Some more playing with the HTC Wildfire Camera

As with all the recent shots these were just taken with the effects of the phone, mostly with the Solarize and Negative effects, though some of them are pretty cool. This one is of the front of a car with the glove compartment being the most obvious part of the picture. The air vent really stands out as looking particularly awesome though.

 These were some really dull and boring green leaves outside of the car taken with the Solarize effect. The leaves went from dull and boring to bright, colourful and rather brilliant to be honest.

 This was almost the same image as above taken this time with the sepia effect. The image uses the lighting from above nicely to give the leaves a brown effect that looks old and worn. It's one of the few Sepia pictures I've taken that I've actually quite liked.

I think, though I may be wrong, that this was taken with out an effect and is again the leaves from above. As you can see the leaves aren't exciting and really did need sprucing up a little bit.

No effects picture of the sun on a lovely sunny day. This was basically taken as a test picture before taking some of the other sun pictures.

 The sun in black and white. Not the best picture of the sun though you can see the huge draining of the colours from the image, the sky and the leaves mainly.

 By the time this "Aqua" picture was taken the clouds had started to come across and hide the sun though it still seemed like a nice image due to the way the sun has decided to hide. Sadly it's really a bit boring and didn't have the artistic feel to it that some of the others do.

 Here is one of my favourite "sun" pictures, it's the sun solarized and it gives off some really cool looking effects. The sky has turned to a pinkish colour, the clouds, despite only being a light coverage, look angry and the sun looks like an explosion in the sky. It's just...beautiful!

 This is the sun negatived, it's not quite as as awesome as the solarized version but still pretty fun and artsy looking. The sun has become dark whilst the leaves have become light in a weird juxtaposition.

The final image, this one saw the sun hiding completely behind the clouds and as a result the light was kind of killed and as a result the sun just looks like a blob. It's a pretty awesome image in my eyes but others may think it sucks.

How to set a different theme on your Samsung Wave Cell Phone

 As with all the guides we start with the home screen the press the menu button the phone to open up the menu. With this guide in particular try and remember what the home screen looks like as it'll look very different by the end of this piece.

 From the menu screen you need to click on "Samsung Apps", it's in the top right hand of this image, though for some users it will be in a different place depending on how you like your menu screens. As with the homescreen this will look pretty different after you've set a different theme.

 In the Apps menu you need to either "search" for a theme or click category and find one. This guide will be done via the Category option as it makes this easier and more simple.

 The category screen looks something like this, you need to scroll down to find "Theme" as can be seen below.

 As I'm a cheapskate I've gone for the ones that are "Free"and picked a few to try. From here they may end up on a menu screen and need installing as well as downloading (though it seems not all of them do need installing).

 After you've downloaded your themes you will need to go back to the menu screen and then enter the settings menu (see left) from here you need to click on "Display and light" and open the the menu's in there.

 In the "Display and light" menu you need to click on "Theme" and you'll find the themes you've downloaded. By default there is only the "Default theme" though after you've downloaded a few more themes you'll be able to select one of those.

 This is the screen that will show all your themes, as you can see I've only actually downloaded 2 on to the phone (and kept the default) so my options here are quite thin though. One of these options is is "cyberpunk" which is what you'll see on the screenshots below which are hugely different to the way the screen looked to begin with.

 

 This is the new homescreen with the "Cyberpunk" theme set, as you can see the homescreen image is different and the icons at the bottom have also changed. Even the icons on menu scree have mainly changed as you can see in the image below. To change the theme back you can easily go back to the "Display and light" menu and select the default one or any other ones.

How to Format a memory card with the Samsung Wave

 For this guide I'll be showing you how to format the memory card for a Samsung Wave. The phone it's self accepts either a MicroSD or a MicroSDHC memory card up to 16GB but the guide for formatting them is the same for both memory cards. You are advised by the manual for format them this way as doing it through a computer can cause incompatibility issues.

As with all the guides for the phone we'll start the home screen which looks something like this. If you have a settings widget you can cut out a few stages though we'll go the long way and start by pressing the menu button

 After pressing the menu button you will bring up a menu similar to this one. From here you want to click on the "Settings" icon which is in the bottom left hand corner and looks like a cog. In this image it's directly above "Keypad". This will open a long list of options for you to tinker with.

What you need to do on this screen is scroll down to the one that looks like a Pie Chart and is called "Memory". It's about 3/4 of the way to the bottom of the phone and is in a section which includes "Reset", "About Phone" and "Security".

 If you actually have a memory card in the phone you will see these options (if no memory card is present the first option won't actually show on this screen). It's the first option that was need to click on as it's the memory card we want to be formatting and not the phone's memory (which can be done via the bottom option of this menu).

 After clicking on the "Memory card details" screen you will see a screen similar to this. The details may be different (for example you might have named your memory card or it may have different numbers). If you look in the bottom left you will see a small button that says "Format", this is the button you need to click on.

After pressing "Format" you will see this screen. If you want to format you should click yes. Before you do this stage make sure if the card has ANYTHING on it that you want to keep, back it up before you format it. If you press "No" and go back you will be able to back up and copy the data on the card to either the phones internal memory on a computer. Remember anything on the card when it's formatted WILL be deleted.!

After this the card will be set up perfectly for your phone and for you to put music on it or use it to store your photographs. Now when you connect the phone to a computer you can click "Mass storage" to access the memory as well as "DRM media" to access the phones internal memory.

How do you clear the chat logs from a Samsung Wave?

 This guide for deleting chat logs begins at the home screen which looks something like this by default (though can be made to look very different depending on what you've done to the phone to personalise it). Whilst on this screen you need to press the "Dial key". The "Dial key" is the soft key on the left of the phone under the touch screen and is shown on page 19 of the of the phones manual.

 You will end up with a screen a bit like this (with out the black marks which have been used to hide numbers of the innocent). This will be a log of the calls and texts you've received. If you've saved the numbers as a contact their name will be displayed here (as seen by Vodafone) otherwise the number will show up. From here we want to click clear in the bottom left hand corner.

 After selecting clear this screen will pop up and you can either select them individually or select them all. You pick which option suits you, in this case I'll be deleting them all so I'll click on the "Select all" option near the top of the screen.

After selecting all, each of the boxes will get a blue tick in them to say they've been selected. If we click "Clear" again it will delete all of the selected numbers and names so you can clear your call log. The function of this is relatively limited though some folk don't like having a log whilst others just don't see the point in having one, though it can also stop you from accidentally calling someone back, which I'm sure we've all done at least once.

HTC and the effects

 Staying on the aspect of photography and the HTC Wildfire's camera I've had a short and quick play with the various effects on the phone. Some of the effects are far more fun to use than others though I'll assume they each have their own function at times. Lets have a look at the pictures taken with the setting, they are all of the same fruit bowl placed in the same place just for comparison purposes.

This was the picture taken with out any effects on. This allows us all to see what the image "should" look like. Although, as with all the pictures on this site, it's not perfect it's here only for comparison purposes.

This is the image taken in taken in "Grayscale" and as you can see the colour has been completely drained out of the image in what is referred to as being taken in "black and white". This can be a great effect if used properly and when used in portraits it can make peoplem even me, look rather good.

"Sepia" turns things brown, it can be one of the more useful effects and can give a good aging feel to pictures. In the case of this setting it's not very useful though in some scenarios it's the best option to give the photograph some real character.

"Negative" looks something like this, it "flips" the colours, or if you rather it "inverts" them. The pictures taken this way can look rather cool (a picture taken at the very end of this article shows off some of the ability of a negative). The inverted colours can be pretty awesome though if used cleverly and a better photographer can really take some amazing pictures using the effect.

"Solarize" changes the photographs colours by inverting them in a different way to "Negative" although it's difficult to really explain by someone like myself all you need to really know is that it can give some great effects or some worrying effects. Looking at the oranges in this picture it looks like the oranges are rotting due to the effect.

"Posterize" is a funny effect that never really seems to look particularly great. The idea behind it is that the it makes tone really stand out from each other and is an incredibly artistic tool. In all honesty most folks just wanting to take general photos should avoid it as it rarely sees a novice photographer taking anything better than wasted shots.

This is the phones final effect and one called "Aqua". It gives the sense that photograph was taken in water and adds a blue tint to photographs. In this example it doesn't really add to the photograph though as with all the effects it can be used in the right scenario to great effect. If you like playing with effects this really could be one of the most interesting ones.

This was an image taken with the negative setting and was taken just to show off how cool the setting can be. It's inverted the colours to brilliant effect and used the images on the TV to give a pretty impressive scene. The lighting on the consoles have been reversed and on the whole this really is a fantastic little example of how good the negative effects are.

Sony Ericsson Shots

After yesterdays fun with the Fruit bowl I've gone Barmy with a bottle. These photos were all taken with a Sony Ericsson C902, like the Samsung Wave it has a 5 Mega-Pixel with a number of options to use and play with. Unlike last nights pictures these were mostly taken in good lighting with multiple bright lights rather than 1 pretty poor lamp. The photographs are of 3 different things, first a “Brahma” beer bottle on the living room floor, “Brahma” bottle on the table and thirdly of a cup of tea in the Kitchen. All 3 sets of images allow you to see different things and some of the pictures are significantly better than others.
 

 Out of the 3 "Tea" pictures taken (only 2 have been used) this was the best, the colours were the nearest to being true. Although detailed enough to read the writing on the microwave you can make out the reflections on the worktop and the crumbs. The detail, all not amazing is pretty decent

 For some reason the colours seemed to be drained out of this photograph. Although it has a similar amount of detail the colours being dark and murky have taken much of the life out of the image. The shadows on the doors do show up better but on the whole the image just feels lifeless in comparison to the one above. Although I'm not 100% sure on the difference I have a feeling this was taken with out the flash on.

 This one of the bottle on the floor is far from perfect though it's gotten most of the colours right, especially the carpet and the bottle. What it's done though has smudged the lighting on the BT Vision box (the Blue light under the TV). Overall it's good for the foreground though seems to have blurred the background slightly.

 This one is very similar to the one above though worse, the red light on the DVD player and the Blue light on the BT Vision box are both heavily blurred and the TV image, although visible also looks terrible in regards to the colours. The Focus seems almost certainly to have been set to the foreground (Auto) due to the way it's made the background look fuzzy.

 This one manages to make the lights in the background look sharper though they seem to "stretch" instead of blur. The quality and colours on the foreground are all pretty much the same as above with only the lighting in the background being of any major difference.

Out of the "Beer bottle on the floor" pictures this appears to be the best of them. Th colours in the forground are at their best and even the lights in the background are bright, sharp and they haven't been blurred like in many of the above pictures. It was almost certainly taken with light mode, which improves the quality of a photograph, though this has meant that the camera was left on the floor and as a result missed the TV from the image.

This one genuinely surprised me, it was taken with VGA quality and yet ends up looking like a pretty decent photo. If you try to blow it up though it really pixelates and is one of the photographs that should be kept at smaller sizes. The way it's picked up the reflection of the TV really shocked me as well, the reflect actually looks better than the TV.

This is probably my favourite picture from this bunch. The reflection of the TV is billiant, the details at the foreground are pretty good (not amazing though) though for it has overly brightened the wood on the mantle piece. The lights under the TV aren't particularly blurry either (they have a slight blur to them but nothing major).

This has significantly darkened the colours from the above picture and the result is that the lights in the background do look much, much crisper. The shadows on the table are a little bit over the top and the photograph is good but not great.

This one is probably the best overall, a look at the desk makes the items much easier to see (glasses, charger, lamp, another cell phone, a house phone, keys and packet) the background lights have only a little blurring and the reflection is picked up brilliantly. Again not a perfect picture but it's me taking them, not someone who knows what they are actually doing.

Time saving tricks for the Samsung Wave

We all like to save time so now I'm going to show you a few quick tricks to save a few seconds whilst using the Samsung Wave, many of the tricks are also possible on other Samsung mobiles. None of these are particularly amazing though they will help you save a small amount of time which can add up if you use the phone a lot.

We start by looking at the quick method of opening the task manager. If you want to open the task manager the "normal" way you need to go through a number of menu screens which can take quite a while and is incredibly fiddly. If you just go to the home screen and hold the "menu key" for a few seconds you jump straight to the task managed saving yourself the time and effort of going through the settings screens. In fact this takes about 3 seconds and is very direct.

The other method of finding the task manager is following this small guide:
Menu>Setting>About Phone>System info>CPU>Task Manager
So as you can see this short cut is much better.

This is a trick most users should already be well aware of but if not it's worth sharing. This little menu you can see is just a drag down menu from the top of the screen and by dragging it down you can turn on, or off, the Wi-Fi, the Bluetooth and Silent mode. This is great for when you just need to turn off something like Wi-Fi to save the battery or turn the volumne off to go into a meeting. 

Each of these 3 settings can be turned on or off through the various menu's though the fact you can do them all here is much quicker and easier than fiddling with a host of multiple screens.



 This final time saving trick takes a little while to set up so I've broken it into the steps you need to use for it to work. It's a trick that some folks will find of more use than others, though if you use the phone for one thing a lot it will be a good trick to learn. Firstly you need to open the "Menu" then click settings and "General" which puts you on this screen here. The you need to select "Gestures" from this screen.



In "Gestures" you will see a screen like this. The option you want to set it "Double tapping" and make sure that a little light is showing next to it as this is what we are wanting to use. After you click on the dot to put the light on you need to click where it says "Double tapping" to open a long list of options.

 The options screen should look something like this (though it has a lot more options than were caught on this screen shot) you need to select the option you want to use. In the case of this example it's going to be "Music" as I like to use my phone to listen to music so it's a good short cut for myself. Others may want to use it to skip to the camera, or the games or soemthing else.

By double tapping the screen on the homepage I'm now zoomed straight to my music and ready to listen to all my tracks with out needing to go through the menu screens. This is a great little trick though one that you need to really use the phone a fair bit to make the most of.

Although this trick does take a little whilst to set up it's pay off in the long run is great and really is a trick you should be using if you want to use the phone for all it's worth.




Of course the phone will have more time saving tricks though these are some of the best ones and easiest ones so are worth using and knowing that they are all there to use.