OK...but there are sometimes when you are holding something in your hand, you cant use your phones with both hands, is that thing bearable? i also heard the new touchwiz makes the GS4 run slow, is the mega running flawlessly(without any lags)?
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Got a Galaxy Mega today.
- Thread starter ChazUK
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OK...but there are sometimes when you are holding something in your hand, you cant use your phones with both hands, is that thing bearable? i also heard the new touchwiz makes the GS4 run slow, is the mega running flawlessly(without any lags)?
I have it set to auto brightness and it seems OK on that. Not tried maximum brightness as I bet the screen would wipe out the battery in no time.
I have it set to auto brightness and it seems OK on that. Not tried maximum brightness as I bet the screen would wipe out the battery in no time.
How high on auto brightness?
Google voice?
The last time I had to type with one hand it was laying on a table and I had a burger or something in my other hand. If my hands are full, then that means I am doing something and the text can wait. But that's just me. I don't text one handed. It's faster to use both hands.
Chaz you are showing your vintage mate.....
Leftfield's 'leftism' album clearly puts you in the mid 30's bracket ...
Those were the days, those were the days
whistles / glow sticks / MDMA / underground car parks in Croydon !!!!
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Chaz you are showing your vintage mate.....
Leftfield's 'leftism' album clearly puts you in the mid 30's bracket ...
Those were the days, those were the days
Ripe old age of 33!
Ripe old age of 33!
Is that what the carbon dating told you
I'm two years older and positively ancient
Is that what the carbon dating told you
I'm two years older and positively ancient
We're only as old as we feel! /creaks back.....
I spent more money today, a friend of mine was selling their Nexus 4 16GB and only wanted £150 for it.
Going to use it instead of my iPhone 4 for now. I have a feeling my wife isn't going to be pleased when she sees another gadget in the home....
We're only as old as we feel! /creaks back.....
I spent more money today, a friend of mine was selling their Nexus 4 16GB and only wanted £150 for it.
Image
Going to use it instead of my iPhone 4 for now. I have a feeling my wife isn't going to be pleased when she sees another gadget in the home....
why did you buy it though when you have the mega? £150 is decent price but it's still £150.
My iPhone 4 seems to be getting a little long in the tooth now and the Nexus 4 (for £150) will make a better work phone for me.
I'll relegate my iPhone to "spare phone" status for now in case of emergencies.
Yeah. My main personal phone for now.
That is until I get the itch for something else (but not any bigger).
Yeah. My main personal phone for now.
That is until I get the itch for something else (but not any bigger).
Don't I recall you saying you we're interested in the Xperia Z Ultra? Doesn't that check in at 6.4"?
Don't I recall you saying you we're interested in the Xperia Z Ultra? Doesn't that check in at 6.4"?
Yeah. I went into the store and saw the Mega and couldn't resist.
The Z Ultra is going to be a fantastic phone. I'm betting I regret this onec it hits in all its 1080p, Snapdragon 800 glory!
So I never thought I'd actually see one of these in person living in the states. However, I spotted one at a cellphone kiosk in The Galleria Mall in Houston Texas. What a MASSIVE phone. A little too big for my tastes, but pretty impressive none the less!
i love these phablets, and i also like the s-pen offered by samsung and that's why i've decided to wait a bit and go for the note 3, i'm sure it's gonna be an awesome device, htc's one max also seems to be a great phone, i wonder if HTC's one max will also offer a stylus
Well, here it is, my review of sorts on this titanic phone.
All pictures are click-able to view full screen.
I'd seen some reviews on the Mega before but it wasn't really interested in the device until I saw one in the flesh. With my original intention to get the Sony Xperia Z Ultra I knew I was going to go large but I didn't ever expect to go the Mega route.
What's in the box?
My box contained:
Design:
It follows the exact same design language as the Galaxy S4 and is pretty much a bigger version of that phone. The dimensions make it very palmable to me and it is a comfortable handset to hold.
Button placement is fine for me but if I had smaller hands I could imagine I'd find the phone cumbersome to hold and use.
The minimal bezels on the sides really does make the phone look slim (for it's size) and is a nice design touch. The back is made of Samsung's dreaded hyperglazed plastic which loves fingerprints but I'm not too averse to the materials used.
Screen:
Being a 720p screen of this size, pixel density is lower than your average smaller smartphone but the screen is fine as a whole and gets the job done nicely.
Games really do look good on the larger screen and are a pleasure to play and apps are just fine on this blur between phone and tablet.
Camera:
The 8 megapixel shooter on the back gets the job done in good light and is an improvement over my Nexus 4 but there are better cameras out there.
The software is intuitive though and seems feature packed compared to the stock (bland) camera experience on the Nexus 4.
Will update with some sample shots eventually
Software:
The phone is running Android 4.2.2 and features all of the stuff that JellyBean brings but it is lagging behind one point release (4.3). Time will tell how fast Samsung will be pushing 4.3 and beyond out to their heavily customised Android release but I'm not holding my breath!
Touchwiz:
Something Samsung has managed to do is improve upon TouchWiz with each release. I didn't expect to like it being an Android purist (#HOLO) but the additional features they add can be useful.
The soft keyboard takes advantage of the larger screen with an additional row of numbers across the top (meaning lees switching between alphabetic and numeric keyboards like you have to on the stock one.
The gallery app isn't as good from my perspective as Samsung seem to list Picasa/Google+ auto uploads by date meaning I have hundreds of upload folders whereas on stock I have a single entry with all backed up photos in one folder - much better.
Some of the features like multi-window makes sense on a larger handset in landscape or portrait and it's nice being able to run two apps side by side on the Mega.
Performance:
Now, this is something I was worried about before buying it. Knowing that even the Galaxy S4 can seem to struggle on the Snapdragon 600 quad core chipset it has, I wasn't expecting huge performance with the Galaxy Mega which uses a dual core 1.7GHz Snapdragon 400 with an Adreno 305 GPU (mistakenly detected as an S4 Pro by CPUz).
Im pleased to say that the phone runs fine on the Snapdragon 400 and I've had very few hitches in performance on the thing. Looking at synthetic benchmarks alone, youd think it was a dog against the more powerful handsets but in real world usage, the phone runs fine.
Ive tested Riptide GP2, Minecraft Pocket and had a good session of Kingdom Rush on it and they all play wonderfully and all look fantastic on the larger screen.
Applications run fine on it, even Chrome seems to run okay on it but the stock Samsung browser is far, far better so Ive been using that for browsing purposes.
It's difficult for me to gage battery life fully as its still being used with that "new and shiny" usage pattern. Once I get a few weeks in I'll be able to judge it better.
Apps: Phone or tablet?
Having such a large screen, I was curious what versions of apps would run on it? Would they use the tablet layout or phone? How did they compare to the Nexus 7 and 4 running tablet/phone apps.
Doing a quick test on the IMDB app, I'm pleased to say they run in tablet mode, taking advantage of the extra screen real estate.
Nexus 4 IMDB:
Nexus 7 IMDB:
Galaxy Mega IMDB:
It looks to me like the Mega is tablet compatible app ready which is nice!
It makes calls too? (phone quality)
Call quality is fine and supports HD calling (as does my network/carrier). Positioning the earpiece was a little awkward at the beginning with it being as large as it is but I'm used to it now.
It does look a little odd having such a large handset to your ear but I use the calling functions of my phones so little, the few times I use it I'll get by with it.
Data speeds:
My network only supports DC-HSPA+ but I've already hit over 20meg on that. Waiting for them to roll out 4G later this year so I can't test the LTE connectivity but it's nice to be future-proof with the LTE model.
Negatives?
My only big negative on this handset is the stock firmware is rather (extremely?) bloated. Mine being the 8GB model, I was left with a paltry 4GB for app storage and although it does have the SD card slot, applications cannot be moved to SD. This makes the 8GB model (without root) extremely limited when it comes to large games. Unless Samsung address this with a firmware update like they did on the Galaxy S4, I may be forced to root to run apps like Foldermount to move downloaded assets to the SD card. I do hope that Samsung do the same that they did to the S4 and enable a native method to move apps to the SD card.
So, my final thoughts on it are that I love the phone. It blurs the lines between a small Android tablet and a phone but I do see it as a niche device which is likely why Samsung have been so conservative with the specifications inside the phone (and possibly to protect sales of the Galaxy Note).
Anyone looking into something big and something different should check out the Mega but with the Xperia Z Ultra due now, it may be worth waiting (depending on the cost differences).
All pictures are click-able to view full screen.
I'd seen some reviews on the Mega before but it wasn't really interested in the device until I saw one in the flesh. With my original intention to get the Sony Xperia Z Ultra I knew I was going to go large but I didn't ever expect to go the Mega route.
What's in the box?
My box contained:
- Galaxy Mega handset GT i9205
- 3200 mAh Battery
- 4GB Micro SD card and adapter
- Micro USB Cable
- UK 3 pin charging plug
- Samsung wired headset
- Warranty and quick start documentation
Design:
It follows the exact same design language as the Galaxy S4 and is pretty much a bigger version of that phone. The dimensions make it very palmable to me and it is a comfortable handset to hold.
Button placement is fine for me but if I had smaller hands I could imagine I'd find the phone cumbersome to hold and use.
The minimal bezels on the sides really does make the phone look slim (for it's size) and is a nice design touch. The back is made of Samsung's dreaded hyperglazed plastic which loves fingerprints but I'm not too averse to the materials used.
Screen:
Being a 720p screen of this size, pixel density is lower than your average smaller smartphone but the screen is fine as a whole and gets the job done nicely.
Games really do look good on the larger screen and are a pleasure to play and apps are just fine on this blur between phone and tablet.
Camera:
The 8 megapixel shooter on the back gets the job done in good light and is an improvement over my Nexus 4 but there are better cameras out there.
The software is intuitive though and seems feature packed compared to the stock (bland) camera experience on the Nexus 4.
Will update with some sample shots eventually
Software:
The phone is running Android 4.2.2 and features all of the stuff that JellyBean brings but it is lagging behind one point release (4.3). Time will tell how fast Samsung will be pushing 4.3 and beyond out to their heavily customised Android release but I'm not holding my breath!
Touchwiz:
Something Samsung has managed to do is improve upon TouchWiz with each release. I didn't expect to like it being an Android purist (#HOLO) but the additional features they add can be useful.
The soft keyboard takes advantage of the larger screen with an additional row of numbers across the top (meaning lees switching between alphabetic and numeric keyboards like you have to on the stock one.
The gallery app isn't as good from my perspective as Samsung seem to list Picasa/Google+ auto uploads by date meaning I have hundreds of upload folders whereas on stock I have a single entry with all backed up photos in one folder - much better.
Some of the features like multi-window makes sense on a larger handset in landscape or portrait and it's nice being able to run two apps side by side on the Mega.
Performance:
Now, this is something I was worried about before buying it. Knowing that even the Galaxy S4 can seem to struggle on the Snapdragon 600 quad core chipset it has, I wasn't expecting huge performance with the Galaxy Mega which uses a dual core 1.7GHz Snapdragon 400 with an Adreno 305 GPU (mistakenly detected as an S4 Pro by CPUz).
Im pleased to say that the phone runs fine on the Snapdragon 400 and I've had very few hitches in performance on the thing. Looking at synthetic benchmarks alone, youd think it was a dog against the more powerful handsets but in real world usage, the phone runs fine.
Ive tested Riptide GP2, Minecraft Pocket and had a good session of Kingdom Rush on it and they all play wonderfully and all look fantastic on the larger screen.
Applications run fine on it, even Chrome seems to run okay on it but the stock Samsung browser is far, far better so Ive been using that for browsing purposes.
It's difficult for me to gage battery life fully as its still being used with that "new and shiny" usage pattern. Once I get a few weeks in I'll be able to judge it better.
Apps: Phone or tablet?
Having such a large screen, I was curious what versions of apps would run on it? Would they use the tablet layout or phone? How did they compare to the Nexus 7 and 4 running tablet/phone apps.
Doing a quick test on the IMDB app, I'm pleased to say they run in tablet mode, taking advantage of the extra screen real estate.
Nexus 4 IMDB:
Nexus 7 IMDB:
Galaxy Mega IMDB:
It looks to me like the Mega is tablet compatible app ready which is nice!
It makes calls too?
(phone quality)Call quality is fine and supports HD calling (as does my network/carrier). Positioning the earpiece was a little awkward at the beginning with it being as large as it is but I'm used to it now.
It does look a little odd having such a large handset to your ear but I use the calling functions of my phones so little, the few times I use it I'll get by with it.
Data speeds:
My network only supports DC-HSPA+ but I've already hit over 20meg on that. Waiting for them to roll out 4G later this year so I can't test the LTE connectivity but it's nice to be future-proof with the LTE model.
Negatives?
My only big negative on this handset is the stock firmware is rather (extremely?) bloated. Mine being the 8GB model, I was left with a paltry 4GB for app storage and although it does have the SD card slot, applications cannot be moved to SD. This makes the 8GB model (without root) extremely limited when it comes to large games. Unless Samsung address this with a firmware update like they did on the Galaxy S4, I may be forced to root to run apps like Foldermount to move downloaded assets to the SD card. I do hope that Samsung do the same that they did to the S4 and enable a native method to move apps to the SD card.
So, my final thoughts on it are that I love the phone. It blurs the lines between a small Android tablet and a phone but I do see it as a niche device which is likely why Samsung have been so conservative with the specifications inside the phone (and possibly to protect sales of the Galaxy Note).
Anyone looking into something big and something different should check out the Mega but with the Xperia Z Ultra due now, it may be worth waiting (depending on the cost differences).