My music habits

I love listening to music & have pretty varied tastes from Evanescense to Taylor Swift, The Who to A Fine Frenzy , Icon for Hire to Abba. This can get expensive buying albums, whether on physical media or CD, and single tracks just never get you into exploring the depth of what an artist is about, to understand the story  that the album is trying to put across - so inevitably there's a comprimise, and in the past that was inevitably to focus on a small number of artists.

Quite a few years back I digitised my modest CD collection, and added mp3/aac albums from a variety of (legal) outlets. I stored these first on a PC, but then on a home server in a way they could be accessed by a variety of devices around the house - and in fact streamed over the internet too.

I'd been a long running user of lastfm (take a look!) radio - I'd get music similar to that which I liked streamed to me, but with no control of exactly what I was listening too.

In early 2011 Google launched Google Music- in the US, but fairly easy to access in the UK with the right tools ;-). Google Music made it easy to access my own music collection - but it was really just that, making it easier.

Around this time I also started playing with spotify and we7 more, along with a few other services, more seriously. I'd used them prior to this but never seriously - yet after taking out some trial subscriptions I was getting somewhat hooked with the idea that I could listen to who I wanted when I wanted. Ok so some artist's material was withheld, but most was there.

After a few months in July 2011 I went with spotify & have stuck with my premium subscription ever since. It's one of my favourite services as it gives me access to content I love. It's uplifting, enthralling, emotional, fresh, comforting, exciting, brash, soft, gentle - anything I want it to be. As a premium subscriber (£10/month) access is unlimited and music can be streamed in amazing audio quality -- pretty much the best I've come across (vorbis v9)

During work time I frequently listen via my PC, but spotify also have a rather handy android app which shares the same playlists as on the PC, and can similarly stream via either 2G/3G/wifi or most usefully play playlists/songs that are saved offline. Since I'm not on an unlimited data plan this works out really well for me.  A single click, and a playlist gets downloaded & managed automatically.

This is how I listen in bed or when travelling -- but it gets better.

At the gym I can now easily listen to spotify via a bluebooth cordless headset - perfect for avoiding tangles, and most recently I've upgraded my car to the Nissan Leaf which supports bluetooth streaming. In fact I've never even used a CD or an SD card in this car in the 6 months I've had it. I simply leave bluetooth on, sit in the car, the phone connects and I can play my offline spotify lists

Spotify isn't perfect - but it's really very good & when combined with a flexible form of access such as through my SGS2 it can be accessed & consumed anywhere.

I love it!

It’s nearly time

Any guesses?

After previously confirming android JellyBean was coming to the Samsung Galaxy S III, today at the IFA in Berlin samsung specifically said it was coming “very soon”.

So what does “very soon” mean. Well for me it means checking for updates at an OCD level, though expecting it within minutes/hours was perhaps a little optimistic.
This week could still happen – here’s hoping

Oh in case anyone’s wondering I have a euro/sim free handset so there should be no delay from any carriers

Samsung Galaxy S III vs Samsung Galaxy S II

In June 2011 I switched to Android having been using Symbian for many years, and having had a Nokia N900 running maemo for the 18 months prior. The N900 was a cool device, but very geeky/techie and little activity in terms of commercial applications.

[photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/rafeblandford/ ]

The switch to the Galaxy S II was like black and white. I was stunned by just how good the S II was. Sure at some level the N900 could do many of the same things – take/share photos, video, decent web browsing – but to me this was the coming of android. The point in time at which android, married to the fantastic S II hardware was slick, usable, functional with wide appeal.


I’d come close to getting the original Galaxy S – but had been caught up thinking about what Nokia’s next move would be. Where was Windows Phone going, what about maemo followons, the relationship with Intel – but more on that in another article.
Back to the S II. What a phone. Lovely for photos. Georgous sexy display, good choice of accessories including the obligatory power users 2000 mAh battery extension. Plenty fast enough for apps. Decent Storage, a healthy 1GB ram. So good I was definately getting to the “how could they possibly improve on this” level.
In truth of course I knew what was coming – screen sizes were continuing to increase (look at the note!), resolutions were increasing (as my OH’s HTC Sensation trumped the S II specwise) and with the Galaxy Nexus we saw some attention paid to the camera to remove the lag associated with phone pictures when compared to say a DSLR.
So when the S III was announced it clearly looked great but I kept on thinking “my next phone is the S IV” – until that is an opportunity arose that made financial sense to go for the S III (and sell the old S II)


I’ve now had the S III for a few weeks so thought it worth summarizing my thoughts – where’s it better, worse, different than it’s predecessor
The screen – georgous OLED as ever, but once you play around with twitter, web browsing, doc reading for a few minutes you quickly appreciate the size boost and crucially the resolution increase. It may be tagged with the “pentile” moniker but in daily use I’d take this over a full res LCD any day. OLED quite simply is georgous to look at.

• The camera – in good light the lag is removed. I expect a big part of this is continual auto focus, but it’s really handy when taking photos outdoors. Very noticeable. I reckon the pictures themselves are improved too, and I’ve not noticed the pink spot I had on the S II.
• Notification light – YAY at last. I had this on my N900 and missed it with the S II. Nice to have it back so it’s easy to see messages are waiting. The downside? I now feel more compelled to respond quickly. Actually I’ve detuned some notifications to get a little more peace and quiet.
• Software – nice to see finally that out of the box touchwiz supports folders, and sorts alphabetically. frankly it was a little crazy there was no alpha sort before, but being android there were plenty of alternative launchers anyway. I used nova – though am still with touchwiz on the S III. Default theming is more ICS like such as in the dialler and scrolling feels a little better.  Lock screen gains functionality.
• The enhanced notification bar stands alone as a very noticeable feature – far more icons to control functions jkay style – we now have wifi, gps, sound,rotate,powersave,notifications, data,bluetooth, driving, sync, brightness all available after a quick swipe

There are other areas where the specs are up, but for me I didn’t have an issue with the S II or just

• Battery life – now 2100 mAh, Original S II was 1650 mAh, but I had a 2000 mAh official extended battery in any case. And it’s too early to compare real life hour usage figures.
• Processor – quad instead of twin, so arguably marginally slicker but then the S II was no slouch and therefore it’s not a big deal

And what didn’t I especially like?

• The samsung keyboard now has some swype like functionality built in. Except it’s not as good as full-fat swype. Easily remedied though by a visit to swype.com

So all in all some lovely improvements – with no doubt more to come software wise with jellybean, but if you have an S II still – enjoy it. It remains one of the BEST android phones around, even a year later. IMO it was truly a landmark android device and really set out what a top end android device was.

Nigel.