android photography

Please have a look at this screen shot:


Yes, you're seeing it correctly. On the Samsung Galaxy S2, via the Samsung App Market, all of these games have finally come to the S2 for free as well!

Here's the list:

• Assassin's Creed
• Hero of Sparta
• Modern Combat 2
• Brother in Arms 2
• Avatar
• Dungeon Hunter (I'm busy downloading this one :)
• Spiderman
• Ganstar Miami Vindication

Hi guys, I know it's been a while since I posted, but it's just been crazy busy here! In the meantime, this video really made me smile, check it out:

The Galaxy S2 comes standard with a very decent photo editor app, called, wait for it :) - "Photo editor" - very handy for a few quick touch ups, cropping or rotating. It's not a full Photoshop type app, but for every day use, it does the job nicely!

In this post I'll quickly go over all the features it has - starting the app, allows you to select which image you want to edit:


You can either select an existing image, or take a new one... Once you've selected the photo you want to edit, you'll get a neat interface with everything you need right there:



The next one you'd need would be a cropping tool - we always get stuff like fingers or bystanders that spoil the photo, so cropping the pic can easily fix that. It can even turn a crappy photo into a MASTERPIECE!!!

This little app also have several selection related tools and features, which allows you to make edits to only certain parts of a photo:



At the bottom you'll see a back and forward button, so you can undo and redo any steps you take... Next to that you have a paint pallet icon, which gives you options to play with the brightness and contrast settings:




The magic wand tool gives you options to make some blur related changes to your selection (you need to make a selection first for this to work):


The final tool in the list gives you some other effects you can apply to your pic:


So there you have it, that covers the stock standard "Photo editor" that comes by default with the Galaxy S2 - it's got enough to allow you to do the basics, but it won't be used by professional photographers :) (they'll anyway rather use their PC or Mac)

I'll have a look to see what alternatives to the standard photo editor there are out there, and maybe do some reviews on them too.

Till next time!

Yes, if you live in South Africa, and plan on getting the Samsung Galaxy S2 for it's "music hub" feature, don't because it is still not available locally:


Yup, very annoying! At least the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa forced Samsung to remove the advert for the music hub on their website - see that article here.

The Galaxy S2 comes standard with their Memo app, which you'd basically use to make quick notes:



It works ok, but I'm not too fond of it. I decided to look for an alternative, and found Evernote - the nice thing about Evernote, is it includes the ability to take a quick picture or video or even voice recording, as well as traditional text notes. Also, a very handy widget is available.

Furthermore, you must create an online account, which means your notes gets synchronized with the Evernote website, so you can access your notes from pretty much every where.




It works a lot better than the default Memo app that comes with the phone in my opinion, and I'd highly recommend getting it as soon as you can, it will really help when you need to make a note of something real quick :)

Get it here

With iTunes now carrying 225,000 apps in its "curated" collection and Android up to 100,000, it is no wonder that app discovery is a major issue for application developers.  

Undoubtedly, one of the key decisions in launching a successful mobile application is determining how to drive application downloads.

Based on experience launching applications working in several mobile startups, I believe that there are at least six key mobile strategies to consider for driving adoption:

1. Why is mobile media support needed? 
• Mobile media support is needed since we need to reach consumers who may already have a mindset or may already be used to certain types of applications (i.e. facebook, twitter, etc). There may also be a need to educate users on issues such as privacy, security,  and so on.
2. What should be the average marketing spend?
• As a result of analyzing download trends and media spend across various advertisers, several marketing experts have determined that the minimum mobile media spend is $200,000 over two days to truly make an impact and accelerate measurable downloads.
3. When should you begin mobile media support? 
• The day of week apparently matters.  To leverage typical download activity, it is suggested to launch your application and begin supporting it toward the end of the week - on a Thursday or Friday. This is allow you to build on the momentum of the weekend downloads.
4. How robust should the mobile application be?
• It is critical to make your application robust because "first impression" matters. If an application frequently crashes or if critical functionality does not work properly, then it is likely that your application may not be subsequently used.  While multiple features such as video, pictures, gaming and maps make for a bigger experience, if consumers cannot download the application and subsequent updates in certain WiFi zones, then it will most likely inhibit downloads.
5. Which form of advertising is more important: creative or contextual?
• Based on mobile campaigns with those of digital display, marketing experts have concluded that in mobile media efforts, the banner creative has more of an impact on performance.  However, in online campaigns, contextual is typically more important.
6. Which mobile devices need to be supported?
• If you want to maximize coverage, then it is recommended that your application must be cross platform (i.e. must support iOS devices such as iPhone 3, 3GS, 4 and Android devices such as Droid X and/or HTC Evo).  However,  keep in mind that the uber-smartphone market represents less than 20 percent of smartphone penetration.  Therefore, by including all phones that can access the Web, you will not only build scale, but you may also experience higher conversion rates from some of the less sophisticated devices.

If you found this article useful, please retweet and/or leave me a comment.

It's been quite a while since I've posted on my blog, so sorry about that :) - got crazy busy the last few weeks, we took a week long holiday, and clients always see that as a big catastrophe, and starts sending lots and lots of work our way!

Anyway, here's some photos I took with the Galaxy S2's camera while we were on holiday down the Garden Route - I really like the panorama feature :)












Still very impressed with my phone's camera - really handy to have when you don't have your regular one close by...

Till next time!