Why does my Samsung Galaxy S3 have an "i" ina circle?

Since using your Samsung Galaxy S3 you may have noticed an "i" in a circle with a line through it in the notification bar (as you can see in the screen shot on the left). You may be wondering why it's there, or what happened to make it appear, the answer is simple.

The symbol is the symbol for "no notifications" meaning that at some point you've turned off the notifications on your phone (probably by accident in all honest). To do this you'll have likely pulled down the menu (see the pictures below) and turned off the notifications.

 To get rid of the "i" and turn your notifications back on you need to again pull the menu bar down and click on the "Notification" icon. After pressing this icon, you'll see it light up and your notifications will return to the bar.

How to activate driving mode on a Samsung Galaxy S2

One of the useful in built features of the Samsung Galaxy S2 are the voice commands and driving mode options. To access these you need to press the "Home" button twice in quick succession and this should bring up a screen like the one on the land hand side.

From this you can easily give the phone a number of vocal commands, for example you can make a call or "write" a text by telling your phone what to do. You can also make the phone "talk" to you by turning on "Driving mode".

When "Driving mode" has been turned on you will see a green light underneath the car (like in the picture on the right of this page). After pressing on "Driving mode" you will notified by a computerised female voice of things like texts and phones calls.

To turn these vocalised alerts off you merely need to open the "Voice talk" screen (the one in the screen captures) and turn off driving mode by pressing the icon again. Obviously we advise using the "Driving mode" option if you're driving rather than physically looking at your phone (which we do not advocate) though of course if the phone is just sat in your pocket you really won't need driving mode to be activated.

How to add attachments to e-mails with the Samsung Galaxy S2

We recently looked at how to send MMS messages with the Samsung Galaxy S2 to share your pictures with a friend, an alternative option is sending them the image by E-mail using either Mobile Internet or Wi-Fi. We're only going to be looking at doing it via the Gmail system (click on the Gmail icon on your phone to access this) which should open something similar to the image on the right side of page you can see). If you press he phones menu button you can open up the small menu at the bottom of the phone and from that you need to click compose.

The compose screen looks a little bit like this, though again you need to press the "menu" button to open up the small selection of options at the bottom. Here you need to press on the "Attach" option which will then allow you to add images or anything else you would like to send.

When attached you should add your subject, your recipient and any text you wish to add (looking something like the image to the right) before pressing on the "Send" icon at the top of the screen. The send icon is the one with an envelope (the one with a floppy Disk is the draft option). The actual writing of an e-mail is easy and your contacts are easy to sync with your e-mail account or even your facebook account.

The advantage of sending E-mails instead of MMS will be looked at shortly in our next piece.

How to take Screen Captures with the Samsung Galaxy S2

Although it's not a necessity for most, some phone users do ask “is it possible to take a screen shot of my phone?”

The answer is simple. Most of the time it is indeed possible to take print screens or screen captures of mobile phones. Depending on the actual phone however you may need to find yourself doing very different things. Most phones require you to download a computer program and have the phone and computer connected by a USB cable to use your computer to take the screen capture. This is how many websites take the screen captures for things like phone reviews and showing off features.

Rather than looking at the overly complex system involved in what the programs do we will look at how Samsung phones take screen captures. This feature has been in the most recent Samsung's including the Samsung Wave and now the highly acclaimed Samsung Galaxy S2. The way the Samsung phones take screen shots, or as they are known by some as "screen captures" or even "print screens",  is incredibly simple and is actually an in-built feature that seems to be lacking in almost all the other phones.

By holding the “Home” button and pressing the “lock” button at the same time you will manage to use the secret “Screen capture” function of the phone which will take a print screen of the phone exactly how it is. The quality of this is far superior to using another phone (or camera) to take a picture and for people who want to use a picture of the screen this is an almost valuable tool.

If you are successful when you try the phone will vibrate and a message will appear on the phone saying “Screen captured. Saved as image file”. These image files can be found very easily on the phone by looking in the Screen Capture folder of the phone for use later on.

Quick tips:
If at first you find your phone locking or going to the menu just try again.
Hold the "home" button for a slight moment before pressing the lock button (to stop the phone from locking)

Hopefully this guide will help you take screen captures with your Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone.

Edit:
I've noticed a few people finding this place through google (hi folks) with one person googling "Screen capture directory"

The directory will be something along the lines of Computer\GT-I9100\Phone\ScreenCapture when connected to a Windows 7 computer. On the phone by it's self they can be found in Gallery\ScreenCapture. Hope that helps you with making the screen capture function of the Samsung Galaxy S2 as useful as it is for me.

For those wanting to know about the quality of image from a screen capture all the pictures of the Samsung Galaxy S2 screens have been done via this method of screen capturing.

...excitement over the Samsung Galaxy S2...

With my handset arriving in the next 14 hours I've had to devise a small list of what I want to do with the device first...so here we go:
Film my beautiful girlfriend stripping in glorious HD- An obvious choice but also the best way to check out the video ability.
Watch bbc iPlayer- Yet to have a phone that's been able to do this so it's a feature I can't wait to use, and I'll be making the most of my 3GB total internet allowance!
Go to the beach and try out the camera- Living just 5 minutes walk from the beach this seems almost the best way to check out the 8mp camera.
Try out the office software- As a writer this was one of the most appealing things about the phone and allows me to work with out the need for my laptop

I'm sure there will be more but this is it for now.

How to get the best upgrade deals

When it comes to mobile phones we all want the best deal we can get. When it comes to the end of a contract and we are being hassled by our provider to upgrade with them calling a few times a day we often don't quite know what to do. Do we snatch and take the first offer they provide and think that we've got a good deal with a network that have done well for us? Do we say no and wait for them to come back to us with an improved second offer? Do we we shop around and see the best offers available and take the best that's on offer through the general channels? Do we call the cancellation line and threaten to take our custom elsewhere?

Well the actual answer is none of them. What we need to do is look at the options that are available but don't try to jump the gun, don't take any offer until you've weighed all the options that are available. What you need to find is a deal that you like the look of, whether it's with your current network or not, you need to find a deal that is open to all customers. When you have found a deal like this you should wait for the sales team to contact you from your current provider and see if they can match it, usually they can unless you've seen a genuinely amazing deal. From here you can choose to take it, though if the company can match the deal you've seen then decline it, they can certainly under-cut themselves.

The following day you need to call up the cancellation line of the company you are with and request your “PAC” number. The PAC number is your Porting Authorisation Code, or the number you need to transfer your number to another network. When you request this you are generally passed to the “retentions” department, this is the section of the company that will be more flexible than the people calling you. The people that call you are the “Sales team” and are trying to sell you a deal, they aren't given a lot of flexibility the retentions team are trying to keep you and will often bend over a bit more. If when you talk to the retentions team they fail to offer a much better deal then just leave them with something along the lines of “I've seen a better deal”.

Over the following few days the company will generally call back again and now you will see the company offer some of their best deals. The company will beat the offers made by the original sales team though may not manage to match the retention offers, this is effectively them trying their hardest to keep you and will often be the most flexible that the company will offer.

Sometimes the company may also have a web relations team (most notably Vodafone who's team is really excellent and deserve all the praise they get). These are often worth contacting (before you request your “PAC” number) as they can often offer deals that are actually better than the retentions team. The team aren't on any sort of commission and aren't taking a cut for themselves so won't “hike” up the price to cover themselves so are worth a try. Again if you want to go this way you really must know what the competition are offering (and you may need to provide them with a link so make sure you're online whilst talking to them) to get the best deals.

Whatever you do, do not take the first offer from the sales team, they are often unable to, or unwilling to match the best offers available from some of the other companies. This is because they ARE on commission and will be trying to pocket some money themselves and won't be flexible with you. Just remember this when you try to upgrade and you will almost certainly save money via the retentions teams.

Some quick tips:
-See what the competition can offer
-Aim high
-Don't take the first offer
-See if the company has a web team
-Request you PAC number (but don't use it straight away)
-Check online, in store and in as many places as possible
-Only accept an offer YOU are happy with

The changing faces of Mobile phone deals

When I did my last article on the best deals available online for the top 3 smart phones I'll admit I didn't have a really great look around. What I did manage to stumble on was an awesome deal for the Samsung Galaxy S2 on allmobiles.co.uk, the deal (no longer available) was pretty much unbeatable and offered the following:
500mins, 5000 texts and 500mb all for £26 a month for 2 years. This deal gave you the phone for free and even the Web Relations team for Vodafone were unable to match it. The brilliance of the deal seemed to be too good to keep open and the deals gone now less than 24 hours later. They have been replaced by some other similar deals on the site but none are even close to it.

An example of the sites new deals include the following
500mins, 5000 texts and 500mb and an ipod shuffle all for £26 a month for 2 years...and a £89.99 up front payment. Although the free gift is nice it's actually only worth £39.00 (the price of the item from Tesco) meaning you will be paying £50 for the phone. This deal looks to be a noticeable disappointment considering the how good the deal had been 24 hours earlier. Another point regarding this deal...why would you want an ipod shuffle as well as the phone? The phone it's self has a pretty amazing media player and the shuffle is...well a bit turd.

If you are still looking to get a Samsung Galaxy S2 (and I can't see why you wouldn't want one to be honest) there are great offers available, some even come from allmobiles.co.uk though make sure you look through all the available options. As with all phone deals take a look through the likes of all the networks (Vodafone, O2, 3, T-Mobile, Orange and any small ones) as well as shops such as Phones 4 U, Tesco, Carphone Warehouse and the online retailers including allmobiles.co.uk, mobiles.co.uk and Dialaphone.co.uk.

If you a due an upgrade have a look at all the available deals and see if your company can match the deals that are online, sometimes they will attempt to beat them even if the offers themselves are short lived ones.

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.

A little bit of a playing with the Samsung Wave Camera

I've had a very quick play with the camera of the phone and taken some photographs of the room I was where I was sat whilst writing a small beginners guide to using the camera function. These photographs aren't supposed to be masterpieces but are just to try and show the differences between what the Camera CAN do and how bad some photographs are with the phone. IF you know what you are doing (not that I actually do) you can take some fantastic pictures. These have just been taken with various settings to see the differences between a good photo taken with the correct settings and those taken with "bad" settings.

Terrible photo that was taken with a "macro" focus and the lowest resolution. As you can see it looks blurry and just not particularly good. This is a bad photo example we are using and one that was used in the article linked to above. The problems extend much deeper than the blurring effects, just look at the TV in the background to show the problems with this image.

Although this needs to be perhaps darkened slightly it's a much better picture of the same thing as the above picture. Whilst it's not ideal (remember this is me taking the photograph) you have gotten a much crisper image, if you view the image in full size you can visible see the lines on the table and the lights on the DVD player under the TV. As well as the difference in sharpness you can also make out the image on the TV and the cup is white instead of an off-white "dirty" colour.

When blown up this picture is strikingly blurry and that was due to making a really small movement when using night mode. The image although looks "acceptable" when viewed in a small image really doesn't look good at all when blown up and the blurriness really comes out. The features of the "Night" scene is that the picture takes a while to take and is high quality, though movement really blurs images.

 This is essentially a very similar picture to the one above though with out the phone being moved at all. The blurring is gone and it's incredibly smooth and crisp. Sadly with using the "Night" scene and needing to hold the camera still it had to be rested on the floor (hence the slight change in angle from the image above). "Night" scene really does increase the quality of a picture though if used properly.

This was taken with slightly different settings and as a result it lost some of the colour quality of the picture above. Whilst it's still "acceptable" it's not as good as the really good night mode one above. Again it's a crisp image though the colours are a little too bright.

This is an odd picture, I do rather like it for the way it shows the rotting orange off and the carpet looks "almost" right. Though it's focused very heavily on the foreground and as a result really neglects the background and looks darker than it should do. I class this as a good photograph though it's the qualities it has rather than anything technical that makes me like it.

 This is pretty much the opposite of the picture above. It shows the background well though the fruit and the fruit bowl are really bad amd dark. I dislike this one despite the fact it does show some of the background features. The problem is that the whole photograph is just too dark and the fruit is really terrible.

This one is simply too bright on the oranges and has overly brightened the carpet. The dark colours on the carpet "should" look rather deep red and instead they look really bright red and the even the rotting orange looks like it could just have been from the flash. Really terrible picture in terms of lighting even if it is relatively sharp.

This one was taken using the "macro" focus, and as you can see it's just blurry and horrific. Out of the "Orange bowl" pictures this is my least favourite as it's blurry, the colours are generally hit and miss and it's a just not very good.

This one is quite possibly the best of the photographs as it's got both the foreground and background looking good and the carpet, although not perfect is pretty accurate. The oranges don't overly reflect the flash and on the whole it's a pretty decent photograph for a complete amateur.

 This is a really poor picture, it almost looks as if it was taken in black and white (though it wasn't) and the colours just seem to be drained out of the image. It's an interesting one in regards of this blog entry though had it not been for this blog it'd have been deleted instantly.

This is probably the best one from a technical view point, the colours are all spot on and the image is crisp, true and sharp. Although not my favourite picture it is a solid image and really show off the ability of the camera. It's a photo that should be zoomed into to really see why it's the best image out of the orange ones.




Although it's pretty obvious I'm not a photographer these have all been taken with the same phone and you can see the vast difference between images from just playing with the settings. If you're a good photographer you will be able to get some very decent photographs out of the phone by using the right settings.