Not everyone standing on line to see the introduction of the Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone yesterday afternoon was happy. "I was really looking forward to this," said a journalist on line behind me, "but it's not going to be on Verizon." Although (as another Verizon user) I agreed with him, I found something else to be annoyed about during Samsung's presentation.
It certainly wasn't the hardware. The Galaxy S II, which has already been released in a number of countries, is, on first look, everything it is advertised to be: light, sleek and loaded with great hardware features. It's got a bright 4.3-in. Super AMOLED Plus display, a 1.2GHz processor, an 8MP camera back-facing camera along with a 2MP front-facing camera and 1080p HDMI output. It offers HSPA+ 4G, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and a battery that, according to Samsung, has at least 10% more capacity than that of its predecessor.
In fact, other than the sour-grapes griping from Verizon subscribers (it will be available in various iterations this fall through AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile), the crowd of journalists who sat in on Samsung's introduction of its Galaxy S II smartphone seem pretty positive.
However, like many Android phones being sold today, the Galaxy S II comes with an overlay -- in this case, Samsung's TouchWiz interface. And because the hardware wasn't much of a surprise, Samsung's reps spent some time during the presentation enthusiastically touting a series of enhancements, such as a cleaner interface, a series of dots across the front that lets you access each of the seven home pages quickly and easily, and a notifications panel that give you access to your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and Flight Mode settings. They also spent several minutes on the ability to create folders for the seven home screens, drag and drop apps into those folders, and then place those folders on the home screens, offering an increase ability to organize and find your apps.
Meanwhile, I was sitting there saying to myself, "But I can already do that on my old needs-to-be-updated Droid." And I can. For example, for over a year I have had immediate access to my Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other configuration through an app called Dazzle Configurable Switcher and I created home-screen folders for my apps using Apps Organizer. (And these are only the apps I use -- there are plenty of alternatives in the Android Market.) I've been able to choose which home screen I want to go to by simply pressing on the Apps icon since my Droid was upgraded to Android 2.2 (Froyo).
Now, there are of course lots of software enhancements available on the Galaxy S II that aren't available on my legacy smartphone. For example, there are a lot more security enhancements, especially for business users, such as support for Cisco VPN and Exchange ActiveSync.
But on the whole, overlays such as TouchWiz (and Motoblur) can look snazzy, but often don't add more to the phones usability than already-existing apps can provide -- and with the latter, you get to decide yourself what you want your phone to do and how you want it to do it. I truly wish the vendors would just let Android be Android.
It certainly wasn't the hardware. The Galaxy S II, which has already been released in a number of countries, is, on first look, everything it is advertised to be: light, sleek and loaded with great hardware features. It's got a bright 4.3-in. Super AMOLED Plus display, a 1.2GHz processor, an 8MP camera back-facing camera along with a 2MP front-facing camera and 1080p HDMI output. It offers HSPA+ 4G, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and a battery that, according to Samsung, has at least 10% more capacity than that of its predecessor.
In fact, other than the sour-grapes griping from Verizon subscribers (it will be available in various iterations this fall through AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile), the crowd of journalists who sat in on Samsung's introduction of its Galaxy S II smartphone seem pretty positive.
However, like many Android phones being sold today, the Galaxy S II comes with an overlay -- in this case, Samsung's TouchWiz interface. And because the hardware wasn't much of a surprise, Samsung's reps spent some time during the presentation enthusiastically touting a series of enhancements, such as a cleaner interface, a series of dots across the front that lets you access each of the seven home pages quickly and easily, and a notifications panel that give you access to your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and Flight Mode settings. They also spent several minutes on the ability to create folders for the seven home screens, drag and drop apps into those folders, and then place those folders on the home screens, offering an increase ability to organize and find your apps.
Meanwhile, I was sitting there saying to myself, "But I can already do that on my old needs-to-be-updated Droid." And I can. For example, for over a year I have had immediate access to my Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other configuration through an app called Dazzle Configurable Switcher and I created home-screen folders for my apps using Apps Organizer. (And these are only the apps I use -- there are plenty of alternatives in the Android Market.) I've been able to choose which home screen I want to go to by simply pressing on the Apps icon since my Droid was upgraded to Android 2.2 (Froyo).
Now, there are of course lots of software enhancements available on the Galaxy S II that aren't available on my legacy smartphone. For example, there are a lot more security enhancements, especially for business users, such as support for Cisco VPN and Exchange ActiveSync.
But on the whole, overlays such as TouchWiz (and Motoblur) can look snazzy, but often don't add more to the phones usability than already-existing apps can provide -- and with the latter, you get to decide yourself what you want your phone to do and how you want it to do it. I truly wish the vendors would just let Android be Android.
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