Reviewed: Samsung Galaxy Tab Android Tablet – How does it fare against iPad?

November 17th, 2010 26 comments

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is a 7-inch Android tablet which has been dubbed the “first true competitor to the iPad”. Find out how the Tab fares in our detailed review here.

It might be a bit of an understatement to say that the technology enthusiasts across the world have been eagerly awaiting the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the chance to pit it against Apple’s iPad. Being the first Google-approved Android tablet on the market and the first mass-market 7-inch tablet device, the Tab gives us a taste of what might lies ahead in the tablet market and whether Android can take on the mighty Apple.

In this article, we’ve got a comprehensive review of the Galaxy Tab. We’ll look at the hardware, the practicalities of using it as a day-to-day device and phone and review some of the built-in applications. Along the way, we’ll look at the debate about the optimum size for a phone/tablet and find out whether the Tab works as a mass-market consumer device.

Our review is based on a final consumer release version of the Galaxy Tab provided to us by Samsung.

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Ken’s Tech Tips Index: Tesco Mobile, Three on the up whilst the big four lose out

October 25th, 2010 Be the first to comment

Our first study of switching intention finds that Tesco Mobile and 3 are doing well in the market whereas the big networks are falling behind.

What is the Ken’s Tech Tips Index?

The Ken’s Tech Tips Index is our first study looking into how well each mobile phone network is performing in terms of attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. Using data from the PAC Code Finder tool and people’s stated intention of how they’ll switch network, the Ken’s Tech Tips Index answers the question of how rapidly a network is gaining and losing new customers. More specifically the index score is “the number of customers who join a given network for every 100 customers who leave that network”.

If a network has a high score in the Ken’s Tech Tips Index, it means they are gaining customers a lot faster than they lose them. This is perhaps a good indication that the products they provide are better value for consumers (or alternatively, it could just mean they are doing a great job with publicity or sales).

A score above 100 in the index means that network is gaining customers faster than it is losing them. Meanwhile a score of below 100 is bad news: it means the network is losing customers faster than it can replace them.

There are two ways by which a network can improve their Ken’s Tech Tips Index score. They can either attract more new customers or they can better retain their existing customers. The ways by which a network can do this is to provide better value to consumers, better customer service and support and a better customer experience.

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Reviewed: Samsung Wave & the Bada Operating System

October 16th, 2010 3 comments

We review the first Samsung Wave, the first phone running Samsung’s new bada operating system.


It takes a lot of guts for a company to decide they still want to develop their own smartphone operating system when the market is already saturated with the likes of iOS (iPhone), Android, Windows Phone 7, Symbian, Palm webOS and Blackberry OS. With these mobile operating systems fighting hard for market share and the open-source Android being adopted by numerous phone manufacturers including HTC, Sony Ericsson and Samsung themselves, Samsung’s decision to develop its own operating system, bada, was a gutsy and risky move.

Samsung recently gave me a new Samsung Wave S8500 handset to play with (see the disclosure notice at the end of this article). Available free on Pay Monthly tariffs starting from £25/month, it’s the first phone on the market running on the bada operating system and I was hoping it would have given me a taste of what’s to come from bada. Unfortunately my experience was incredibly disappointing: bada lacked many of the features that you would expect from a modern smartphone, many of the bundled applications failed to work and there were some serious usability issues.

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How to see the invisible infrared world using your mobile phone camera

April 4th, 2010 56 comments

Using your mobile phone, you can see infrared radiation – a normally invisible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Ken’s Tech Tips looks at some of the physics of electromagnetic waves and explains how you can see this invisible world – and you don’t need anything more than the mobile phone in your pocket.

What is infrared radiation?

Infrared is a form of electromagnetic radiation. Other forms of electromagnetic  radiation (EM radiation) include visible light, x-rays, microwaves (the EM waves that wi-fi networks use and also the waves that cook your food in microwave ovens) and radio waves. The difference between all these different forms of radiation are the wavelength of the EM wave. We can illustrate this electromagnetic spectrum (CC-licensed image from Wikipedia):

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Contact

December 6th, 2009 Be the first to comment

If you’d like to get in touch with me, you can send me an e-mail on ken at kenstechtips.com.

How Can I Help?

Looking to get in touch with a specific mobile or broadband provider?
(e.g. to change or cancel your plan)
Unfortunately, I’m just an third-party blogger and I operate independently of the mobile networks and broadband providers discussed. I therefore won’t be able to help you with any account-specific queries: you’ll need to direct this to the provider themselves. Due to data protection, please do not send me any of your personal information such as your account number, address, PAC Code, etc.
Found an error or an omission on the website?
Sometimes, I’ll get things wrong (or things can change quickly, given the industry we operate in). You can either leave a comment below the relevant article to let me know, or you can send me an email using the address above. Thanks again for taking the time to letting me know!
Got a question that you’d like answered?
Unfortunately, I’m not able to answer questions via e-mail due to the large volume of messages that I receive. However, you can leave a comment below the relevant article with your question. I’ll endeavour to reply to as many of those questions as I can, or other members of the community might chip in and answer them as well. If you like, our system can also send you a email notification whenever someone replies to your message.
Want to place a guest post on the website?
Unfortunately, we don’t accept guest posts on this website.
Want to get in touch with information about your product or service?
I’m happy to receive information about relevant products and services but unfortunately I won’t be able to reply to every email I receive.

 

Effect of Microwave Ovens on Wireless Internet

April 16th, 2009 16 comments

The New Cook
Creative Commons License photo: Joshua Davis (jdavis.info)

I noticed something quite odd lately – when the microwave oven in my house was being used, I would lose all connectivity on my wireless internet connection. That lead to the internet dropping out in the whole house – internet radio, game consoles, laptops, etc.

It turns out that the issue is that microwave ovens and wireless internet operate on the same frequencies. My microwave uses a frequency of 2450MHz (check the back of your microwave as yours may be different) and my wireless (802.11g) operated on channel 11 (around 2462MHz). As you can imagine, the microwave oven outputs with a lot more power than the wireless router so totally overwhelms your ability to use wi-fi.

The solution is to change the frequency that your wireless internet operates on.

Firstly, check the back of your microwave oven and find out what frequency it operates on.

Now you’ll want to change the frequency that your wireless internet operates on. As a rule of thumb, you’ll probably want it to be at least 20MHz different from your microwave. As my wireless was operating at 2462MHz, it was well within the frequency range which was susceptible to interference from the microwave.

Modulazione di frequenza
Creative Commons License photo: Un ragazzo chiamato Bi

Here are the wi-fi channels and corresponding frequencies:

Channel Frequency (MHz)
1 2412
2 2417
3 2422
4 2427
5 2432
6 2437
7 2442
8 2447
9 2452
10 2457
11 2462
12 2467
13 2472
14 2484

It’s important to note that these are center frequencies. In other words, your wireless internet will use a range of frequencies around that frequency (e.g. channel 11 is centred on 2462MHz but actually uses all frequencies between 2451MHz and 2473MHz). Hence you need to make sure there is a sufficient gap between the frequency of your wireless internet and the frequency of the microwave. Consult this graph on Wikipedia for more information.

Check local laws too about what frequencies and power levels you are allowed to use. You can use channels 1-13 in most of the world with the exception of channels 12 and 13 in North America.

Search

May 6th, 2008 Be the first to comment


Privacy Policy

March 6th, 2008 Be the first to comment

Ken’s Tech Tips is an independently run website about mobile and broadband internet providers in the UK. This privacy policy explains some of the ways we use your personal information: for instance, when you visit our website or when you interact with our community by leaving a comment. It is our policy not to use personal information for any purpose other than what it is intended.

What personal data do we collect?

We collect the following information when you visit our website:

  • Information about your use of our website, such as how you came to access our website (e.g. via a Google search or social media), which pages you visit and how you interact with that page. In order to collect this information, we make use of cookies and other tracking technologies.
  • Information when you click on a link to leave our website. This may include when you click on a link to one of our partner websites.

If you engage in our community (for example, by leaving a comment below one of the posts on our website), we’ll also collect:

  • Your name. You can provide us with a name, which may also be a nickname or pseudonym, to be shown and published next to your comment.
  • Your e-mail address. We’ll store your e-mail address for the purposes of contacting you and following up on any questions about your message. You may optionally choose to receive e-mail notifications when there is a response to your message. Your e-mail address will never be published.
  • Technical information such as your IP address and browser user-agent string. This helps us with spam detection.
  • Other information you communicate to us. For instance, the contents of the message you submit.

How your personal data is shared

Through the course of your interaction with our website, your information may be shared with the following third party providers:

  • Automattic (Akismet) – we send all visitor comments through the Akismet service for automated spam detection. See the Automattic privacy policy.
  • Automattic (JetPack Stats) – we use JetPack Statistics to understand how visitors interact with our website. See the Automattic privacy policy and cookie policy.
  • Google (Google AdSense) – we use Google AdSense to show relevant advertising on our website.
  • Google (Google Analytics) – we use Google Analytics to understand how visitors interact with our website. See the Google privacy policy. If you’d like to opt-out of this tracking, you can do so by installing the Google Analytics Opt-Out Browser add-on.
  • Google (Google Tag Manager) – we use Google Tag Manager for the management of third-party integrations. See the Google privacy policy.

If you click on a link from our website through to a partner website, your information may be shared with one of the following third party providers. They may set a cookie on your device for the purposes of being able to track the traffic back to our website:

Cookies

Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information. This information is used to track visitor use to the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity. If you visit our website, we may use a number of cookies (e.g. from Google Analytics) to this purpose.

If you leave a comment on our site, you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

You can choose to disable or selectively turn off our cookies or third-party cookies in your web browser settings. However, this can affect your ability to interact with our website. It could also affect your ability to log in to other websites and services (e.g. your online e-mail account or social network websites).

Contact Us

If you have any privacy-related questions or concerns, please e-mail me on ken at kenstechtips dot com.

Bug inside LCD Screen

July 14th, 2007 282 comments

Argh, help! I’ve got a living bug crawling around inside my LCD computer monitor! It’s actually walking around which is quite annoying. I’ve no idea how it got in there but it’s small enough to have fit through the small holes at the back of the monitor.

On the bright side, there only seems to be one so they won’t be making babies in there any time soon. Has anyone ever had bugs inside their monitors and how did they get rid of them? The advice I’ve had so far is to wait for them to die and hope that they die off screen or somewhere where it won’t affect the picture too much.

Update (July 2010): Incredibly, this article has had 10,000 hits since it’s been published (most of them being in July each year which seems to be peak season). Please read the comments below for tips and discussion. In my case, I found that the bug disappeared after a few days providing that you don’t squish it or anything. You don’t need to do anything elaborate like taking your screen apart (and would not be advised to). Please do drop a comment below and let us know what’s working for you.  – Ken