If you haven’t heard of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge you must just be coming out of a cave. The Challenge has become so popular that it has passed frompeople to smartphones.



















The Samsung Galaxy S5 follows in the footsteps of many celebrities and got splashed with freezing water.







The Galaxy S5 nominated the Apple iPhone 5s, HTC One (M8) and Nokia Lumia 930, all phones without water resistance. The IP58-certified Sony Xperia Z2 was conspicuously left out (the Galaxy S5 itself is IP67-certified).
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               The Samsung Galaxy Alpha comes in two versions – one with Samsung’s brand new Exynos 5430 Octa chipset and one with the more common Snapdragon 801 chipset. Both have small 1,860mAh batteries. Small relative to the phone’s size, of course, 4.7″ phones typically have 2,000+ mAh batteries. The Galaxy Alpha is pretty slender though, just 6.7mm, which eats into the available volume for the battery.


Today we’re testing the Exynos version of the device.
The Samsung Galaxy Alpha is the first handset to use the Exynos 5430 Octa chipset. It’s the first mobile chipset to get the manufacturing process down to 20nm, which promises power savings all by itself but the chipset can also scale from a few Cortex-A7 cores active all the way to eight cores active (four A7 + four A15). The chipset is coupled with a power-optimized Exynos modem too.
Full-size flagships do over 20 hours of talk time, as does the Xperia Z1 Compact. iPhones don’t go over 11 hours. Still, the Exynos chipset and modem do a decent job with the available battery capacity and the Galaxy Alpha lasted over 13 hours of talk time, a bit longer than the Galaxy S5 mini.

Talk time

We weren’t holding out much hope for the web browser test as the Galaxy Alpha screen is fairly bright for an AMOLED, but the phone held its own and lasted nearly 8 and a half hours. The Xperia Z1 Compact beats it by 4 hours, the iPhone 5s by an hour and a half but both of those have smaller screens and are thicker than the Alpha.
The Galaxy S5 lasts an hour more so in terms of browsing endurance the Alpha stays close to its full-sized flagship sibling. The Galaxy S5 mini blows both out of the water with a time of over 13 hours, though.

Web browsing

The video playback time was just a bit shorter than web browsing time. The Xperia Z1 Compact and iPhone 5s come out ahead by a couple of hours and the S5 duo by three.

Video playback

 

 

The final endurance rating is 52 hours. The Samsung Galaxy Alpha should last two days of moderate usage and a day of heavier usage. When we read “1,860mAh” we were picturing fast battery drain but as it turns out the smartphone is perfectly usable. It may not be an endurance chamption but it should be able to easily last the day even if you torture it a lot.


The iPhone 5 and 5s have 51-54 hours endurance ratings and the iPhone 6 will perhaps do a bit better. The Sony Xperia Z1 Compact gets 65 hours while the Galaxy S5 mini matches the big Galaxy S5 at 72 hours. Overall Samsung could have put it a bigger battery (and made the Galaxy Alpha thicker and heavier) but while the Alpha doesn’t conquer its segment, battery life certainly isn’t an issue.

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After all the drama that followed the launch and success of Flappy Bird, one would have assumed the developer would never make another game. Yet here we are, with what is called Swing Copters.



Swing Copters is yet another masocore game from the evil mind of Dong Nguyen. Except this time it’s supposedly even more difficult. Because that’s what was lacking last time. More difficulty. Anyway, let’s see what this one feels like (other than painful).

Gameplay

Swing Copters is a simple arcade game with one touch control that does just one thing. Your character is strapped to a propeller hat that not just goes up but also sideways. You can tap on the screen to make him change direction.

While going up you have to fly between the narrow gaps in the metal beams. As if that wasn’t hard enough, you also have hammers swinging sideways that you have to dodge. If you touch the beams, the hammers, or just ram into the side of the screen, you fall and the game is over.

The difficulty in the game mostly comes from the haphazard flight pattern of the propeller cap. Tapping on the screen makes it change direction but it also moves at a shocking speed in the other direction unless you tap the screen in time and manage to turn it back. The game is essentially about tapping the screen quickly enough to prevent the contraption from gaining enough sideways momentum, while going upwards and avoiding obstacles.

It becomes obvious very quickly that the game is difficult to the point where it feels impossible. I don’t have a problem with a game being difficult, even impossibly difficult. But I do have a problem with a game relishing in the fact that it is difficult.

Swing Copters feels like it was designed specifically to be annoying. The difficulty exists not to complement the gameplay or test the player but simply for the sake of it. It’s like eating spicy food that is spicy just for the sake of it, not because the spice adds to the flavor.

I wouldn’t even call it frustratingly difficult. You get frustrated when the difficulty level is just above your skills and you can feel you can get there but can’t unless you try really hard. Flappy Bird was difficult but manageable. With some time you could easily attain a decent score unless you were really slow. Swing Copters gives you practically no hope, and you just sit there and look at what’s happening on the screen thinking, there is no point to this. The developer managed to strip whatever little depth Flappy Bird gameplay had and distilled it down to just pure difficulty. It’s like concentrated ghost pepper sauce; it just exists to cause pain and there is no enjoyment to be had with it.

Admittedly, some people have managed to score double digit scores. I guess with some really fast reflexes, god level precision and a fistful of cocaine, you can manage to go beyond 2 points. But most people shouldn’t have to put themselves through this ordeal of a game.
One thing I particularly disliked about the game is the time gap between dying and playing again. It seems like it’s about 3 seconds but that feels like an eternity when you want to just quickly try again.

Graphics and Sound

Not much to say here. Simple 8-bit pixel graphics that get the job done. The game looks okay on iPhone and Android but is hilariously bad on tablets as it just stretches everything without even the slightest bit of optimization. The ads also make you want to poke your eyes out but can thankfully be disabled on iOS by paying a dollar.

Sound isn’t much either, and the developer has again gone with simple chiptune sounds that go with the 8-bit graphics.

Verdict

Swing Copters is a game designed with just one goal in mind: to be difficult. It’s not entertaining and it’s definitely not fun (you know, the kind of things people expect from games). It feels like it’s made purely to annoy you and succeeds spectacularly at that. If you want to play a ‘game’ which constantly begs you to uninstall it or throw your phone out the window, then you can give this a try. If you want a ‘game’ with the depth of a teaspoon, download it right now. Only good thing about it is that it’s free but I still feel like asking for my money back for the few minutes I spent playing it.

Rating: 1/10
Pros: It’s free
Cons: Gameplay designed purely to frustrate rather than be enjoyable or even playable, poorly optimized graphics for tablets, obnoxious ads on free version, takes too long between restarts

Download: iOS • Android

Two of the devices challenged by Samsung’s marketing team during the Galaxy S5 Ice Bucket Challenge have stepped up to the task. HTC One (M8) and Nokia Lumia 930 both got drenched in ice-cold water on camera. 





             As you can see, despite their lack of official water resistance, both devices made it out of the cold shower unscathed. Each device appeared to remain completely functional.

        The survival of the HTC One (M8) should hardly catch anyone by surprise – the IPx3 splash-resistant, metal-clad smartphone has pulled even more dramatic water-related stints in the past. As for the Nokia Lumia 930, the author of the video helped it out a little bit by sealing its 3.5mm audio jack during the exercise with his finger, thus preventing water from entering directly into the device (the M8 needs no such assistance, as its audio jack sits on the bottom).

         So, should we be surprised that the two smartphones didn’t suffer damage despite their lack of certified water resistance? The answer is no, as most high-end smartphones these days offer build quality that allows them to survive more unforeseen circumstances than in the past.
What do you think? Would the third device challenged by Samsung, the iPhone 5s make it through such challenge? I think it would, as all its connectivity ports are located on its bottom.


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Figure : Images of Samsung brand new smartphone, Samsung Galaxy S4.

On March 2013, world was once again shocked by the announcement made by Samsung regarding their upcoming smartphone that will beat the other technology features in other smartphone. The release of this brand new Samsung Galaxy series surely made their fans jump with excitement. So what's actually this phone features provide their beloved users this time?

First lets take a look on how users predict on the upcoming model. Prediction usually means what they really hope for the phone to come out with this time.

Below are several models predicted by consumer. Most of them, predicted that the phone's gonna featured a wider screen. How wide it is? too subjective right? Lets take a look first

Model 1 : featuring cute android jellybean :3 *joke =p

Model 2 : looks like sony xperia z eh? maybe not ><

Model 3 : Simple and plain design. Yet still worth appealing to the eye.

Model 4 : Seems galaxy note wannabe

Model 5 : Another one galaxy note wannabe

Model 6 : erm probably one of the worst design here? =p

Model 7 : Seems like the iphone design to me.

Model 8 : Not bad :D