Archive for Samsung

Custom Kernel and ROM available for the European Galaxy S Wifi 4.0

Forum member SteveS cooked up a custom kernel and ROM for the European version of the Galaxy S Wifi 4.0. Note that this won’t work on the American or Korean version of the Galaxy (yet), nor on the Galaxy S Wifi 5.0.

Besides gaining root/superuser access to the device and various interface tweaks, this ROM includes the Voodoo sound patch, effectively fixing Samsung’s botched audio output. Voodoo fixes the amplification gain for less background hiss and louder output, and – similar to Cowon players – adds a hardware parametric EQ and a hardware 3D spatialization effect for the Wolfson audio CODEC as well.

Kernel changelog

  • Based on Original XXKPQ Kernel
  • Added Voodoo sound patches
  • Can work with XXKPN and XXKPQ stock Samsung ROM.
  • To use Voodoo sound you need to install Voodoo Control or Voodoo Control Plus

ROM changelog

  • Contains the latest STeVE’s Kernel 1.0: you don’t need to flash separately
  • Based on original XXKPQ Samsung stock ROM
  • Contains root and superuser permissions
  • Tweaked theme: Honeycomb status bar icons, transparent notification pane, ICS windows effects
  • CRT screen off animation
  • If you start from a XXKPN or XXKPQ you can skip wipe to keep your existing applications and settings

Check Steve’s forum thread for discussion and download links.

Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 and 5.0 have finally been released

Already announced in January 2011, it took good old Sammy long enough to get these 4″ and 5″ 480×800 screen things on the American market. Speaking of market: contrary to Cowon’s D3 and Archos’ Generation 8, Samsung’s phones-without-a-phone come with the official Android Market installed. The long wait for the Galaxy Players’ release also paid off on the operating system side of things – both players run on Android 2.3.5, which is one of the more recent ‘Gingerbread’ versions. Besides the usual variety of codecs and containers found on Android devices, the Galaxy players support MKV, FLV, OGG Vorbis, and FLAC as well.

Hardware specs are quite exhaustive. With front and rear cameras both shutterbugs and chatterbugs should be happy; GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, and Wi-Fi B/G/N are present as well. Not to mention a very necessary MicroSDHC slot – since internal capacity is only a pathetic 8GB for both players. Samsung claims the 2500mAh battery in the Galaxy 5.0 should last up to 60 hours for music playback, which sounds a bit implausible. Eight hours video playback seems more realistic, though. The Galaxy 4.0 runs on a 1200mAh battery and should presumably deliver 54 hours for music and five hours for video.

[Amazon: Galaxy Player 4.0 | Galaxy Player 5.0] Thanks to Lagoo56 for the tip.

Hacked firmware available for the Samsung R0

It’s a dilemma one encounters with many a portable player: manufacturers design nice hardware, but the accompanying firmwares lack in features and/or usability.  The Samsung R0 is certainly not the player with the worst firmware out there, but Italian hacker Lorenz092 and his co-conspirators thought they could improve the user experience nevertheless.

Choosing the R0 as a modding target is certainly a smart move – the R0 is quite popular, has a nice aluminum housing with lots of tactile buttons, it is inexpensive – and it runs on Linux. Also, in the long run, modding its stock firmware might pave the way for a Rockbox port.

Currently, the modded firmware is at version 2.10 (based on official firmware 1.25). It features improved translations for several languages, removes the – for most people – annoying startup and shutdown sounds, changes the look of the battery status indicator, changes the key press time used for resetting the player, and – biggest of all – implements a Device Rescue Kit (DRK). This DRK feature basically means you can recover the player from being bricked, without having to sent it back to Samsung for fixing. Unbricking the player yourself sure beats paying money and waiting several weeks for it to return, methinks.

In future versions of his custom firmware Lorenz092 wants to implement a CPU downclocking feature, which might effectively double the R0′s battery life. Other planned features are integrating the player’s SD slot with its internal database, tweaking the sleep mode time, and several things more. This is getting very interesting.

Read the forum thread, or jump straight to the post containing the download link.

Samsung YP-Z3, YP-F3 released: Same old, same old

We already mentioned the upcoming YP-R2 some time ago, now Samsung adds two more players to their current lineup, the YP-F3 and YP-Z3. They sure are a bit too… déjà vu to really call them “new”, but kudos to Samsung for keeping their hardware output steady.

The Z3 appears to be situated somewhere between the Z5, Q3, and maybe the R0. Besides sporting MP3HD support like the aforementioned R2 it doesn’t have any overly novel features. It is said to support h264 video playback, but on a tiny screen of unknown resolution – possibly 320×240 or maybe even 160×128 (which would have been top of the line for a 2005 player) – one sure wouldn’t want to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy in one go. The Z3 comes in capacities of 4 and 8GB – no SD expansion slot.

The F3 is a player that seemingly belongs to the U-series of Samsung devices, it doesn’t really resemble the long discontinued line of F players that much. On a cursory glance the F3 is basically the same player as the U5 and U6 – hopefully it comes with a classy CSTN display as well. Contrary to the U-series, the F3 doesn’t have an USB plug built in, but a MicroUSB port. It comes in cringe-worthy 2 and 4GB capacities, with no expansion slot as well.

Thanks to Lebellium for the tips. Check the YP-F3 forum thread and YP-Z3 forum thread for full specs and discussions.

Samsung YP-R2 Available in Vladivostok

In South Korea, Samsung releases you. Ok, enough of the old meme slaughtering.

Sammy, biggest economical power in South Korea, just released their new YP-R2 – at least in Russia. It is a interesting device, in that it supports and audio codec no other portable device (and not many software players either) supports – MP3HD.

MP3HD is a hybrid lossy/lossless codec, similar to Wavpack. It contains a portion that is a regular compressed MP3 file, playable by any audio player – and it contains a lossless portion that’s only playable by the R2 to date, as far as portable audio players go. The merits of this strategy are debatable, since most people who care about these things simply keep their originals as FLAC on their hard disks and transcode them to whatever format they like for portable use – but it sure is laudable that Samsung dared to be different in including this codec that not even Rockbox supports. Even if MP3HD files are several times larger than regular MP3 files, with debatable improvement in audio quality for casual listening on the go, at least on this one player that supports them.

As for other specs, the R2 is a lukewarm affair: a low-res 240×400 screen, same as the Archos 32, no SD expansion slot (memory from 4 to 16GB), Samsung’s new ‘SoundAlive’ audio enhancements. On the positive side, battery life claims are decent: 40 hours for audio, 4 hours for video… well, not really great, but still ok.

Thanks to Lebellium for the tip. Read the full specs in the forum thread.

Samsung YP-U6 Review

Introduced in 2005 the famous U series has welcomed a new device end of 2010: the YP-U6 or U6. No surprise here as this series has always sold well. Indeed, many people do not want to spend much money on mp3 players and just need a small MP3 USB key, not a high-end Cowon DAP. But they may also be demanding on quality. Thus this review is the opportunity to check if the U6 is worth it and really better than the U5.

Please note this review is based on firmware 1.09. At the time you are reading it, a new firmware may have been released.

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Samsung Galaxy S Wifi 4.0 and 5.0 Quick Preview

Samsung insider Lebellium posted some first impressions of the two new Samsung Galaxy S Wifi devices which he gathered at Samsung France Open Day.

Check out the nitty gritty in the forum thread.

Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 5.0

Samsung’s new oversized iPhone/iPod Touch lookalike, announced at Mobile World Congress, causes a bit of confusion. It’s obviously the bigger brother of  the equally tediously named Galaxy S WiFi 4.0. Some people say the 4.0 was formerly known as YP-MB2/Galaxy Player 50, while our very own industry insider, lebellium, clarifies that it’s actually the YP-GB1, released without Korea-specific DMB features for the international market. So where does that leave the 5.0, in the sea of all these confusing names and acronyms? I don’t know, my head is already spinning. Maybe it’s just a shrunken Galaxy Tab 10.1…

What we know is that the Galaxy S WiFi 5.0 (let’s just call it GSW5, ok?) runs on Android 2.2, uses Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, sports a 5″ Super Duper Clear LCD screen at 800×480, a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, a MicroSD slot, and a 5 megapixel camera with flash, for all your artsy Facebook photography needs.

The great thing about this phone-without-a-phone is that it comes with Android Market support right out of the box. This is a huge advantage over the non-phone Android offers from Archos (Gen 8 devices) and Cowon (D3), which have no official access to the Market – therefore rendering them quite inferior, software-wise, to even the humblest of Android phones, such as the ZTE Blade. While some kind hackers already gave Archos users the possibility to access the Market, there’s no such option for the D3 yet, leaving you at the mercy of Cowon to come up with some quality apps, such as scientific calculators. Samsung licensing the Market on their Galaxy players is the smartest move so far for devices without SIM card slot.

Availability of the GSW5: sooner or later.

Thanks to sideways for the tip. Read more in the forum thread. Additional info via Engadget (1, 2).

Porting Rockbox and Android to the Samsung YP-R0

Since October 2010 forum members slade and nik1105 have been working hard on porting Rockbox to the Samsung R0. While this port isn’t ready for prime time yet, the developers recently started to take advantage of the R0′s open source Linux-based stock firmware as well – by attempting an Android port.

While the advantages of Rockbox are obvious on any portable music player, Android might seem strange at first on a device that a) has no Wifi or other Internet connectivity and b) has no touch screen but is controlled via tactile buttons. In the end, despite the lack of Android Market accessibility, one could still install .apk apps manually on it. If the developers manage to map Android’s touch screen controls to the plethora of tactile buttons available on the R0, some apps and games might actually be easier to operate than with their intended control scheme. I for one am excited to see where this goes – especially since other Linux-based Samsung players might benefit from this effort as well in the future.

The R0 seems like the perfect candidate for such experiments – it’s  very affordable, has good sound quality, a decent screen, a MicroSD expansion slot, and a fetching full metal housing. For its low price, the R0 is a top notch player – just held back a bit by its basic (and sometimes buggy) stock firmware. If the developers succeed with either Rockbox or Android, I’m sure a lot of people would be happy about having the choice between three systems to run on the thing.

Watch the forum thread for further developments.

Samsung YP-Q3 Review

Editor’s Note: Lebellium is our Samsung Moderator based out of France and English is not his first language, so the grammar and wording in this review is not perfect. Please refrain from grammar trolling in the comments and enjoy the content of the review. Lebellium really knows his stuff when it comes to Samsung and is well connected to the product teams there. He moderates our Samsung forums and does an incredible job- so please have that understanding while you read this review. Thanks! – Enzo/Grahm

After more than a year and a half Samsung finally launched the successor of the Q2, the YP-Q3. Mp3 players enthusiasts have never been interested in the “Q” series but despite its numerous flaws, the Q2 was a bestseller, probably thanks to its low price. While the Q2 was based on the Q1, one can’t say the Q3 is based on the Q2. Actually, Samsung changed so many things that this new device is closer to the R0 than to the Q2. I really wonder why it still belongs to the “Q” series but Samsung series names never made sense after all. On the paper it looks like an interesting audio device but is it really? I’ll try to answer in this in-depth review.

Please note this review is based on firmware 1.31. At the time you are reading it, a new firmware may have been released.

Continue reading…