Tips and Tricks for Samsung Galaxy Tab

We’ve been testing Samsung Galaxy Tab for a few months, here are some practical tricks that are not covered in the very limited printed documentations inside the box.  Geektechpost.com

Hotkey: Screen Capture
To make a screen capture of the device, press and hold the back button, and press the Power button once.  If successful, you will hear a camera shutter sound, and the toast message of “Screen Captured. Saved as image file.”

You can find the screen capture file at the folder called ScreenCapture under the root directory, with the file name “SCYYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.png”.  For example, “SC20110203-040506.png” means it is captured at 4:05:06 am, on 3 February 2011.

Note: This might not work on certain apps which have designated special function on the Back button.

Geektechpost.com

Hotkey: Task Explorer

By pressing and holding the Home button, you will see the eight recently used apps, as long as a Task Manager function.  This is especially good to close unwanted apps on the fly.

 

Hotkey: Force power off
If something get unresponsive (for example you use Browser, Music player, several IMs simultaneously), and you can’t just end it by any normal mean, just press and hold the Power button for 7.5 seconds.  The power will be off and you can reboot afterwards.

Geektechpost.com

Save energy, save the Earth
Like every other device, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can consume a significant portion of battery even when idle.  Turn them off when not in use. 

 

How to change input method
A new user in Android handset might wonder how to change the input method (on-screen keyboard) during input. 

While most users might opt to use the default Swype keyboard or Samsung keyboard, users in East Asian countries usually need to switch input method several times a day.

Tap and hold the blank field and until you see the popup menu enabling you to choose input method.

MobFox vs AdMob

Early last month the CEO of MobFox (Julian Zehetmayr) sent to selected Android Developers an email inviting us to join their network, and we decided to give it a try in some of our Android Apps, and we are still using it.

 

 

If a click can only generate $0.03 per click, we tend to evade them – it’s better to display house ads than low-paid ads – at least they might download your free app and your potentially profit will be way more than 3 cents.  By default, their eCPM control function is off, and you will risk your program display low quality apps.

Turning the eCPM control is easy – just send them a notice by click a few simple buttons.  We are currently setting the minimum display threshold to $0.036.

As MobFox also supports backfill of advertisements, you don’t need to worry that no ads to display.  Simply put the AdMob or InMobi Site ID and you will get money generated from both side.  You don’t get to set the display rate though.  Out of my calculation, they are refreshing the ads at a 60-second rate.

Indeed we do enjoy a higher eCPM in MobFox than AdMob, but not as high as they claimed on their front page (it’s nowhere near triple eCPM – 200% at most).  Contrary to the widespread belief of a way higher CPC in ad revenue, in some territorial apps I only enjoy limited success (especially those in China.)   So it is really a territorial thing – it works well in Europe and perhaps America.  Just don’t use it in your Apps targeting Asia!

If you have something to ask, please do ask us.

We are planning to develop iOS apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.  We will definitely implement MobFox on apps that targets European users.

We also enrolled their affiliate program, if you like our content, please feel free to go to this URL to sign up: http://www.mobfox.com/. Thank you!

Google Checkout... so we can finally sell paid apps, now what?

OK, so we can sell paid apps in Android Market now.  Our apps are now selling live now.  But, alas, here's a problem - we cannot withdraw the fund accumulated in Google Checkout yet.

Hopefully they can resolve the problem before the payout date.  After all, it does not feel good to accumulate a sum of money in Google Checkout - unfortunately most online payments are prefer Paypal.

In the pic they say "Please revisit this page in the future to provide bank account information".  In the future? There's no concrete date!  If Google sees this please do something

Samsung Galaxy Tab price

Our favorite online shopping site for digital gadgets, computeruniverse.net, is taking pre-orders for the iPad rival, Samsung Galaxy Tab (don’t forget the €5 discount coupon HERE)

This 16GB tablet is running with Android 2.2 Froyo and is expected to be upgraded to Android 3.0 Gingerbread later.  This 380g lightweight machine is equipped with a real phone function, that means you can insert a SIM card without being unreachable like the problem iPad created.

Unfortunately the price is a bit steep - €671.43 is not attractive to us when we can buy iPad with 3G here at €488.7.  Perhaps we’ll wait until a price drop.

Another late Review - Samsung i5700 Galaxy Spica

A couple of weeks ago, we had gotten a hold of a Samsung i5700 Galaxy Spica and tested it with a 2.1 ROM.  Same as always, we lack a proper tool to take the pictures (or host it, for that matter)

In this review, we use HTC Hero as the control phone for come comparison.  Galaxy Spica is slightly heavier than a Hero, but is slightly thinner.

Speedwise, with its 800MHz processor, we wouldn't call this a lightning speed, but its Android 2.1 ROM is indeed way more smooth and is noticeably faster than any given custom 2.1 Hero ROM up to date.  We proceeded to re-flash the HTC Hero back to Android 1.5 nearly immediately.

There is a lot of buttons for this innocent i5700.  Just by bottom of phone we have dial, hook/power, return, menu, search, home, four-way cursors, and an OK button.  On the right side, there are also a camera key on the right side which is disabled in the 2.1 ROM, and a Lock-screen button.  On the left side there's volume control.  To make things worse, the arrangement of the buttons are not quite easily adaptable, especially the Return button.

On battery life, we have no special complaint since it beats Hero quite comfortably, as we didn't need to charge it in the middle of the day, while we can't probably make the Hero pass 4PM even with a brand new official battery (Model TWIN160).  Look, we had to recharge the Hero!

The 3 megapixel camera is quite impressive and is comparable with (if not better than) the quality of a 5 megapixel camera of an HTC phone.

With most Android handsets over US$400, Samsung Galaxy Spica's price is virtually unbeatable - we can get it for below US$250 here, less than half of price of the Google Nexus One.  It's definitely a nice budget choice for new users of Android.