Galaxy S4 (IV) Official Release Specs & Thoughts

So last night we saw the opening ceremony of the Galaxy S4 in New York. I must admit, I wasn't the biggest fan of the ceremony itself, it's was a classic over the top American production with stages within stages and 'pretend' scenes in which they could use situations to demonstrate the abilities of the new S4. 100 marks for effort, not so much for execution. However, at least they tried something new and different which is fair enough.

A quick rundown of the new hardware features present in Galaxy S4:

CPU: Octa core 1.6Ghz Exynos/Quad Core 1.9Ghz Qualcomm (market dependent)

Display: 5 inch SUPER AMOLED display at 1920x1080 441ppi (Gorilla Glass 3)

Memory: 2GB RAM

Internal Storage: 16GB/32GB/64GB with expandable micro SD slot for card

Cameras: 13MP rear, 2MP front

Mobile: GSM/EDGE/3G/4G technology, Wifi a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0

Sensors/Connections: NFC/InfraRed/MHL2/Temperature/Humidity

Physical measurements: 130 grams, 7.9mm thin, Thin Bezel

Battery: 2600mAh

Software Additions:

Operating System: Android 4.2.2 - Jelly Bean (No mention of Key Lime, however one would assume it will receive the update when available)

S Translate: A neat feature that holds 9 languages and can translate between them, it can process text-to-speech and speech-to-text and can apparently be used without data charges!

S Voice Drive: When the phone is running on bluetooth it will accept voice commands without the need for touching the device itself!

AirView: You can 'hover' your fingers over the screen to expand certain items (an image on a web page for isntance), along with using hand gestures to scroll the screen/answer calls etc.

Smart Pause: The S4 can tell when you look away from it, pausing whatever media you are currently watching. It resumes when you look back at the screen again.

Camera Functions:

Dual Shot - can activate both front and rear cameras simultaneously to enable everyone to be in the picture, the same applies to video calls, you can show both cameras at once.

Eraser - if you are taking a picture and someone inadvertently walks across the image, the eraser tool will snap multiple times to enable you to 'remove' said person/object from the end image.

Drama Shot - Does almost the opposite of Eraser, takes many shots in quick succession but will keep the image store from each picture, thus you could show a horse in many stages of its jump, for instance.

Sound & Shot - Allows tagging of a voice memo/message to each image.

In all, you may not think there are many fantastic hardware additions over the Galaxy S3. The screen being promoted to a full 1920*1080 resolution (same as an HD monitor/TV) is a step in the right direction. Going to 5 inch I'm not so sure I am a huge fan of. I'm not really sure where the mobile market is trying to go right now, it seems screens are getting bigger and bigger but they're only 2 inches from a small tablet now (not counting the Note, I don't even know what that is). In the past it was always, 'Who can make the smallest phone?', it seems now to be going the other way now. But I guess if everyone is doing this, you can't really blame one manufacturer for it, they are only following the trend.

Aside from the screen, the camera addition is a decent one, making that standard 'step' to the next level. The same applies to the CPU, either a 1.6Ghz 8 core unit or an almost 2Ghz (1.9) 4 core unit will ship with the S4. To power these units it also contains a 2600mAh battery, around 25% higher capacity than the one in the S3. That screen will drain quite some juice though so it does need it. I can imagine battery levels to be fairly similar, perhaps with a possibility of it having a slightly longer life.

It's nice to have things like a temperature sensor and a humidity sensor but whether they will get used in day to day life is another question. The same applies to the InfraRed sensor, will people use it to control their TV's? I'm not sure, only time will tell.

In all, it's most definitely a worthy upgrade from the Galaxy S2, however a lot of S3 owners have been feeling like the biggest difference is the software and that they will be shunned to the side without any of the updates themselves, but it still seems like it has enough features for the upgrade.

I'll give the phone a 9/10 as it's not quite as much as it was hyped up to be, but it's most certainly one of, if not the, leader in the Android/worldwide smartphone market at the moment.

9/10

Images courtesy/copyright of Samsung

TP-Link TL-WA901ND v2 problems, now with added DD WRT

We purchased two of these devices for our offices a short while back, however, after setting one up on our private network and the other for external users, we discovered the one we used internally would drop out every now and again.

Sometimes, it would stop displaying the wireless SSID altogether, sometimes it would stop displaying it to new clients, yet clients that were already connected could still use the network, sometimes it would flat out deny any new connections to the network an IP. It would also display more than one of the problems at the same time. All could be resolved for around 12 hours by restarting the device.

We never had any more than 15 devices connected at any one time to our internal one, at 1 or 2 at most to the external one. I tried swapping the settings on them so we were now connecting to the other device instead for internal use, to no avail. Whichever one we connected the most clients to, would always drop out, despite running the latest firmware from TP Link.

How this issue hasn't been resolved yet I don't know.

(Image is copyright of DD-WRT)

Seeing as we rarely used the external device, I decided to have a play around with it so I flashed the custom firmware from DD WRT onto the spare access point.

To start with I wasn't able to access the GUI. To get into it, I connected to the wireless network 'dd-wrt' that it broadcasts,and within command prompt, had to set a neighbor on the wireless connection.

Open 'cmd' as admin.

Type: arp -a

Then: netsh -c "interface ipv4"

Then: set neighbots "Wireless Network Connection 1" "192.168.1.1" "A0:F3:C1:81:XX:XX"

You must replace the 'wireless network connection' with the name of your connection - check the network and sharing centre for this. Also check the bottom of your access point for the correct MAC address and replace the "A0:F3:..." etc with your one.

Then: exit

Then type 'arp -a' again to check if the MAC address is assigned to that particular IP.

If you can connect to 192.168.1.1 through your web browser, then your work is done! If not, you may need to restart the access point and as soon as the network is picked up by your computer, quickly connect and hit refresh on the webpage - you have to be quick to get in!!

To be able to properly setup the device on your network, you must fill in all the correct values, otherwise you may not be able to connect again.

Setup - Basic Setup:

WAN Connection Type - Disabled

Network Setup - Router IP - all of your network information goes in here, your local IP address is the one you want to connect to your access point on (remember this so you can connect back to the interface in the future!!), subnet mask should be taken from your main router and is normally 255.255.255.0, gateway is the IP address of your main router and if you have a local DNS server, enter it in the box as well.

Tick the 'Assign WAN Port to Switch'

Enable your DHCP server for the AP and input your correct network details

Setup - MAC Address Clone
Make sure this is disabled

Setup - Advanced Router:

Make sure Operating Mode is set to your preferred type, we have ours as a Gateway

Wireless - Basic Settings:

Enter all of your setings in here, wireless mode is AP for us, the channel/bandwidth settings and your preferred broadcast SSID.

Wireless - Wireless Security:

Ensure you enter a password in here, otherwise you will have an open network that anyone can join. We use WPA2 Personal Mixed with AES algorithms.

Samsung Galaxy S4: Information Imminent!

Samsung has been fairly good at keeping quiet on this one, however rumour has it that there will be an announcement on March 14th 2013 to showcase their new flagship mobile phone handset - the Galaxy S4 (S IV).

At the moment there is too much information to speculate on, however I'm certain we will see the now-standard 'upgrades' when manufacturers push their new flagships out, such as a higher res camera, higher ppi (pixel density) plus possibly larger screen and a much smoother and more enjoyable user experience in the form of a faster processor.

The Galaxy S3 base specs are as follows: Display: Super AMOLED Screen - 720 x 1280 pixels (4.8inch) at 306ppi, CPU: 1.4GHz Quad Core Cortex A9, Camera: 8MP

If we take the above and extrapolate along with taking some of the circulating rumours in, we could expect the S4 to come with a 1080p 5inch 441ppi display while sporting an Octa Core Exynos chip (with split cores) but also potential for a Snapdragon. The highest bets are currently on the 5440 Exynos Quad Core though, as it has been floating around for a few months now and is much faster than the previous chip. It seems it is all up in the air at the moment due to potential manufacturing issues. We've also heard that samsung have worked on getting the physical size of their flash memory down to enable them to produce thinner phones, this may be something we end up seeing in the new S4. The S3 sported an 8MP camera however we've heard there may be a 10MP on the upcoming S4, that's quite something for a mobile handset!