- entry 2015/01/20

New contract

My chosen phone was a Motorola G (4G). Cheap and cheerful. I wanted to plan out everything in advance because I was dreading going to the Orange shop after what happened last time. We waited a while. A while being defined as "are you sure the parking ticket lasts this long?". I went to speak to a man and - first problem. The Motorola G was only available ordering on the internet. I could have done all this stuff on the internet, if Orange didn't make it kind of complicated. Oh. Crap.
So the man asked me what I was looking for in a phone. I said "inexpensive", "good display, preferably HD", and "not running a prehistoric version of Android". He asked me what I was most likely to use it for. I took out my Xperia and showed him a bit of Akatsuki no Yona. I said when I'm at home I turn mobile off completely and just use the phone like a small tablet on WiFi.
He thought for a moment, then showed me an Samsung s5 Mini. I laughed and said that sort of thing was so far out of my budget. He said, actually, it is cheaper than the G. Say what?
Well, actually, it was. If I signed up with a 24 month contract, and put down €100, I'd have a little piece of paper that would allow me to have fifty euros reimbursed (actually, deducted from the phone bill). That works out €9.99 less then the Moto G.
Yeah, I thought to myself, it's the baby version of the s5 so it will be missing loads of features. But I bought it anyway because the display did actually look rather nice. Since I would be watching animé and such on it, that was important.

I also changed my contract from Open Style (which no longer exists) to Open Play. Here's a side by side.

So, for only seven euros more, I get six times as much data, the ability to use my phone as a personal hotspot for the iPad, and if I should ever go on holiday to Spain, the UK, etc - a small but useful allocation of calls and data. So if I'm stuck for a night in that peculiar fifties-style hotel at a crossroads in Manzanares, Spain, I can still browse my favourite web sites... well, assuming there's a mobile tower nearby.

The transition? Clicky-clicky-done. It'll take effect from my next billing period which is, I think, the 22nd.

Samsung s5 Mini (part 1)

So at a brief glance, the phone delivers more.

And, believe me, we're just scratching the surface.

Here's the first difference. I never used to PIN lock my phone as it was either such a hassle to unlock it for every time it was wanted, or it would do something dumb like "unlock at power up and never ask again". When security is too much hassle to bother, that's not a good thing. Not so with the s5 mini. The physical home button doubles as a fingerprint reader. It isn't foolproof (somebody beat it with a latex and zinc (I think?) model of a real fingerprint) but for the sorts of things that my phone will want to be protected from, the fingerprint scanner is a simple and reasonably secure way to unlock the phone. Better yet, the scanner does not require the finger to be read exactly straight. So my second registered fingerprint is my thumb, so I can just flick my thumb across the sensor. It's at an angle so might require a second try, but it is a quick thing to do. There is also the option to unlock the phone by entering a password. This is useful for times when the phone can respond to input, but you aren't able to provide a fingerprint. Such as when wearing latex gloves, or normal gloves that have special tips to permit touchscreens to be used. In these cases, I can just tap out the password and I'm in. So it works either way around.

The phone is quite easy to open up. Slide a fingernail under a small tab, the back panel simply unclips. Here lies another surprise.

I had wondered for a while why this never ending spat between Apple and Samsung seemed to focus so strongly on Samsung. Okay, there are similarities between the way Android does things compared to Apple (or vice versa) just as there are similarities between Windows and Ubuntu. Or, for what it is worth, any of them and RISC OS decades previously. Certain user interface elements are just "a given" that they will behave in a certain way. Once you have used a UI, you don't really need to be told what a button looks like or what a caret is for; just like when you get into a car you won't find the accelerator where the handbrake should be. But, why concentrate so much on Samsung? You hear of Apple screaming about how this and that is this and that (complicated legal dribble) but it's always Apple vs Samsung.

Now I understand.

I have always thought of Android as being a capable enough, if somewhat bloated, operating system for modern mobile phones which provides enough frameworks to allow you to get "apps" to do all the things you want. This is like the old J2ME system on acid. However... The web browser was functional, if unexciting. The email was (generally) functional, if unexciting to the point of being a bit awkward. SMS was functional but nothing to get excited over. It was better than the old feature-phone method, but it was a bit blah given that it's a near-gigahertz bit of kit running it. Phone? Contacts? About as much as is necessary, and not a lot more. Bluetooth? Headset/handsfree, yes. Object push? Perhaps. Or maybe one way. Or depending upon the phase of the moon. Keyboard? Not a hope in hell. The biggest win was the camera, which had plenty of options that could be tweaked (unlike iOS that dumbs it down to the level of "press this button to take a photo"). You knew that the system could be capable of good things, if Google didn't keep screwing it up with really lame default software (again, the "they'll go get an app" mentality), encouraging embedded adverts all over the place, and one of the most execrable permissions systems ever designed - that years along the line and we're still stuck with "read phone status and identity" so an app that wants to know if you're in a call (to shut itself down when you answer a call, for instance) gets unfettered access to all manner of personal identifiers including a phone ID, your phone number, IMEI and SIM numbers... Great stuff. Of course, the world blames this on a hiccup with Android 1.something, but Google is in no rush to correct this (split the API, make the new version of the old call return dummy data for compatibility) because it just so happens that phone unique identifiers are useful for in-app advertising. To elaborate, the READ_PHONE_STATE permission provides access to the ACTION_PHONE_STATE_CHANGED which is what most apps probably want. It also allows: getDeviceId() [the IMEI], getLine1Number(), getSimSerialNumber(), getSubscriberId(), getVoiceMailNumber()... [reference]
That's one example. There are more.
So, that's it. A capable and less expensive "unified" operating system ecosystem to bring together disparate manufacturers and disparate ways of doing things in to one thing that should be broadly compatible across the board.

Then I started up my Samsung.

The first thing was that it there was no Facebook app in sight. Samsung had added a few games and things, and Orange preloaded their own stuff, but by and large it wasn't cluttered with things I'd never use nor want. Some of the baked-in apps cannot be uninstalled, but via the App manager they can be disabled. I disabled "BlurbCheckout" and "Flipboard".
Out of the box, there is a calculator and a note jotter - simple things but surprising how often these things are overlooked. There is a PDF/doc viewer (and the full version can be downloaded from Samsung's own app store, if I feel like deviating from Google Docs). There is a voice recorder, a widget called "Torch" that can turn the flash on and off from the home screen, Google's news app, both the stock browser (that Google has given up on) plus Chrome. The built in video player is fairly basic looking but it has no problem with an animé in an MKV wrapper with on-screen subtitles. This puts it head and shoulders above everything else I have tried.

So, let's take a look around. First though, please note that the screenshots have been resized to fit the 680 width that applies to all images on my b.log. The real size is 1280×720. And, if you're looking at the reduced quality mobile version... god help you...

Here is the initial home screen showing the weather forecast - the pictures change depending upon the time of day. The standard background is a bright affair that looks like a screenshot from Starfighter 3000, so I used Google to find some pleasant cherry blossom, and the first match - Sakura tunnel by Masai Okeda was absolutely perfect.

Calling is simple and nice looking. Tap on a contact, and a clear and obvious screen will appear, along with a big photo of the person, if you have one. The photo here is mom out refilling the bird feeders in the snow. Hopefully our only snowy day - fingers crossed!

You can switch away from that to do other things, and a little pop up icon will appear overlaid onto the screen so you can remember you are in a call, see how long it has gone on for, and switch to the dialler if necessary.

I have installed the old (before they messed with it) version of WinAMP on the phone, but I'm not sure how much I will use it for the built in player is rather nice. It offers an extremely customisable EQ, a range of presets, something called "AdaptSound" which will test your ears to tweak the music to sound its best for you.

The camera seems fairly basic - the auto mode does most of what you might need, but there doesn't seem to be too many options for setting different kinds of scenes. It is weird not to see portrait, landscape, sunset, etc. Here are the "Modes". Panorama is nice to play with, but you'll be using Auto due to a lack of anything much else.

You might have more luck here, the camera settings:

Then there's the editor. If you are lucky, you might be able to crop the photo on any random phone. Not Samsung. Samsung delivers something useful as a standard feature.

It doesn't end there. Oh no. The feature list just goes on. I'm going to have to call it a day because I'm beyond bedtime, and I'll talk about it some more in a further post.

Your comments:

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Mick, 21st January 2015, 01:33

I want one. It ticks all the boxes. Hope you report back on the battery life as my S2 is like a landline. Always plugged in! Oh, is one the front two dots an LED to let you know if you have received a message?

Rick, 13th March 2015, 20:25

Hi Mick,  After a month and a bit of using the phone, it seems to be around 50% after a day of my average use (so it seems slightly better than my Xperia U). Obviously screen brightness, GPS, and mobile hotspot will suck the battery down, though thankfully Samsung have not opted for a welded-in battery. As such, if you will be out for a long time, want to make a lot of use of the phone, and have concerns over the battery life...you can always buy a spare to put in? It's nice to have that option.  I guess trains don't come with a lighter socket on the dashboard, so you won't be able to hook it up to charge while you're en route. Oh well... ;-)

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