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And so it begins... The SIM-free Samsung i8910 HD arrives in the UK

90 replies · 21,627 views · Started 23 July 2009

rvirga 24 Jul 2009, 04:52

Steve, I have a question, which in its concise form can be formulated as:
0) Will there be now a QHD version (and maybe a HD one) of the Phones Show, alongside the traditional QVGA/VGA version?

The above question can be expanded into several subquestions:
1) Is this phone obtained through the 'Ambassador' program yours to keep, or do you have to return it to Samsung later on?
2) Are you satisfied enough with the quality of the i8910 to use it for the Phones Show?
3) Does your video editing software have an easy-to-use 'Pan & Scan' feature to allow you to shoot at 16:9 and then obtain a 4:3 cropped video?
4) Could a QHD RSS feed be added without incurring in additional web hosting fees?

As you probably have noticed, the number of phones with 16:9 screens in the market is increasing rapidly, creating a demand for widescreen video. As an example of this trend, the MSNBC podcasts that I watch have all transitioned this year from QVGA to QWVGA.

krisq 24 Jul 2009, 07:50

rvirga wrote:
As you probably have noticed, the number of phones with 16:9 screens in the market is increasing rapidly, creating a demand for widescreen video. As an example of this trend, the MSNBC podcasts that I watch have all transitioned this year from QVGA to QWVGA.

Oh yes :icon14:. I would like to see The Phones Show in 16:9 too. Also, you should use XviD Simple Profile Level 3 instead of AVC for 640x480(or 360). That way it will be playable on almost all devices.

NZtechfreak 24 Jul 2009, 08:01

First off, this is the most stable S60 phone I've ever owned at first release. I currently have a trial N97, and I've owned N95, N95 8GB, and an N82 previously and used an N81 a fair amount.

The latest firmware has AAC video encoding as others have mentioned, not AMR.

Samsung has delivered several firmware updates for this phone already, so I think they are proving they can deliver some follow-through (new firmware is on the way too, confirmed via the official Italy Facebook blog, who accurately gave information on the most recent firmwares release).

Sure it has two video players, but I like that, since the Samsung one actually supports subtitles. Incidentally there is no finer movie player in the mobile biz right now, because it (A) plays stuff perfectly without any need for down-sampling or transcoding. and (B) has the best screen available on any mobile (until Samsung release their WVGA AMOLED screens on other OS environs soon). It literally mocks every Nokia handset in this respect.

Regarding web site loading speeds, the fact that the N86 might load pages faster is negated by the fact that scrolling around a web page in QVGA more than negates a few seconds speed advantage in loading here and there.

...its all a little moot anyway, since the S60 browser is awful compared to whats on offer in most other OS environs (Opera Mobile 9.7 on a WVGA WinMo phone like the Xperia, my previous handset, is a simply joyous experience). Since there is no good 3rd party support for S60v5 at present you really have to accept that you are compromising on the browser front when you buy any S60 phone, and if you're going to compromise then you may as well get superior hardware - which the i8910 has in spades.

slitchfield 24 Jul 2009, 08:08

>The C disk (internal flash memory) is only 40MB total, How well does the device get by with this?

Well, it's not ideal, obviously, although to a certain extent you get round it by just installing all apps to the 'Mass memory'. Wish there was another 128MB of flash here though, wouldn't have cost Samsung more than a few dollars per unit.

rvirga wrote:1) Is this phone obtained through the 'Ambassador' program yours to keep, or do you have to return it to Samsung later on?
2) Are you satisfied enough with the quality of the i8910 to use it for the Phones Show?
3) Does your video editing software have an easy-to-use 'Pan & Scan' feature to allow you to shoot at 16:9 and then obtain a 4:3 cropped video?

I believe all Ambassador phones are to be retained after the 'programme' - it's part of the deal etc. 8-)
Yes, I was very impressed by video quality of the i8910 HD. It's certainly good enough for use in The Phones Show. There's no easy way to produce both QVGA and 16:9 HD renders though. Dare I risk leaving those out who want to watch on the phone itself? I guess I could produce a QVGA feed with black bars top and bottom? Comments welcome, I haven't decided what to do yet!

slitchfield 24 Jul 2009, 08:16

NZtechfreak wrote:First off, this is the most stable S60 phone I've ever owned at first release. I currently have a trial N97, and I've owned N95, N95 8GB, and an N82 previously and used an N81 a fair amount.

So no Eseries in there then, which explains your statement 8-)

supports subtitles. Incidentally there is no finer movie player in the mobile biz right now, because it (A) plays stuff perfectly without any need for down-sampling or transcoding. and (B) has the best screen available on any mobile

Fair enough, I'm not going to argue! 8-)

Since there is no good 3rd party support for S60v5 at present you really have to accept that you are compromising on the browser front when you buy any S60 phone, and if you're going to compromise then you may as well get superior hardware - which the i8910 has in spades.

Fair point, though there are actually some very good 5th Edition-designed apps - thankfully most of them work fine on the i8910 HD. Biggest downside for me is to lose Internet Radio - anyone know of a slick alternative?

krisq 24 Jul 2009, 08:16

slitchfield wrote:I guess I could produce a QVGA feed with black bars top and bottom? Comments welcome, I haven't decided what to do yet!

You shouldn't add black bars because it's would still be 4:3 😊. I don't know which software are you using for editing but if you do 16:9 ratio, the program should put appropriate flag in the header when exporting to MP4. Real player, or any other player for that mattter, should add letterboxing on playback automatically if nesseccary. Just like it is on DVD. If not, you can always adjust size in the real player manually.
And think about switching to mpeg4 sp for vga version. It will be playable on almost all devices.

Gajas 24 Jul 2009, 09:20

Does the bundled TV out accessory support 720p TV display output? I've read elsewhere that it is not possible unless you are using the DLNA dongle.

stuclark 24 Jul 2009, 09:24

Steve,

You need to re-write a lot of this article when using the IG2 firmware - as I posted in both the articles I wrote (one using IF4 and the second announcing IG2); Samsung have fixed a LOT, if not ALL, the bugs you mention.

I have been using this phone for over 2 months now and have it on the Italian IG2 firmware you've now got - and it's just as stable as my 5800 on V21 firmware and much, much better than a friend's N97!

The i8910 (actually STILL branded as the Omnia HD on Italian firmware) is the BEST S60 V5 phone currently available. Bar NONE!

(oh, and Steve - Download IS available in iPlayer, but the phone isn't capable of receiving the certificate from the Beeb yet - this is an iPlayer bug, not a lack of DRM on the phone)

stuclark 24 Jul 2009, 09:43

Oh, and Samsung Italy have announced they're working on ANOTHER update... should be out in a couple of weeks.

This one "improves phone speed and multitasking"

NZtechfreak 24 Jul 2009, 09:52

slitchfield wrote:So no Eseries in there then, which explains your statement 8-)

You may be right, I've been tempted by the E-Series, but never quite got there yet...

slitchfield wrote:Fair point, though there are actually some very good 5th Edition-designed apps - thankfully most of them work fine on the i8910 HD. Biggest downside for me is to lose Internet Radio - anyone know of a slick alternative?

I quite agree, I was only making that comment in reference to the browser... I really hope the Opera Mobile dev blog was telling the truth in their recent hint that an updated S60 version of Opera Mobile is coming soon...

Software support is not too bad at all otherwise, if you hack your handset its even better. I'm currently enjoying Sportstracker and photobrowser on my handset, and others report that Nokia Messaging works fine, as do a few other Nokia apps. If you browse in Firefox its even possible to download the installation files from Ovi Store by using an extension that reports you are browsing from an N97, and then you can remove the .dm container from the file with a hexeditor and install them on your i8910...

NZtechfreak 24 Jul 2009, 09:55

I also miss internet radio - alternative anybody?

(and don't say you can listen to them in Real Player either, I know that but want something more user friendly!)

Unregistered 24 Jul 2009, 11:05

Steve, Can you say what the wifi encryption protcols are?
Thanks

malerocks 24 Jul 2009, 11:18

Gajas wrote:Does the bundled TV out accessory support 720p TV display output? I've read elsewhere that it is not possible unless you are using the DLNA dongle.

This is an excellent point. Anybody have an answer to this???

slitchfield 24 Jul 2009, 11:28

stuclark wrote:You need to re-write a lot of this article when using the IG2 firmware - as I posted in both the articles I wrote (one using IF4 and the second announcing IG2); Samsung have fixed a LOT, if not ALL, the bugs you mention.

Not true, I'm sitting here and they're all present and correct in IG2.

krisq 24 Jul 2009, 13:05

malerocks wrote:This is an excellent point. Anybody have an answer to this???

720p playback is available only through HDMI which I8910 doesn't have, via mass storage or DLNA.

Gajas 24 Jul 2009, 13:44

krisq wrote:720p playback is available only through HDMI which I8910 doesn't have, via mass storage or DLNA.

That has been reported to be the case when a compatible TV out cable from a Nokia is used. Have you tried it with an official/bundled TV out cable for the i8910?

So far all the posts I have read about the TV out cable only supporting Standard Def are i8910 owners that did not have a bundled TV out cable with their package, but were using ones from either their old N95 or 5800XM.

Tenkom 24 Jul 2009, 15:30

You won't get HD signals on a A/V cable no matter who makes it, samsung or nokia. You need HDMI or perhaps Component. Forget about DLNA cause there's not enough bandwidth to stream HD content over the phones WIFI.

Unregistered 24 Jul 2009, 18:58

I think this review is a bit harsh and premature...I have had the phone serveral days now, and although I do believe the browser is a bit crap(this will be fixed w/new browser downloads coming)....this phone is the most awesome piece of multimedia technology, in a phone, you can buy (IMHO)...It takes a while to learn it, which can be frustrating at first, but after you work out the understanding and software and setup; it is simpy unrivaled at the current time. BTW: SO many of my iphone 3Gs friends are JEALOUS of the screen and drop/drag/memory card stuff...not to mention the HD Videos...mine look GREAT!!!

Me

rvirga 24 Jul 2009, 20:07

slitchfield wrote:
There's no easy way to produce both QVGA and 16:9 HD renders though. Dare I risk leaving those out who want to watch on the phone itself? I guess I could produce a QVGA feed with black bars top and bottom?

Neither dropping the 4:3 RSS feeds nor adding black bars is a particularly appealing solution. This is why I was suggesting using Pan and Scan when you edit the video on a computer, if you can find a program/plugin that allows you to do it easily.

slitchfield 24 Jul 2009, 20:47

Unregistered wrote:I think this review is a bit harsh and premature...I

Umm..... 'review'??? This was an unshamed set of very initial impressions. When we do a 'review', you'll know it because it'll be thousands of words long and (probably) in 3 or 4 parts. Give me a break, I'd only had the phone for a few HOURS!!!

Tenkom 24 Jul 2009, 21:05

Why would you want the phones show in widescreen? It's informational show mostly showing a bunch of phones and steve's face. And don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that. I watch every episode. But there's no reason to go widescreen. Except maybe to show that phones can now record widescreen video. That's my opinion at least.

capitaine 24 Jul 2009, 22:44

Tenkom wrote:Over the air updates is one thing. But no udp is really bad. Especially considering how many firmwares this thing has to got through before even being close to stable.

a load of utter crap. Have you got the phone? Mine is perfectly fine. There are no stability issues. There are few major issues period.

rvirga 24 Jul 2009, 22:54

Tenkom wrote:Why would you want the phones show in widescreen? It's informational show mostly showing a bunch of phones and steve's face.

If you go to YouTube and search for the Phones Show episodes there, you'll see that, while the videos themselves are 4:3 pillar boxed (since YouTube has also transitioned to widescreen - part of that trend I was talking about before), the thumbnails of the videos are 16:9 cropped frame grabs. Looking at those 16:9 thumbnails gives you an idea of what a widescreen version of the Phones Show would look like. And precisely: you would see less of Steve's torso, and more of the phones he's usually holding in one or both hands. Since when I watch the Phones Show I'm more interested in the phones than in Steve's torso (although part of the female audience of the show might disagree with me on this point 😊), I think a ws version as an improvement over the current 4:3 version.
Although, I now realize, with an efficient use of widescreen as outlined above, Pan & Scan doesn't look very feasible, and maybe the simplest thing would be to use letterboxing to generate the QVGA version.

Madcypher 24 Jul 2009, 22:56

"Why would you want the phones show in widescreen? It's informational show mostly showing a bunch of phones and steve's face. And don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that. I watch every episode. But there's no reason to go widescreen. Except maybe to show that phones can now record widescreen video. That's my opinion at least."

My friend, the global trend for widescreen has been underway for many, many years now. Movies have ALWAYS been widescreen, DVDs advanced the widescreen format and HD (broadcast, Blu-Ray, etc) is the icing in the cake. Cell phones are just starting to catch up within the last few years.

Widescreen is and has always has been the screen ratio of choice, if you were up on your latest phone specs, the majority of mid to high-end phones released in the past few years have widescreen displays.

Just a little fyi my friend.

Madcypher

Tenkom 25 Jul 2009, 00:02

capitaine wrote:a load of utter crap. Have you got the phone? Mine is perfectly fine. There are no stability issues. There are few major issues period.

Yes I do. I'm the "proud" owner of a 16GB I8910 with the latest( I think, I8910XXIG2) firmware.
The podcast player is just plain broken, the web browser crashes alot and for no particular reason. It will be in the middle of loading a page, crash and exit and when I start it up again and try to load the same page it'll be fine.
But the stability isn't really my biggest concern. it's the performance. The speed of the web browser is really sub par. Only a little faster than my n95. And reading rafe's browser speed comparison that means it's actually slower than the 5800. And I've seen 5800 browser reviews on youtube and scrolling is smoother on the 5800!
There is no flick scrolling like there is on the n97, I have to manually turn on full screen after the page has loaded. When in landscape and in fullscreen the button to exit fullscreen mode is sometimes REALLY hard to hit. Forcing me to turn it over to portrait just to exit fullscreen. For some reason page scrolling in landscape is much more jerky than it is in portrait.
The s60 music player really loses alot of it's efficiency without a keyboard. The landscape coverflow like effect is not very smooth(which it should be! 600MHz with really powerfull 3d acceleration).

It's funny, a fairly common metaphor when reviewing smartphones is "It's like putting a fiat engine in a ferrari". This is more like putting a ferrari engine in a fiat. Although the fiat part is only the software. The hardware really is a Ferrari, probably the best hardware in the world at the moment.
When I bought this phone I knew that s60 5th wasn't the most intuitive or efficient os in the world. But I thought the cpu and that BEAUTIFUL screen would enable me to overlook it. I'm sad to say I was WRONG. 😞