Leads#2: DivX Certified Mobiles in INDIA

Well, there is no end to this ever growing technology. One thing that changed the perception of mobile phones was the mp3 technology. Every phone manufacturer made sure that their mobile had the mp3 support and it was a huge success that it almost dumped the mp3 players. Things are getting even hotter because now its time to have video playing capabilities on your phone and that’s how we have the .h264 technology.



Ahh! Its not over yet. Am sure everyone knows about those .avi movie files. They completely changed the way we watch the movies. They offer such good compression yet maintain superior quality. You get that same DVD quality but with a reduced size on disk(A 4GB DVD can be ripped to a .avi file of 700MB maintaining almost the same quality). The compression algorithm behind this .avi file is called the DivX/Xvid algorithms. Now what if these are available on a mobile device? Yes they already are. In this post I will post some of the DivX certified mobile phones which will almost dump your media player.

There are many software solutions available on the net. You can download the media players; install them on your mobile to play these files. But nothing can match the DivX certified mobiles. Reason? Because these devices are tried and tested and offer solution from the hardware (.h264) rather than software, so you get superior movie watching experience.



In the mobile phone industry (in INDIA) only Samsung and LG are offering Divx solutions. But things will change soon. All the phones discussed here are the ones that are available from 2010. There are many other phones like the LG KM Arena,Samsung Omnia etc who also offer the DivX certified devices which are quite old now. Additionally you may also want to know some of the touch screens like TFT LCD,OLED,AMOLED and Super AMOLED from our post on Touch Screen Phones here which will be helpful in judging the right DivX phone.


There are four classification in the certification listed as under:

DivX HD: Resolution 1280x720, supports .avi(encoded with DivX/Xvid algorithms), .divx files and .mkv(Matroska Video) HD files.

DivX Mobile: Resolution 320x240 supports .avi(encoded with DivX/Xvid algorithms) and .divx files


DivX Mobile Theatre : Max Resolution 640x480 supports .avi(encoded with DivX/Xvid algorithms) and .divx files

The coolest thing here is, you need not do any conversion. Just dump your movie files and these DivX certified devices just plays them smooth.Ok lets check these DivX babies right away:


Samsung Galaxy SPICA:



So in the ascending order, the phone that is in great demand in India is Samsung’s Galaxy SPICA i5700. This phone comes with a 3.2” capacitive TFT LCD(16M colors) screen with 800MHz processor doing the number crunching.It runs on Android Éclair which is from Google and the OHA which is getting popular now. It has got Samsungs own DNSe technology for superior audio quality. It’s a sheer pleasure watching movies on this phone. This phone is a DivX Certified Mobile device. I had watched a movie with a resolution of 704x288, it played them very smooth. You can check the review of SPICA in one of our posts here. Spica sells for around Rs. 12,500. Its very hard to find this phone in the market, if you find one just grab them, its worth for the money you pay.


Samsung Jet(2):




Samsung Jet s8003 has 3.1” AMOLED(16M colors) resistive touch screen, 800MHz processor and DNSe technology which makes sure you get a good audio experience. With the AMOLED screen the colours are more sharper, deeper and brighter than the good old TFT LCD and watching movies on such a display is awesome. If you don’t know what AMOLED’s are check our post on touch screen phones.The phone sells for around Rs. 13,000 and is a DivX Certified Mobile device.


LG GW620:



LG GW 620 is LG’s first Android phone running CupCake. It has 3” Resistive(256k color) TFT LCD screen, 528 MHz processor and a QWERTY slide out keyboard. The phone sells for around Rs 16,000 and is a DivX Certified Mobile device.

Samsung Wave :



Samsung has brewed up their own new OS called Bada OS. And Wave is the first device, infact their Flagship device to run their Bada OS. Wave has a 3.3” Super AMOLED Touch Screen(16M color), with a 1 GHz processor doing the math, FM Radio and DNSe.
If the Jet offered crisp movies with its AMOLED screen, Wave has Samsung’s new Super AMOLED screen which is more superior than the latter. Now this mobile is for sure going to make a bold statement on the multimedia front. This phone sells for around Rs. 18,000 and is DivX HD certified Mobile, which infact is the first phone to have HD certification. This means it will play all your 720p videos and .mkv files like a champ.

Samsung Galaxy i899:




Galaxy i899 is the first CDMA phone with Android Platform in India. This phone has a 3.2” AMOLED(16M colors) Resistive Touch Screen, with a 800MHz processor and DNSe. So, this phone too has the AMOLED screen which will make sure that you have a good movie watching experience. This phone sells for around Rs 19,000 which is tied with Reliance and is a DivX Certified Mobile device.

Samsung Galaxy S i9000:





The last phone on our list is from Samsungs Galaxy family called the Galaxy S i9000. This phone is Samsung’s flagship Android device. It has a huge 4” Super AMOLED(16 M color) touch screen with 1 GHz Processor doing the number crunching,FM Radio, DNSe and DLNA technologies. 4” screen+ Super AMOLED+DNSe+ DLNA= Theatrical experience.This phone is a DivX HD certified Mobile.The phone sells for around Rs 27,000.

Leads:

We have seen 6 different phones to super phones and it looked like a one sided game with Samsung filling 5 phones here. This trend of DivX certified devices has just started and other player will soon join LG and Samsung to catch up the mobile entertainment race.

Now picking your right DivX certified device depends on so many factors ranging from price,OS and to many other features like camera etc. But as far as our leads is concerned, it is to pick the device which is quite good player on all the segments (price, feature etc.).

So the Leads here is to 3.3” Super AMOLED screen+ DNSe+DivX HD(play HD .avi,.divx and .mkv) + flagship device+cost + feature = Samsung Wave S8500. Watching those movies on those Super AMOLED screens is surely going to give you goose bumps. With a price range of Rs 18,000, the Leads here is to Samsung Wave S8500.

If price is not a concern then Samsung Galaxy S is the mobile to look for as it has the now stable Android running and moreover is the flagship device of Samsung as well. This would simply mean that all the Android updates for Samsung will start from this device.

If none of the device impressed you, then you might check for good old LG KM Arena or the Samsung i8910 HD which are also DivX certified devices. To check out the complete list of Divx certified phones(or any DivX certified electronic device) check here.

Coming Soon:

Watch out for Samsung i5800 also called the successor of Samsung Galaxy SPICA and LG GT540 Optimus , the two phones which will be announced in the last quarter of this year. These devices are DivX Certified Mobile device.

Touch Screen Phones

There was a time when we looked up @ a person having a touch screen gadget like multi-millionaire. But things are totally different now. Thanks to LG and Samsung who made this technology reach the lower middle phone segment. Now with lots of touch screen phones around costing little more than 6k, there sure is confusion to choose from.

So in this article I will discuss some of the technologies and terminologies that will help you choose the right touch screen phone according to your requirement.

Touch Screen Types:

Touch screens can be broadly classified as Resistive and Capacitive screens. Each of these technologies has their own pros, cons and purposes. Lets check out how they differ.


Capacitive Touch Screens: The capacitive touch screen is made up of a glass panel that is coated with a material. The property of this material is that it can store electrical charge. So the capacitive touch screens basically stores electrical charge. The human body is a good source for charges to flow. So, when you touch this screen with your finger, some of these charges on the screen get transferred to your finger. The oscillator circuits in the phone will then sense this decrease in the charge on touch screen and the exact location where the touch occurred. And then finally it transfers this specified information to the touch screen driver software, which takes care of the rest.

Pros:
+Highly sensitive to finger touch.
+Multi touch.
+Good sunlight legibility.
Cons:
-Requires little humidity to function smoothly.
-Does not function with objects such as stylus, gloves or even nails.
-It is comparatively costly.

Resistive Touch Screens: Resistive touch screen, on the other hand is again made up of normal glass panel. However, this glass panel in this case is coated with three layers. Two of these layers being conductive and resistive are kept apart using spacers while the third scratch-resistant layer covers the whole setup. When the resistive touch screen system is running, current flows through these layers. On a finger touch, the two layers get connected and change in electrical field occurs. The system calculates the coordinates of point of contact and passes them to touch screen driver software, which takes care of the rest.

Pros:
+Works with any object stylus, pen, nail etc.
+Independent on humidity factor.
+Relatively cheaper

Cons:
-No multi touch support.
-If used with a finger, requires a little bit of pressure to recognize the touch.
-Poor sun light legibility.
-More vulnerable to dust and scratches.


Now that leaves us to choose the technology based on our requirements. If you are going to use hand writing recognition tools (screens are very responsive to stylus) then resistive screens are the best ones for you but remember you will have hard time typing in your hand. On the other hand if you want a device to be very much responsive and you don’t want to use any external objects, then capacitive screens are the ones to go for. As said there is considerable difference in touch sensitivity with capacitive screens beating the resistive screens.

Display types:

TFT LCD/OLED-AMOLED and Super-AMOLED are some of the displays used in mobile phones. Lets have a look at each of the technologies.

TFT LCD (Thin Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display): This technology uses liquid crystals that have direct driven image elements on which voltage is applied and varied to accomplish different color elements. In addition it uses a back lighting arrangements to illuminate each color element.

Pros:
+ Oldest reliable technology.
Cons:
-Very bad sunlight legibility/ viewing angle.

OLED-AMOLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode/Active Matrix OLED): As the name indicates it uses LED’s to accomplish the task. AMOLED utilizes the Active Matrix addressing with the OLED technology. They are self-illuminating and do not require back lighting. Thus it reduces one more layer on the screen and making it thin. Each of the pixels is self-illuminating thus consuming less battery.

Pros:
+ Less power consumption (since it does not require back lighting).
+ Sharp display with superior brightness, contrast and viewing angle.
+ Faster color switching, reducing ghosting or blurring effects in fast moving graphics, such as action movies or fast moving games.

Cons:
- Poor sun light visibility.
- It is costly.

Here is a good comparison between TFT LCD & AMOLED.

Brightness comparison:
































Response time and blurring effects on fast moving objects:



Super AMOLED: Is there a technology that would wipe out the cons of AMOLED? Thanks to Samsung for the Super AMOLED technology, which almost completely eliminates the cons of AMOLED, but for the price tag. Lets hope the cost also comes down. The only change here is that instead of having a separate glass for touch sensor as used in TFT LCD and AMOLED, the AMOLED screen will itself handle the sensor. The following pictures were taken from Mobile World Congress 2010 covered by mobilereview.com, reveals the technology.





























Check out the video where Samsung explains its Super AMOLED technology against TFT LCD and AMOLED technologies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQkLMG3SBQ4

Here goes the advantages of this technology.
Pros:
+ 20% brighter screen.
+ 80% less sunlight reflection which means good sunlight legibility.
+ 20% more battery life.



Now when we talk about touch screens the first thing that comes to our mind is the iPhone. Now here is the screen comparison between the iPhone (TFT LCD capacitive screen) and Samsung Wave (Super AMOLED with capacitive screen), which is the first phone to have a Super AMOLED screen.








picture source:gsmarena.com

Now this video will sum up as to what to expect from a Super AMOLED screen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRkb75gjVD0

Display Resolution: It simply means the physical number of columns and rows of pixels creating the display. More the number of pixels better is the clarity of the display. VGA (Visual Graphics Array) is a standard way of measuring the resolution. VGA refers to a resolution of 640x480. Most of the low-end phones nowadays come with a 2.2” QVGA resolution, which is nothing but Quarter of VGA or a WQVGA. The table will give you an overview of the various display resolutions:


Conclusion:

The Super AMOLED touch screens are a wonderful piece of technology to own. On the other hand TFT LCD’s are tried and tested and one of the most reliable in this front. At the end of the day, no matter how many technologies come up, it all depends on ones requirement and affordability. I hope this article helps you choose the right touch screen phone that meets your requirement and on your budget. Here are some of the phones, with resistive screens:(in the 6k to 15k range)














Here are some of the Capacitive touch screen phones:(in the 9k to 15k range)