I have a neighbour who's a life long PC guy. He's quite tech savvy and from time to time he's had to what he calls "re build" one of his several PC computers, which I came to learn really meant reloading all the software after a "crash".

I've also heard him talk about "personally" increasing his RAM and adding a more powerful "video card". All fantastic stuff really. He loved to talk about how his "mouse" has 2 buttons while mine only has one... of course I have had to let him down the hard way telling him I don't use a mouse anymore AND there's nothing he can do with his "2 buttons" I cant do so... BIG DEAL!

I can tell it annoys him that Apple has made it easier for people to use computers, surf the net etc... in fact I think he resents that. He often says Apple made computers for dummies... interesting comment really, should we only allow mechanics to drive cars? Directors to watch movies? Seriously... who cares? So a group of people who knew something others didn't and so could hold us to ransom and over charge for their time have to work a bit harder?... that's life. Blacksmiths ran into the same problem when the car came along.

My neighbour's son aften brags to other kids that there is a bigger range of games available on PC and they are much better priced... that's a tough claim for a Mac owner to argue other than... der... that's why I have a PS3 connected to a 55" 3D LED TV!

This is the point where he often reminds me that he has far more options when it comes to music and video editing, graphics creation etc while I am locked into those that "Apple approve of"... Of course he is unable to expand that statement to include what it is he can do with his software I can't... mind you I dont know too many industry professionals in graphics & design etc that aren't using Apple computers and overwhelmingly accepting their so called "restrictions". I guess he has a point though. The average PC user finds it much "easier" to download music without paying for it and share it with as many of their friends as they want... (I only said "easier"...)

My neighbour told me recently his 20 YO daughter is buying a Macbook Pro. He seems a little disappointed LOL. He was explaining to me how you can't get the full MS Office on a Mac. That shocked me a little because obviously I have excel and word and powerpoint etc and have no problem sending and receiving with both Mac and PC users. "Oh but you cant get Publisher on a Mac he said and you need that for Uni" to which his daughter said "Dad, I haven't used Publisher for 2 years..."

Personally, I use a Mac. it works for me. However, both Mac and PC make great products these days. The introduction of Windows 8 and the detachable screen laptop puts PCs where Apple has spent much of the past 10 years... ahead of the curve, predicting what the consumer wants... it will be very interesting to see if they were right.

it seems Apple's ability to know what people want before people know is not quite what it was.

[ Last edited by  TonyToro at 27-1-2013 22:39 ]

I'm sticking it out with the preloaded Windows 7 in my Samsung Series 5 coz i dont think its necessary for me to upgrade to Windows 8.

You I phone guys may not be as cool or as young as you think you are !

Among Asian trendsetters, iPhone fatigue sets in
Monday, 28 January, 2013, 10:12am
Reuters in Singapore

Apple’s iconic iPhone is losing some of its lustre among Asia’s well-heeled consumers in Singapore and Hong Kong, a victim of changing mobile habits and its own runaway success.

Driven by a combination of iPhone fatigue, a desire to be different and a plethora of competing devices, users are turning to other brands, notably those from Samsung Electronics, eating into Apple’s market share.

In Singapore, Apple’s products were so dominant in 2010 that more devices here ran its iOS operating system per capita than anywhere else in the world.

But StatCounter , which measures traffic collected across a network of 3 million websites, calculates that Apple’s share of mobile devices in Singapore - iPad and iPhone - declined sharply last year. From a peak of 72 per cent in January last year, its share fell to 50 per cent this month, while Android devices now account for 43 per cent of the market, up from 20 per cent in the same month last year.

In Hong Kong, devices running Apple’s iOS now account for about 30 per cent of the total, down from about 45 per cent a year ago. Android accounts for nearly two-thirds.

“Apple is still viewed as a prestigious brand, but there are just so many other cool smartphones out there now that the competition is just much stiffer,” said Tom Clayton, chief executive of Singapore-based Bubble Motion , which develops a popular regional social media app called Bubbly.

Where Hong Kong and Singapore lead, other key markets across fast-growing Asia usually follow.

“Singapore and Hong Kong tend to be, from an electronics perspective, leading indicators on what is going to be hot in Western Europe and North America, as well as what is going to take off in the region,” said Jim Wagstaff, who runs a Singapore-based company called Jam Factory developing mobile apps for enterprises.

Southeast Asia is adopting smartphones fast - consumers spent 78 per cent more on smartphones in the 12 months up to September last year than they did the year before, according to research company GfK .


Television screens display the Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S III at a Seoul shop. Apple’s iPhone is losing its “X” factor in the face of tougher competition. Samsung Electronics last week said quarterly profit soared 76 per cent, boosted by its Galaxy smartphones, which comfortably outsold the iPhone. Photo: AP
Anecdotal evidence of iPhone fatigue isn’t hard to find: Where a year ago iPhones swamped other devices on the subways of Hong Kong and Singapore they are now outnumbered by Samsung and HTC smartphones.

While this is partly explained by the proliferation of Android devices, from the cheap to the fancy, there are other signs that Apple has lost followers.

Singapore entrepreneur Aileen Sim, recently launched an app for splitting bills called BillPin (http://www.billpin.com/), settling on an iOS version because that was the dominant platform in the three countries she was targeting - Singapore, India and the United States.

“But what surprised us was how strong the call for Android was when we launched our app,” she said.

Indeed, 70 per cent of their target users - 20-something college students and fresh graduates - said they were either already on Android or planned to switch over.

“Android is becoming really hard to ignore, around the region and in the US for sure, but surprisingly even in Singapore,” she said. “Even my younger early-20s cousins are mostly on Android now.”

BillPin launched an Android version this month.

Napoleon Biggs, chief strategy officer at Gravitas Group, a Hong Kong-based mobile marketing company, said that while Apple and the iPhone remained premium brands there, Samsung’s promotional efforts were playing to an increasingly receptive audience.

For some, it is a matter of wanting to stand out from the iPhone-carrying crowd. Others find the higher-powered, bigger-screened Android devices better suited to their changing habits - watching video, writing Chinese characters - while the cost of switching devices is lower than they expected, given that most popular social and gaming apps are available for both platforms.

“Hong Kong is a very fickle place,” Biggs said.

Janet Chan, a 25-year-old Hong Kong advertising executive, has an iPhone 5 but its fast-draining battery and the appeal of a bigger screen for watching movies is prodding her to switch to a Samsung Galaxy Note II.

“After Steve Jobs died, it seems the element of surprise in product launches isn’t that great anymore,” she said.

To be sure, there are still plenty of people buying Apple devices. Stores selling their products in places such as Indonesia were full over the Christmas holidays, and the company’s new official store in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay has queues snaking out of the door most days.

But the iPhone’s drop in popularity in trendy Hong Kong and Singapore is mirrored in the upmarket malls of the region.

“IPhones are like Louis Vuitton handbags,” said marketing manager Narisara Konglua in Bangkok, who uses a Galaxy SIII. “It’s become so commonplace to see people with iPads and iPhones so you lose your cool edge having one.”

In the Indonesian capital Jakarta, an assistant manager at Coca Cola’s local venture, Gatot Hadipratomo, agrees. The iPhone “used to be a cool gadget but now more and more people use it.”

There is another influence at play: hip Korea. Korean pop music, movies and TV are hugely popular around the region and Samsung is riding that wave. And while the impact is more visible in Hong Kong and Singapore, it also translates directly to places like Thailand.

“Thais are not very brand-loyal,” says Akkaradert Bumrungmuang, 24, a student at Mahidol University in Bangkok. “That’s why whatever is hot or the in-thing to have is adopted quickly here. We follow Korea so whatever is fashionable in Korea will be a big hit.”

[ Last edited by  kaka at 28-1-2013 14:17 ]

Please explain this post

Interesting~!
i have a neighbour who was an idiot when it comes to anything that has a electronics in it. She can't even operate a modern LED-screen controlled washing machine, or setting timer control for the air-con.
So for the longest time, she's been using a Nokia phone. Classic 6300 or something. That's the most complicated phone that she can handle.
2 years ago, her company gave her a blackberry and an iphone3. she gave up on her blackberry within a week, and concentrated on learning to use the iphone.
1 week later, she learnt how to take photos and do simple editing, another week later, she was actually able to surf the internet, and email the photos to her friends. she was so impressed with herself and the iphone that she bought iphone4, iphone4S when they launched.

but 2 years later, when it's time to buy iphone5, she hesitated.
according to her, the new iphone has nothing more to offer.
it looks the same, it's just as uncustomizable. a iphone5 looks only just as "cool" as an iphone 4 which she had for 2 years.
and now she's ready to learn more, do more with a smartphone. but iphone isn't offering her that.
so she decided to say byebye to the "easy-to-use" iphone.
she's ready for Android. in fact she is excited to use Android.
so she bought a S3.

not to mention apples Map App was a complete failure.

also, the new Series 5 now comes preinstalled with Windows 8. I actually wanted a series 5 model without the cd rom, 13.3 inch screen, i7 core, 1.4kg for 8k HKD. but it came preinstalled with windows 8. Now, i could pirate w7 but i couldn't be bothered to, so I bought a 6k HKD series 5, windows 7, i5, 14 inch, with cd rom, with page up/down keys on the right (not FN), weighed 1.8kg (+400gram).

i really wish these new laptops would let you choose windows 7 or windows 8. this is my only gripe with PC atm, because w8 is such a flop, unless you're using a touchscreen laptop, and even so, w8 is just trash. it doesn't support coroporate proxy which i use at work, and there are thousands of others complaining about this bug but there are yet to be a fix. which means, windows store and metro just doesn't work if you're behind a coroporate proxy.

OK, changing the discussion from computers to mobile phones, I agree that what was once a HUGE gap between iPhone and everything else has closed. In fact I agree the Samsung products are very good and the S3 is excellent. In terms of "doing more with a smart phone"... I don't know anything meaningful you can do with an Android you cant do with an iPhone. Both have Apps for just about everything these days. I'm saying that trying to avoid the circular debate of Android owners who "think" they know all there is to know about iPhones and iPhone owners who think the same about Android.

There is much talk about market share. Someone who is very pro Android told me that collectively they own more than half the smartphone market. The response I got from someone with great insight into Apple's marketing was "little surprise given the price cutting and 2 for 1 offers available on Android phones". When faced with the market share debate Mr Apple says, "sure, but if you look at how much web browsing is actually done on smart phones it is still overwhelmingly done on iPhones" (something like 70%) which tends to suggest the market share issue may not be quite so clear cut... consumers make mistakes sometimes.

What I find really interesting though is the reluctance by Apple to participate in the larger screen smartphone market. In particular the Galaxy Note is a good example (at least so far) of how Apple have misread the consumer. The fact that the new Note comes with a stylus is the ultimate "anti iPhone" feature. It will be very interesting to see where that goes.

Android people insist that consumers want a bigger web browsing experience in their smartphone. Apple people insist that it's not a "smartphone issue"... they say consumers want a bigger "mobile" web browsing experience which is catered for in 2 sizes of iPad. Who's right? we will know this year I guess.

LOL, as big a failure as Google Maps was when it first came out! Same story... lot's of publicity about errors.

Fortunately I still have Google Maps on my iPhone to use.

If Apple Maps gets itself sorted out I may use that, especially given the far superior 3D renderings of buildings. Brilliant stuff and so practical and easy to use if they ever get the Map part sorted out. If they can't, it simply means the best Maps App on an iPhone is the same as the best Maps App on an Android. Hardly the end of the world.

yes but social media didn't exactly exist back when googlemaps was released. for apple to replace googlemaps in a social media era with a garbage map app that almost killed travelers who used that map, which is also preinstalled on all iphone 5's ios 5 (which you have to live with) is suicidal to its brand name.

oh, here's the news where people almost died using apples map app: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/12 ... e-life-threatening/

After more than 6 months of usage, i feel like upgrading my Galaxy S2 to Galaxy S3 (pebble Blue) since its price has gone down here in the Phil.
I just wonder what the upcoming Galaxy S4 has to offer since it may be launched this summer.

i'd advise you to keep the s2, unless the s3's price has dramatically dropped. the specs on the s3 just does not justify it's price (the price at launch, not sure about now). otherwise, the s2 running at jellybean firmware is a really powerful smartphone (be sure to upgrade from ice cream sandwich, because jellybean fixes a lot of bugs, at least for me it did)

I jumped from the S1 to the S3 and just love the screen and longer battery life.  I am not sure how it compares with the S2, but the screen seems a little bigger.

If you are comfortable with installing a custom ROM, you can upgrade any of the S's to the latest version.

Unless you are the type of person who MUST have the latest and greatest, it's usually a good idea to skip a generation before upgrading.  Phones and laptops now seem to have fairly steady, but slow, improvement.  Not like the PC scene 10 years ago.

Also, since the OS is so important in Android phones right now, I suggest looking at some of the smaller companies.  I recently bought a Huawei phone (not a small company any more) for a girl, and before giving it to her I played with it for a while (I use an iPhone 4s).  The thing is pretty amazing.  Good stats at a low price.  It does feel a bit cheaper than a Samsung as far as materials go, but the design is better IMHO.  And they have some much stronger ones coming.

I will probably switch to Android for my next phone.

I dont know how to update my S2 to jellybean.
What i like about the S3 is the larger screen and more features in its camera like voice command, burst shots and taking snap shots while in video mode.
Btw, will my S2 have these features once it's updated to Jellybean 4.1.2?
Current price of S3 here in the Phil is 20k pesos (about 3.8k HK$).
I'm also aware that the S3 has many clone units circulating and saturating the market.

To upgrade ICS to Jellybean, a simple Google search will suffice, but here's the simple steps:
Download Samsung Kies

Install it
Plug in your phone with near full battery
Let it auto detect
Backup/update
Voila

The S3 camera is actually really powerful. S2's camera can't even begin to compare, takes 2 seconds to focus and another second to snap, it's pretty.... behind. I spose the S3 camera is another feature why anyone would make the change from S2 to S3.

Jellybean would only slightly make S2 faster, fix a popular bug with wifi crashing ur phone, make some apps who previously crashed become more stable, "nicer" interface, etc etc. Google for more details.

3.8k sounds... alright. If you need a better camera then yeah go for it. I just find it slightly bulky, I mean, S2's size is already my personal limit. Can't imagine anyone stuffing a S2 note / S3 in their jean pockets without shifting their pants constantly.

[ Last edited by  asurada00 at 29-1-2013 20:33 ]

My S2 has ICS 4.0.3 and Kernel version is 3.0.32-siyah-v3.2.7.2+ Baseband is I9100NELP2
Is my unit ready for update to jellyBean w/o any setbacks?

actually I respectfully disagree ...
... although the specs are very close, the actual user experience is much slicker on the S3

I have an S2
My SO has an S3

and I'm insanely jealous

They tweaked the interface, making it easier to do things you have to do (e.g. turn off the data connection)
and some functions have been optimised to run faster, e.g. the camera on the S3 is much faster
and the better battery life is a must-have
not to mention the extra screen size
and the cool factor

must be other differences, I've not done a complete 1:1 comparison, but definitely worth looking at more closely - and then making your own decision based on your own affordability of the improvements you see.  

S4?  
well, as you can see, I myself am waiting ... but that's what I usually do: skip an upgrade step and put up with old tech for at least one product cycle.  Do as I say, not as I do

and Apple hope like hell more and more people agree with you...

it's an interesting social question. Where do people carry their mobile phone? What impact have trendy personalised cases had on people's decision to keep their phone in a pocket vs hold it in your hand? Does "advertising" you have the latest technology effect where you hold your phone?

If it was a simple as practicality, the iPhone 5 offers a good size screen in the correct aspect ratio for modern movies and newer games and fits nicely in your pocket...

BUT...

are less consumers concerned about fitting their phone nicely in their pocket and more concerned about the "size" of the web browsing experience? the image they portray owning the "latest" etc.

Apple have resisted the size issue. They say the larger size smartphone is impractical to use... like holding an ironing board next to your ear... However, trends change, more people talk on their phone using headphones... suddenly what "was" impractical is now useful? Actually "talking" on your phone is what... 10% of your phone's use now days? Less?

Apple specialised in knowing what WE wanted before we did and delivering it... in doing so they established new markets and owned them. Times change. This will be an interesting year...

iPhones are simply heavy, while s2 is lighter but larger.

As long as KIES says you can upgrade your firmware, you can do so, with no setbacks. If it doesn't say you can upgrade, it means you can't, unless you custom root/upgrade it which i don't recommend for people not familiar with this. (i myself have it rooted so i can take pics with no shutter sound)

As for battery, it's been a universal issue for all smartphones. I simply purchase an extra battery and use that as a backup when my phone goes out of battery, and charge both batteries at home. Simple. BUT you can't do that with an iphone since they're control freaks, and don't suggest using a battery pack when the phone itself is already quite heavy.

And yeah I forgot to mention the camera comparison between S2 and S3, which I did in a few post above this one. S3's camera is superb, etc etc but when it first launched, the S3 was priced over 5k HKD, while the S2 is around 2k. In that sense, the specs do not justify its price. Now that its price has dropped to 3.8k, it's "alright". I still wouldn't go for it when i have a perfectly functioning s2.


I refused to use an iphone primarily because the method to turn off data plan was insane, the need to sign into itunes everytime you wanted to download an app, can't use a spare battery (forcing you to use battery pack/traveler battery charger), forces you to use mini-SIM card (i travel to China a lot so I need to switch sim-cards to a different phone), it's closed app market, it forcing you to use itunes which is a hassle for those who enjoy pirating. I once purchased an iphone 4s for my mother but after 2 weeks of trouble shooting and incompatibability with my PC, we sold it at second hand, lost around 400 HKD (worth it), and bought a S2 in its replacement. Saved me many hours of troubleshooting.

[ Last edited by  asurada00 at 30-1-2013 15:32 ]

How can the S3 battery last longer than that of the S2?
a. S3 has a larger screen and it should more or less consume more power than the S2.
b. S3 is quad core and S2 is dual core.

I'm now patiently searching online for a fresh 2nd hand Pebble Blue S3 that still has our local waranty from Samsung Phil.
Price of used S3 is around 17-18k pesos (3.5k HK$) though it may still drop after the Chinese New Year when Samsung is about to launch the S4.
S3 also uses the micro sim, i really dont understand why they have to follow Apple's footsteps when there's a lot of space for the regular sized simcards to be used in the S3.