30 Samsung Galaxy S3 facts you should know before buying

1. No option to mount usbmass storage to PC

2. If wifi/data is always on, your battery will drain like a flashback of your Galaxy S2's poor battery life

3. The application memory is 16GB out of which you get around 12GB for all apps. Like it or not, you have to eke out . There is no "move to SDcard option" either

4. The native Browser is lightning fast

5. The Video Player is always praised for being capable of playing any piece you throw at it. But some files are played with a constant pause. The video is played ahead of sound, or vice-versa. But the good news is you can resolve this by downloading another player

6. Operations are slow and sluggish

7. The total RAM available for user is about 780MB to 750MB out of 1GB (the rest is eaten up by the loaded OS). In most instances, the 750MB-530MB of the free RAM is further swallowed by other running apps. As the math goes, you finally get a total free RAM of about 250MB to 161MB. Be prepared to do the Mortal Combat, constantly clear RAM and kill apps

8. The recieving party is having hard time hearing what the calling party has to convey. Such was present in the S2 too

9. Hangs and restarts reported in considerable numbers

10. APPS2SD is incompatible

11. Run Like Hell, Fruit Slice, Samurai Vengeance II, Gold Miner 2 and Highway Rider work pretty well. GunBros lags but playable. Splinter CellConviction starts but shuts down within a few seconds after the first mission starts

12. Auto bright feature or Ambient Sensor takes few seconds to adjust with the surrounding lighting conditions or may force you to readjust the brightness manually

13. When you try to have a good grip, you may accidentaly press the volume buttons

14. Physical home button isnt built solid. No wonder if you feel it may fall

15. The notification may lose audio when the phone goes to lockscreen

16. Forces the user to tag pics

17. You dont need to zoom in to read web pages In the browser. The unabridged desktop versions are readable with the naked eye

18. The latest firmware "i9300XXALF2" via OTA, takes about 15 minutes to download and is a file of about 8MBs

19. Smart call feature isnt perfect

20. To access the camera from the screen itself, you shouldnt have any "locks" on the phone

21. Kies Air isnt a security hole in your phone that let every one have a look into your stuff. You can monitor and see who's connected to the phone at any moment and grant or reject access to computers

22. You can stream music and videos stored on the phone with Kies Air

23. Smart Stay works provided the place is well lit and face visible clearly without any bright light behind

24. When move from page to page on the main screen, there will be some lag

25. Internal memory isnt fragmented like in Galaxy S2. Install apps as many as you want without exceeding 16/32 GBs

26. The pictures in low lights may have a lot of noise and may not sharp at all. Not typical for indoor pics

27. The option to take a screenshot by sweeping your hand across the screen works like a charm

28. In U.A.E (United Arab Emirates) its available for 2,599 derhams (707.44 U.S dollar) in white and blue colors with 16GB on board

29. Maybe not a good multi tasker but a task killer. When plying HD games and pause them to do other tasks, like launching the browser to prepare a saucy search on Keira knightley's photos, you may loss (game's) progress. There is a rhyme in the above sentence but really is a pain in the (user's) butt

30. When play video on the browser, video may freeze while audio may continue playing stupidly and independantly in the background headlong

31. Phones sold in UK do not support Persian

32. Face recognition to unlock the phone is actually handy

33. Update the flash player to the latest Adobe flash 11. It may kill or solve some video freezing issues or you can try other alternative browsers if your totally dissatisfied

34. Not your typical USB flash driver replacement. With S2 you could quickly save files on the device via USB without having to install a bunch of drivers

35. The MircoSIM slot is not as easy to use as the slot in SII, especially in terms of removing SIM cards

36. With the meager, unreliable, unpredictable RAM conditions, you may find difficulties in transferring large files via bluetooth

37. Battery life? It wont last a day even when the power saving mode and all the other adjustments are set (for moderate users, its a different story)

Most popular mobile phones as of 2012 june- Most successful mobile phone models of each brand so far

Nokia Phones	Samsung Phones	Sony Ericsson Phones
Nokia 808 PureView Nokia N9 Nokia Lumia 800 Nokia N8 Nokia Asha 200 Nokia 500 Nokia Asha 302 Nokia Asha 311 Nokia Asha 303 Nokia Lumia 710 Nokia Asha 300 Nokia C5 Nokia Lumia 900 Nokia C3 Nokia X2 Nokia C5-03 Nokia E5 Nokia C6 Nokia C2-03 Nokia Lumia 610 Nokia X2-01 Nokia C7 Nokia X2-02 Nokia E7 Nokia E6 Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Nokia C2-01 Nokia Asha 202 Nokia X3-02 Touch and Type Nokia C2-00 Nokia 5233 Nokia C1-01 Nokia Asha 305 Nokia E72 Nokia C6-01 Nokia E71 Nokia 701 Nokia 700 Nokia 603 Nokia C5-05 Nokia Asha 306 Nokia X6 Nokia 5230 Nokia E63 Nokia N97 Nokia X7-00 Nokia C3-01 Touch and Type Nokia 110 Nokia N900 Nokia C2-02 Nokia 101 Nokia Lumia 900 AT&T Nokia X1-01 Nokia N73 Nokia X3 Nokia C5 5MP Nokia Asha 201 Nokia C5-06 Nokia 800c Nokia Lumia 610 NFC Nokia 5130 XpressMusic Nokia 5530 XpressMusic Nokia N95 Nokia C2-06 Nokia C2-05 Nokia E52 Nokia 100 Nokia 6300 Nokia Asha 203 Nokia X2-05	Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III Samsung Galaxy Y S5360 Samsung Galaxy Ace S5830 Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II Samsung Galaxy Note N7000 Samsung Galaxy Y Duos S6102 Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus S7500 Samsung Galaxy Pocket S5300 Samsung I9000 Galaxy S Samsung I9070 Galaxy S Advance Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos Samsung Galaxy Nexus Samsung Galaxy Mini S5570 Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 I8160 Samsung Galaxy W I8150 Samsung Galaxy S III T999 Samsung Galaxy mini 2 S6500 Samsung I9001 Galaxy S Plus Samsung Galaxy S III I747 Samsung Galaxy S III I535 Samsung Star 3 Duos S5222 Samsung S8600 Wave 3 Samsung Wave Y S5380 Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 P3100 Samsung Galaxy Y Pro Duos B5512 Samsung Galaxy Fit S5670 Samsung Galaxy Ace Duos I589 Samsung C3312 Duos Samsung P1000 Galaxy Tab Samsung S3850 Corby II Samsung P6200 Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus Samsung C3300K Champ Samsung Galaxy Gio S5660 Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 P5100 Samsung Galaxy Note I717 Samsung I9100G Galaxy S II Samsung Google Nexus S Samsung S8530 Wave II Samsung I9003 Galaxy SL Samsung Omnia W I8350 Samsung S5230 Star Samsung I5800 Galaxy 3 Samsung C6712 Star II DUOS Samsung I5500 Galaxy 5 Samsung Galaxy Y Pro B5510 Samsung S5620 Monte Samsung I9103 Galaxy R Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 4G P7320T Samsung Galaxy Pro B7510 Samsung S5610 Samsung S8500 Wave Samsung P6800 Galaxy Tab 7.7 Samsung Ch@t 335 Samsung I929 Galaxy S II Duos Samsung I8530 Galaxy Beam Samsung S5690 Galaxy Xcover Samsung Galaxy Player 70 Plus Samsung Galaxy Nexus I9250M Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD Samsung Galaxy Appeal I827 Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 N8000 Samsung Omnia M S7530 Samsung S3650 Corby Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 N8010 Samsung Ch@t 222 Samsung S5260 Star II Samsung I9500 Fraser Samsung B7722 Samsung S5250 Wave525 Samsung Focus 2 I667	Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V Sony Ericsson Xperia ray Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Sony Ericsson Xperia mini Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro Sony Ericsson Xperia X8 Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo Sony Ericsson Xperia active Sony Ericsson Mix Walkman Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY Sony Ericsson Xperia pro Sony Ericsson W8 Sony Ericsson Vivaz Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro Sony Ericsson txt pro Sony Ericsson Satio (Idou) Sony Ericsson Yendo Sony Ericsson txt Sony Ericsson Cedar Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro Sony Ericsson Aino Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 Sony Ericsson W995 Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 Sony Ericsson Elm Sony Ericsson Aspen Sony Ericsson Zylo Sony Ericsson Spiro Sony Ericsson Hazel Sony Ericsson WT18i Sony Ericsson K800 Sony Ericsson C905 Sony Ericsson J105 Naite Sony Ericsson C510 Sony Ericsson A8i Sony Ericsson W595 Sony Ericsson K850 Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY CDMA Sony Ericsson C902 Sony Ericsson W910 Sony Ericsson BRAVIA S004 Sony Ericsson P1 Sony Ericsson W810 Sony Ericsson K750 Sony Ericsson W705 Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness Sony Ericsson Xperia Duo Sony Ericsson W205 Sony Ericsson W395 Sony Ericsson W200 Sony Ericsson K770 Sony Ericsson K810 Sony Ericsson C901 Sony Ericsson T715 Sony Ericsson K530 Sony Ericsson W580 Sony Ericsson W960 Sony Ericsson S312 Sony Ericsson C903 Sony Ericsson S003 Sony Ericsson P990 Sony Ericsson G900 Sony Ericsson W350 Sony Ericsson Yari Sony Ericsson W800 Sony Ericsson W508

World's leading mobile phone review sites and mobile phone news providers

Worlds leading mobile phone review sites

techradar.com
trustedreviews.com
t3.com
pcadvisor.co.uk
gsmarena.com
guardian.co.uk
fonearena.com
tech2.in.com
cnet.com
knowyourmobile.in
mymobile.co.in
techtree.com
saholic.com
mouthshut.com
cellphonereviews.net
mobilereviews.net
fonearena.com
thinkdigit.com
pcworld.in
sulekha.com
mobileheart.com
phonearena.com
ubergizmo.com
phandroid.com
eurogamer.net
digitaltrends.com
expertreviews.co.uk
letsgomobile.org


Leading mobile phone news providers

phonearena.com
mobilegazette.com
gsmarena.com
techradar.com
knowyourmobile.in
fonearena.com
techtree.com
mobileinfos.com
mobiletechnews.com
themobileindian.com
mobilenewshome.com
india-cellular.com
mobileburn.com
tech2.in.com
feelphones.com
mobiledia.com
intomobile.com
phonescoop.com
phonedog.com
trustedreviews.com
pocket-lint.com
pcworld.com
cnet.com
thinkdigit.com
mymobile.co.in
cellular-news.com
kochar.com
phonegg.com
techmagnifier.com
softpedia.com
ibnlive.com
telegraph.co.uk
cnn.com
mob.org
zdnet.com
guidingtech.com
n4g.com

Cheapest Android (chinese) phones

Here are some of the cheapest Android (chinese) phones. Mind that most doesnt bear brand names

Model: EPC_GAP_035

[2.8'' Touchscreen QWERTY Cellphone with Android 2.2 OS + GPS + GPRS + WiFi + Analog TV]

Price: $98.99

Specs:

QWERTY Keypad
GPS
Compass
Android 2.2
CPU Adopt MTK6516 460Hz
RAM 256MB
ROM 512MB
GSM 850 / 900 /1800 / 1900 MHz
2.8 inch Screen
Resolution: 240 x 320 , QVGA
Screen Type: TFT LCD touchscreen (resistive)
Dual SIM, Dual Standby
WIFI
FM radio
Analog TV
Word, Excel, Powerpoint
Mirco SD/TF card up to 16GB(maximum)
Camera:
- Built-in dual cameras
- Front camera: 0.3 MP
- Rear camera: 2.0 MP
Battery standard capacity: 1000mAh
1 Year Warranty


Model: X100

[Android 2.3 Dual GSM Sim 3.5''HVGA GPS+WIFI Only]

Price: $99.47

SPECIFICS:

GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Android 2.3
Screen Size 3.5 Inch, TFT
Colors 16 million
Display Resolution 320x480 Pixels
Capacitive Touch Screen
Multi- touch
CPU Brand MTK 6513 650MHz
GPU Imagination PowerVR SGX531
Memory Capacity 512MB RAM,512 ROM
Battery Capacity 1600mAH
Handwriting Input
Adobe PDF,Office (word,excel,ppt)
GPRS,EDGE
TF Card(microSD Card), expandable to 32GB
WiFi
GPS not available
Camera 5.0 MP
Front Camera, 0.3 MP
Flash Dual LED
Auto Focus
Camcorder Audio and Video Capture 480×320,30Frames/Second


Model: W619

[Android2.3 800MHz Dual-core CPU Dual- SIM GSM+3G WCDMA 3.5"HVGA]

GSM:900 1800 :WCDMA 2100
Can Root
3.5 Inch TFT Display
Color 16 million
Resolution 480x320 Pixels
Touch Screen Capacitive Screen
Multi-touch
CPU Brand Snapdragon MSM7225A 800MHz
GPU Imagination PowerVR SGX540
Memory Capacity 512MB RAM,512MB ROM
Battery Capacity 1420mAH
Handwriting Input
Adobe PDF,Office (word,excel,ppt)
GPRS,EDGE,HSDPA
TF Card(microSD Card), expandable to 32GB
WiFi
GPS
A-GPS
Camera Pixel 2.0 million pixels
NO front cam
Flash Dual LED
Auto Focus
Camcorder Audio and Video Capture 480p (480×320,30Frames/Second)


Model: CPC_GAP_026

[2.8 Inch Android 2.2 OS Smart Phone with WIFI + GPS + Analog TV]

Price: $97.51

Android 2.2
CPU: MTK 6516, 416MHz
ROM: 512 MB
RAM: 256 MB
Network: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
Screen Size: 2.8 inch
Resolution: HVGA, 320 x 480
Resistive touch screen
Dual SIM
Dual Standby
GPS
WIFI
Analog TV
FM radio
Edit Word, Excel, Powerpoint
mirco SD/TF card up to be 16GB (max)
GPRS
Battery capacity:1800mAh
1 Year Warranty

Samsung Galaxy S3 vs Apple iphone 4S specwise

SAMSUNG I9300 GALAXY S III

Apple iphone 4S

2G: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 3G: HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 4G: LTE Measures: 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm Weight: 133 g Touch-sensitive controls Screen: Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen Colors: 16M Pixels: 720 x 1280 Screen Size: 4.8 inches Pixel Density: ~306 ppi Multitouch Corning Gorilla Glass 2 TouchWiz UI v4.0 MEMORY Card slot: microSD, up to 64 GB 16/32/64 GB Internal storage options RAM: 1 GB WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n DLNA Wi-Fi Direct Wi-Fi hotspot Bluetooth: v4.0 with A2DP EDR NFC USB: microUSB v2.0 (MHL) USB On-the-go CAMERA: 8 MP Autofocus LED flash Simultaneous HD video and image recording Touch focus Image stabilization Video: 1080p@30fps Secondary Cam: 1.9 MP, 720p@30fps Android OS, v4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) Chipset: Exynos 4212 Quad CPU: Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A9 GPU: Mali-400MP Accelerometer Gyro RGB sensor Proximity Barometer Threaded view Adobe Flash Radio: Stereo FM radio with RDS GPS with A-GPS GLONASS MicroSIM card support only S-Voice Smart Stay Dropbox (50 GB storage) TV-out (via MHL A/V link) SNS integration MP4/DivX/XviD Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF doc editor Predictive text input (Swype) BATTERY: Li-Ion 2100 mAh Stand-by Up to 590 h (2G) / Up to 790 h (3G) Talk time Up to 21 h 40 min (2G) / Up to 11 h 40 min (3G) SAR US 0.55 W/kg (head) 1.49 W/kg (body) SAR EU 0.21 W/kg (head) Pros and Cons of Samsung Galaxy S3

2G: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 CDMA: 800 / 1900 3G: HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Physical Size: 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm Weight: 140 g Screen: LED-backlit IPS TFT, capacitive touchscreen Colors: 16M Pixels: 640 x 960 pixels Screen: Size: 3.5 inches Pixel Density: ~330 ppi Multitouch Corning Gorilla Glass oleophobic coating Propriety ringtones No memory Card slot 16/32/64 GB internal storage options RAM: 512 MB WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot Bluetooth: v4.0 with A2DP USB: v2.0 Cam: 8 MP Autofocus LED flash Touch focus Face detection HDR Video: 1080p@30fps LED video light Video stabilization Secondary Cam: VGA 480p@30fps Videocalling over Wi-Fi only iOS 5 (upgradable to iOS 5.1) Chipset: Apple A5 CPU: Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 GPU: PowerVR SGX543MP2 Accelerometer Gyro Proximity Sensor Threaded view Safari No Radio GPS with A-GPS GLONASS MicroSIM card support only Siri iCloud cloud service TV-out BATTERY Li-Po 1432 mAh Stand-by Up to 200 h (2G) / Up to 200 h (3G) Talk time Up to 14 h (2G) / Up to 8 h (3G) Music play Up to 40 h SAR US 1.18 W/kg (head) 0.98 W/kg (body) SAR EU 0.99 W/kg (head) 0.99 W/kg (body) Pros and Cons of Apple iphone 4S

Difference between/compare Samsung Galaxy S3 and Samsung Galaxy S2, Samsung Galax S3 vs Samsung Galaxy S2 by pros and cons of each

Iphone 5 Pros and Cons

Samsung Galaxy S2 Pros and Cons	Samsung Galaxy S3 Pros and Cons

Unparalleled Super AMOLED Plus screen Quad-band 3G support 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA 4.3" jumbo screen 16M-colors Super AMOLED Plus capacitive touchscreen A display of WVGA (480 x 800 pixel) resolution Android OS v2.3.3with TouchWiz 4 ( upgradable to 2.3.4) 1.2 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU Mali-400MP quadcore GPU 1GB of RAM 8 MP autofocus cam Face, smile and blink detection Geo tagging 1080p HD video recording at 30fps Dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 b, g and n support GPS with A-GPSconnectivity Digital compass Large16GB internal storage and microSD slot which can be filled with a 32GB card MHL port for dual-purpose USB or HDMI out (video) the first smartphone to feature an MHL port USB host TV-out (1080p) Stereo Bluetooth v3.0 Stereo FM radio with RDS Real slim body , slimness measured only at 8.5mm Heavy light weight (116g) 2MP secondary video-call cam Full Flash support ( flash player 10.1 ) and 1080p flash video playback GPU-acceleration for web browser NFC Doc viewer and editor The richest video format support under the sun by a mobile Viewable under sunlight Multi touch input Accelerometer Sensor for UI auto rotate Swift SWYPE text input Proximity sensor for auto turn off Unlimited call logs Gorilla Glass display Touch focus Image stabilization Snail-paced RFS file system is replaced with EXT4 An 8GB card included ( market dependable ) Wide viewing angles with no loss of contrast or color distortion A new screen setting ; Background Effect , which lets you adjust saturation with three saturation descending modes A power efficient display which is capable of turning individual pixels off . Backlighting is less required , so consume less energy A hot-swappable SIM card slot The power widget lets the user control the screen time out on the homescreen itself and furthermore provides one-click access to the settings menu The pinch zoom-out fetches a view of all screen panes , which then enable the user to easily rearrange ,delete or add new onces Can create folders inside the app launcher and then drag to the screen App launcher panes can also be rearranged in the exact way the homescreens are arranged , pinch zooming and swiping around The Samsung-specific swiping gesture is everywhare , just swipe a contact right to make a call and left to compose a message Can take a note, use the keypad, mute , hold a call or add another call to ongoing conversation during a call Can create new custom menu pages browsing through existing ones , picking the icons that need to be placed on the new page After syncing social networks , the phonebook automatically merges contacts and contact details are pulled from your desired social networks Third and fourth tabs in the contact info screen , handle the social status updates and the contact’s online galleries Swiping on a message header left lets start a new message, while swiping to the right will start a call. A specific search function that lets you quickly find any given message from all stored SMS and MMS. Type the corresponding name or number and choose from the contacts offered , when you need to add message recipients When add multimedia to messages, they are automatically turned into MMS A translate option to translate composing messages or messages you’ve stored Email batch operations like multiple emails archiving labeling or deleting can be carried out on Gmail app The generic email app supports multiple accounts , multiple POP or IMAP inboxes and sports a combined inbox, where all your mails will be flocked into a single folder . Pretty smart if you have several accounts Turning the phone landscape activates the split view . Where the left shows the list of emails, while the right shows the message The standard Android gallery automatically locates the images and videos wherever they are stored and imports the photos from Google Picasa web albums The gallery is capable of displaying high-resolution images The two-finger tilt zoom, double tap and pinch zoom are added to the gallery My Files app lets user move, copy, lock rename files in bulk and send multiple files via Bluetooth The image editor is equipped with a selections tool and a Context fill tool The video editor lets instant sharing TouchWiz music player allows user to look up a song on YouTube or via Google The look up by artist, song title or the album is available Most importantly the video player remembers the last video viewed and the last viewed position 5.1 channel virtualization Subtitle customization . Changing font size , adjusting subtitles and syncing (move them back or forward a few seconds ) etc The cam app and the videocorder let pick four shortcuts to put in their interfaces . Fourmost commonly used features will be a tap away. Wide-angle lens Dual band Wi-Fi , both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands compatible AllShare Wi-Fi Direct Products that bear the Wi-Fi Direct certification mark can connect to one another without joining a traditional home, office or hotspot network . Simply , with Wi-Fi Direct, you do not need an access point or internet connection . Your personal Wi-Fi network goes with you wherever you go. Bluetooth 3.0 , up to 21Mbps USB On-The-Go The Browser is garnished with dainty gestures like double tap , pinch zooming and additionaly two-fingertilt zoom is newly added The Social hub lists all incoming messages as one list and let it be filterd by message source Music Hub lets browse music online with lists of new releases and a free 30 seconds preview of all new releases is also provided The Readers Hub turns Samsung Galaxy S2 to an e-reader Game Hub's try-before-you-buy option enable the user to pre-taste desired games . And also titles by Gameloft are exclusively inclusive 5.1 channel virtualization Dolby virtualization technologies like Virtual Dolby Surround and Virtual Dolby Digital do not deliver the same delectable 5.1 Channel listening experience The MHL adapter ( required for HD TV-out) and the USB adapter ( that enable the USB host functionality ) aren’t included in the box Stock browser is armed with 21st century GPU acceleration which immensely decrease battery life Do not display SIM contacts Split view in email app and messages which allocates the left side of the screen with a list of emails or ms messages , while the right side with the corresponding messages , halves the 4.3 screen where there isn't enough room left for comfortable reading In landscape mode, the keyboard takes up most of the display My files will only browse the memory card and the large internal storage and wont access the system drive No option to manually load subtitles, they have to have the same filename as the video file to load When battery level reaches 10% , the video player shut downs The outcome is not impressive when plug-in a pair of headphones. Stereo crosstalk increases ,volume levels decreases and intermodulation distortion starts having business in Nothing in the way of lens protection Mono audio recording Video cam starts to focus only after it has started recording . In other words the first few seconds of every clip will be out of focus USB On-The-Go wont recognize USB keyboards Lacks a Dual LED flash which would have been a delight delivering better captures in low light conditions . It has got only a single flash Memory card slot is buried under the battery making the card not hot swappable No dedicated HDMI port for the headset Android market has thousands of apps but in Samsung Galaxy S2 , the user is left only with a 2GB memory out of hyped16GB . Most apps need to be nestled in the 2GB aforesaid dedicated system memory . and reluctant to be placed in the phone USB memory or external memory Alarm wont wake you up if the phone is turned off Sync of contacts with Outlook is a real trouble area Android is not in its purest form . Samsung has added its own UI discrepancies ; TouchWiz 4 which is described by many as a work of a bunch of cartoonists . Many negative responses are leveled against TouchWiz user interface A jumbo display with a tiny pixel count 480 X 800 , less than peers MALI GPU that inbuild to the set is not compatible with most of today game texture compression formats ( EA GAMELOFT etc ) Many negative feedbacks are levelled against the inbuilt Gmail app . Many have failed to refresh it manually with a single try Voice dialling wont respond when the phone screen is locked Audio Player not stylish ( its TouchWiz after all ) When recording videos at full HD , the angle of view changes . The higher the video resolution , the narrower the field of view becomes ( When recording video at 1080p the lens become zoom and when recording video at low resolution of 720p format , becomes wide lenses . Doesnt record full HD video at wide and zooming in , apparently looses wide angle ) Replace burden A claim for a replace is a mission impossible . If your having a phone with a faulty display . and hoping to convince the sales personal its faulty , its strictly advised that you better take him to a more darker place in the store . So my advice , you take the phone to the store even if its your wifes phone that need to be replaced When initiate a call , sound quality of the voice on the other end is terrible (low microphone volume ) . In most cases , the calling party is barely heard by the other party . Number of complaints claim that they have had to yell to be heard . The only known fix is not a permanent one which vanish into thin air with every single restart that follows Airplane mode doesnt do Bluetooth . You cannot listen to that desired playlist inflight through Bluetooth headset On the SWYPE keyboard the mic button is horribly prone to be accidentally hit Stock mail app does not support Doc attachments When recording videos from a distance the camera constantly shifts focus causing videos blur on and off ( video focus issue ) Problems reported with AVC high video file playings using stock video player Some major audio video sync issues have been reported when playing high definition videos More keypad chaos The space bar is too small and constantly makes the full stop a hit Managing call logs and contacts is bit cumbersome Cannot set individual text ringtones Icons not pleasing From exiting apps and returning to the homescreen there is a considerable lag . Also after installing apps , adding widgets to homescreen is bit sluggish Any single Android game or app cannot exceed 50mbs

GSM (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900) 3G (HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100) 4G LTE Touch-sensitive controls Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen 16M colors 720 x 1280 pixels 4.8 inches Mumbo Jumbo display Multitouch Corning Gorilla Glass 2 TouchWiz UI v4.0, fine tuned 1 GB RAM WLAN, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n and DLNA Wi-Fi Direct Wi-Fi hotspot NFC microUSB v2.0 (MHL) USB On-the-go 8 MP cam Autofocus LED flash Simultaneous HD video and image recording Touch focus Image stabilization 1080p video recording @30fps Secondary 1.9 MP cam which captures 720p videos @30fps Android v4.0.4 Quad-core 1.4 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU Mali-400MP GPU Accelerometer Gyro RGB sensor Proximity Sensor Compass Barometer Threaded view Adobe Flash Stereo FM radio with RDS GPS with A-GPS support MicroSIM card support only TV-out (via MHL A/V link) SNS integration MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV Document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) Swype Predictive text input Stand-by Up to 590 hours on 2G and up to 790 hours on 3G Talk time Up to 21 hours and 40 minutes on 2G and Up to 11 hours and 40 minutes on 3G The whole the concept is 'inspired by nature', Samsung claims. Wanna proof? touch the lock screen and you'll see a little water ripple and a little water drop sound can be heard too. Natural isnt it? All plastic. Feels cheap Lightweight It has an HD screen. But there are few other options at the market at the moment too, like Nexus, Note and One X 309ppi pixel density Good contrast ratio Large display Excellent colour reproduction Colours balanced. The thing doesnt seem so saturated or harsh like previous Super AMOLEDs Bulky for small hands. Not for your dirty reckless sister A more interactive lock screen Touchwiz re-touched The dock at the bottom of the display now houses five favourite items including the app menu S voice needs training to be sharp tuned Notification light The video player supports almost every codec Pop Up Play. You can watch a video with it while doing some other tasks by pressing icons at the corner of the video. A video playing Multi tasker The music player as it is in the predecessor, UI not enhanced AllShare Cast Available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB internal memory versions. Upto 64GB supported through microSD card. 50GB out of Dropbox and SugarSync also present, a Memorysaur! A larger than before display. Typing served well Three photos manually per second 20 photos in a row (at six per second) in burst mode HDR, panorama, Smile Shot, Beauty Mode and few others present "PlayMovies" from Google present Music Hub Gamer Hub S Beam allows you to send content between phones over NFC at 300Mbps Only Samsung I9300 handsets are capable of handling S Beam S Beam-enabled smartphones are sparse on the market 2100mAh battery LTE, HSPA+, Wi-Fi, a GPS, GLONASS, Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC, all inclusive Samsung's own quad-core Exynos processor, though each core clocked at 1.4GHz, isnt as power efficient as other chips, such as Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 The polycarbonate smartphone chassis material, the standard nowadays, isnt what you get with this Samsung Galaxy S3 is no exception!. None of the Android devices natively Sync with Outlook's PST file. The only two software bundles which have succeeded in doing so, and correctly, are Microsoft's ActiveSync and the Blackberry Desktop so far Zero shutter lag Backside illuminated sensor Its TouchWiz, updates wont roll in so fast Video-calls Non-PenTile screen, heart broken? The subpixel density is still on par with what you got from the S II A whole new sensor for the camera Build up from glossy plastic, Samsung Hyperglaze coating doesnt improve the feel and the handling of the device. Finger prints not curbed well The design is far from perfect The display settings menu offers four different modes to choose from. Namely, Livelier dynamic, Standard, Natural and Movie. What a flexibility!. Does your ******* offer that? Sunlight legibility is a splendour. However HD Super AMOLED isn't the brightest display around. You get a meager reflectivity which is surprisingly manageable Wide viewing angles (Colors are lost when one reaches the extreme angles though) Icons and text are perfectly clear, when one reaches the extreme angles though colors get a bit distortion Ambient light Sensor No dedicated camera key again microUSB port can be used for both, data connections and charging. USB host MHL, HD TV-out connectivity Have to purchase an adapter to use HD TV-out connectivity You can enable a news ticker at the bottom of the lockscreen The homescreen and the app drawer host only four icons on a row The app drawer houses upto five icon rows Some widgets are resizable Can pinch to zoom out and easily manage, add, delete or rearrange homescreen panes Can't have more than seven homescreen panes. Isnt it enough? The performance of the camera is improved An F/2.6 aperture unlike what we saw in the S2, F/2.65 and a focal length of 3.7 mm against the 3.97 mm of the Galaxy S II. This means bit wider viewing angles and more from your photos Noise is well controlled Higher resolution inclines towards a more unearthly color saturation and the "Result?", images may seem unrealistic Q: What did the big candle said to the small candle on its birthday? A: Your too young to go out! Phone's backlit displays usually go out according to the time you set it to be that way. With Smart Stay, light remains as long as your eyes are glued to the screen. Next time you do something the display wont dim or cut it out in the middle of the _______ When you're fiddling with contacts, reading or writing a message to a contact, and suddenly decide calling is the better option than mere texting, do a "Direct call". Just take the phone close to your ear at the very instance and your done New cool gesture controls, (A) Shake it! It will detect nearby Bluetooth devices, update emails, news or weather apps. (B) Double-tap on the top of the device, you will be taken to the top of a scrollable list. (C) Turn the phone over! It mutes calls, kill media and radio playback (D) A hand sweep across the screen will capture Screenshots (E) Hold the palm against the screen, it will pause the media playback. Yikes!, it will plast a big ugly palm print on the screen though (F) Hold finger against the display and rotate the phone to landscape mode. The camera is accessed from the lock screen At times the responsiveness of the S voice is bit laggy Can grab 720p videos using the front-facing cam S Voice - the voice commando of the Galaxy S3 and the arch nemesis of the Siri. You can voice command it to accept or reject calls, take pictures, set alarms and search the big G etc Pop up play is a thing to consider. It plays videos in separate windows, which is draggable around and resizable. While sinking the Titanic, it will text or surf too An innovative eye-tracking method, "Smart Stay". It will track your eyes when looking at the display, and dim it when you're not When you have missed calls and messages, the "Smart alert" will notify it, vibrating exactly when you pick it up without knowing what was going on while you were fishing away from the phone The average bitrate of the 720p videos that you take with the front cam is 12Mpbs and even they are accompanied with stereo sound too Images even taken in the burst mode, are of full 8 MP resolution S Beam allows you to share all sorts of media via NFC. But it actually uses WiFi to transfer data swiftly Take near full- resolution pictures (these are cropped to an aspect ratio of 16:9) The S voice is reluctant of too much detailed or lengthy demands The Pop up player is brisk enough to handle both videos in a seperate window and other tasks at the other hand With S Beam you can even transfer webpages and contacts S Beam provides only the stock "Android Beam" functionality Truth speaking, S III's actual capturing capabilities are capped at a maximum of 20 consecutive shots. Its said to be capable of capturing full resolution shots at 3.3fps for much longer than what it delivers now HD video recording delivered without any delay During video recording you can also shoot full- res 16:9 snaps The Buddy photo feature automatically recognises people from your contact profiles and enables the Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III to tag pictures accordingly Easier to hold and less likely to slip even when your taking snaps Heavier than the S2 The Smart Stay will drain your battery life The S voice even works when music is playing The S voice wont answer you back Pop up player's seperate video window is very tiny The Pop Up Player is the best bet for video conferencing while doing some essential tiny tasks An optical zoom is absent You wont notice even a slight lag when switching between home screens and launching apps You can pre-configure photos to be automatically sorted out and placed in ideal groups based on such criteria as faces, contacts or location All Share PLay, wireless transfer to all other connected devices The camea app will deliberately choose the best shot from a bunch of photos taken with the Burst Mode, analysing smile detection, blink detection, contrast and blurring Face Zoom, tap on a face when shooting a crowd shot and the camera will zoom in automaticlly. The Social Tag instinctly figure out faces from any pics and automatically offer to text the image to the people featured in the image. But be careful, it wont fix Moods 'Buddy Photo Share', displays social media profiles directly on a photograph when those faces are recognised Flipboard No black version Outdated design Wireless charging Allshare Cast which lets you put whatever is on your screen on a larger display like a TV The Best Shot mode only takes eight photos to choose the best one from The 4G doesn't work with the Exynos. In States they will be selling it with the 4G compatible snapdragon CPU. US snapdragon version is only a Dual Core Wide-angle lens Blink detection Majestic audio quality Really slim Full Flash compatible web browser File manager preinstalled The best JavaScript performance by a phone browser, beats HTC One S, New Apple iPad and HTC One X The Mali-400MP inside the Galaxy S III beats both the iPhone 4S and iPad 2's SGX 543MP2 The Galaxy S III shows the best 3D performance by an Android Future-proof S-Beam doesn't require any setup like Bluetooth The device is already rooted. Custom ROMs will overflow The HTC One X is sugar coated in polycarbonate unibody, screen is brighter, has a non-PenTile LCD and comes as a dual-core Krait processor version as well as a 4G LTE one for AT&T Smart Stay, Direct call, S Beam, Burst shot and S Voice have already set trends The HTC One S has a metalic unibody Announced Optimus LTE2 will be equipped with 2GB RAM and a 4.7" 720p TrueHD screen Huawei's Ascend D quad will bring a Dolby Mobile 3.0 Plus The D Quad XL comes with a gigantic 2500mAh battery Bluetooth transfer rate is 21Mbps WiFi is compatible with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands Twin AllShare functions, AllShare Play (to transfer data and multimedia files to your notebook or PC) and AllShare Cast (to stream things to and from different type of gadgets with monitors like TV or computer over DLNA Double tap, pinch zooming, two-finger tilt zoom, all still awaiting your fiddlings in the browser Browser is empowered with Multiple tabs, text reflow, find on page and tabs view The stock Galaxy S III browser plays 1080p Flash videos With the Incognito mode, you can surf the web in rose. It doesnt log history or store cookies Social hub centralizes email accounts, social networking backgrounds and IM accounts SocialHub shows all incoming messages as one list In the SocialHub, messages can be filtered by message source US music dominance is over and King of Pop is officially declared dead. But still you can try dry Yankee Chanks on "Music Hub". You can have 30 seconds long previews of any song before buying any junks which are flavoured with dazzling dumb jackass visuals Readers Hub is gone and here comes the Google's Play Books store Game Hub lets you try-before-you-buy The GameHub houses titles by Gameloft and EA (not available on the Google Play Store) The almighty Polaris Office preinstalled The Polaris comes with a PDF viewer, act as a file manager and also can be integrated with Google Docs or Box.net Polaris editables include, text style, justification, paragraph formatting, bullets and for the first time creating tables Excel file editor includes a formula wizard, option to resize rows/columns, border style, merge cells and few more The advent of S Memo from the Galaxy Note; The Memo app is fully equipped with a rich set of tools and let you do drawings You can buy a specially designed display-friendly ball pen sold by Samsung exclusively for the delightful Memo app S Diary lets attach pictures to the text The built in YouTube app doesnt keep pace with the resolution the stock browser's flash player provide With A-GPS turned off, GPS receiver takes few minutes to get a satellite lock Voice-guided navigation When you plan a route to stride on with the GPS app, Navigation caches the needed maps beforehand and keeps them in stock. So a data connection is only required when you initiate the planning of the path. The Reroute option enables you to detour off the pre determined course without connecting to the Net Can send and fetch contacts to the SIM and from the SIM The imported contacts from the SIM arent displayed along with the phone memory entries Lag in boot The phone book finds and joins duplicate contact entries A kiss from Russia; You can translate just composed message into a totally different language or translate a message you recieved that is natively in Greek to a language your more convenient at During a call, you can take a note, use the keypad, mute, hold the call or add another call to the ongoing conversation if necessary The built in email app handles multiple POP or IMAP inboxes and comes with a combined inbox, which centers all mail in a single directory The native Gmail app supports multiple Gmail accounts, but lacks a single inbox The QWERTY keyboard offers very handy keys that are big enough to strike with fury when your cheated In landscape mode, the keyboard fills up a huge chunk of the display. Compromised! The incoming calls can be assigned a specific vibration pattern from available onces or custom made onces Chapter preview enables user of previewing chapters in videos with lively playing thumbnails All eight video thumbnails in the video player will be playing at the moment your staring at them dumbfounded When Buddy Share fails, you can manually highlight faces and guide it to do the job SoundAlive audio- enhancing also resides in the video player Video player supports .WMV, .AVI, DivX, XviD, .MP4 .MKV Can record radio broadcasts The Radio app lets you save 8 stations as favorites In the Radio mode, you cannot turn on the loudspeaker without the headset hitched. It works as the antenna. You know what it means?, its Mono Smart Dial Voice dialing is powered by S Voice My files file manager reads the memory card and the internal storage but doesnt favour the system drive Volume levels, when hooked to an external amplifier are not that good The music player is accompanied by the sound-enhancing SoundAlive techo, which houses the 7.1 channel virtualization High Resolution, FullHD files, how large or small they are, Galaxy S3 plays them all HDR mode for high-contrast scenes When the Social tag identify a face in a photo, their social status can be seen on screen. You can call or message the person in person too Photos are bit greeny Finds the right white balance even indoors under artificial light circumstances The split view in the message department and the email app, allocates the left side of the screen to a list of emails and messages and the right side to the corresponding message. But still reading from a half of the screen is still a mess Equalizer presets and a custom one Both video player and music player feature DLNA. You can play tracks on your own player and tracks reside on nearby devices through WiFi There is a limit to resizing of widgets. Most widgets are pre defined a minimum and a maximum resizable size The bitrate of recorded HD videos is about 17-18Mbps. There will be no traces of compression Swipes in the phonebook; right swipe for quick dialing or simply left swipe for messaging Click the home key twice, the voice control will be in action Volume rocker Stereo crosstalk will be having business in when you plug in a pair of headphones. But a remarkable overall performance Live Wallpapers; The News wall brings a slideshow of headlines, Stock wall does the stock quotes while Photo wall will fetch photos from the Gallery A smart search option in messages area. It finds the saucy message that your ______ just sent you, if you do the search with the right or exact keywords that your wife may use. It wont get lost in the wild forest of other messages and get caught by wrong hands, audience or draw unhealthy attention A big tap to compose box. Either S Voice or Google's native voice recognition app can be used for texting instead of typing Music square; the new mood fixer The camera uses the same field of view either you're recording 1080p or 720p videos The video subtitle files are well catered. Each time you play a subtitled video you dont have to name the relevant subtitle file so that it bear the same name as the video file. It shows a list of subtitle files that available and let you pick the right one With the Menu key, you can conduct a Google search. But it needs a long press Hold the Home key down for a while, the task switcher will pop up The app drawer features a tab that lets you drop widgets to the homescreen with an ease The zoomed-out view in the app drawer enables the user rearrange pages easily A "Remove all" button in the Task Manager A second clock on the lockscreen, will show off while roaming You can hide apps S Voice is capable of understanding English, French, Spanish, Korean, Italian and German dishes. But better dont go too far. Its still premature When adding recipients to messages, as soon as you type names or numbers, a list of matching contacts names or numbers are displayed Tap on a contact, all the available details are displayed The second tab in the Phonebook shows the accumulated social data of contacts including updates etc S Voice does the work of a calculator too The S voice can be activated by voice. Just try "Hi Galaxy" or "Hi Buddy" (it supports custom made onces too, but put your stinky custom tailored trousers away from it) The S voice can solely depend on voice commands from the very activating. But it severely drains the battery You can S voice and drive but dont drink meanwhile S Voice does search the net, make calls, send texts, do notification area toggles, control the music player, look up weather and traffic , set timers and alarms, snooze them, launch apps, take pictures (just say "Cheese!" when your in the cam app), update social status and look up facts While dictating S voice to write things down, dont overload it with all the fancy command stuff in your head. It will crash on your palm The speech to text transcription doesnt come close to Siri The fact machine; the Wolfram Alpha which empowers Siri's answers, is in charge of handling S voice's factology. In case your curious, it only pulls out the relevant databits out of Alpha and will show you more details only if you have the necessity to have a look at more. It totally differs from Siri which pulls all the information once With the built in Gmail app you can archive, label and delete emails in batch. In inbox, swiping left or right makes it easy to move between messages Can do voice commands right on the lockscreen The video player has three crop modes. Tune in until one fits your taste and the screen most Full fledged PowerPoint presentations are served (and editable too) Task switcher provides a screen shot for each running app No dedicated search button To kill an app in the Task Switcher, all you have to do is swipe the app left or right Can view newly downloaded apps seperate in App Drawer From now on, your editing on a 4.8-inches large HD Super AMOLED display. It will be easier than with any other tiny display to do that Vector maps are lighter. Wont eat much data Kies Air; it connects to Wi-Fi or will create a Wi-Fi hotspot if necessary and hand over you an URL generously. Type it in the address bar of your PC web browser and then onwards, you can manage contacts, messages, compose messages, view images, videos, brows files from your very desktop browser In the app drawer, you can rearrange icons or list them alphabetically No one click access to the task switcher, have to press and hold the home button The Google Play Store is easy to navigate than ever before with easy to scrollable tabs and categories like featured, top paid, top free, top grossing, top new paid, top new free and trending etc Some of the Apps in the Google Play Store has demo videos too You can also figure out how dominant or capable of apps are by checking out comments, ratings and the number of downloads in the Store

Buddypress vs Elgg; a case study and best plugins/add ons to spice up your Buddypress or Elgg Social Networks. Bonus: pros and cons of Buddypress and Elgg

These days I am trying two "Social Phenomena," which dont inherently fall under an astonishing 100 billion market cap, namely, "Buddypress" - an addictive free open source social networking script by very people behind Wordpress.org - and Elgg, another budding social script which will enable you to set up your own social network in full blossom.

"A social network in a box", "out of box" or whatever the official description of the Buddypress plug in says, according to developers who frequent to the site and the project, the project is under heavy criticisms that claim that the project is ostensibly moving backwards rather than forward. Updates arent constant. With so many negative feedbacks for unnecessary calls that the script perform when processing a request, few more bad mouthed buzzes and well argued articles that question the drive and the direction of the future of the plugin, I was at first bit hovering to choose Buddypress out of the rack. Similarly Elgg isnt moving with swift steps either. Most plugins are not updated to the latest release or are already abandoned and most functions of the plugins which state that they are compatible with the latest release are sadly deprecated. If you frequent to the community you may notice that several hundreds of plugins still require some sort of patch up once or twice. So if you choose Elgg you may someday or some way loose or mess up your entire site easily with a handful of fancy plugins. Unlikely Buddypress developers are compelled to produce the best as they address a much larger audience

However "The Single I" decided to make the most bold step with "The most plenary pile of the best plugins available for both citadels along and try to put both into action and watch who kicks its own bucket or kick the other out of the race. Here comes the list of the most prominent pros and cons of the so called Social Networks out of the boxes (listed with the pure generosity
)



Pros
and Cons of Buddypress

1. Its a truely amazing piece of software that delivers what it promises
with few exceptions

2. 1000000 downloads to date and still counting

3. A nice layout. Favourite and comment buttons are elegant.

4. The installation can be empowered by 19000 plugins. From such a huge number, there should be something that you will admire

5. Users get nothing for participating in your network. Even no simple signatures for forum posts at least
(do you expect that to happen around a social network? I might be wrong)


6. No option to limit the cloud of emails due to be delivered through your resources limited shared hosting package
s


7. Lack of good themes

8. Further developments of most Buddypress plugins are left in uncertainties. Selecting or depending on Buddypress oriented plugins is too risky. No one knows when will now budding plugins be abandoned

9. No poll option at the moment

10. Every additional plugin you add to the installation is a massive overload on the processor

11. Cashe plugins retard the way Activity Stream behave

12. Users cannot be assigned a maximum number of groups that he or she can create. It will shatter your social network into tiny pointless pieces and will be another Google Group thing

13. Member activities are limited. You cannot have a farmville for it

14. The Buddypress group forum and the site wide forum use same page for displaying content. You have to manually put an end to the quarrel

15. Nothing that pertain to Buddypress including Group forums can be exported or imported



16. The latest release adds only already available plugin options like profile privacy



Elgg, pros and cons

1. Email notifications can be turned off with a plugin
(more than one plugin)

2. More than 1500 plugins + themes though most are outdated
(buddypress has only 400 or so)

3. A nice handy group page creator. Sub pages can be created too . The page thing is totally different from Blog thing. Pages behave in the exact same way as Wikis

4. Site wide blogs and group blogs

5. A five star plugin is available

6. All the things in an Elgg is well integrated into one network. Because its such a solid, stable and unique platform. For an instance, the buddypress at the moment of writing doesnt have a classified ad plugin (has one but its a crap). If you go with an available classified plugin for Wordpress the plugin data wont be daintily hooked up with the Buddypress. So not so well integrated across the entire website



7. Each module out of an Elgg like Blog, File, Page, The Wire can be turned off he you feel them unnecessary

8. Cannot creat subgroups. A real pain in the back was triggered by searching for a plugin that can handle the thing. But I was unable to

9. Bluehost doesnt host Elgg sites

10. The admin dashboard is of poor quality

11. The community is bit lackluster

12. Buddypress has the most powerfull and meaningful add ons though its small in number. Buddyspess wins with quality over quantity. Most plugins you find at the Elgg site are language packs and only a few from the rest stand out from the crowd

13 Elgg plugins are light and as a result whole the installation is light. Loads faster than a Buddypress

14. Some plugins arent updated for years and most available plugins are craps. These have many bugs and no any countable words on updating them in the future. Buddypress also has many plugins that already abandoned but in the Elgg site its more of a convincing and nasty nature
. At least Wordpress is mightier than Elgg

15. The default theme of the Buddypress is horrible. Contrarily Elgg is an eye candy

16. Though many plugins are incomplete, the Elgg dashboard is well indicative. It shows what is deprecated in the latest version and clearly states whether the uploaded and extracted thing is a plugin or something else

17. Elgg boldly shows its logo at the up left corner. Its ugly and directly linked to the Elgg site.

18. The Elgg plugin directory is not comfortable to navigate. No search option available

19. Elgg plugins are full of bugs

20. No settings for user roles. They are simply admins or members. No user roles, no user permissions. Not so good even as a social network. The purposes that most people use these softwares are for building niche groups. Non of them want to build the next facebook. On the other hand Buddypress comes with these options built in. Without premium user options monetizing part will be hard

21. Has some game plugins

22. Compared to Buddypress community, the Elgg site is posh. There are handsome developers and very hot feminines too. Whole the Buddypress thing looks like abandoned and gloomy

23. Developer's suit is built in and can be activated at the developers disposal

24. Elgg isnt mobile friendly out of the box. A huge disadvantage these days

25. Good Adsense plugins are sparse

26. Mostly used for academical institutes. Throws me off setting up a general social network with it

Best Plugins to empower your Buddypress social network

1. Ads Manager WP/BB
An Adsense manager specifically designed for Buddypress

2. BP Unread Posts
Creates new post icon if there are new posts in the thread

3. BP Webcam Avatar
Adds a webcam snapshot option for avatar

4. BuddyPress Activity Plus
A Facebook-style media sharing improvement for the activity box.

5. BuddyPress Activity Stream Extras
A collection of small tweaks for the activity stream

6. BuddyPress Docs
Adds collaborative Docs to BuddyPress

7. BuddyPress Groups Directory Extras
Display additional information for each group on the groups directory page

8. BuddyPress Introduce

9. BuddyPress Portfolio
This plugin allows each user to create his portfolio on your website

10. BuddyPress Rate Forum Posts
This plugin allows rating of BuddyPress forum posts and user karma.

11. BuddyPress Share It
Adds a share button to your BuddyPress site to let people share content on Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz without having to leave the page.

12. BuddyPress Topic Mover
Allows BuddyPress group mods and admins to move a forum topic to another group they are a member of. An improved version of BuddyPress Forum Topic Mover.

13. BuddyPress Tweet Button Adds a button to your BuddyPress site to let people share content on Twitter without having to leave the page.

14. BuddyPress Twitter
Let your members and groups show their Twitter Follow Button on their profile page and group page. Using the twitter's @ username widget, the plugin fetches your members and/or groups username and displays their folow button in the member's/group's header.

15. Recently Registered
Add a sortable column to the users list on Single Site WordPress to show registration date

16. User Switching: Instant switching between user accounts

Stay tuned. I will add the best plugins to spice up your Elgg site soon and more pros and cons that will help you to take the wisest decision possible. To be continued........


Buddypress Alexa Traffic Rank: 7,908
Traffic Rank in US: 7,330
Sites Linking In: 22,665

Elgg.org Alexa Traffic Rank:12,233
Traffic Rank in IN: 5,445
Sites Linking In: 7,927

Also here is a confession from a former Elgg developer (contacted her through email)

Hi there, Samila!

"Thanks for getting in touch. Personally I like Elgg more than I do BuddyPress, but then BuddyPress is more supported, but then again, not so much. The problem with Elgg is that every time a new version is made, the plugins break. Sadly there is not a lot of developer support, so a lot of the things you will find won't work with 1.8 or even 1.7. They are constantly updating and updating and leaving people behind because of this. Who wants to build a social platform on something that becomes out of date in a month's time? And unlike something like WordPress/BuddyPress, it's really hard for the average developer to code for Elgg because there's too many files that you have to make separate files to hook into the default setup. It's a nightmare for people who just want to theme the thing. It's not clean code either. It's very bulky. No web standards. BuddyPress is much easier to design for as it's built by the same team behind WordPress. But it doesn't have many plugins either, and the adoption in the beginning was really high, but I found that most sites that used it in the beginning switched to their own system built from the ground up a few months/a year later. There is really no point to open source social networks when spammers can dig through the code themselves and find ways to get their stuff into the system. Better to patch up your site on your own than leave it to other people."

Her personal site jessicalares.com


I contacted another former Elgg contributor who went by the name Stephen O'Connor through email. Here is how the conversation went


Me: Now its 2012. Which you recommend? you have been a regular at elgg.org. But not much now. Why?
Stephen: Honestly, I had hoped that we could use Elgg or BuddyPress for school, but I got tired of trying to get it to happen. The superintendent didn't get it and the BOCES tech person opposed it as it was eating into her turf. I have been administrating a WordPress Multiple user blog set up for students in a closed garden set up for some years. At this point it would be easiest to go with BuddyPress

Me: Do you recommend buddypress or Elgg for big networks? Which is the one to go with to have a large user base? which one is the most stable?

Stephen: I've never worked with either on any sort of large scale. My bet would be WordPress.

Me:
1. Which script eats the CPU and the RAM most?
2. Who will survive? Elgg or buddypress at the end?
3. is updating plugins cumbersome in Elgg?

Stephen:
1. Which script eats the CPU and the RAM most? I don't know at this point. Not running either on my server.

2. Who will survive? Elgg or
buddypress at the end? It appears that Elgg is fading. All the original devs have moved on.

3. is updating plugins cumbersome in Elgg? Nobody does plains better than WordPress

Part 2: The best free social script? There is no such a thing