Howdy folks, it's been a while since I had the time to post something new here. I've decided to make my next post about the "Hubs" that comes with the phone. There's four of them, namely Social Hub, Readers Hub, Music Hub and Game Hub.
Now first thing's first - the Music Hub, EVEN THOUGH Samsung Advertises it here in South Africa, is NOT available in "your location" as the phone puts it. So don't expect any info regarding that from me - gotta love living in a third world country hehe :)
I actually filed a ASA (Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa) complaint about that, will keep you guys posted on what they say...
EDIT: Well, it turned out that the ASA ruled in my favour, and Samsung had to remove their advertising of the music hub on their South African section of their site - click here to read up on it on My Broadband
Anyway, let's get to the hubs that actually work:
Social Hub
The Social Hub is Samsung's attempt at combining all of your social life related stuff in one place. For example, you can set it up to include your Twitter feed, Facebook feed, IM accounts, Email accounts and so on. I tried it when I first got the phone, but I wasn't very happy with the interface, I personally prefer using the dedicated apps for each one. One annoying thing was that you cannot add more than one of each type of account (unless I missed it) - I personally have two twitter accounts, and would have loved to have them both on there, but alas, you cannot.
I'll experiment some more with the Social Hub to see if it's worth using or not, but it doesn't look good so far.
Readers Hub
The Readers Hub is a place where you can read newspapers and magazines on your phone. According to Samsung's website:
"Books
From classics to best-sellers, enjoy access to over 2.2 million eBooks, now with amazing new interactive features like the page curl effect.
Magazines
With over 2,300 Magazines in 22 languages, featuring both article and page view, you will never be short of an interesting read.
Newspapers
Enjoy easy access to breaking news at your fingertip with access to over 2000 newspapers in 49 languages"
I will have a look and let you know what I discover on the Readers Hub.
EDIT: Here are links to the reviews of the Readers Hub sections: Newspapers, Books and Magazines.
Game Hub
This is where you get access to what Samsung calls "Social Games" and "Premium Games" - I downloaded a free demo of Assassin's Creed (a premium game), and played a few minutes and it was actually quite cool.
The only problem I can already see with the Game Hub is the fact that there's a total of only 13 premium games. Whoopdidoo!
That's a short intro on the four hubs that Samsung has included on the phone. As I play around with them, I'll post more in depth info for each.
So far I'm not that much impressed by it at all, in my honest opinion. Anyway, I'm open minded, and will give them all a good try and see if they can maybe change my mind :)
Till next time
