I might take a break from blogging really soon, just don’t know when.

I first got the RM5 change from the lady selling noodles at the famous chendol stall along Jonker Street. The next time I took the RM5 out from my pocket, it became two RM2.50 RM note instead. I swear to God that I just stuffed the money into my pocket and 10 minutes later, it became like that.

And I lost RM5 just like that.

A mobile phone with integrated camera is sort of a must thing nowadays and as expected, the Samsung SGH-i550 is equipped with a 3.0 mega pixel camera, auto focusing feature and embedded flash. The camera is definitely up for standard photo taking for every Tom, Dick and Harry out there.

To activate the camera, press the camera shortcut key on the right hand side of the phone for a second or so. It will take another two seconds before the camera is ready to take pictures. Two seconds start up time for a normal digital camera is considered to be extremely slow, but for a camera phone, it is still acceptable.

Before I start to elaborate on what you see on the screen, one should know that the image quality can be set to basic, normal or high, with various resolution options, ranging from 320 x 240 to 1152 x 864 to 2048 x 1536. What caught me by surprise is the light metering option, with the standard matrix, spot and center weighted. Enlighten me, since when light metering is part of a camera phone’s option?

The screen displays camera / video camera, phone / memory card, exit / options, auto focus feature on / off, flash on / off, white balance mode, single / burst mode and scene mode.

Instead of going through and deep into option list every time you want to change a setting, there are shortcut keys conveniently placed and can be activated by pressing the relevant alphanumeric keys. Switching from camera mode to video camera mode and vice versa is as simple as gliding your finger across the track ball. “1″ to activate burst mode, “2″ to activate flash, “3″ is to switch between phone or memory card, “4″ for white balance, “5″ to toggle the auto focus feature, “6″ is for white balance, “*” for help, “0″ for settings and “#” for light metering.

Assuming each flip is 1x zoom, there are 9x zoom for this little gadget. 9x zoom, impressive. However, I am not sure whether is it optical zoom or digital zoom. Although both do the same thing, picture quality differs from each other by a rather huge margin. The first picture is at 0x zoom, followed by a 4x zoom and then a full 9x zoom. There’s one thing that bugs me, the very fake laser sound produced each time I zoom in and zoom out. Its the kind of sound you would imagine when a robot moves, in ascending and descending tone. It is not cool, at all, to me, that is.

It is a camera phone and the auto focus feature is definitely not going to be at god liked speed. True enough, there’s a shutter lag of two seconds or more to achieve fully focused before snapping the picture. You just need to press and let go the camera button and the camera will start to focus and snap the picture.

To view the various example of the pictures taken under different white balance, click on the link. Automatic, flash enabled, sunny, cloudy, incandescent and fluorescent. I sure hope I linked the correct pictures to the correct white balance settings as I forgot to label them before I load the pictures into my computer.

The phone also has video taking capability. I have shot two sample videos from two scenes from two different movies. The first one is the confrontation of Jedi Master Yoda and Darth Sidious from Star Wars Episode III : Revenge of the Sith and the second one is a battle of Gundam Exia and GN Flag from Mobile Suit Gundam 00.

At its native resolution, the sharpness is at an acceptable range, but once being maximized or boosted, you will be seeing a pixel-ated movies and chunky characters. Sound quality is mediocre, as noises are captured along due to the unfiltered microphone. If there are too much sounds being played at one go, its really noisy and I doubt one can make out what’s being played. That aside, the phone does record conversations very clearly though.

Inside the Samsung SGH-i550, there is a video editing software that came pre-installed which allows you to create a video out of still pictures or edit a video right on the spot. Handy feature but whether is it that useful, its still too early to say.

You can insert transition effect between still pictures movies and cut / remove certain scenes from a recorded movie. Another neat feature in the video editing application is the live dubbing, which means you can add in your own voice at a later / during the editing process.

Well, that’s about the phone and video camera of the phone. There’s no point in going through every single detail as its up to the user to find out, right?

My take on the camera is that, it is decent enough for a petty and simple picture, but definitely not for pictures with lots of moving actions, require fast auto focusing or that you deem precious and really want to keep it for a long time. It is still a camera phone after all. However, for still objects, it should be able to the job without major flaw.

I am using a Canon EOS 40D and there’s no reason for me to use the camera for my shots. The only time I will use it will be the time when I want to send a picture through MMS, making it the least used feature of all my past, current and even future phone.

Now, smile one for the camera, please?

Do take note that some of the photos taken by Sony Ericsson P1i as my Canon EOS 40D couldn’t do macro.

The Samsung SGH-i550 series :
The Kick Off
The Outlook
The Specifications & Symbian Series 60

P/S : Interested in a surveillance camera for your company? Surveillance cameras, pan tilt and zoom cameras, and a surveillance camera system are all good examples of surveillance devices that can help improve security.

For the more geeky people, here is a summarized specifications of the Samsung SGH-i550.

Network
- HSDPA (3.6Mbps download and 384kbps upload)
- Quad-band (900, 1800, 1900, 2100 MHz)
- EDGE
- GPRS Class 10

Operating System
- Symbian Series 60

Dimnesion
- 115 x 53 x 13.8 mm
- 109 g

Battery
- Lithium Ion at 1200 mAh
- Standby time up to 450 hours
- Talk time up to 8 hours

Memory
- 150MB internal memory
- Expandable up to 4GB Micro SD

Connectivity
- Bluetooth technology Version 2.0 with EDR, A2DP and AVRCP
- USB 2.0 high speed
- WiFi enabled

Display
- 2.6″ screen
- 262144 color TFT (240 * 320)

Camera
- 3.2 mega pixel
- 9x digital zoom
- Auto Focus
- Flash LED

Video
- Recording time up to 3 hours
- Playback time up to 4.5 hours
- MPEG4, H.263 and Real One format.

Music
- MP3, AAC, AAC+, e-AAC, WMA format supportable
- Background music play

Features
- Organizer
- Quick Office
- Adobe Reader

- Java MIDP 2.0
- EMS / MMS support
- SyncML DS 1.1.2
- OMA DRM v2.0
- FM Radio
- e-Mail (POP3, IMAP4, SMTP, SSL and TLS)
- Instant Messaging
- PC STudio v7.1
- Offline mode
- Hands-free speaker phone
- Voice Memo
- Voice Mail
- Call Logs (10 missed calls, 10 received calls and 20 dialed numbers)
- Speed dial
- Themes

And that is the official specification released by Samsung Mobile.

Looking at the specifications, I would say they are pretty standard and what one would expect from a high end mobile phone these days. With a price tag of RM1499, if the phone doesn’t have these much of features, then it doesn’t fit the price tag. In my opinion, the ones that make them stand out would be the WiFi, 3.2 mega pixel camera, 2.6″ TFT LCD display and last but not least, Symbian Series 60 as its operating system.

Symbian Series 60 is currently the operating system used in most high end (which also spells expensive) mobile phone. The pioneer would be Nokia’s N-series, the earliest series of mobile phones to adopt and implement S60 as their operating system. Although the open source software is owned by all the mobile phone manufacturer, it is Nokia that is holding the biggest stake in the company.

The advantage of using S60 as the operating system is that end users are able to install as many third party applications as they want, making their mobile phone as fun, as efficient, and as powerful as the end users want it to be. Being an open source program, developers around the world are constantly creating SIS applications for Symbian phones with different objectives, functions and purposes.

However, nothing is perfect, so is the S60 operating system. Coming from an end user who used N70 that runs on S60 for the past two years, I can safely say that after a long period of usage and with many applications installed, the system will be slowed down at a significant speed. It is somewhat similar to a normal computer trying to run Windows XP with insufficient memory. In Layman’s term, lag.

Yet, it has been two years and there were many newer versions and patches that have been released to fix this aging problem, I can only hope that the problem is partially solved as I believed there’s no solution to this problem. Why? It’s like saying Microsoft Windows will never have blue screen of death, which you and I know that its impossible.

I always have doubt with Samsung’s mobile phones because of its really lousy operating system. When I found out that Samsung Mobile has finally decided to jump onto the wagon to use S60 as its operating system, I was nothing but pleased and glad. Not only S60 is a powerful operating system, the user friendliness that Nokia’s phone is famous for can also be found on Samsung’s phone now. It pushes Samsung’s phone to be right on par with Nokia’s N-series and it boils down who has the better specifications.

Yes, with the S60, its going to open up many possibilities for the upcoming models and even perhaps, change the future of Samsung mobile. That pretty much summarized the specification of the Samsung SGH-i550 as I shall leave the rest for another post.

The Samsung SGH-i550 series :
The Kick Off
The Outlook

P/S : Are you looking for a cell phone provider? The net can help you find wireless plans as well as a pay as you go cell phone, helping you get the best price around.

I like potatoes. Who doesn’t?

I like curry.

I like potatoes with curry sauce.

Funny how I don’t like curry puffs because of the pastry, especially the super yucky and hard sides. Moreover, it’s not easy to find a good curry puff. It’s either too hard, too soft, too dry, too puffy, too wet, too plain or too…

There is this Indian lady that sells deep fried stuffs (traditional Indian snacks) at a junction not too far from my house. She sells this snack, that tastes exactly like a curry puff but without the pastry. Instead, it is wrapped with a thin layer of batter which is then deep fried as well. There’s pieces of onions and even poppy seeds, which might or might not explain my addiction to it.

I know it looks gross, but it is absolutely finger licking-ly delicious. Definitely ideal for those who are going out for a picnic, with those blue and white checkered picnic blanket.

And I have been eating this for lunch for the past four days. It’s cheap, three for only RM1.

I don’t know what is it, any Indian readers that can help me identify this snack? Ex-housemate Sanjev Sunder said he knew what it was, but didn’t know the name.

The stall is just near the vegetarian restaurant at Taman Bukit Melaka, near to the main road.

Updated : It’s called bonda. Thanks, Visithra