My Galaxy Mini

It is roughly two weeks now since I bought my first Android phone, a Samsung Galaxy Mini. It is a leap from my previous phone, a Nokia model that can be resold now for less than 500 pesos I believe (any takers?).

So, the Galaxy Mini is the cheapest, most basic Android phone from Samsung. You get one camera, a 3" touch screen, practically no internal phone memory though 2 gigs are available with the micro SD card sold with the phone. The casing is a little slippery so it is advisable to fit it with a jelly casing. I also bought the scratch-proof screen protector, a new pouch, and a 16 gig micro SD. All in all, I spent roughly 9K pesos for it.

Of course, this being my first internet phone, I had to spend more than a day figuring out how to stop losing my load. Yeah, took me that long to figure out how to stop my phone from connecting to the internet -- you have to, or you will be charged 20 pesos per hour by Smart.

I've installed free apps from the market, which I love (yes, angry ang bird ko!). I am now able to access my gmail from just about anywhere. Yahoo mails are a little backward, because they are asking you to register a new mobile mail account with them. So what happens to my old mail account, Yahoo? I might just have to abandon  them since they are slowly becoming too edsamail-ish.

The camera has acceptable resolution. But since you only have one at the back of the phone, it is quite a challenge to take photos of yourself. To further complicate things, the touchscreen button doesn't help when you have the phone facing the other way. And yeah, the Mini has no flash.

Battery will last less than 6 hours if you are using it as a mobile internet device. Otherwise, I am told it will last more than a week if you use it only as a phone.

The 3" screen is a little too small to fit column spaces in newspapers (like the inquirer.net). The frontpage is ok. But reading the full story is a little struggle, to read from left to right, you have to keep pushing the screen all the time. This reminds me, I need to get this blog available in mobile format. I'm sure Google/blogger has the solution for it. Android is Google after all.

All in all, I am happy with the purchase. It takes some getting used to, but now, I can't imagine going back to my old jurassic phone.