samsung focus

Samsung Focus vs Samsung Focus 2 (Specs)

May 7, 2012 | By Surur

	Samsung Focus	Samsung Focus 2
Size	124.7 x 64.3 x 9.9 mm	121.7×62.7×10.9 mm
Weight	119.4 g	122 g
Screen	4 inch Super AMOLED	4 inch Super AMOLED
Camera	5 megapixel	5 megapixel
FF Camera	No	VGA
Storage	8 GB, microSD expandable	8 GB
Processor	1 Ghz Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon, Adreno 200 GPU	1.4 Ghz
Battery	1500 mAh	1750 mAh
WPBench score	56.74	89.56
Connectivity	HSDPA	LTE, HSDPA+
Price at launch	$199 on contract	$49.99 on contract
Release date	November 2010	May 2012

The Samsung Focus 2 was announced today as a successor to the original Samsung Focus.

Do our readers think the improvements over the last 18 months have been significant enough? Let us know below.

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Windows Phone gets some great product placement in latest Jasmine Villegas video

April 9, 2012 | By Surur

Microsoft has been hitting the music video product placement hard recently, and the Samsung Focus has a pretty long segment in this new Jasmine Villegas video.

The star has also worked with the IE9 team to create an interactive video of her song “Just a friend” which, if connected to your Facebook account, will feature your real photos in her video.

Her YouTube video already has nearly 2 million views, so on this occasion certainly appears to be money well spent.

Thanks Milad for the tip.

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Dark Forces Team release a fully unlocked ROM for 1st gen Samsung Windows Phones

February 7, 2012 | By Surur

DFTSummyRainBow

Cotulla has announced a fully unlocked ROM for the Samsung Omnia 7 and Samsung Focus v1.3 and 1.4.

The DFT ROMs have so far been confined to HTC handsets.

A fully unlocked ROM allows the installation of native software, such as the Windows Mobile Opera 10 browser.

Cotulla warns this release may have some issues with USB and that Over the Air updates should not be installed, as it may overwrite the new boot loader. The ROM is however the latest version of the OS, 8107.

Read more about the ROM, which will likely invalidate your warranty, at XDA-Developers here.

via XDA-Developers.com

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eWeek’s Don Reisinger votes HTC Trophy, Samsung Focus amongst worst phones of 2011–what’s he smoking?

December 14, 2011 | By Surur

Don Reisinger of eWeek has posted a list of 11 phones which he calls the worst smartphones of 2011.

His reasons are far from clear, but he states “just about every smartphone maker (save for Apple) chalked up at least one loser this year. They hit the market with outdated designs, delivered poor implementation of potentially neat features or were victims of awful marketing” setting his agenda pretty clearly.

Of the Samsung Focus he complains:

Does the Samsung Focus look familiar with its rounded corners and black body? Yeah, thought so. Like too many other smartphones this year, the Focus is a derivative device that does nothing to push mobile design concepts forward. Consumers, who can see through that, voted against the Windows Phone 7-based device by buying other products.

and for the HTC Trophy he says:

The HTC Trophy is yet another Windows Phone 7-based device that got lost in the shuffle this year. Was it the device’s operating system, which disappointed consumers? Was it the device’s derivative design? Or was it because it came with only 16GB of internal memory? Probably all of those things turned off smartphone buyers.

Given that I am a HTC7 Trophy user and love my phone, and would kill for 16GB, I am pretty offended. The Samsung Focus was one of the most desired devices of the first generation of Windows Phones also.

ngbbs4cd881b3d6a16 The Verizon HTC Trophy also got 4 1/2 stars in customer satisfaction from 751 reviews, so I do not think owners think the device is bad either. The Samsung Focus similarly got 4.3 starts out of 5 from 618 reviews, with 88% willing to recommend it.

To Don Reisinger we can certainly say:

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HTC Trophy on Vodafone Greece gets the 7740 update, brings internet sharing. Samsung Focus gets video playback fixes

December 4, 2011 | By Surur

The 7740.16 Windows Phone continues its slow roll-out around the world.

Manos from Greece has let us know his HTC 7 Trophy in Greece has received the update, which has now enabled WIFI internet sharing. Andre tells us the same update has also hit the HTC 7 Trophy on Vodafone Portugal last week.

Mike on Rogers Canada has also seen his Samsung Focus receive the update, and reports it has fixed an annoying video stuttering problem which started with Mango, and which affected all video, including streaming YouTube video and locally stored video.

Unlike the Mango update Microsoft has unfortunately not released any information on the roll-out schedule of the 7740 update, which was meant to only fix an Outlook 2003 and Visual Voice Mail bug, but comes with firmware which brings much more, including internet sharing, supposed battery life fixes on the Nokia Lumia 800 and now video fixes for the video playback on the Samsung Focus.

Have any of our readers noticed any unexpected benefits after the update? Let us know below.

Thanks Manos, Andre and Mike for the tips.

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Bootloader hack may bring Android dual-boot to Windows Phones

November 19, 2011 | By Surur

focusdb

It remains to be seen how desired this is, but work by the Dark Forces Team to port the the MAGLDR bootloader to the Samsung Focus may mean Android dual-boot could be coming to certain Windows Phone 7 handsets.

This would result in a similar situation to the HTC HD2, which it seems has been hacked to run every mobile OS under the sun.

The work is being initially done on the Samsung Focus v1.3, but Cotulla writes that the next version will support the Samsung Focus 1.4 and Samsung Omnia 7 also.

Have any of our readers been waiting for this development? Let us know below.

Via Slashgear and WPCentral.com

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Samsung Focus 1.4 owners finally getting the Mango update

November 18, 2011 | By Surur

It has been a long wait, but Samsung Focus owners with the 1.4 version of the hardware are finally getting the Mango update, according to a blog post on the Windows Team Blog,

The Mango update for Samsung Omnia 7 owners on the Telefonica network in Spain are also going in to scheduling, meaning delivery should be in about 10 days.

Microsoft also confirmed the 7740 update is being pushed out to Vodafone, Orange and Deutsche Telekom subscribers to address the issue of new voice mail notifications not appearing under certain conditions and also a fix for an email issue associated with Exchange Server 2003.

Eric from Microsoft also mentioned firmware updates being pushed out by OEMs to “improve the overall function of your particular make and model of Windows Phone.“

The more interesting message from the blog post however is unspoken – more updates to address more issues for more devices, which was the promise we signed up for when we decided to buy a Windows Phone, and which Microsoft now seems to be delivering in spades.

Read the post at Microsoft here.

Thanks drankurn for the tip.

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AT&T’s current Windows Phone 7 line-up end-of-life’d

October 18, 2011 | By Surur

Click for full size

WPCentral reports that AT&T has marked their current Windows Phone 7 line-up, including the Samsung Focus, LG Quantum, HTC Surround and also the HTC HD7s as end of life, meaning current stock will be sold-out but not replenished.

Fortunately AT&T has already announced their new Windows Phone 7.5 line-up, including the Samsung Focus S, HTC Titan and Samsung Focus Flash. Interestingly it does mean the end of Windows Phone 7 device with a hard keyboard on the network, but I suspect those were never big sellers.

Now the only question which remains is when AT&T will release the new crop of devices.

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AT&T HTC HD7s now getting the Mango update, Samsung Focus 1.4 and Dell Venue Pro still awaiting

October 14, 2011 | By Surur

*Also known as "Mango" and the 7720 update.
**Except Dell Venue Pro.
***Delivery has begun for the HTC HD7S, HTC Surround, LG Quantum, and Samsung Focus v. 1.3. The Samsung Focus v. 1.4 is Testing and the Dell Venue Pro is in Planning.
Last updated: 10.13.2011

Microsoft have updated their “Where is my update?” page, and have revealed that the Mango update for the HTC HD7s, which has so far been withheld, has now finally started rolling out to owners on AT&T.

Less lucky are Samsung Focus owners of the 1.4 revision. While the Samsung Focus 1.3 is already getting the update delivered, Mango is still in testing for the 1.4 handsets, which have a different memory configuration.

Also still disappointed is Dell Venue Pro owners, whose update is not even in one of the Official 3 levels of delivery (Testing, Scheduling and Delivery), but is still in the unknowable Planning stage.

Keep an eye on Microsoft’s Update page here for the latest info.

Thanks fedd for the tip.

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WindowsPhoneHacker promises enabling Internet Sharing on your Samsung phone is as easy as 1,2,3,4,5

September 29, 2011 | By Surur

WindowsPhoneHacker have simplified the guide for enabling Internet Sharing on your unlocked Samsung Windows Phone 7 handset to 5 easy steps taking 3 minutes.

The steps are:

Download DiagProvXML and Samsung Tools
Deploy both XAPs to your phone
Run DiagProvXML and hold down on the Internet Sharing item, press Execute
Close (press Back) DiagProvXML, and run Samsung Tools. Press Apply to set Auto Data Config.
Your phone will reboot, and everything should work from there on it.

Find the download links at WPH here.

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A closer look at the Samsung Focus S

September 12, 2011 | By Surur

It is pretty clear the Samsung Focus S is the Samsung SGH-i937, shown off by Microsoft at their Partner Conference a few weeks ago.

Now that the specs have been released it is worth another look.

We now know the handset has a 4.3 inch Super AMOLED Plus screen, an 8 megapixel camera in the back and a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera and is only 8.55 mm thick, making it thinner than the iPhone 4 which is 9.3 mm thick.

More relevant to our Windows Phone using readers, we can calculate, using a bit of Pythagoras, that the phone will be about 67 mm wide and 125 mm high, which compares very well with the Samsung Focus, which is 64mm wide and 125mm high. The Focus is 10.2 mm thick, making the Samsung Focus S 16% thinner than the Focus. The screen size was clearly gained mainly by adding width, rather than height to the device.

Unlike the Samsung Focus the Samsung Focus S has HSDPA+, which should offer speeds from 8-13 MB/sec down and 1-2 MB/sec up, and of course has a 1.4 Ghz processor and newer generation GPU.

Do our readers feel this is a worthy upgrade? Let us know below.

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Fujitsu IS12T benchmarked

August 22, 2011 | By Surur

Tezawaly from Nanapho.jp has managed to benchmark the Fujitsu IS12T and and found it to be the fastest Windows Phone in general circulation at the moment.

The Fujitsu IS12T ‘s MSM8655 1GHz benchmarked 30% higher than its nearest competitor, and its internal storage is faster than that built into the Samsung Focus also. Even the Adreno 205 achieved more than double the results of the Adreno 200 in current handsets.

While we do not have dual core processors in Windows Phone 7, we will certainly see a good performance boost when upgrading to new devices this fall.

Microsoft promising a 7392 update for Samsung Focus rev 1.3

July 28, 2011 | By Surur

Posting on the Windows Team Blog Eric Hautala has promised that the 7392 update for Samsung Focus rev 1.3 was definitely on the way.

Intriguingly he said “7392 will be bundled in our next update for AT&T customers” raising the possibility that AT&T may jump straight to the 7720 Mango update.

Eric also notes that a number of device-specific hardware updates were being pushed out which would address issues such as battery life, call clarity, or touch responsiveness, depending on the model.

The 7392 update is relatively minor, only addressing a security certificate issue, but which could lead to phishing attacks on users without the update.

Read more at the Windows Team Blog here.

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