# Choice between Samsung Galaxy S2 and Nokia Lumia 800 !



## Kvishal (Nov 30, 2011)

Hi Guys,

I was wondering between the New Nokia Lumia 800 and the Samsung Galaxy S2 which would be a better choice. The requirement is the same as usual. Want a great web surfing experience and should be a great entertainer for watching videos. Of course availability and use of APPS remains top of the agenda.

Cheers !


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## red dragon (Nov 30, 2011)

Ask dhruv, he has lumia.


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## AndroidFan (Nov 30, 2011)

Galaxy S2 is unbeatable... 

Lumia 800 WP7 marketplace has very few apps. Nokia Drive might be useful, though I am not sure it is available for India, no front facing camera in Lumia... I don't know how its main camera would compare to S2's 8 MP camera, but I am sure it would be competitive.

Overall, S2 is a lot better... Unless you can get Lumia 800 for 20k or less, don't buy it. Not worth the money...


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## red dragon (Nov 30, 2011)

Lumia 800 for 20!!Not going to happen in near future.
WP7 is a nice platform actually.
But not for app junkies ATM.


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## Kvishal (Nov 30, 2011)

red dragon said:


> WP7 is a nice platform actually.
> But not for app junkies ATM.



And how about for Internet Surfing? and watching Videos ?


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## coderunknown (Nov 30, 2011)

i remember noob posting a list of big shortcomings for Mango. check the list before spending so much money on a new platform.


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## Zangetsu (Nov 30, 2011)

Samsung Galaxy S2 all the way


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## Kvishal (Nov 30, 2011)

Sam said:


> i remember noob posting a list of big shortcomings for Mango. check the list before spending so much money on a new platform.



But what about for features like Internet Surfing and Video Watching.


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## tarey_g (Nov 30, 2011)

WP7 is awesome, I liked it a lot when I got chance to play with my friend's windows phone. But Lumia is costly, I wont personally go for a phone with inferior hardware (in comparison) for that cost. SGS2 is available for 27k in many cities (got one from Pune) and is a great phone (and soon getting ICS). 
If Lumia is available for 19-20k , then get it. Its worth only that much. IMO


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## thetechfreak (Nov 30, 2011)

Galaxy s2 all the way to the winnerrs line


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## AndroidFan (Nov 30, 2011)

Kvishal said:


> But what about for features like Internet Surfing and Video Watching.



I have a Samsung Focus, running on WP7.5. Had bought it for 13k from Ebay India... Brand new unlocked from US. No warranty in India...

Internet surfing is excellent. Video experience is also good, thanks to the 4" Super Amoled screen. But I am afraid not many resolutions are supported. No USB plug-n-play to transfer files. Your video has to pass through Zune, and it is very likely to be converted first.

Also, WP7 does not support Adobe Flash. So, a lot of 3rd party video websites might not work well.

Galaxy S2 browsing experience is on par with any other phone in the market. You will not be disappointed.

Your actual choice should be between Samsung Galaxy S2 and Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Lumia is not yet affordable enough or mature enough yet.

Personally, if I could afford it, I would get he Galaxy Nexus... Pure Google phone...


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## amitabhishek (Dec 1, 2011)

It's like comparing chalk & cheese! SGSII is a generation ahead of Lumia. Lumia scores only on polycarbonate housing.


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## Zangetsu (Dec 1, 2011)

Lumia 800 is only good in PPI than S2


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## Kvishal (Dec 1, 2011)

Zangetsu said:


> Lumia 800 is only good in PPI than S2



And What is a PPI ??


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## AndroidFan (Dec 1, 2011)

Kvishal said:


> And What is a PPI ??



Pixels Per Inch. 

S2 has only WVGA resolution for 4.3" screen size, so PPI is low. Lumia has the same resolution, but because the screen size is only 3.7", PPI is higher.

Doesn't make much difference, since S2 has a Super Amoled Plus screen, which is better than Nokia's Clear Black Display...


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## karthikrg (Jan 14, 2012)

S2 anyday. Lumia 800 has lot of bugs (esp related to battery charging). Plus the hardware features are much better on the S2.


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## red dragon (Jan 14, 2012)

AndroidFan said:


> Pixels Per Inch.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Not really,the Clear back display is really great,if not better than samoled plus of gs2.
Lumia is a very good phone BUT the audio quality is as bad as gs2(expected better audio from Nokia)


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## red dragon (Jan 14, 2012)

karthikrg said:


> S2 anyday. Lumia 800 has lot of bugs (esp related to battery charging). Plus the hardware features are much better on the S2.



GS2 also has/had loads of bugs.
The hw of gs2 is not fully utilized by Android till now(probably it will never be)
Winmo7 is far more optimized for the hw.
SGS2 like all Android phones,lag here and there.
Lumia despite its hw and sw limitation;runs even smoother than 4s.
But it is slightly overpriced  atm,another reduction of 2k,it will be a great buy.


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## red dragon (Jan 14, 2012)

amitabhishek said:


> It's like comparing chalk & cheese! SGSII is a generation ahead of Lumia. Lumia scores only on polycarbonate housing.



It is probably the other way around.
I have a gs2 and know what I am talking about.
@o.p,for internet surfing alone Sensation XE is better than GS2,texts in almost every standard webpage look blurry without zooming in gs2(blame low res for that)


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## red dragon (Jan 14, 2012)

AndroidFan said:


> I..
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Browsing experience is the weakest point of gs2.

I hope you know the PURE GOOGLE PHONE CANNOT PLAY xvid/mkv natively?
All 3rd party video players are junks compared to the touch wiz video player.


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## AndroidFan (Jan 14, 2012)

red dragon said:


> Browsing experience is the weakest point of gs2.
> 
> I hope you know the PURE GOOGLE PHONE CANNOT PLAY xvid/mkv natively?
> All 3rd party video players are junks compared to the touch wiz video player.



Native support is bullshit. We are talking SmartPhones here... We don't need native support when we have a massive supporting ecosystem...

If you can, please try MX Video Player from the Android market. Touchwiz video player is junk compared to it...


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## red dragon (Jan 15, 2012)

Mate,you do not have any freakin idea of what you are talking about.

MXplayer plays xvid/mkv with software decoding,major battery drain.
These players(moboplayer,rockplayer,mxv player)
 are nothing compared to the stock TW media player.

Only comparable player is the dice player which actually uses the gpu during video decoding(but it is not free)

Please get yourself familiar with basic things like these before making expert comments.

In plain words
Without the appropriate drivers for the gpu,no dev can use it and Samsung will never give it to devs.

And try to become a smart user of a phone than a smart phone user.


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## techbulb (Jan 15, 2012)

You can use snappz market or blackmart to download dice player or any other apps .apk free but you have to search snappz market app on google and blackmart can be found on snappz market these apps can be used without rooting i use them on my galaxy y since there is no kernel available.you should go for s2 its unmatchable especialy if you root it .my small bro has galaxy s he makes rom (doctorz rom) for it.


peace out ;-D


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## Sarath (Jan 15, 2012)

There are very few people who own both S2 and 800. I suggest you ask individuals who own each device and their experience with it.

I have seen many people very happy with their S2's and at the same time I have a few cases for people ditching their S2 for a Samsung Focus (model name?) which I later learnt to be a 10-15k device. So it all depends on your preference. 

I suggest you demo each handset and ask owners of respective devices about them. Don't go after what's on paper. Real world use can cripple even the best of hardware.

I cannot suggest either as I haven't seen the Nokia 800 as yet. But I did get a few minutes with the S2 and I didn't like the build quality (feel) especially when it has to look similar to the "R" which is 10k cheaper.  But there are many S2 users here and build is actually good.


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## red dragon (Jan 15, 2012)

techbulb said:


> You can use snappz market or blackmart to download dice player or any other apps .apk free but you have to search snappz market app on google and blackmart can be found on snappz market these apps can be used without rooting i use them on my galaxy y since there is no kernel available.you should go for s2 its unmatchable especialy if you root it .my small bro has galaxy s he makes rom (doctorz rom) for it.
> 
> 
> peace out ;-D



We should not talk about these things here.
Dice player from blackmarket does not work on gs2.


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## siddhipatel (Jan 16, 2012)

Nokia Lumia 800 has windows OS and samsung galaxy s2 has android OS, now you have to decide that which OS is useful or with which OS you are more comfortable and decide accordingly.


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## AndroidFan (Jan 16, 2012)

red dragon said:


> Mate,you do not have any freakin idea of what you are talking about.
> 
> MXplayer plays xvid/mkv with software decoding,major battery drain.
> These players(moboplayer,rockplayer,mxv player)
> ...



Are you sure Software decoder uses more battery than hardware decoder? I thought it was the other way round, that is why Android does not default to using Hardware Acceleration even in Android 4.0, and Hardware Acceleration is completely missing in Android 2.x.x

Here is a screen grab from MX Video settings...

*www.imgur.com/UGUPs.jpg

Could you please tell me what are the best settings for decoder? I can switch t HW decoder when the videos are playing... But even in SW decoders, never faced any battery drain...

Cheers!


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## coderunknown (Jan 16, 2012)

AndroidFan said:


> Are you sure Software decoder uses more battery than hardware decoder? I thought it was the other way round, that is why Android does not default to using Hardware Acceleration even in Android 4.0, and Hardware Acceleration is completely missing in Android 2.x.x



i also heard same. h/w decoding should eat more battery.


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## PurusH (Jan 16, 2012)

Yes, Androidfan is right, it is the h/w decoding that drains battery fast


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## red dragon (Jan 16, 2012)

No sir,battery drain is proportional to the no. of cpu/gpu cycles over a fixed time.
For current gen of dual core phone with  proper hardware decoding far less cpu/gpu cycle is required than software decoding......so less drain(it is pretty obvious aint it?)
Do not trust me?
Ok;try this yourself...
1.play a 720p mp4 file in loop with dice player with hw decoding.
2.Now in dice setting change mp4 playback to sw decode,and loop the video again.
3.compare the drain in both cases.
In sgs2,the drain is more than double in sw decoding.
If your phone has s decent gpu,you will observe the same.

Regarding HW acceleration of ICS,
It is not to make a framework which is gpu driven,the major flaw of Android was the battery drain(the infamous o.s bug)
The hw acceleration of ics in very crude sense is basically a gpu driven launcher,in an effort to save some juice even with those fancy animation and other various eye candys.
This is nothing new actually,Samsung has actually done it with their much hated Touch Wiz;it is butt ugly but extremely easy on battery compared ti ADW,GO and other goodlooking launchers.
(Sense does look good but it is still cannot utilize the gpu properly and also a RAM hog resulting in pathetic battery life in ALL htc androids)

You guys may hate symbian,but it was Nokia who first utilized the gpu in a mobile o.s for other things like gaming.
Apple did the same with i.o.s(resulting a phenomenal battery life in ip4,somewhat screwed with i.o.s5)
Now it is the turn for Android to use the gpu in u.i rendering(their task is far more complicated than i.o.s as they operate in a completely open platform with so many hw variants.


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## red dragon (Jan 16, 2012)

AndroidFan said:


> Are you sure Software decoder uses more battery than hardware decoder? I thought it was the other way round, that is why Android does not default to using Hardware Acceleration even in Android 4.0, and Hardware Acceleration is completely missing in Android 2.x.x
> 
> Here is a screen grab from MX Video settings...
> 
> ...



Absolutely not...we are forced to work on SW compaitibility mode because the SW is not coded properly to use the HW in best probable way.

ICS  does finally have HWA for Galaxy Nexus.
Lack of the HWA was/is the most talked about flaw in Android.

With MX  video player you can not use gpu in most cases(only mp4 may use it)
Actually you can not choose the decoder for most 3rd party players.

AFAIK Dice player does use hw decoding for most formats in SGS2(You can actually select the mode you want from the settings)

But the best Video player for Android I have seen so far is the TW player(stock player) in sgs2 and Note.
It is the only player which can play 1080p mkv encoded with insane bitrate without breaking a sweat(Mali is indeed insanely powerful)

I have tried to play the same clip in Sensation XE,ipad2,4s(of course demuxed in mp4 container,as Oplayer hd uses sw decoding and it stuttered even in first few seconds)
XE with Dice player hw mode played with stutters[but watchable]
Sw mode understandbly could not even initiate it even in 30 seconds with a drop of 5% battery.

Ipad2 with stock player can play the demuxed mp4 finally,but nowhere comparable to gs2.

I would suggest you to read up a lot more to get a clearer picture.
If you want can p.m links to the awesome 
sites which deals with the mobile platform development and coding.


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## AndroidFan (Jan 16, 2012)

red dragon said:


> Absolutely not...we are forced to work on SW compaitibility mode because the SW is not coded properly to use the HW in best probable way.
> 
> ICS  does finally have HWA for Galaxy Nexus.
> Lack of the HWA was/is the most talked about flaw in Android.




Check out this discussion on Google+ 
*
Android Graphics True Facts ---* *plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s



			
				Dianne Hackborn said:
			
		

> • Android has always used some hardware accelerated drawing. Since before 1.0 all window compositing to the display has been done with hardware.
> 
> • This means that many of the animations you see have always been hardware accelerated: menus being shown, sliding the notification shade, transitions between activities, pop-ups and dialogs showing and hiding, etc.
> 
> ...


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## red dragon (Jan 16, 2012)

Where did my comment contradict with the article?
Basically it says even with full hw utilization Android will stutter.
This by no way justifies the lack of optimization.
And it deals with u.i rendering,not hd video rendering and it is common sense that forced hw rendering in ALL program will cause subtle change/complete crash in some.
Apple will never release their complete i.o.s source code to devs and we will never know how exactly they made this brilliant hw/sw toggle so effectively.
I myself like Android a lot more than i.o.s but it is indeed coded brilliantly(ofcourse made easier by the closed system approach)


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