The introduction of 4GS Apple iPhone with a 5 mega pixel integrated camera has changed the landscape of photography forever. IPhone 4G comes with amazing features that were available only on high-end digital SLR cameras or with various software programs for desktop computers a few years ago.

Today you can customize your iPhone 4 with more than 6,000 applications that are designed to enhance and improve the experience of the iPhone camera. While most of these applications cost less than a couple of dollars, that will make your photos beyond incredible! Here are five fun, fresh and creative applications that will turn your photos into masterpieces.

ProCamera – This application incorporates state of the art technology, offering separate focus and exposure controls for both photos and video. It has features like Anti Shake, Power Zoom, a Self-Timer, Virtual Horizons and Grids, multiple shots and a Full Screen Trigger. This application will give you all the bells and whistles you’ll need to turn the iPhone camera into a camera pro. You will get a bit ‘of everything – including filters and effects, cropping and editing functions, including direct posting to the popular online social network.

Camera +-Some people find the need to touch the screen of the iPhone to take a picture embarrassing or even irritating. The makers of camera + provide users with an intelligent solution, the volume button of the phone are perfectly positioned under your thumb or index finger when using the screen as a viewfinder. The stabilization feature is a motion sensor that ends blur. There is also a self-timer and burst mode two-a-second. You can crop, rotate, or sharpen a photo, add a border and apply effects to your photos as black and white, sepia, and more.

Hipstamatic – If you are back in stock, this is the perfect application for you. It offers filtering software to reveal the images of the era. Hipstamatic turns the screen of your iPhone into a perfect replica of a plastic toy camera of the past. It ‘s funny cool and really creative. Filters to make images look as if they were taken with a camera vintage film. Special filters make all images appear old and older. It includes classics like Lomography format, Polaroid and square format. This application also includes social media features to immediately share with others.

Panorama – You want a big picture broader landscape? This apps take a panoramic photo with your iPhone. You can create a beautiful panoramic image without a computer! The application magically stitches together photos horizontal and vertical images to merge into one huge image. Perfect for outdoor scenery or landscape images.

100 cameras – do not have to be a pro to understand this application. You can take a photo, or choose one from your library and then browse and choose from 100 possible effects and filters to the final result. You can not beat the attractiveness and creativity of 100 cameras. It ‘s really fun and easy to use. Best of all, one operation, send your masterpiece to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Smugmug, Dropbox, e-mail or printer.

“The best camera is the one you have with you.” Always make sure you have your iPhone with you. The rest can be done at the Apple Apps store!

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The telegraph and telephone are very similar in concept, and it was through the efforts of Bell to improve the telegraph that has found success with the phone.

The telegraph was a communication system successful for 30 years before Bell began experimenting. The main problem with the telegraph was that he used the Morse code, and is limited to sending and receiving a message at a time. Bell had a good understanding of the nature of sound and music. This allowed him to perceive the possibility of transmitting more than one message along the same wire at once. Bell ‘idea was not new, others before him had planned for a multiple telegraph. Bell offered his solution, the “Harmonic Telegraph”. This was based on the principle that musical notes can be sent simultaneously along the same wire if the notes differed in the field.

By the latter part of 1874 Bell experiment had progressed enough for him to inform family members about the possibility of a multiple telegraph. Bell’s father-in law, attorney Gardiner Green Hubbard saw the opportunity to break the monopoly exercised by the Western Union Telegraph Company. He gave Bell the financial support necessary for him to continue his work developing the multiple telegraph. However, Bell did not mention that he and his accomplice, another brilliant young electrician Thomas Watson, were developing an idea that came to mind during the summer. This idea was to create a device that could transmit the human voice by electricity.

Bell and Watson continued to work on the harmonic telegraph at the urging of Hubbard and a few other financial lenders. During March 1875 Bell met a man named Joseph Henry without the knowledge of Hubbard. Joseph Henry was respected director of the Smithsonian Institution. He listened carefully to the ideas of Bell and offered words of encouragement. Both Bell and Watson were encouraged by the opinions of Henry and continued their work with more enthusiasm and determination. By June 1875 they realized their goal of creating a device that could transmit speech electrically would soon be realized. Their experiments have shown different tones would vary the strength of an electric current in a wire.

Now all they had to do was build a device with a suitable membrane that can transform those tones in various electronic currents and a receiver to reproduce the variations and the resulting newly formed Audible other end. In early June, Bell discovered that while working on his harmonic telegraph, he could hear a sound in the network. It was the sound of a clock source flickering. It was March 10, 1876 that Bell was to finally realize the success and potential of its new communication device. The chance to talk down a wire far exceeds that of a telegraph system as amended, which was based essentially on the right spots and dashes.

According to Bell’s notebook entry for that date, he describes his most successful experiment with his new piece of equipment, the telephone. Bell spoke to his assistant Watson, who was in the next room, through the instrument and said, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to talk to you.”

Alexander Graham Bell was born March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His family were leading authorities in elocution and speech correction. It ‘been treated and educated to follow a career in the same discipline. At the age of 29 in 1876 had invented and patented the telephone. His extensive knowledge of sound and acoustics has helped immensely in the development of his unit and gave him the edge over others working on similar projects in that time. Bell was an intellectual quality rarely found after his death. He was always looking for success and seeks to nurture and develop new ideas.

The telephone – important dates

1. 1874 – Principal of the phone was discovered.

2. 1876 ​​- Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone from Elisha Gray a matter of hours.

3. 1877 – The first permanent outdoor telephone wire has been completed. It extended a distance of only three miles. This was closely followed in the U.S. since the first commercial telephone service worlds.

4. 1878 – The exchange work was developed which allowed calls to be switched between subscribers rather than having direct lines.

5. 1879 – Subscribers began to be designated by numbers and not their names.

6. 1880 – expanded long distance service throughout this period, metal circuits.

7. 1888 – common battery system developed by Hammond V. Hayes, allows a central battery to power all the phones in stock, rather than relying on each unit’s battery.

8. 1891 – First automatic selection system invented by an undertaker in Kansas City. He believed that the operators were sending his twisted potential customers elsewhere. It ‘was his goal to eliminate all the operators.

9. 1900 – first coin operated telephone installed in Hartford, Connecticut.

10. 1904 – “French Phone” developed by Bell. This was the transmitter and receiver in a simple laptop.

11. 1911 – American Telephone and Telegraph (AT & T) to acquire Western Union Telegraph Company in a hostile takeover. They bought shares in the company of hiding and the two finally joined.

12. 1918 – It ‘s been estimated that about ten million Bell System telephones were in service throughout the U.S.

13. 1921 – The passage of a large number of calls was made possible through the use of phantom circuits. This allowed three conversations to be held on two pairs of wires.

14. 1927 – First transatlantic service from New York to London became operational. The signal was transmitted through radio waves.

15. 1936 – The search for electronic telephone exchanges start and was finally completed in 1960 with the electronic switching system (ESS).

16. 1946 – Worlds first commercial mobile telephone service started. It may be connected moving vehicles to a telephone network via radio waves.

17. 1947 – Microwave radio technology used for the first time for long-distance phone calls.

18. 1947 – The transistor was invented in Bell Labs.

19. 1955 – saw the beginning of the laying of transatlantic telephone cables.

20. 1962 – The worlds first international communications satellite, Telstar was launched.

21. 1980 – The development of fiber optic cables in the course of this decade, has offered the ability to carry much larger volumes of calls to satellite or microwave.

22. 1980, 1990, to present – huge advances in micro electronic technology over the past two decades have enabled the development of cellular (mobile) phones to advance a truly amazing speed. A cellular telephone (mobile phone) has a central transmitter that allows you to receive broadcasts without interruption, which enters and exits a cell.

Some believe that the impact of the phone has had on our lives is negative. Whatever your beliefs, it is un-doubtable that the invention and development of the phone has had an enormous impact on how we live our lives and go about our every day.

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Given their widespread use, and the degree to which we rely on them, it is difficult to imagine a world without mobile phones. For new generations growing up today, this could be as difficult as for older people to imagine life without electricity. With a touch of comedy, television and movies we remember the early 90s with large mobile phones that were cutting-edge technology at the time, but in reality, the first modern mobile phone handheld was created back in the 1973.

Dr. Martin Cooper is credited with creating the first not for the use of mobile handheld portable vehicle. The head of Motorola’s John F. Mitchell is also given credit for service, and its contribution to society is pushing the portable device small enough to be used in practice. There was a tremendous race closely the development of mobile phone from Motorola and Bell Labs, and in fact, Dr. Cooper made the first call to Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.

The phones did not exactly take off soon because the technology to make it feasible for the general population was not exactly intact. The phones after that had a more advanced system of connectivity that depended on the ability to switch seamlessly between mobile phones sites. This made it easier to move with the phone, thereby making it truly portable. This technology has taken off in Japan in 1979. The early years saw more than 80 countries like the United Kingdom, Mexico, Canada and develop networks, but the price tag of expensive phones combined with the lack of a fully developed network has made them rare, and virtually no mainstream consumers of their property.

The next big improvement in the technology of the phone took place in the early ’90s with the advent of digital transmission over analog and even with major improvements and faster between the phones and the network. In addition, the battery life was increased and phones started getting smaller. Not surprisingly, this is what started the explosion of ownership of the phone and is really the beginning of their use on the scale we see today.

In the early 2000s it was clear that the demand for mobile phones was insatiable, and the industry has begun work on creating the fastest, most reliable networks that can support data transmission. Mobile phones started popping cameras and other devices, and that all require greater connectivity. In the mid-2000, the networks were sufficiently improved to allow for mobile phones and other devices for Internet access portable, so the modern era of mobile phones has been reached.

E ‘taken for granted now that everyone can be reached on their mobile at any time, but there was a time long ago when our current reality seemed to belong only in the realm of science fiction. We owe our thanks to those of Motorola, Bell, and other innovators from around the world during the years that have brought us to this state of advanced technology.

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Samsung Galaxy S 4G from T-Mobile

BUILD & DESIGN

This phone is extremely thin and light. It measures 4.8-inches long, 2.5-inches wide, and 0.4-inches thick, and weighs just over four ounces. Unlike some modern smartphones that will hardly fit in your largest pocket, the Galaxy S 4G won’t add any bulk to your mobile lifestyle.

The sides of the phone are shiny silver, and the back cover is a platinum gray color with a cool color shifting effect. There’s nothing flashy or garish about this phone, but it does stand out from the pack in a good way.

The Galaxy S 4G can be somewhat “slippery” and difficult to hold on to because it’s so smooth. It doesn’t have any prominent ridges, and is rather curved at the sides. The only slight bump is at the bottom edge on the back, but that may not be enough to help you figure out which end is which when you dig it out of your pocket or bag.

Since the power and volume buttons are almost flush mounted, they don’t stick out enough to give you much of a clue about which way you’re holding the phone — you’ll have to look.

Aside from my slight frustration with the slipperiness of the phone, I found the Galaxy S 4G to be of excellent build quality. The phone feels solid in the hand and is well made. You won’t find any bending, creaking, or flimsy parts here.

Display
The 4-inch Super AMOLED display is simply gorgeous. While I might not often want to watch full length movies on the small screen, the clarity and detail are just outstanding. Colors are rich and sharp, and I can see everything clearly, be it text on a web page, photos, videos, or games. Even when I look very closely, I can see little to no evidence of jagginess or pixelization on the 800 x 480 pixel display.

I also found the screen to be entirely readable outside in direct sunlight, though of course the colors did wash out a bit. The screen can be a bit too bright indoors, at least for my taste. I found myself turning off the automatic brightness control in the settings area so that I could dial it down just a bit.

Keyboard
You’ll be relying on the on-screen virtual keyboard here, since the Galaxy S 4G doesn’t have a physical QWERTY keyboard. Thankfully the Swype technology is included, so you should be typing quickly and accurately with a minimum of practice. That’s especially important since this phone is relatively narrow in portrait mode, so the keyboard keys are rather long and narrow too.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Swype is a text entry method in which you slide you finger from letter to letter, rather than pecking at each one. It’s become quite popular in the last year or so, and Samsung put it on virtually all its phones.

Swype is smart enough that it does a very good job of reading your mind. If it ever isn’t sure about a particular word choice, a handy menu pops up with several likely choices, and a single tap is all that is needed to pick the right word and move on.

Other Buttons & Controls
The menu, home, back, and search “buttons” are touch-sensitive areas located directly under the screen on the front of the Galaxy S 4G.

The charge/sync port is at the top of the phone, and is covered by a sliding door. I really like that extra touch, because phone ports can get really dusty/linty if your bag is full of junk.

The headphone jack is also up top, the power button is on the right side, and the volume button is on the left side.

As mentioned above, the keys are very small and don’t stick out much at all — until you become more familiar with the device, you will likely have to look each time you want to find and activate a button.

The microSD card slot and the SIM card slot are located on the back side of the phone, underneath the back cover. I was glad to see that neither one of those slots was stuck under the battery. While you do have to take off the back cover to access them, the cover is easy to remove and replace.

PERFORMANCE

The Samsung Galaxy S 4G is snappy all around, whether you’re switching between applications or using the web browser. The combination of a fast processor with a fast network made it a joy to use in all circumstances.

It runs Google Android OS 2.2 on a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, a user-friendly operating system that has become very popular. On top of this is Samsung’s own TouchWiz, which makes a few modifications to the user interface.

I did find the lock screen one to be rather annoying, however — it doesn’t use the puzzle piece standard I’ve grown accustomed to on other Android devices. Instead you have to swipe the lock screen far enough to unlock the device, which is harder than it sounds. If you’re not forceful and aggressive with the movement, the lock screen “snaps” back into place and you have to try again. I believe this is part of Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, and it’s not something you can turn off in the Settings app. It’s a small frustration, but a very real one that annoyed me every single time I had to wake the phone.

Communication
Voice quality on this phone was somewhat disappointing, though not horrible. One of my test callers complained that everything sounded “buzzy” while another said that it sounded as though there were plastic wrap over the microphone. There weren’t any major problems with background noise, it’s just that everything seemed rather muted–perhaps the noise cancellation feature was a bit overactive, causing human voices to lose their depth and richness of tone.

I got the same results whether I was making a regular cellular call or using the built-in Wi-Fi calling feature. I really enjoyed using Wi-Fi calling, because it made the phone much more reliable in my office. The feature still uses your plan minutes, but it’s a big plus if your office or home happens to be in a dead zone and you have access to a wireless network.

I was able to connect to my home and office Wi-Fi networks with no problems at all, and Bluetooth works as expected.

The Galaxy S 4G has replaced the Samsung Vibrant in T-Mobile’s product lineup because the two are very similar, but only the new model offers support for this carrier’s HSPA+ network. I’m fortunate to have access to T-Mobile’s 4G network here in Dallas, and it really sings — downloads, navigation, and web browsing are all blazing fast. It was refreshing not to open a web page and have to wait (what seems like) forever for it to load. If you’re in a 4G area, you will likely be thrilled with how fast you can accomplish network-dependent tasks.

In theory, this smartphone should be able to download data as fast as 21 Mbps, but reality is something different. According to the benchmarking app Speed Test, in my real-world test this smartphone achieved download speeds of 4.088 Kbps and upload speeds of 1.305 Kbps on the 4G network. That’s with 4 signal bars.

The social networking experience on the Galaxy S 4G is good, though I missed the tight integration/unification of all of my online social info provided by the FriendStream application on the HTC Android devices I’ve tested in the past.

Facebook is pre-installed, of course, though you will have to go to the Android Market to get the free Twitter app. Thanks to the blazing fast speed of the Galaxy S and the multiple home screens that make launching your favorite apps a matter of a swipe and a tap, keeping up with your friends is simple and fun.

The email and web experiences are also good. There’s not too much to say here since this is pretty standard across all Android-based devices. The controls are straightforward, and you can choose which Gmail labels to sync. You can star, archive, and delete messages, and if you use the menu, you can mark individual messages as important or report spam (the latter takes two taps now).

You’ll find smooth scrolling in the web browser, as well as outstanding performance if you’re in a 4G area. The flash support works, though the experience isn’t very smooth. Animations were slow and sometimes rather jerky, and in one instance, the edges of the site kept getting cut off because it wasn’t being properly sized for the screen. I couldn’t manipulate any of the controls at moodstream.gettyimages.com either.

Productivity
Calendar, contacts, a memo pad, basic calculator, alarm clock, a news & weather app, and a file manager are all included with the Galaxy S 4G, and they work just as you would expect them to.

The first two, calendar and contacts, pull down all of the information from your Google account so you’re always up to date. ThinkFree Office is pre-loaded, so you’ll have access to your Microsoft Office files.

There’s also a Mini Diary app that is very cool if you’re into journaling; it provides a space each day to enter your thoughts and you can add a photo to each entry as well, either from the camera or from the photos already stored on the device. When you save each entry, it includes your GPS location as well, so that you’ll always know where you’ve been.

If navigation is your thing, there’s plenty here to check out. Google Latitude and Places are pre-loaded, as well as Google Maps. TeleNav GPS is pre-loaded, with free basic access to points of interest and turn-by-turn directions. If you are interested in real time traffic updates, traffic camera locations, and voice search capabilities, you’ll have to upgrade to the premium version of the app for an additional $2.99 per month. The directions and maps provided by TeleNav were excellent, clearly spoken and easy to understand. The information is really up to date as well — I didn’t find anything obviously wrong or incorrect.

The included Layer app added a social aspect to navigation, with multiple layers of information. When you first launch the app you might get information about nearby restaurants and shops, but there’s much more than that. Tap the layers tab and you’ll find that you can add listings for everything from dating sites and employment listings to entertainment and nightlife to local parks and even crime reports.

While it’s a fun app to use in your hometown, it will be even more valuable for road warriors — if you’re constantly traveling, Layar can help you get the lay of the land much more quickly and break you out of the rut of eating in the hotel restaurant every night.

Two more navigation aids round out the on-the-go package. Car Home provides a quick access screen that includes voice search, navigation, maps, phone, contacts, music, and settings. You can also mute all sounds with a single touch, or dim the display so it’s less distracting when driving at night.

If you’re an extra responsible driver, you’ll probably appreciate DriveSmart, an app that “encourages safe driving” by automatically silencing notifications, routing calls straight to voice mail, and even providing customized automatic responses that let your callers know that you’ll get back to them when you’re not behind the wheel. A DriveSmart upgrade is available on the Android Market which starts the app automatically by using speed detection to tell when you’re driving, plus parental controls parents can use to help their teenagers stay safe on the road.

Entertainment
The Android built-in Music Player app is rather basic, but it works: view a list of all songs or group them by playlist, album, or artist. Amazon MP3 is pre-loaded, as well as the doubleTwist app that syncs iTunes playlists, podcasts, and videos from your Mac or PC.

The Galaxy S 4G  gaming experience is a very good one, thanks to the extra sharp clarity and bright colors of the Super AMOLED screen and the powerful external speaker. Angry Birds and Jewels look better than ever, and I didn’t experience any lag or crashes or any other problems while playing them. It was slightly disappointing to find that T-Mobile didn’t include any pre-loaded games or even any demos, but there are plenty of options, both free and paid, available in the Android Market.

If you like video, there’s plenty to choose from here. YouTube videos look fantastic. They automatically expand to fill the whole screen, and the clarity (depending on the original source, of course) is very impressive. If you want to watch live TV, the T-Mobile TV app is included. It’s very easy to use, with several live music and sports channels, plus a good selection of network shows.

The Amazon Kindle app is pre-loaded, and if you’ve already got some Kindle books in your account they will appear on your device as soon as you sign in. The reading experience with the Android app is just the same as on iOS or PC, so it should be familiar to old users and easy to figure out for new users.

Camera
The Galaxy S 4G’s rear-facing five megapixel camera takes very nice photos. Regular photos are clear and sharp, and certainly good enough for everyday memories. The zoom feature generally works well, though depending on what you’re shooting you may see moderate loss of detail. If you look at my sample photos, this is especially true for the church, as it is impossible to make out the individual bricks so the building looks a little fuzzy.

The camera does take a while to focus, so if you’re trying to catch an action shot, you need to press the shutter a little early if you’re going to capture the moment. As you can see from the image taken on a busy street corner, it was hard to capture a car before it had almost completely left the frame.

There are several different shooting modes, including beauty (for portraits), smile shot, panorama, and vintage. You can tweak the white balance to match the situation, and you can also set the camera to send photos to an online album, a new email, or a particular recipient by default.

While I found it frustrating that I had to tap a tiny little arrow on the screen to access the camera settings, because the standard menu button wouldn’t work, that is a relatively minor complaint. Most users will find that the camera on the Galaxy S 4G is good enough for everyday use, though it won’t replace a dedicated digital camera for special events.

This smartphone also includes a front-facing VGA camera for video chats, as well as the QIK video chat software. This app is about to be replaced by Skype, so I didn’t see a point in testing out something that’s going away very soon.

Battery Life
I’m very pleased with the battery life experience offered by the Galaxy S 4G. It lasted five days with light use: watching about 30 minutes of Inception, downloading and playing three games, with some email and web surfing plus three or four calls each day.

With much heavier use, taking lots of photo to try out the camera and one long session surfing YouTube, I was able to get through almost two complete days. The battery was down to about 20% by the time the evening commute came around, but I was able to read in the Kindle app until I was able to plug in the phone when I got home.

CONCLUSION

The Samsung Galaxy S 4G is an entertainment powerhouse. If you’re looking for a phone that can offer excellent photo and video quality, with excellent choices for live and on-demand TV, this is the phone for you. The screen is gorgeous, the battery life is impressive, the camera/camcorder capture everyday memories with excellent quality, and the gaming experience is fun.

Though there were some issues with voice quality and a few minor frustrations relating to the lock screen and access to the camera settings, the Galaxy S 4G is a solid device with some impressive features.

If you’re more interested in Facebook, gaming, video, and email than you are in gabbing on the phone, this is the device for you. Voice quality isn’t horrible by any means, or even particularly bad, but it is the weakest point for what is, in all other respects, a powerful and fun device.

Pros

• Thin and light
• Excellent screen
• Good sound quality
• Highly responsive
• Useful bundled apps
• Excellent battery life

Cons

• Slippery to hold
• Disappointing voice quality
• Frustrating lock screen
• Flash web experience can be glitchy and frustrating

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BUILD & DESIGN

The Nexus S looks like most smartphones available today, with a black exterior and a minimum of buttons and controls so that the overall look is streamlined and modern. Then again, you might have trouble picking out your phone if you put it on a table next to a few other smartphones at dinner, because there is nothing that really stands out about the Nexus S in a stylistic sense.

At 4.8-inches by 2.48-inches and 0.43-inches thick. the Nexus S is comparable to other large-screen smartphones available today. It does seem to be somewhat lighter than many of the other phones I’ve recently reviewed–when I first took it out of the box I looked for a battery to install, but it was already in the device. It might create a bulge in your pocket, but it won’t weigh you down. My key ring, with its large assortment of office and home keys, weighs more than the Nexus S.

Display
The screen on the Nexus S is simply beautiful. It’s a 4-inch WVGA (480 x 800) Super AMOLED display, so it is extremely sharp and bright. Even when I’m outside in full sunlight I can see the display clearly, which is a nice change from squinting and trying to shade the screen with my hand. There isn’t any ghosting during video playback, and photos looks especially vibrant.

It’s also the first phone with a Contour display, which means exactly what it sounds like — the screen of the phone is slightly curved. The idea is to make it more comfortable in your hand and against your face, when you’re using the Nexus S as a phone. The curve is quite subtle, I didn’t notice too much of a difference except that the phone does seem to fit in my hand a little better than other devices I’ve reviewed recently.

There is an anti-fingerprint coating on the screen, and while I can’t say that it works perfectly — there are still plenty of fingerprints on the screen — it does seem to extend the time between my compulsive screen wiping and cleaning sessions. I simply can’t stand smudgy screens, so something that cuts down on the frustration is a step in the right direction, and the Nexus S delivers on that point.

Keyboard
The Nexus S doesn’t have a physical keyboard, so you’ll be doing your text entry on the virtual on-screen one. This has been improved in this new version of Google’s operating system, so you’ll see slightly larger keys thanks to an optimized, clutter-free layout. It has punctuation at the top for convenience, and works quite nicely.

Of course you can bypass the keyboard entirely using Google’s speech recognition, which works amazingly well on the Nexus S. No matter which way you choose, text entry is fast and easy.

Other Buttons & Controls
The Nexus S has very few buttons or other hardware features. The power button is on the upper right side of the device, and the volume rocker is on the left.

The only other controls are the standard Back, Menu, Search, and Home controls underneath the display, the camera lens on the back, and the headphone jack and charge/sync port on the bottom edge of the device.

There is no microSD card slot, which is unfortunate. I know that everything is “in the cloud” these days, but I like to keep a lot of music, photos, and ebooks on my device, and the 16 GB of internal memory can fill up all too fast since there’s no option to add more with an expansion card.

PERFORMANCE

Under the hood, the Samsung Nexus S is powered by a 1 GHz Samsung Cortex A8 Hummingbird processor. It is extremely fast, carrying out my every desire almost immediately. The only slowdowns I noticed were network related (more on this point later).

Android OS 2.3 — sometimes better known by its code-name: Gingerbread – includes a number of small improvements throughout that leads to a better overall experience. There are more options on calendar appointments, and the new copy and paste scheme is truly delightful.

A simple tap on a word brings up the text markers, and you can move them to the beginning and the end of what you want to copy by sliding them to the proper spot on the screen. The word or phrase is then automatically copied to the clipboard. I love the new method, because it is so much easier to use and so much more precise than what previous versions of Android could offer. No more worries about random spaces or punctuation marks getting in the way because it is now much easier to copy exactly what you want.

Some Nexus S users have complained about some troubling glitches — random reboots, text messages being sent to the wrong contact, and some graphical issues with icons on the homescreen. I haven’t encountered any of those problems on this test device, but enough users have complained that it seems likely these aren’t isolated issues.

Communication
Unfortunately, call quality on this device is very poor. One of my test subjects likened it to “a tin can connected to a tin can” and another said that I sounded very tinny and distant. In both cases I could hear them on the other end very well, they just had problems hearing me. It wasn’t due to background noise either, because none of my callers were able to identify exactly what was going on the background (construction, children at a playground, a nearby fountain, or a busy street).

I don’t have a great deal of experience with T-Mobile, so this could be a network issue, but I live in a major city and tried the phone inside and outside of my office, at home, and while I was out shopping, with notable voice quality issues each time.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work great, though I’m not too happy about the new Wi-Fi settings screen. When you join a new network you don’t get the quick and simple user name and password box anymore; that area is farther down and requires scrolling past security certificates, etc. to access. I’m not sure why Google decided to rearrange things to make it more difficult to join a new network, but at least it’s the sort of thing you usually do just once when you set up the phone.

The email and web browsing experience is also great, as I have come to expect on Android devices. Reading my Gmail or navigating from page to page on the Web is fast, with smooth scrolling and a rich experience.

There aren’t any social networking apps included, but you can get Facebook and Twitter clients on the Android Market, most of them for free.

Productivity
The Samsung Nexus S has all of the standard PIM apps that you would expect to find on any Android phone, including calendar, contacts, clock, calculator, and a News & Weather app that provides the local weather forecast and all of the top news and sports headlines.

Gingerbread brings some enhancements in this area, most notably with the addition of guests/invitations in the calendar app and time zone support for appointments. The new appointment interface is much cleaner than before, and more attractive.

The new features in Google Maps 5.0 with Navigation are quite impressive. Multi-touch allows you to use two fingers to explore 3D maps, dragging up and down to tilt and twisting to rotate the map. There’s a compass mode that reorients the map to the direction you’re facing, and improvements to map caching with offline rerouting means that you won’t lose your way even if you lose your data connection. I like being able to choose between driving, biking, walking, and public transit directions, and I was perfectly directed on each of my test trips.

There is no Microsoft Office compatible software included with the phone, such as QuickOffice, but if you receive a Microsoft Word or Excel document as an email attachment you will be able to view it with the built-in ThinkFree Write Mobile or ThinkFree Calc Mobile. There are also more productivity apps available on the Android Market.

Entertainment
The Android OS music player will keep you entertained listening to your favorite tunes. The external speaker will is capable of extremely loud volumes if you desire, with a minimum of distortion. Plus, there’s a video player if you want to transfer TV shows or movies you get off the Web. Just keep in mind that 16 GB storage limit I mentioned earlier.

The included YouTube client showcases web videos quite nicely, with full screen viewing and good sound quality.

Since the Nexus S is sold as an unlocked phone, you won’t find all of the games and demos you typically see on phones that have been more heavily customized by mobile carriers. I downloaded a few games from the Android Market and found that my usual favorites like Jewels and Sudoku played well, with no stuttering or lag and with bright vivid colors.

If you have some time to kill and want to play games or watch videos, the Nexus S can definitely handle your mobile entertainment needs.

Camera
The Nexus S has two cameras, one on the back that takes five megapixel still photos and can capture video as well, plus a VGA camera on the front for video calling.

The five megapixel camera takes excellent photos, even under difficult lighting conditions, and I’m impressed with the level of quality and detail I was able to capture.

White balance, flash, scene mode, focus mode (including macro), and exposure are all easily adjusted by tapping on the screen, though I was disappointed by the lack of any sort of zoom capability.

The only other issue is with action shots, as demonstrated by my photo of cars speeding by on a busy street. You might be able to capture some sports shots if you’re lucky, but you may end up with some blurring or may miss the shot if the camera isn’t able to work fast enough to keep up with you. It works best for portrait and landscape shots, so if you’re planning to take lots of kid or pet shots this might not be the best cameraphone for you.

Battery Life
You won’t have to worry about running out of juice with the Nexus S, because it seems to go on and on forever. I can get three days of relatively heavy use out of it, with Wi-Fi on, taking shots with the camera, constantly checking my email, and watching two or three YouTube videos each day.

You should certainly be able to make it through the day without having your phone go dead during your evening commute, and you might even be able to get away without packing the charger on a weekend trip.

CONCLUSION

I like the Samsung Nexus S, mostly because of Android OS 2.3/Gingerbread, the responsive nature of the device — I hate waiting for apps to open — and the nice camera.

It’s not perfect, though. While this smartphone generally performed well and I didn’t see any of the glitches that have plagued other users, I’m extremely disappointed with the voice quality of the device when I’m on phone calls.

Of course it’s important to have a great email and web browsing experience, and there are times when you have a few spare minutes to play games or watch a video on YouTube, and it’s great that our phone can do all of those things. But they should first of all be really good phones, and the Nexus S doesn’t live up to my standards in that regard. It is possible that the issues I experienced are all due to the T-Mobile network in my area, but that is impossible to know for sure.

If you have strong T-Mobile coverage in your area, or are planning to use the Nexus S with another GSM carrier such as AT&T, it deserves a closer look because it performed well in all other respects.

Pros

• Latest version of the Android OS
• Excellent screen
• Responsive device
• Good photo quality, with accessible controls for white balance, exposure, scene mode, etc.
• Light weight
• Good volume and sound quality on external speaker
• Long battery life

Cons

• Extremely low voice quality
• No memory card slot
• No zoom on the camera

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