Samsung released what’s called Smart Stay. This cool software will recognize when you’re looking at the phone. It will replace the auto lock feature which previously used a timer to shut off the screen. Now if you’re looking at your phone, the screen will always remain on. Direct call is another very useful feature. If you’re in the middle of texting someone and wish to call them instead, just hold the phone up to your ear. Like Smart Stay, it will automatically detect your actions.

Samsung will continue to use TouchWiz to keep a consistent interface across its devices. With consistency also comes the use of a pretty ugly interface. TouchWiz looks very much like Gingerbread so Samsung users don’t have to deal with drastic changes from previous phones. I rather the standard look of Ice Cream Sandwich which looks almost futuristic and is pretty sleek.

The design of the Galaxy S3 isn’t that nice looking either. It comes in either blue or white, with no options of black. The blue is pretty weird looking; it’s not a solid color. It’s broken up and has a slight pattern to it.

The presentation of the Galaxy wasn’t too impressive either. Apple has a history of great keynotes; Samsung’s felt awkward and rehearsed. Steve Job’s seemed genuinely enthusiastic with the iPhone keynotes; Samsung’s presentation was choppy and boring. They didn’t really go into detail and give good demonstrations of the phone. Additionally, his English speaking skills were lacking quite a bit and it was hard to understand him at times.

SonyEricsson has come out with an official launch date for Xperia Play, the smartphone previously known as the PlayStation phone. On a Facebook page that was published last weekend, Sony says that the Xperia Play will be released on February 13.

Xperia Play runs the Android operating system and has a game pad that folds out horizontally. Sony Ericsson announced last week that the company has plans to release several PlayStation titles for Android, which will be accessible to all Android phones, but the Xperia Play will no doubt be the one best suited to enjoy these classics.

Sony has had some financial troubles this past year with declining sales in its Sony Ericsson mobile phones. The company has also been criticized for the latest version of the Sony PSP and its steep $250 price tag.

According to WSJ, Sony is also planning to launch a proprietary media distribution platform later this month called Sony Online Service, to compete with Apple’s iTunes store.

Good – Not Perfect

The design is similar to other HTC handsets, but it’s quite low-key and anonymous, almost too much so. On the other hand the build quality feels really solid overall. One downside is that all of the buttons on the front except for the clickable trackball are of the touch sensitive sort. This is of course a matter of personal preference, but solid buttons are by and large easier to use.

The rest of the Nexus one is all extremely up to date; the excellent OLED screen gives off amazing contrast and color depth, and on the inside it’s equipped with the latest Snapdragon CPU clocking in at 1GHz and 512MBs of RAM. This combination makes it the fastest Android phone you can currently buy. The built-in camera, however, unfortunately stays true to established HTC standards in this respect – it’s not completely useless, but it has nothing on “dedicated” camera phones.

Android 2

As opposed to most of the current competition, the Nexus One has been given the latest version of Android, which is now at version 2.1. In real life, this means some speed improvements and some extra apps from Google. As it’s really an HTC phone, you also get the excellent Sense interface that really improves the Android experience.

In addition to relying on the latest version of Android and HTCs sense interface, Google has pimped the interface with some additional eye candy like active backgrounds and other graphical updates here and there – all in all pretty nice updates that run well on the fast hardware.

Considering its features, it is a highly affordable handset with a target price of less than $200 (potential subsidies not included). With the Nokia C5 you get a lot of bang for the buck at this price, and no doubt the Symbian S60 mobile OS is the main attraction.

This makes it a true smartphone in an inexpensive package – thanks to Symbian you get the full Ovi package including Ovi Maps, which now supports sharing your location via Facebook. On top of that, the usual social media fluff is of course included.

Just like Nokia’s X-series, the ideas behind the model names are borrowing from the automotive industry. This also means there will be one to C5 a year, with the same basic idea and pricing model, but with updated technology. It is Nokia’s way of both reducing the number of models and to reduce all the usual model name confusion.

As opposed to the X series – a renewal of the XpressMusic series – the C series aims at the social media-intensive consumer base, which is huge nowadays. It’s a great thing that smartphones are finding their way down into the budget categories.