Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro Review

Earlier this year, we saw the Samsung Rugby Smart come to AT&T, which set it apart from other smartphones with the carrier, as it was designed to be a rugged Android device.
Now eight months later comes the follow-up, the Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro – it has a larger 4” display, 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, and is running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich. If that wasn’t enough, 4G LTE is also on-board, so you can get faster data connection while in an AT&T LTE coverage area. Add all of that together, and you have a smartphone that has a nice appeal to it with only a $100 on-contract price.


Included in the retail box is the Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro SGH-I547 smartphone, 1850mAh battery, wall charger with detachable microUSB cable, and user guides.

Design:

The overall design of the Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro hasn’t changed too much from the Rugby Smart. It still exhibits all the qualities of a rugged device, with thick rubber gripping on the sides, and a textured locking battery cover. This does make the device feel a bit chunky in the hand, but no more so than a standard smartphone with an add-on case installed.



Since the Galaxy Rugby Pro meets military standard 810F, it is resilient to blowing rain and sand, high humidity, thermal shock, and is waterproof up to 1 meter for 30 minutes. The display and front keys also have an anti-scratch coating on them. We were able to drop the phone several times (on tile) from a height of 5 feet, and there were no visible signs of damage to the device.





Below the display are three physical buttons for menu, home, and back, and around the sides of the device are the volume rocker, power/lock key, and customizable key, all of which are easily found by touch alone, as they have a nice texture on them. Up on top is the 3.5mm headset jack, and on the bottom is the microUSB port, both of which are protected by a plastic cover with water seal.

Display:

Even though the Samsung Galaxy Rugby Pro is built to withstand the elements, it remains a mid-range smartphone, but we're glad to see that the display size has increased from 3.7” to 4”, though the resolution remains WVGA 480x800 pixels. This means that small text appears slightly jagged at times. But since it is Super AMOLED, it provides eye-grabbing colors and excellent contrast when viewing images or watching videos. One feature missing is any type of automatic backlight brightness setting, which means that you have to manually set the screen brightness yourself. This can be annoying when going from a dark environment to outside in the sun, as you’ll have to keep adjusting the backlight. The only work around is to set it near the middle, so it wouldn’t need readjusting too often.





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How do I Beam playlists and songs in Music Hub?Samsung Galaxy NFC

You can only beam musicthat is located in the Music Hub catalog. If you uploaded your own music to the Music Hub cloud locker, you may only beam music located in the Music Hub catalog.

Note: NFC needs to be turned ON to enable beaming. To access the NFC options for your device open the Notification Panel by swiping your finger from the top of the screen to the bottom and touch Settings > More settings. Touch the Off/On slider to turn it on.

1. From the Music Hub app, touch My Music to access your playlists.
2. Select a playlist or song that you wish to share.If beaming a playlist, go to the My Music folder, and open the playlist. If beaming a song, click on a song and open the player page.
    
3. When you put the devices together, the playlist image will shrink. Touch teh image to begin the transfer of the playlist.
4. The Playlist will appear in other subscriber’s My Music folder. If beaming an individual song, the song will immediately begin playing on the other subscriber's device.

Note: This feature does not work on the native music player and is limited to Samsung Music Hub.

Samsung, Galaxy S and Media Hub are trademarks of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Other company names, product names and marks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners and may be trademarks or registered trademarks. Screen images simulated.

 http://smgm.us/WMg

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Samsung I930 ATIV Odyssey for Verizon image leaked

We reported couple of weeks ago about an upcoming Windows Phone 8 device for Verizon's network in the US. Called the Samsung ATIV Odyssey the device seemed like a variant of the ATIV S for Verizon's network.

We now have an image of the device, courtesy of @evleaks on Twitter. The phone looks like the original Samsung Focus from the front and the ATIV S from the back. But somehow, it does not strike us as a high-end device, with the display size seemingly around the 4-inch mark.
Other than the 4G LTE badge on the back and the microSD card slot on the side, we are not sure of any other spec of the device, so we will have to wait till we hear more about this one.


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Sony offers 24K gold-plated Xperia P as contest prize

We haven't seen any gold phones in a while, but we didn’t expect Sony to be the one to fill that void. Sony ran a contest on its Facebook page over the weekend with the prize being a 24 karat gold-pated Sony Xperia P.
The contest is for Nordic countries only and will be over in a couple of hours. If you want to participate, you have to send an email to fans.se@sonymobile.com answering the question "What is a gold Friday for you?" (this is an automatic translating so it may not be 100% accurate, but we're sure people in Nordic countries don't need Google Translate).

The Xperia P launched early this year and one of its major attractions was the aluminum unibody. The Limited 24K Gold Edition will go to a lucky winner today and they might be the only ones to have it.
Sony's Facebook page makes no mention of this limited edition going on sale. And even if it did, did anyone buy those gold-plated Nokias? Sure, this has the advantage of running Android rather than Symbian - or worse still - S40, which puts it head to head with the Lamborghini TL700 and the Mobiado Grand Touch.
Anyway, the winner of the Sony Xperia P Limited 24K Gold Edition (who is yet to be announced) has our congratulations.



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HTC Windows Phone 8X vs Samsung Galaxy S III

Introduction

Now that we've compared the Windows Phone 8X with the iPhone 5, and came to the conclusion that there's still quite a bit of work ahead of Microsoft and its partners, let's see how one of the better Windows Phone 8 handsets fares against one of the best Android ones – the Galaxy S III.

The Galaxy S III is, without a doubt, a fearsome opponent – one that the 8X will definitely have a hard time against. Will its Live Tiles and high-quality screen be enough to somehow turn the odds in its favor? Let us see for ourselves!

Design

Although the Galaxy S III is certainly not much of a looker, we can't really give the win to the Windows Phone 8X, because of how uncomfortable it feels in the hand. If you just have to look at these devices, then yes - we'd say that HTC has achieved the more stylish appearance, but once you actually start using the handsets, it becomes evident that its sharp edges and rubber-like soft-touch materials used for its body make it somewhat unpleasant to handle. Meanwhile, although the GS III doesn't shine in any particular way, it still feels natural when held in the hand, while the smooth, glossy plastic feels fine to the touch.

The physical buttons of the HTC Windows Phone 8X aren't very responsive, especially the power/lock key, which is probably the most important. The Galaxy S III isn't much better in this respect, but we'd say it's just a tad better.

Display

It's clear that the Windows Phone 8X has the better display of the two. Its S-LCD2 panel is brighter than the Super AMOLED of the GS III, allowing it to be more visible when outdoors. The color temperature of the 8X is also better. Although it's just a little bit too warm, it's still much closer to reality than the cold image of the GS III.

Meanwhile, the smaller screen size and the RGB matrix of the 8X mean that everything will look crisper on its display, compared to the PenTile-powered GS III. However, since both handsets have very high resolutions, the differences in image clarity are almost negligible.



Source:http://www.phonearena.com/

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Fastest Mobile Networks 2012

With more than half of all U.S. mobile phone buyers picking smartphones, we're all relying heavily on wireless Internet. Seven major U.S. wireless carriers are all promising some form of "4G" now or in the near future, but all 4G isn't the same. So for the third year in a row, we sent drivers out to see the state of the 4G nation and bring home 240,000 lines of data to figure out which network is the fastest near you.
This year we dramatically expanded our testing project, taking three 2013 Ford Taurus cars out to survey 30 U.S. cities. We tested the five largest U.S. carriers: AT&T, MetroPCS, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless. (For more about the wireless providers, see Different Carriers, Different Strengths.)
We found the situation is even muddier than it was last year, as all the carriers seems to be calling nearly everything 4G. We'd love to say that LTE is the gold standard, but that isn't always the case, as the slower results from MetroPCS's LTE network and the speedy downloads on T-Mobile's HSPA+ 42 network show. (For more about 4G classification and speeds, see How Fast Is 4G?)
Rather, you need to have a solid LTE network with lots of spectrum to win, and it helps if not a lot of people are using it yet. Across our 30 cities, Verizon's 4G LTE network dueled with AT&T's new 4G LTE network for supremacy; Verizon won 19 cities while AT&T won 10, and the two carriers tied in one. T-Mobile came surprisingly close for a non-LTE carrier. And the slower results in cities where AT&T and T-Mobile have less spectrum show that the spectrum crunch is real. (For more, see Why Spectrum Matters.)
Not all phones, including Apple's popular iPhone, support 4G, and the fastest technologies aren't available in rural areas, either. So we made sure to measure the carriers' 3G networks as well. (For more, see Which Carrier Has the Fastest iPhone?)
Finally, this is a snapshot of networks in May 2012. Our results are sure to change in 2013 as new LTE networks come on line from Cricket, Sprint and T-Mobile. We got a brief glimpse of what Sprint will have to offer in Atlanta; for more on that, see Testing Sprint's New 4G LTE Network.
Our Methodology
We chose our 30 test cities so they were evenly spread across our six regions, and so we could drive to all of them in three weeks. We also chose so as many of them as possible had the maximum number of 4G networks. We tested 12 of MetroPCS's 14 LTE cities, 20 of AT&T's 39 LTE markets, 23 of Sprint's 70 WiMAX markets, and 30 of Verizon's 258 4G LTE markets.
Two of the carriers we regularly review declined to participate this year. Cricket currently runs a slow-but-steady 3G network and is installing 4G LTE soon; it'll return in our 2013 feature. U.S. Cellular has LTE, but its coverage map didn't mesh well with our travel plans.
The competition is much closer than it looks. Calculating our speed score, we applied a major penalty if a network wasn't available in one of our test cities. If we only counted the cities where AT&T LTE had coverage, it would have tied Verizon nationally and won the northeast, southeast, and south central regions. But you can't win if you don't play, and AT&T's 39 markets pale when compared with Verizon's 258-market rollout. (After our testing was complete, AT&T disputed the upload speed results we found on its network.)
Note that we didn't test call quality, dropped calls, or coverage. These tests are all about data speed. For the best assessment of voice call quality according to our readers, check out our annual Reader's Choice awards results. To get a picture of wireless coverage near you, download the Sensorly app from the Android Market and you'll see crowd-sourced coverage maps for all the major U.S. mobile carriers, enhanced with the data from our test drives. (For more, see How We Tested.)
Again, mobile networks are constantly changing, and almost always for the better. And because speeds vary based on tower location, network load, device used, and even the weather, we can't predict performance in a specific location; rather, we're giving a snapshot of a few days' worth of usage in several locations across a metro area. Hit the next page for the regional and national winners:

s0urce http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2405596,00.asp

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