GETTING TO GRIPS WITH A WHOLE NEW GALAXY

So I'm sitting here watching a movie on my TV, even though it's stored on my PC. I'm streaming it through my phone. While I do that, I'm also checking my emails, my twitter-feed and an on-line auction. With my phone.

I just got back from my run, which I tracked with my phone. While I ran, I listened to some podcasts and a nice lady told me how fast I was going and how far I had gone. On my phone.

And I'm thinking, "How can they make this any better?"

Ladies and gentlemen, the Samsung Galaxy S5...

Not even a year since Samsung released the S4 and already it's time to consider an upgrade. But what does the new one offer the 2013 model can't provide? Do this year's modifications add up to a major evolution, or are they just a collection of minor tweaks?

For that matter, was there really anything wrong with the SIII?

Of course there wasn't. These days, phones are pretty much all awesome but that doesn't mean you can't make them a bit awesomer.

At this point, I've had limited access to the latest model, so I can only really give you first impressions. Let's start with size, shape and feel...

It's too big. There's always a fine balancing act between screen size and something you can actually hold with one hand. Obviously everyone wants a massive screen, but two handed operation makes it a mini-tablet, not a handset.

In truth, the screen is only slightly larger, but the phone itself is quite a lot longer than the S4 - about the same width though. On the bright side, the new dimpled back plate provides a much grippier surface than its more plastic-feeling predecessors.

The S5 is water and dust resistant. Don't take it swimming, but you can drop it in the loo, as this video clearly demonstrates. This means you can go running in the rain, no probs. Unfortunately, it also means a cover over the USB socket at the bottom. It's actually a double USB port, because there's a microUSB 3.0 socket right next to the normal one - a belt-and-suspenders approach Apple didn't take when they made all their previous accessories obsolete with the new cable for the iPhone 5. So it's a big plug hole, requiring a big plug if you want to keep things watertight.

This is a major pain in the arse. Nobody wants to fumble around with fiddly little rubber bungs just to plug in or unplug their charger. And if that wasn't annoying enough, every time you unplug your charging cable, a reminder window pops up on the screen nagging you to make sure that plughole is all covered up again in case you get things wet and dusty. How many times do I need to be told? I get it. Put the plug back in. What am I going to do, leave it dangling around, hanging off the bottom of my phone. STOP REMINDING ME! Hopefully wireless charging options will be made more available for this handset than the last couple of generations, making the whole tedious plug process redundant. (That's right, guys. You can actually charge your S3 or S4 wirelessly, although you will have to scour the net pretty intensively to source the right accessories. I don't know why Samsung doesn't ship their handsets with wireless charging back plates by default, like Nokia does with their Lumias)

But the S5's bung hole is literally the only thing I could fault in the whole 4 days I had to play with it.

Everything about this phone just works a little bit more seamlessly and in some cases, a lot faster. Apps generally opened more quickly than on the S4. You can select the Download Booster function which combines the best of your WiFi and Mobile Data speeds to suck large files into your phone more efficiently than ever. But what really blew me away was the consistency of the WiFi connection. Apparently there are not one, but two swanky new WiFi antennae in there somewhere and whatever they've done to them, my streaming experience became noticeably smoother and more stable.

Some new features are just cute - like Kids Mode, which gives your sprogs access to the fun stuff without risking them messing up your important bits. Other features are potentially life-changing; the S Health app has been souped up to monitor even more of your exercise and nutrition routines than ever before. This all syncs up with Samsung's latest range of wearables, so you can literally plug yourself into the matrix. I tried this combination first hand (excuse the smartwatch pun) in an actual gym the other day. I nearly died, but was impressed by the results, which I'll share with you in the next blog.

I could go on all day, and that's probably the point. None of the changes are massive, but in combination, there are enough of them to make this Galaxy a very tempting upgrade.

AN END TO BARE-CHESTED BLOKES

Over the last few days, I've been lucky enough to have a sneak peak at both the Galaxy S5 and Gear Fit smartwatch from Samsung. I'll get to the new phone in the next blog, but what I'm most excited about right now is this cool thing on my wrist.

I'm the first one to admit I have a magpie-like tendency to fall in love in the latest piece of tech wizardry to cross my line of sight. So when the idea of a smartwatch became reality, I really, really wanted one. I didn't really know why, I just did. I wanted one even though I secretly suspected they were probably next to useless, couldn't really do any of the things they promised to and none of the things you actually wanted them to. Oh, yes - and they looked ridiculous and uncomfortable too.

Still wanted one though. What a tech tragic.

Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, depending on which way you look at it, I never managed to get my grasping mitts on the first couple of generations of smartwatch. I'd see other people wearing them. I'd stare. They'd wonder why I was creepily checking out their left hands.

That's all changed now - so have the watches. Not only does the Gear Fit live up to the hype, it surprised me by doing a whole list of things I had no idea it could.

As opposed to some of its predecessors, the Gear Fit is slim and light. Throw in the innovative curved AMOLED screen and the whole package is a super comfortable fit.

Not only can you choose from a small selection of watch faces, (presumably more will be available for download further down the track) but you can change the wallpaper colour, pattern or image in the background - if want, you can put your actual face on your watch face.

That's fun, but not especially useful. What moves this thing from the category of nifty gadget to genuine tool is how seamlessly it connects with the phone it's paired to. I've never encountered a bluetooth device that works so consistently with no glitches and over such a long range.

You'd expect something called "Fit" to feature things like a pedometer and heart-rate monitor. I'd hoped I'd be able to read texts and maybe be alerted about emails and phone calls. What I didn't anticipate was what happened when my mum texted me.

I texted her back. With my watch. And it was easy.

Texts appear clearly on the curvy screen and then you have the option to send a pre-programmed quick reply. Remember, these are texts, so replies are supposed to be quick.

What surprised me more is emails work exactly the same way - obviously you only get a preview of any longer emails, without attachments, but again you can still send a quick reply or do what you normally need to do with 85% of emails... ignore them completely.

That's right, folks; you get an email, your watch vibrates, a quick glance and you've successfully ignored that message about the lunch man arriving. All without getting your phone out of your pocket or handbag.

But the thing that impressed me most was the media controller.

I use my phone to access more and more media all the time. Obviously I listen to music, directly from the handset using earbuds or headphones, via bluetooth in my car or at home on various sound systems. Once you're playing something, you can then use the Gear Fit to pause, play or skip it, or even adjust the volume. While your phone may be plugged in to something across the room, you are now effectively wearing a bluetooth remote control on your wrist. What's more, it seems to work with everything; streaming apps like iHeart radio? Not a problem. Even when streaming video from my PC through my phone to my TV, I can still pause and play from my watch.

Kill me now, it doesn't get better than this.

But back to exercise... Do you know what I hate most about running? Guys who take their shirts off. Why do they do it? I get that it's hot work, but that's why there are singlets. It's always the guys who are a little too old, fat or gross who insist on getting their gears off as well. Ick. Goes without saying, I would never go there... except... the other day it was a bit cold and rainy, so I elected to wear my phone/armband UNDER my long-sleeved running top in case there was a deluge mid-run.

When I run I use my phone to track my route, pace and time and listen to podcasts. Unfortunately, for some reason I had downloaded a whole bunch of podcasts I'd already listened to. Very difficult to skip a track when your phone is in an armband, under your shirt. Bugger. Nothing else for it, I made sure I waited till I reached a secluded section of my run, removed my shirt, skipped to the next podcast and away I went.

Only to discover I'd heard this one before too. DAMMIT!!!

I had to go through this at least 3 times before I sorted it all out. Luckily, no-one spotted me (and my moobs) at least, not that I'm aware of. I can't rule out the possibility some poor soul may have copped an eyeful, turned and fled while I was still wrestling with my phone.

If only I'd been wearing the Gear Fit that day. With 3 simple swipes of the screen, these atrocities could have been avoided.

Ironically, the only area I felt the Fit let me down was when it came to tracking my fitness. The heart rate monitor works well, but will only measure your pulse if you're standing, sitting or lying still - so not particularly helpful for maintaining a specific pace while working out. (NB: Since first writing this I have been shown a secret setting on the Gear Fit's big brother, the Gear 2, which would probably make the heart rate monitor work perfectly while exercising, so forget everything I just said) I also had an issue with the exercise tracker dropping out of Running mode and back into Pedometer mode without me realising, a short distance into my run, so the pace and distance information synced to my phone were all out of whack. This may have been a one-off though, as unfortunately, I had to give my review model back before I could re-test it.

Minor complaints about what is generally, an over-delivering device.

Now I'm suffering serious withdrawal. Every time someone texts me I reflexively glance at my wrist, but all I get is the time! What use is that? And now I have to walk all the way to the kitchen to pause my music. It's like living in the dark ages.

MUSIC: A FULL RETRACTION

I hate admitting I'm wrong. I'll do almost anything to avoid it. I'll go to extreme lengths to prove my point and I'll argue it to the death. I may even fake evidence if absolutely necessary. I was 3rd speaker on my debating team at school. I didn't even need to believe the argument, I was literally disagreeing for the sake of it.

However, when it comes to enjoying music on my Samsung Galaxy SIII, and this hurts me to write more than I can say, I was wrong. So wrong. Way wrong. Wrongiddy wrong wrong the wronging wrong.

And it's all because of Google Play Music.

Last time I wrote about music on smartphones, I was struggling to sync things onto my S3 from my iTunes playlists. I may have been a bit hasty. Since then, I've persisted, primarily because of the other features of the phone. I gave up trying to sync things with Kies, an application that tries to work either via USB or Wifi, but just took forever if it worked at all.

In fact, once I uninstalled Kies, everything functioned a lot better. I now keep the playlists I want up to date on my handset using Easy Phone Sync, a more stripped down program, but it works and it works quickly.

What's more important is now if I'm in Wifi range, it literally no longer matters if I have any music saved on my phone at all. Thanks to Google Play Music, I can access my entire music collection through my phone.

I'm not sure what Apple are trying to do with the iTunes Radio service they revealed last week, but they're probably trying to replicate what Google has been doing for a while, the difference being, you can access Google Play Music from a variety of devices.

Using the Google Play Music Manager on your PC, you can upload as many as 20,000 songs from your iTunes library - playlists, podcasts and all. They are then available from anywhere, all you have to do is log in.

I've found the streaming to be amazingly stable, probably due to the way the Play Music app caches songs in advance. You can even download songs and playlists to your phone on the go.

In short, finally, I have the ability to access my entire music collection in a way I've never been able to before, even when it was just a stack of CD's under the coffee table. The chances of me fossicking through over 1000 albums just because I felt like listening to one particular song would be about zero. Now I can search for it on my phone just as easily as I can using iTunes on my PC.

This is what I've been waiting for since I spent a stupid amount of time digitising my collection. Now, at last, I can finally LISTEN to it.

A SAMSUNG GADGET YOU SHOULDN'T LIVE WITHOUT

Oh dear, what a sellout I turned out to be. It seems like all I want to talk about lately is Samsung this and Samsung that. If it's not the innovative features of the Galaxy S4, it's the all round usefulness of the Note 8.0.

And now I've seen Samsung's dongle, there's no turning back...

Yes, today I bring you something from the You-Never-Knew-It-Existed-But-Now-You-Do-You-Must-Have-It-Immediately Department; the Samsung AllShare Cast Wireless Hub.

To be fair, it is a silly name for it. If I was naming it, I'd call it something a bit more straight forward, like PhoneOnTelly, because that's exactly what it does.

My relationship with my Galaxy SIII was not love at first sight. In fact, when I first tried to use it, I only lasted a week before I was scared off by how fiddly it was to set up. But eventually I went back to it, lured by Android's promise of a wider app selection.

It's actually a bit like my relationship with the Domestic Manager - we couldn't really stand each other when we first met, but over time we grew to love each other and 20 years on, we've really started to take each other for granted. Same deal with my trusty S3; after I spent a bit of time and effort getting to know it properly, we reached a mutual understanding and now I use it for things I never expected to.

Initially, I said mean things about playing music on it, for example. Now, after discovering Google's Play Music app, my listening habits are all Samsung based, but more on that next week. 

Not only am I now listening, I'm watching too. Unlike Windows and Apple phones, the Samsung's default browser doesn't even blink when asked to stream video. In fact, I even watched yesterday's Warriors game on my phone. Weirdly, this actually wasn't terrible.

The screen on the S3 is big, the S4's is bigger still but obviously, the game would have been even better on my TV, and what all Samsung phone or tablet users need to know, not only is this possible, it's easy.

I guess the AllShare Cast Wireless Hub is effectively Samsung's answer to Apple TV, except, instead of using it to stream stuff from your computer, you do it straight from your handset. (And by computer, I mean a Mac - I've heard "inconclusive reports" from people who've attempted to use Apple TV with their PC)

These days, Samsung makes a pretty impressive Smart TV, and this may be why I haven't seen any marketing for the AllShare Cast Wireless Hub, because it effectively turns ANY HD telly into a Smart TV, as long as you've got a spare HDMI socket to plug it into.

Amazingly, that's about all the setup required. You plug the tiny box in, push the AllShare button on your phone and you're good to go. Photos, music, video all played in crystal clarity on the big screen. Even if you're just browsing, you can now do it on your TV, just like one of those flash new ones you can't really justify buying.

It really is that simple - there's not even an on/off switch, just a reset button if you want to swap feeds between phones or tablets. Updates over the weekend have incorporated all this into the Samsung Link system, which gives you access to any multimedia content stored on any of your devices.

You can use the AllShare Cast Wireless Hub in conjunction with the Galaxy S3 and S4, the as well as the Galaxy Note II, 8.0 and 10.1.

What this all means is at last, after years of trying, is I can now use my phone to play anything on my computer through my TV. And that makes me a very happy boy.

THE GALAXY S4's NEW GADGETS: Part Three

A LITTLE LESS REMOTE...

Over the past few weeks, I've been taking a look at how Samsung has made the Galaxy S4 better than the SIII. Quite a few of the features they've been shouting about are software-based and a rumoured to be coming to an S3 near you in future updates.

Several of the new gizmos are built-in though. There are some pretty wizzy camera tricks I'll try and cover off next week, but I discovered one of the coolest things about this new phone almost by accident.

As well as being the smartest phone on the block, the Galaxy S4 is now your new Universal Remote Control.

I am old. I know this because I can clearly remember a time BEFORE remote controls. In fact, I recall the first VCR my parents ever owned. It was cutting edge because it came WITH an actual remote. Admittedly, it wasn't a wireless remote... it was connected to the video recorder by a very long lead. (No, I'm not making this up) You could play, stop, rewind, fast-forward and possibly even record. Obviously if you wanted to do anything as complicated as set the timer you'd have to do it on the actual machine, but what do you expect?

Of course, in order to do that timer recording thing, you'd have to stop the clock flashing, "00:00" - nobody's ever worked out how to do that, so no point in putting it on a remote, right?

Needless to say, things have progressed somewhat since then.

Now you can control EVERYTHING by remote - from the telly right through to the lights and the heater. Even just watching my favourite shows now involves up to 3 different clickers; home theatre for the sound, TV for the pics and SKY for dialing up the actual show. That's a lot of buttons on a lot of remotes all taking up a lot of coffee tabletop.

Enter, the universal remote. These come in all shapes and sizes - there are universal remotes that look like remotes, then there are models that operate more like a small tablet giving you complete control over your whole house, your beach house and possibly the U.S.S. Enterprise.

The price of these varies wildly too, but it's hard to find a half decent one for much under a hundred bucks. So is it worth handing over a hundie to free up your sofa arms? Possibly not. But if the universal remote was already built into your phone, it'd be silly not to use it.

The S4 comes with something called the IR Blaster, a piece of hardware you can now find in several of the new Samsung devices. On the S4, you run it with an app called WatchOn which will guide you through a reasonably straight-forward setup process to get your phone talking to your other gadgets.

The really cool thing is, you can set up different rooms. Hell, I even took it to work and started changing channels there. Primarily just to annoy people who couldn't figure out why their remote had stopped working properly. Good times.

If I have a criticism of what really is a very straight-forward device, it'd be some difficulties I had figuring out which option to use to recognise my MySky decoder. You select devices by manufacturer and it took some fairly intensive Googling to discover Sky's set-top boxes are in fact manufactured by Pace. Once I had discovered this, I could access most of the Sky remote's functions bu not all. I can't rule out operator-error here, of course, but given I would have thought this was a reasonably common machine for New Zealanders to want to control, the WatchOn people may want to have a look at making the kiwi MySky options a bit more accessible.

Other than that, how cool is it to have a universal remote that doesn't take up any table space at all, because it's in your phone? Or your Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet - but that's a whole other story. Or at least another blog.

THE GALAXY S4's NEW GADGETS: Part Two

TELLING ME WHERE TO GO...

Last time I investigated driving navigation on a Samsung Galaxy, I was comparing the Google-powered app on the Galaxy SIII with the very slick Nokia Drive on the Windows-based Lumias.

I gave the honours to the Nokia phones simply because their app worked offline, whereas the Google one didn't. Well... it SORT of worked offline, but not really, and certainly not as well as the Nokia version.

Enter the Galaxy S4 and its promise of a whole new navigation option. It's called Navigon and it just about does the job.

Somewhat confusingly, the original Google navigation app is still installed as well, so you need to choose which will be your default.

The Navigon app comes with the whole of New Zealand pre-installed, and I could also choose to download Australia for free. This is still not as comprehensive as Nokia Drive, which seems to offer a whole world of downloadable maps at no charge, but it's certainly a massive improvement on Google, which would only allow you to store 5 relatively small regions for offline use and even then, you'd have to go online to plan your route.

The S4's new navigation option works very quickly, asking you first for the city you're travelling to, then the street address. You then usually have a choice of routes along which you can decide to either drive or walk.

I used the app on a few of my regular routes, just to make sure it really knew what it was talking about. The only fault I could detect was at roundabouts, when the voice guidance would tell me to take the 1st exit when it meant the 2nd or 3rd. Very odd, given the map itself showed the correct route without fail. I'm sure this is a small glitch the designers will remedy in a future update and bearing it in mind, I set off on a real test of the might Navigon's abilities; Middlemore Hospital.

For any non-Aucklanders reading this blog, Middlemore is not what you'd call a central, easy-to-get to destination. Especially given I live at the opposite end of the country's only super-city and I'd never been there before.

My sister had decided to cut her wedding anniversary trip to Fiji short, by having an argument with a kayak in rough sea conditions. She lost the argument in spectacular fashion, smashing her knee up so badly it required urgent surgery back in New Zealand.

This is how she wound up stranded in Middlemore Hospital, still some distance from her usual network of friends, family and helpers in her home town of Palmerston North.

Being the doting younger brother I am, spending some time with her while she was waiting to be shipped back to the Manawatu seemed the decent thing to do, and the perfect excuse to put the Galaxy S4 to the test.

If you're online, you can simply speak your destination into the phone - this is true of any of the navigation apps I have used. It drives me nuts that you can't do this offline. When is offline speech recognition going to be a standard feature on our phones so we can do things like dictate text messages safely while driving? It's just stupid.

Anyway, even though I had to type it, I only got as far as "Middle..." before the S4 had suggested Middlemore Hospital as a probable destination and set me on my way.

I found the voice guidance less robotic than some others I've used, and less intrusive - only giving me directions when I needed them instead of hassling me with the same direction 15 times before I got to each intersection. The really cool thing this app does is when you have to do something tricky on the motorway. The display then changes from showing where you are on the road to a graphic of the motorway on or offramp in question. The lane or lanes you need to use are clearly highlighted taking any doubt out of your maneuver - even the signs on the screen match the real ones exactly.

The estimated time of arrival was as accurate as any other GPS I have used and the display was very clear and uncluttered.

In short, I got to the hospital with no problems whatsoever. The parking charges were exorbitant, but sadly, no phone is smart enough to get around that. Yet.

So the S4 has truly delivered an offline navigation solution, and a powerful, user-friendly one at that. Now if I could just figure out how to get off this roundabout...

THE GALAXY S4's NEW GADGETS: Part One

HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU...

It's been a fair old while since my last series of phone faffs, in which I pitted the Samsung Galaxy SIII against the latest Windows Phones from Nokia. The S3 won in the end, primarily due to the fact I could make it work like a Nokia Lumia, whereas I couldn't make a Lumia work like a Galaxy.

Since then I've been using the S3 pretty much exclusively, and it's consistently delivered in every area. Browsing, photos, the navigation works great (as long as you're online - more on that in a later blog though).

I found I could even pimp it up. I added a longer life battery and discovered I could charge the phone wirelessly - just like the Nokia Lumias.

I took it overseas, bunged a U.S. sim card in it, tethered iPads and other phones to it and it just kept delivering.

So when Samsung launched the S4 recently, I had to wonder just how much better it could possibly be.

Well, I've been playing with one for a few days and it definitely is a step up - in lots of little ways.

Essentially the S4 is the same phone. It's still an Android, albeit a very fast and powerful one. Although it's the same length and slightly more narrow than its predecessor, the screen is a bit bigger. It has a more solid feel to it - I don't know why, it just does. In fact, every time I use it, I seem to find something else it simply does better.

One of those things is called Smart Scroll.

According to Samsung, they've put a lot of time, effort and money into making the Galaxy S4 its most user friendly device yet. To achieve this, they've included a whole heap of extra sensors to read how you're interacting with the handset, from the way you're holding it to how you're looking at it - even what the temperature is!

This means browsing a website or reading a long document can now literally become a hands-free experience.

Who's watching who?

Smart Scroll works in one of two ways - Firstly; you can set it to detect which way you're tilting the handset. Tilt the bottom up and the the page automatically scrolls down. Tilt the phone the other way to scroll back to the top. It works in both portrait and landscape which is good because I've never understood why people try and view websites in portrait.

Alternatively; and this is kind of hard to believe till you've actually tried it, but you can set Smart Scroll to detect which way you're LOOKING at it. I'm not even kidding. Look towards the bottom of the page and it'll scroll down. Look up and back you'll go. Even Mike Hosking was impressed when I showed him this trick.

Whichever setting you choose, a small icon flashes up green in the middle of the screen to let you know when you're good to go, although you can turn this off if you find it intrusive. It isn't so I haven't.

I don't know whether it's because I wear glasses or I'm just not very good at it yet, but I found the second "looking" option a bit less reliable than the tilt option. I get the feeling it's the kind of thing you could train yourself to use more consistently if you really loved the feature. For now though, I'm perfectly happy with my Smart Scroll set to tilt. It makes me feel nicely lazy not to have to swipe up and down my emails.

Is it a must-have feature? Probably not, but it's some pretty nice icing on Samsung's latest cake and like I say, it's just one of a host of neat little tricks they've built in to the S4. The phone's now watching you all the time. If you're someone who views a lot of video content you'll appreciate the Smart Pause function, which stops your clip if you have to look away for any reason then automatically plays it again once your eyes are back on the screen.

Again, this is not something I was sitting there thinking, "Gee, I wish my SIII would stop playing my video automatically when I have to look around to answer someone's question." But since I've used it, I'd miss it if I didn't have it.

Now my phone is watching my every move, I can do more of what I like to do best; think less. After all, that's why I have a smart phone in the first place - so I can be dumber.

Next week we'll see if the the S4 can deliver on it's promise to provide comprehensive off-line navigation... as long as I don't get lost in the process.