The recent launch of Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 flagship smartphone was interesting to attend for what wasn’t said, as much as for what was said. Google was not mentioned at all, Android was mentioned only once and even that was just as an aside.

Software Differentiation

While new hardware specifications were highlighted the focus was very much on Samsung specific software applications and additions to Android which aim to differentiate it from flagship smartphones from other manufacturers. However from my experience most buyers will not get around to using most of these software features, they are marketing differentiation gimmicks.

Towards the end of setup process the much vaunted special features like Air View and Air gesture are presented as “Key Features” which can be turned on and off. Not all of them are turned on by default and if a user isn’t inclined to explore settings menus then the Galaxy S4’s software features will seem not much different to a Galaxy S3. Also even when turned on some new features like Smart Scroll only work in a small number of apps eg: the stock Android browser rather than the more popular Chrome browser.

Looking at the market share split for Android phones shows that Samsung is far in front like a blazing comet with all the other manufacturers such as HTC, Sony, Motorola and LG trailing behind in its tail. Also because it waited to launch the Galaxy S 4 after the HTC One, LG Optimus G and Sony Xperia Z, Samsung has been able to ship units from day one with the latest version of Android 4.2.2 which is very good.

Corporations are like peacocks in that they like to signal how well they’re doing to competitors by showing off their plumage in a flashy way. Apart from trying to be seen to be a good corporate citizen by supporting the arts, the purpose of Samsung sponsoring the Sydney Opera House for 3 years and spending a substantial amount on a huge party for each new flagship phone launch is to signal how well they’re doing to other Android smartphone manufacturers.

Hardware Features

Most readers who upgrade to the Galaxy S4 will be doing so from an older and smaller Android phone or an iPhone will find the Galaxy S4 screen and data download speeds over 4G/LTE quite impressive.

Samsung engineers have designed the Galaxy S4 with a stunningly crisp 5 inch 1920×1080 high resolution screen while also making the phone body a tiny bit smaller and lighter than the Galaxy S3, which had a 4.8 inch 720×1280 screen. Another engineering achievement is the increase in battery capacity by 24% (from 2100mAh to 2600mAh) compared to the Galaxy S3.

Upon hearing that the Galaxy S 4’s back camera had been upgraded to 13 megapixels I was worried that this would mean larger photo file sizes but lower photo quality. However testing the camera by taking photos in a well-lit garden, low light conditions at a small bar and during a meal shows that it is capable of taking sharp well exposed photos that rival a compact camera, apart from lacking optical zoom capability.

Regarding storage the Galaxy S4 model sold in Australia only has a disappointing 16GB onboard. After installing all my usual apps etc I only had a bit over 7GB of space free which is not enough to fit podcasts subscriptions and a music collection as well. The Galaxy S4 supports MicroSD cards but you shouldn’t have to be forced to buy a microSD card to be able to use all the capabilities of a high end smartphone.

Sydney based information professional Amy told me that compared to her old iPhone the Galaxy S4 is “streets ahead in terms of speed, ease of use, integration of apps and camera. Another major thing is the battery life – excellent – and fact that I can buy and charge a spare battery” to swap out when her phone goes flat.

Galaxy S4 Optimisation Tips

A phone with speedy specifications like a Quad Core 1.9GHz CPU should be blazing fast all the time but every now and then the phone seems to lag when opening or switching apps. I suspect that the Samsung’s Touchwiz menu and user interface overlay causes these pauses.

I was able to remove some of the perceived lag by disabling S Voice so the home button works faster and enabling developer mode so window animation scale and transition animation scale are set to off.

To turn S Voice off press the home button twice, once S Voice opens press the menu button and choose Settings, unselect Open via the home key. Readers who take a lot of photos with their phone would be advised to try the free Quickpic gallery app which is a lot faster and robust than the photo gallery apps supplied by Android phone manufacturers.

Another unwanted feature which I disabled is the annoying sound played when the phone is turned on, potentially waking up your partner or the person sitting in the airline seat next to you. We suggest finding the free SilentBoot app, once installed open it and turn Silent Boot on. Now turn the Galaxy S4 off and when it turns on again it will do so without a sound.

I love Swype style phone keyboards which allow words to be entered by sliding your finger to connect letters in a word. By default this functionality isn’t enabled in the Galaxy S4 out of the box which is odd. To do so go to Settings, My Device, Language & input, click on the little wheel at the right of Samsung keyboard and select Continuous input.

Perhaps it’s just the view of just a few people like myself and my journalist friend Adam Turner but I find the Samsung ringtones and default water raindrop sounds when you touch the screen really annoying. On Android you can use any audio file on your phone as a ringtone including MP3 music. To turn off the annoying water dripping sound you have to go to Settings, My Device, language and Input, click on the little wheel at the right of Samsung keyboard, Advanced, untick Key-tap sound.

Price

The Samsung Galaxy S4 has an Australian RRP of $899 and is available from Telstra, Optus and Vodafone on various plans or outright from retailers such as Mobicity and Kogan. With a little effort you can find outright prices around $700. Make sure you buy a Galaxy S4 model i9505 because it is better suited to Australian networks.

This is the extended version of a feature article written by me for Business Spectator

Rambling Thoughts Blog - Samsung Galaxy S4 Android Smartphone (Review)

Today’s spotlight is on the Paleo Future blog. If you’re interested in topics like the Jetsons, science fiction, robots, rocket ships, monorail, in home technology, world’s fairs of the past and more then you should subscribe to the Paleo Future blog. Clearly I’m interested in those kinds of topics The monorail, retro robot and rocket ship photos in this blog post are mine.

Currently in it’s 3rd iteration, Paleo Future blog was initially on Blogspot, then all the content was moved to paleofuture.com. This is where it continued until late 2011 when the Smithsonian employed it’s curator Matt Novak to blog for them at blogs.smithsonianmag.com/paleofuture. The previous 5 years writing remains at paleofuture.com.

Matt said he started the Paleofuture blog in 2007 as part of a writing class he was taking at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Little did he realise that writing about the history of the future would become such a huge part of his life. This is how he described what prompted him to collect and share a history of the future that never was:

‘I first came across the word “Paleo-Future” in a Flickr group of the same name. However, the topic first sparked my interest when I visited Walt Disney World’s EPCOT Center, (now Epcot), and realized that Disney’s version of the future was based upon what they thought the future would look like in the 1980s. As is important when depicting the future, your opinions must change with the times, unless you happen to be omnipotent, which means you have no need to revise your vision of the future and have probably used your powers for such noble endeavors as guessing my weight at the local carnival or writing horoscopes that tell me, “you should find time for yourself tonight.”‘

‘While I might poke fun at the outlandish ideas of 1950s America, corporate puffery, or Jules Verne I do it with an admiration for the idealism we seem to be losing in our post-modern society. The belief that technology has the potential to improve the lives of everyone on Earth seems rare. Just remember that an optimism for the future and the attempt to better the world for all humanity is hidden somewhere within each sarcastic comment about flying cars and space farms. In that same vein, I will always remember that the dystopian societies depicted by George Orwell or Alan Moore are just as plausible if we surrender freedom in the name of security. Here’s to a “great big beautiful tomorrow.”‘
- Paleo Future blog curator Matt Novak

The Internet is like panning for gold in a stream, you’ll find a lot more dross (worthless, commonplace, or trivial matter) than gold nuggets. That’s why I’m asking for your help – please suggest quality sites for me to spotlight in the future, in the comments area of this article, via social media or by emailing me.

Rambling Thoughts Blog - Paleo Future: Spotlight on Quality Blogs

For thousands of years mankind has gazed at the starry night sky, wondering what lies out there in our solar system and beyond. As a youngster I obsessively read many of the classic space and exploration science fiction books by authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and Jules Verne. Space is the final frontier for mankind, as less travelled a path as you can get.

Fans of the popular series Star Trek which first debuted onscreen in the mid 1960’s would have hoped that by now almost 50 years later we’d be star trekkin across the universe. Sadly this is not possible except in your imagination by watching modern science fiction entertainment like the newly released film Star Trek: Into the Darkness.

Unfortunately space flight and civil aviation standards have regressed during the last few decades. The last manned mission to the moon Apollo 17 was in late 1972, the final supersonic flight for Concorde landed in 2003 and NASA’s final space shuttle flight mission STS135 launched on July 8th 2011.

The hopes and dreams of scifi fans may seem overly optimistic now but you have to remember their context in the second half of the 20th century which saw the invention of satellite technology, giant rockets sending people in orbit around the earth, on missions to the moon as well as the spectacular growth of commercial aviation after World War II and the supersonic Concorde which had a cruising speed of Mach 2.04 (2,170 kilometres per hour).

Yet the future of manned space flight to the moon and beyond is far from certain, with world leaders like President Obama focused on urgent earthly issues such as cutting the US budget deficit.

The ISS (successor to Salut, Skylab and Mir) whose construction was barely completed before the Space shuttle fleet was grounded won’t last forever either. The NASA budget signed into law by President Obama in late 2010 extends the mission of the ISS until 2020. There is speculation that this could be extended until 2028 but nothing is certain.

The next big project for Russian space agency ROSCOSMOS is the new Vostochny cosmodrome to be built in far Eastern Russia, which will reduce their reliance on using the old Baikonur cosmodrome located in ex-Soviet state Kazakhstan for manned space flight launches.

NASA Belt Tightening

We are at a key juncture point for the future of human aviation and space flight.

William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s chief of human exploration recently told members of a US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee that if planned NASA budget cuts for 2014 go ahead then “we can’t deliver the programs that we committed to you that we would deliver … This is really going to be tough for us moving forward”.

In early February 2013 NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski that due to NASA’s budget being cut so much, funding for private partners like SpaceX and “overall availability of commercial crew transportation services would be significantly delayed, thereby extending our reliance on foreign providers for crew transportation to the International Space Station”.

Administrator Bolden was referring to the post STS135 situation where NASA is faced with the humiliating prospect of paying the Russian space agency millions for use of Soyuz spacecraft seats going roundtrip to the ISS, until the SpaceX Dragon or another American commercial spacecraft is ready for astronaut transportation duty full time.

A few days ago on April 30th Bolden was even more direct, telling the media that

“Since the end of our Space Shuttle Program in 2011, NASA has relied on the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) for the launch and safe return of astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) aboard its Soyuz spacecraft. While our Russian counterparts have been good partners, it is unacceptable that we don’t currently have an American capability to launch our own astronauts.”

“That’s why the Obama Administration has placed such a high priority on correcting this situation. Three years ago, the Administration put forward a public-private partnership plan, the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), to ensure that American companies would be launching our astronauts from U.S. soil by 2015. It’s a plan that supports the U.S. human spaceflight program, boosts our economy, and helps create good-paying American jobs. If NASA had received the President’s requested funding for this plan, we would not have been forced to recently sign a new contract with Roscosmos for Soyuz transportation flights”.

“Because the funding for the President’s plan has been significantly reduced, we now won’t be able to support American launches until 2017. Even this delayed availability will be in question if Congress does not fully support the President’s fiscal year 2014 request for our Commercial Crew Program, forcing us once again to extend our contract with the Russians. Further delays in our Commercial Crew Program and its impact on our human spaceflight program are unacceptable”.

One thing NASA does very well, at a relatively low cost is science education and outreach to explain the value of space exploration. A recent internal NASA memo from late March 2013 shows just how poorly thought out long term space policy in the USA is at the moment, stating that “effective immediately, all education and public outreach activities should be suspended, pending further review”.

The current ISS Commander, Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield has shown through his stellar social media efforts that a huge audience is interested in what NASA is up to. What many are not aware of is that his social media updates are a personal effort assisted by his son Evan on Earth, without any NASA assistance.

In the midst of all this gloom and doom enter Elon Musk and Richard Branson. These two entrepreneurs are putting millions of their own dollars on the line in a bid to reignite sparks of innovation and enthusiasm in manned space flight.

SpaceX Astronaut & Cargo Transport

Elon Musk is the co-founder of PayPal and electric car company Tesla Motors. Musk gained his fortune from selling Paypal and has since invested large portions of it in Tesla Motors and SpaceX along with venture capital partners. The character of Tony Stark in the Iron Man trilogy of superhero movies may have been partly inspired by him.

Under President Obama’s bold and controversial new space policy NASA abandoned the troubled Constellation program to develop the next generation of spacecraft and booster vehicles which would have replaced the aging space Space Shuttle fleet.

Instead it offered seed funding and the possibility of lucrative service contracts to entrepreneurial commercial spaceship manufacturers such as SpaceX to provide workhorse vessels for transport to and from the ISS so NASA could focus on flying to Mars and so-called “near-Earth objects.

While several private companies competed to build NASA’s next heavy lift vehicles to carry cargo and astronauts to the ISS, SpaceX is in the lead position followed by Orbital Sciences.

Virgin Galactic Joyrides

Virgin Galactic has its roots in Scaled Composite’s SpaceShipOne concept team headed by Burt Rutan, which won the $US 10 million dollar Ansari X Prize for the first non-government organisation to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.

Richard Branson partnered with Scaled Composites to build two Five SpaceShipTwos (the first pair of which will be called Enterprise and Voyager in homage to Star trek) and 2 WhiteKnightTwos . His Virgin galactic company has been taking deposits from aspiring rich joyriders for several years to go towards the full ticket price of approximately $US 200,000.

For this princely sum a ticket holder will get to experience a flight to about 110km above Earth including a 6 minute period of weightlessness at the apogee (highest point of the flight’s orbit).

The 110km altitude was not chosen arbitrarily but because the Kármán line internationally recognised as the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and space lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62.1 miles).

In reality the atmosphere simply gets thinner the higher you go above Earth so there is no actual visible line at 100km, the reason it was chosen is because above that altitude a spacecraft would have to fly faster than orbital velocity in order to derive sufficient aerodynamic lift from the atmosphere to support itself.

Virgin Galactic is not expected to have its maiden passenger flight until early-mid 2014 at the earliest.

Private Sector Flights To Infinity and Beyond?

Without inspiring stories about space there won’t be any prompts to make people ponder the abandoning of near-term manned space flight plans by the USA, whether China, Russia or Japan might take up the slack and plan their own missions to the Moon and beyond.

Perhaps entrepreneurs like Elon Musk’s SpaceX will make the necessary investments that nation states are unwilling to, with any resulting benefits accruing to his investors rather than the public as a whole.

The decisions made by governments and private corporations in the second decade of the 21st century will decide whether manned spaceflight beyond low earth orbit will be relegated to a display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum or evolve into serious plans to build a successor to the International Space Station (ISS) as well as sending astronauts to Mars and beyond.

If these attempts fail then mankind’s greatest space achievement will be recorded in the history books as the Voyager I mission launched on September 5th 1977 and still going strong today, soon to enter interstellar space and travel where no man has gone before, or ever will, over 18 billion kilometres from our sun.

This is the original version of a feature article written by me for Business Spectator

Rambling Thoughts Blog - Humanity Stuck On Earth or Private Space Flights To Infinity & Beyond?

If you’re a fan of ebooks and usually read more than 50 of them a year then the new Kobo Aura HD eink ebook reader may be exactly what you need to enhance your reading experience.

Malcolm Neil, Kobo’s Director of Content Acquisition and Publisher Relations for the Asia Pacific told me that the Aura HD was a device with limited availability which was made specifically to fit the needs of the most voracious ebook readers.

According to Neil these readers had told Kobo that an ideal “luxury” eink reader would have a larger screen than 6 inches, a sharper display and larger battery capacity for long trips.

The Aura HD’s 6.8 inch screen offers about 30% more display space than a standard 6 inch ereader so you won’t have to flip pages quite as often. However this comes with a tradeoff of greater weight as the Aura HD is 240gm, compared to the Kobo Glo’s and Kindle Paperwhite which tip the scales at 185gm and 213gm respectively. It also means that reading the Aura HD with one hand is not easy, whereas holding the Kobo Glo on handed is comfortable.

Readers who are night owls or like to read in dark environments such as long haul flights can use the builtin front edge lighting which provides even light distribution across the screen. The light can be turned on and off using a dedicated button next to the top red power slider and it’s intensity can be set at a level that you find comfortable using a slider from 1-100%.

The Aura HD’s 1440×1080 screen resolution is noticeably sharper than the standard 6 inch models which have 1024×768 displays. This will prove useful to readers who wear glasses or contact lenses as the font size can be increased while still remaining sharp and displaying many words on screen.

Since I have only had the Aura HD on loan for 2 weeks I can cannot confirm Kobo’s claim that it’s battery should last 1-2 months if used to read for 30 minutes every day with WiFi off and the light on sometimes. However it is saying 75% battery left at present and as a general rule larger devices which have bigger physical batteries last longer between charges than their smaller competitors.

In terms of connectivity the Aura HD works with to WiFi networks upto and including the most recent N specification but only those running at 2.4Ghz not 5Ghz. As with all other Kobo ereaders the Aura HD is WiFi only and doesn’t have builtin 3G connectivity like the high end 6 inch Kindle ereaders do.

Readers who want to manage their ebook library on their computer can connect it via a USB port at the bottom of the ereader and use the Kobo Desktop App for Windows & Apple Mac OSX.

When the Aura HD is connected to your computer it appears as a USB storage device so you can also slideload any books or files you have in the following formats: EPUB, PDF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RFT, CBZ, CBR. Thanks to it’s 1ghz processor the AuraHD is slightly faster at displaying complex PDF’s than other ereaders.

As a premium device the Aura HD has 4GB of onboard storage and a microSD slot next to the USB port so you can add upto 32Gb more storage. In theory this means you could store over 30000 books on the Aura HD though whether you’d be able to read that many in your lifetime is a different question.

The back of the Aura HD has a curious wave effect which is meant to make it easier to hold like a folded book, personally I liked the old quilted back pattern on the Kobo Glo and other previous models.

After using it to read for 2 weeks my verdict is that the Aura HD is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. While it’s superior to the smaller 6 inch Kobo Glo and Kindle Paperwhite ereaders, calling it luxury is a bit much.

However it is true to say that for the moment this is the fastest, largest eInk ereader with the best screen available on the market. Since Amazon controls the majority of the ebook market globally it’s surprising Kobo hasn’t tried to sell a premium ebook reader like this before. If it can attract enough heavy readers who consume an ebook a week or more to the Kobo platform, that could draw a noticeable amount of revenue away from Amazon.

The Kobo Aura HD will be available from Australian retailers such as Collins Books and JB HiFI by early June for RRP $219.99 (probably a bit less actual retail price).

Rambling Thoughts Blog - Kobo Aura HD eBook Reader (Review)