The Samsung Skyrocket (Part Two)
The Samsung Skyrocket (Part Two)
by Aldrin N. on 2012-02-06
In the first part, we looked at the design of the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket. It’s definitely a large phone. We also went over the display screen, and a couple of motion gestures to navigate the home screen.
Next, we’ll look at the user interface itself.
User Interface (continued)
The Skyrocket, like the Galaxy S II, uses the Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread as the operating system. The Gingerbread is one of the most popular operating systems found on smartphones. Plenty of other brands use this, such as HTC and Motorola.
You get seven home screens to place all the widgets and apps. That’s a lot! You also get cool additions, such as a task manager. That’ll make uninstallation of apps easier to do. You can even capture screenshots by pressing the power button and home key at the same time.
But let’s dive into the features of Gingerbread:
One of the first things you’re going to notice with the Gingerbread is the home screen. While it is similar to the iPhone in that it has apps displayed on the home screen, the Android offers more.
One of the first things you’ll notice is that not only can you place apps on the home screen, you can also place widgets.
Widgets are icons that update information right on your home screen. For example, you can install a weather widget and it’ll display the weather in your area. If you want to go into greater detail, you can tap on the widget and it’ll take you to the app itself.
Plenty of widgets work like that, but there are also widgets that make things convenient for you. For example, you can just toggle the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth without having to go the Options. These little things make it easier to navigate the interface, and it makes the screen more interesting too.
The Gingerbread also has a pull down notification bar. Just swipe down from the top of the screen and you get a list of notifications. You can reply to texts, email and update apps just by opening the notifications tray. Unlike in the iPhone, you get a blue box interrupting you. This is one advantage of the Android over the iPhone.
What’s cool is that Samsung has decided to throw in some of their own stuff. They call it the TouchWiz. Don’t worry because they didn’t change the anything about the look of the interface. They added stuff that makes things even better.
They give you access to live panels. These are widgets, only larger. You can view content such as emails and calendar all in one portion of the screen.
You also get stuff like the Social Hub. It consolidates all the updates of your contact’s social media profiles in one smooth interface. Facebook updates, Twitter updates and other social media content will be shown in this app. You don’t have to log onto the respective apps to view anything anymore.
You also get media related stuff, such as a store where you can rent videos. This will maximize the huge screen of the Skyrocket.
Continuation
Now that we’re done with exploring the user interface, let’s take a look at the other features of the Skyrocket, like the camera.
Aldrin Norwood is a resident blogger for Cash for Smartphones. A certified multimedia geek, he lives and breathes smartphone news and updates. Born from a family of writers- reinforced by his degree in English Studies- his work had been cited Honorable Mention on the Genoveva Edroza-Matute Literary Awards in 2011- Essay Division, and had been the Editor-in-Chief of his university’s official publication. He mostly writes about philosophy, pop culture, movies, literature, and technology, specifically about the smartphone industry.
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