I now own a Samsung Galaxy S2, and it's awesome!

I bought a brand new Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone last month with a 32GB memory card in it, giving 48GB of total memory, for around £375. I bought it from the Samsung shop in Central Festival Center in Pattaya. It is the best gadget/smartphone/pocket PC/piece of technology that I have ever owned, it really is perfect in every way!

I previously had a Nokia N97 for 2 years, which is by far the worst piece of technology I have ever owned, utter garbage, the complete opposite of the Galaxy s II (see my blog about that here: The Nokia N97 - it's rubbish really).

It was so bad all of the time that I swear I will never buy another Nokia product ever again, no matter what they make in future. Nokia - YOU SUCK!! What a rip-off of over £400 the damned thing was! It cost too much money for me to be able to change it until last month, but now I wish I'd bought an Android phone instead of the N97. Oh well, you live and learn!

If you're looking to get a new smartphone any time soon, go and get a Galaxy S II right now - nothing else, not even the latest iPhone, comes close to being as good for doing everything you want. The Galaxy S II is the best all-in-one mobile phone, pocket PC, mobile web browser, social network manager, HD photo and video camera, portable media player and pocket games console that there is!

The Nokia N97 - it's rubbish really

I've had my Nokia N97 smartphone (the full-size version, not the mini) for nearly a year now, and I have to say I haven't been very happy with it - considering that it cost just over 400 GB Pounds it really is quite rubbish.

Now, I'm not talking about the usual phone crashes and lock-ups that most people experience with smartphones from time to time - I've suffered plenty of those with my N97, and I can generally live with such things. They're to be somewhat expected due to the very complex and intricate nature of these types of device.

The main problem with the N97 for me is that it is extremely slow to do anything, especially with the multimedia I have stored on it. It takes around two minutes to access my MP3 music library of around 3000 songs and 100 playlists each and every time I go into the music player, which is absolutely terrible. The N97's main rival, the iPhone, has no such problems, giving almost instantaneous access to a similar sized music library.

The N97 is also pretty poor at playing MP4 videos (which have been formatted specifically for the N97 using Nokia's OVI Suite), often freezing and/or skipping during playback, which is very annoying.

And the N97 is also dreadfully slow to access my photo library of around 500 photos.

I have tried all manner of things to try to improve the situation, including a soft reset and a hard reset of the phone, a reformat of the phone's mass storage device, and a careful reload of all the multimedia, but nothing ever makes any difference.

Clearly there are two major problems with the N97:

1. The processor is not powerful enough, and...

2. There is not enough dedicated RAM for the processor to use - there is only ever about 50 MB of free internal phone memory showing on my phone, with almost no apps installed or running, which is a shockingly low amount. (And which is similar to what most other people report having free on their N97's during use.)

Both of these factors combine to make the N97 very slow to do anything - unacceptably slow for such an expensive smartphone. For what is basically Nokia's flagship product, it really is a very sorry story.

In summary, I don't recommend anyone to buy the Nokia N97, which is the first time I have ever had to say anything negative about one of Nokia's products. Oh dear.

How to sync iTunes with a Nokia N97 in Windows, perfectly

Following on from my previous post about how to make decent quality MP4 video files for the Nokia N97, Apple iPhone, iPod and so on, here now is my recommendation for the best and most reliable way to get your Windows-based iTunes music library to sync with a Nokia N97 (or any other Nokia S60 phone for that matter):

Use MediaSync for Windows, from Salling Software, which is free to try (and works fine in trial mode), and which only costs US$22 for the full version.

It is truly excellent. After running it with my N97 plugged into my Windows XP PC, I ended up with an exact clone of my iTunes music library on the N97. This includes all 3192 of my music collection's MP3 files having been automatically copied to my N97, using 16.4 GB total of the phone's internal mass storage.

Wonderfully, this also includes around 99% of the MP3 files' album artwork having been automatically converted to display correctly on the N97, which is a seriously tough thing to get to work right using any other sync method - including directly copying your MP3 files to the N97 yourself - just in case you weren't aware.

Additionally, all 104 of my iTunes playlists were automatically converted into .M3U format and copied onto the N97. The volume of each MP3 track appears to have been set to the optimum level for the N97 too, and certainly all the volume levels have been more-or-less equalised. Utterly, utterly brilliant!!

I hope that helps you as much as it helped me! :-)

How to make decent quality portable MP4 video files

I wanted to convert my DVD collection into MP4 video files on my Windows XP PC, for use on my Nokia N97 phone and my Apple iPod. It turned out to be quite a tricky job, because finding the right software tool to do the conversion work was not easy - there are so many different conversion products to choose from, and there is only so much time available to do this sort of thing. However, doing it right is, of course, of the utmost importance.

So, to save any of you out there having to go through the same trials and tribulations and time-consuming effort as I went through..... if you want to convert your DVDs into decent quality and decent sized portable files, here's what I found out:

After a great many false starts, I finally settled on Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum, because out of the seemingly hundreds of different DVD ripping products that are available, Xilisoft turned out to be the best for me. It is extremely good at what it does, and it is easy to use, reliable and reasonably priced.

It can convert any part of a DVD (the main feature, the special features, etc.) into any kind of video and/or audio format you like, such as MP4, MPEG, AVI, 3GP, 3G2 and so on. And it will convert and optimize for almost every type of portable video viewing device, such as the N97, iPod, iPhone, Sony PSP, HP iPAQ, Pocket PC, iRiver, Creative ZEN and most others. Genius!

So far I have converted 10 of my favourite DVDs into standard MP4 format, and it really is a great set of results - around 1 GB per full movie, with decent video and sound quality. In fact, it is a very good all-round balance of file size vs. quality, which is the eternal BIG issue for all of us digital media nuts, LOL! Job done!! :-)

i-mobile TV 630 mobile phone - don't buy one!

This is my review of the i-mobile TV 630 mobile phone:

My wife Su recently bought a brand new i-mobile TV 630 mobile phone because it looked very good in the adverts, and when she tried it out in the shop it seemed to be excellent. Its very impressive specification includes dual SIM cards (so it's two phones in one), an 8 megapixel camera with full flash and video recording, micro SD memory card up to 8 GB, MP3 and MP4 player, TV tuner and FM radio. The price was 5,800 Thai Baht, or about 110 GB Pounds.

However, after using it for around a week, it has turned out to be nowhere near as good as it first appeared to be. In fact it is completely rubbish, and here's why:

Even though it can use an 8 GB micro SD memory card, you can't do much useful stuff with all that memory, like for example the MP3 music player in the phone cannot cope with a music library of more than around 400 MP3s (as opposed to the around 1200 that can fit on an 8GB memory card) - the phone hangs then crashes with more than around 400 songs. AWFUL!!

Also, the phone is supposed to be able to play MP4 files, but it has never worked for any of around 20 different MP4s that we tried. RUBBISH!!

Also, the phone does not display file names properly, with its operating system seemingly being based on something like ancient DOS with very basic short file names being displayed, including such useful characters as ~1 in place of extended file names. OH DEAR!!

And the few long file names that the phone does manage to display that are too long for the width of the display screen get scrolled across the screen at such a slow speed it takes ages to read them. DOH!!

Also, when using the web browser and waiting for a page to load, there is nothing displayed to show any kind of progress with the page loading, so you have no idea whether it is loading or has hung up. And it likes to hang up most of the time without notifying you that it has done so. STUPID!!

Also, the plastic flip cover over the phone's memory card slot snapped off after only about 8 uses, due to its ridiculously thin plastic attachment. And the main i-mobile shop in Bangkok doesn't have a replacement part for it, and even if they did they said would want paying to fix it, even though the phone is less than 2 weeks old! PATHETIC!!

And worst of all, the phone likes to randomly switch itself off for no obvious reason at all, sometimes when navigating around between menus, and sometimes even when in the middle of a call! TERRIBLE!!

The list of faults and problems actually goes on and on, but I can more easily sum it all up like this: DO NOT BUY AN I-MOBILE TV 630 PHONE, AND DO NOT EVEN ACCEPT ONE AS A FREE GIFT!! IT IS THE WORST PHONE I HAVE EVER SEEN AND EVER WILL SEE!!

We're going to get rid of this travesty of a phone and treat ourselves to a Nokia N97 instead - a lot more money, sure, but a lot less hassle too!