for your calls and notifications, although will eventually get a lot more quiet when laying on softer undergrounds. Speaker Quality was good, although slightly creaky when on full volume.

The camera on the SGS II has been cranked up to 8 megapixels, with a single LED flash. The camera shutter is operated via touch and can be either used with the big cam interface shutter button, or via touch to focus. There’s a gazillion of settings and scene modes, spanning from party pics to autumn colors and even a setting for visibility on the outside, cranking up the display brightness to a maximum, and going back to normal after closing the cam application. Nice! Videos are recorded in 1080p at 30fps, a very rare combination for mobile phones, but will eventually appear more often on those powerful high-end smartphones. The autofocus while shooting videos was actually quite usable, something that i always missed on my preferred camera phone, the Nokia N8. Interested in how the camera actually performs? Well, it surely isn’t a Nokia N8, and it never claims to be, but I gotta say, the camera was better than expected. Pictures turned out to be crisp in normal light conditions, while expectedly not reaching the good low light capabilities of the SE Arc or even Nokia’s EDoF camera units. I will be posting a post later on this week, with sample camera shots and some short video clips, showing you the video quality, in 1080p of course.

Price & Availability

Samsung Galaxy S2 is available in India. The price starts at Rs 33000/-.

Hardware:

After the build quality disaster that is the Sony Ericsson Arc, my biggest fear was that the SGS II would be the same: super-thin and cheap build, resulting in a very unpleasant feel in hand. But, my first contact with the phone was actually a pleasant one. I took the phone out of the (very small) box and the phone actually felt quite good. Sure we still talk plastic here, but the build quality is really nice. Nothing like you could break it with some brute force. And WOW, that thing is ultra thin! 8,49mm thin that is. I felt that Samsung has hit the nail on the head with the extreme thin, yet 4,3″ big device. The feel in hand is perfect.

The front of the phone is dominated by one big piece of glass, spanning over almost the whole device, and the most breathtaking screen I have ever seen on any device. Samsung promised a lot with it’s new screen tech and boy, have they delivered. This 4,3″ super AMOLED plus brings black levels and eye-crushing colors unlike anything I have ever seen. Yes you can nitpick now, and say that its 800×480 pixels resolution is less than the HTC Sensation, but that’s pretty much the tech audience of today: “Sure the SGS II has this resolution, but device XYZ has a better one, so it’s not that good”. Pah, sure, grow up. You know what? I don’t care, the Galaxy S II screen is perfect as it is, and i don’t need the extra few pixels. Speaking of the display, this was one of the major factors why i actually skipped the HTC sensation. It is absolutely brilliant for all day to day tasks, even in sunny conditions, as I have tested last weekend. Pictures, Videos, even browsing around is nothing but fun on this gorgeous piece of touchscreen. I absolutely love it.

Underneath the screen is a physical Home button, with a capacitive menu- and back-button on either sides of the home one. On top of the screen you find the phone speaker, front facing 2MP camera and light-sensors. The whole front is kept in black, which makes the device a lot more stylish in my opinion, and in different lightning somewhere even difficult to tell where the screen ends and the device begins. lovely. Furthermore, Samsung has worked on the coating of the front, as the SGS II is not as much as fingerprint magnet, than any other device I had so far. The sides of the SGS II feature the power-/screen lock button on the right, the volume keys on the left side, a 3,5mm audio jack on top, and the microUSB charging- and data cable connector on the bottom. All very clean, the phone never feels too overloaded. I would have appreciated a physical camera button on the SGS II, but Sammy probably went with the masses here and skipped it, relying solely on a touch cam shutter button.

Turning the screen around, reveals a very welcome surprise, as opposed to Nexus and Galaxy S – the battery cover this time has a nice texture, making the device a LOT more grippier to handle. The battery cover itself is a touch of nothing on this device and is actually quite scary when pulled off, but placed on the device it sits super tight, so I don’t have issues with that. The speaker sits on the slightly raised lower part of the SGS II, being very slightly curved. It’s loud enough for your calls and notifications, although will eventually get a lot more quiet when laying on softer undergrounds. Speaker Quality was good, although slightly creaky when on full volume.

The camera on the SGS II has been cranked up to 8 megapixels, with a single LED flash. The camera shutter is operated via touch and can be either used with the big cam interface shutter button, or via touch to focus. There’s a gazillion of settings and scene modes, spanning from party pics to autumn colors and even a setting for visibility on the outside, cranking up the display brightness to a maximum, and going back to normal after closing the cam application. Nice! Videos are recorded in 1080p at 30fps, a very rare combination for mobile phones, but will eventually appear more often on those powerful high-end smartphones. The autofocus while shooting videos was actually quite usable, something that i always missed on my preferred camera phone, the Nokia N8. Interested in how the camera actually performs? Well, it surely isn’t a Nokia N8, and it never claims to be, but I gotta say, the camera was better than expected. Pictures turned out to be crisp in normal light conditions, while expectedly not reaching the good low light capabilities of the SE Arc or even Nokia’s EDoF camera units. I will be posting a post later on this week, with sample camera shots and some short video clips, showing you the video quality, in 1080p of course.

Price & Availability

Samsung Galaxy S2 is available in India. The price starts at Rs 33000/-.

It is nevertheless claimed by AppleInsider contacts that the task manager will be based on interface technology in Mac OS X, which could potentially refer to the basic Command-Tab switcher, or something like Expose. Apple has been extremely concerned about preserving speed and battery life, however, and currently limits multitasking to first-party apps such as the phone dialer and the iPod. Users cannot, for example, stream Internet radio and play a game at the same time, or even start a radio app and then return to a first-party app.

Apple might also increase the amount of available RAM on the iPhone to ensure rapid switching times.

Earlier claims that Apple iPhone 4.0 firmware will not have multitasking are not true claim many sources close to Apple. In fact Apple is said to have developed a "full-on solution" to multitasking, although no details have been leaked on how problems like battery life, memory use and processor consumption will be handled, reports ipodnn.

It is nevertheless claimed by AppleInsider contacts that the task manager will be based on interface technology in Mac OS X, which could potentially refer to the basic Command-Tab switcher, or something like Expose. Apple has been extremely concerned about preserving speed and battery life, however, and currently limits multitasking to first-party apps such as the phone dialer and the iPod. Users cannot, for example, stream Internet radio and play a game at the same time, or even start a radio app and then return to a first-party app.

Apple might also increase the amount of available RAM on the iPhone to ensure rapid switching times.

"Every one loves to have the Gadgets which helps & entertain in our daily life. Infact in the present time no one can even think a life without a gadgets. I am one of those who love to have all the latest gadgets. The reason why I started this blog to make all of you aware of the new gadgets introduced in the market. I hope you may be benefitted with this blog and will continue visiting this blog frequently". – Abhisek Vibhuti

Logitech Squeezebox Boom

College students love music, so the Squeezebox is perfect. The Wi-Fi radio speakers can stream premium music content from online music services, along with internet radio stations. Some of the services offered are Sirius, Rhapsody, Slacker, Pandora, and Last.fm. But that’s not all, it also streams music straight from a PC or Mac on a Wi-Fi network. For $5 more, you can add an extension cable to add an iPod, PC or another source. It’s available on the Logitech website and will run you $300.

iPhone 3GS

The iPhone is still the hottest phone in the market and everyone wants to get their hands on the one of these devices. The iPhone 3GS takes it to another level by offering video recording and editing capability. While many may not like AT&T, its the only carrier if you want the iPhone. The 3GS could end up being your go to device for everything.

Amazon Kindle DX

Carrying around those heavy textbooks no longer applies with the Amazon DX. It’s only 19 ounces and can hold hundred of textbooks for all your classes. You can download books under 60 seconds but most college kids are also pretty savvy internet users, so look online, you’ll also get access to textbooks from such educational publishers as Cengage Learning, Pearson and Wiley. The 9.7-inch screen wireless reading device costs $489. If you can find textbooks online, then the cost of the device might not be so bad, considering textbooks can be very expensive.

Playstation 3 Slim

Sony came out last week and made their gaming console very appealing by making it slimmer, lighter and faster. Most college students will already be in school when Sony releases the gaming console, but it’ll be out during the first week of September, so it’s not too far away. Plus with the slimmer design, it’ll be easier to carry around.

iPod Touch 3rd Generation/Microsoft Zune HD

Apple is planning to release their 3rd generation iPod Touch music player. It’s rumored to be updated with a camera. The iPod Touch is one of the best selling music players out in the market, so why not get the updated version.

If you’re not an Apple person, then Microsoft is releasing the Zune HD. It’ll offer a touchscreen with a Tegra processor, and updated OS. Plus it looks good enough to compete against Apple’s Touch.

The Zune HD will start out at $220 for the 16GB version, while the Apple iPod Touch will probably be in the $250 range for 16GB version.

Macbook Pro

Apple has lowered the price for their Macbook Pro line and also included the 13-inch in their Pro family. The 13-inch starts out at $1,199, while the 15-inch will run you around $1,699, and then the high end 17-inch, starts out at $2,499. All of the Macbook Pros are available with a student discount on Apple’s Education Store.

Brita Ultramax Filter

If you’ve ever lived in a dorm room, then you know you never want to drink the water on campus. Most kids end up getting bottled water but that adds up and not really green. To solve that problem, get a Brita filter, better yet, get a Brita Ultramax water dispenser. It’ll give you 18 8 ounce glasses of water and has a electronic gauge that’ll tell you when it’s time to change the filter. The water dispenser will cost you $42. Split it with your roommate and you’re looking at $21 for a convenient and healthy water solution.

Nikon Coolpix S1000PJ Projector Camera

Teens love taking pics of themselves and their friends and what better way to share them right away instead of waiting for them to be uploaded on Facebook, than on your dorm room wall. The Nikon projector camera solves that problem. It can make a 40-inch picture from six feet away, showing your friends all the stupid things you were doing while getting hammered last night. It’s a fun and an expensive camera. But you pay more for the latest features and a projector on a camera is something. The cost of the Nikon projector camera is $429 and will be available soon, in September.

Nintendo DSi

Nintendo’s most popular handheld gaming console will definitely make the breaks between classes a little more fun. No one really studies in between classes right? So, why not pull out your DSi and continue your saved game until it’s time to head into Econ 101. The handheld console will run you around $169.99 and is available now.

Shure Professional Headphones

I’m a big fan of headphones and when Shure, known for their ear phones, released three professional headsets, I wanted one. They’re available in 3 different models. Prices for the professional headsets ranges from $59.99 for the entry level headset, $99 for the mid level headsets and $199.99 for the higher end model. They’re definitely worth grabbing if you’re going to cram for exams and papers. Might as well listen to your music comfortably.

"Every one loves to have the Gadgets which helps & entertain in our daily life. Infact in the present time no one can even think a life without a gadgets. I am one of those who love to have all the latest gadgets. The reason why I started this blog to make all of you aware of the new gadgets introduced in the market. I hope you may be benefitted with this blog and will continue visiting this blog frequently". – Abhisek Vibhuti

Logitech Squeezebox Boom

College students love music, so the Squeezebox is perfect. The Wi-Fi radio speakers can stream premium music content from online music services, along with internet radio stations. Some of the services offered are Sirius, Rhapsody, Slacker, Pandora, and Last.fm. But that’s not all, it also streams music straight from a PC or Mac on a Wi-Fi network. For $5 more, you can add an extension cable to add an iPod, PC or another source. It’s available on the Logitech website and will run you $300.

iPhone 3GS

The iPhone is still the hottest phone in the market and everyone wants to get their hands on the one of these devices. The iPhone 3GS takes it to another level by offering video recording and editing capability. While many may not like AT&T, its the only carrier if you want the iPhone. The 3GS could end up being your go to device for everything.

Amazon Kindle DX

Carrying around those heavy textbooks no longer applies with the Amazon DX. It’s only 19 ounces and can hold hundred of textbooks for all your classes. You can download books under 60 seconds but most college kids are also pretty savvy internet users, so look online, you’ll also get access to textbooks from such educational publishers as Cengage Learning, Pearson and Wiley. The 9.7-inch screen wireless reading device costs $489. If you can find textbooks online, then the cost of the device might not be so bad, considering textbooks can be very expensive.

Playstation 3 Slim

Sony came out last week and made their gaming console very appealing by making it slimmer, lighter and faster. Most college students will already be in school when Sony releases the gaming console, but it’ll be out during the first week of September, so it’s not too far away. Plus with the slimmer design, it’ll be easier to carry around.

iPod Touch 3rd Generation/Microsoft Zune HD

Apple is planning to release their 3rd generation iPod Touch music player. It’s rumored to be updated with a camera. The iPod Touch is one of the best selling music players out in the market, so why not get the updated version.

If you’re not an Apple person, then Microsoft is releasing the Zune HD. It’ll offer a touchscreen with a Tegra processor, and updated OS. Plus it looks good enough to compete against Apple’s Touch.

The Zune HD will start out at $220 for the 16GB version, while the Apple iPod Touch will probably be in the $250 range for 16GB version.

Macbook Pro

Apple has lowered the price for their Macbook Pro line and also included the 13-inch in their Pro family. The 13-inch starts out at $1,199, while the 15-inch will run you around $1,699, and then the high end 17-inch, starts out at $2,499. All of the Macbook Pros are available with a student discount on Apple’s Education Store.

Brita Ultramax Filter

If you’ve ever lived in a dorm room, then you know you never want to drink the water on campus. Most kids end up getting bottled water but that adds up and not really green. To solve that problem, get a Brita filter, better yet, get a Brita Ultramax water dispenser. It’ll give you 18 8 ounce glasses of water and has a electronic gauge that’ll tell you when it’s time to change the filter. The water dispenser will cost you $42. Split it with your roommate and you’re looking at $21 for a convenient and healthy water solution.

Nikon Coolpix S1000PJ Projector Camera

Teens love taking pics of themselves and their friends and what better way to share them right away instead of waiting for them to be uploaded on Facebook, than on your dorm room wall. The Nikon projector camera solves that problem. It can make a 40-inch picture from six feet away, showing your friends all the stupid things you were doing while getting hammered last night. It’s a fun and an expensive camera. But you pay more for the latest features and a projector on a camera is something. The cost of the Nikon projector camera is $429 and will be available soon, in September.

Nintendo DSi

Nintendo’s most popular handheld gaming console will definitely make the breaks between classes a little more fun. No one really studies in between classes right? So, why not pull out your DSi and continue your saved game until it’s time to head into Econ 101. The handheld console will run you around $169.99 and is available now.

Shure Professional Headphones

I’m a big fan of headphones and when Shure, known for their ear phones, released three professional headsets, I wanted one. They’re available in 3 different models. Prices for the professional headsets ranges from $59.99 for the entry level headset, $99 for the mid level headsets and $199.99 for the higher end model. They’re definitely worth grabbing if you’re going to cram for exams and papers. Might as well listen to your music comfortably.