The Samsung Galaxy S7, The simcard-enabled-submarine.

Mar 11

You’ve got seven vices and seven virtues, you also have seven dwarfs and seven riders of the apocalypse. You also have a movie called “Seven” where they cut off Gwyneth Paltrow’s head and ship it via Fedex, but that is beside the point. What is important to remember that there are also seven siblings in Samsungs Galaxy family. We got our greedy hands on one of the few models in circulation and decided to tell you all about it.

A picture of the Samsung Galaxy S7

Look and feel
The S7 is a lot like Iron Man. Where the 1950’s versions of Iron Man looked bulky and edgy, the modern implementation of Iron Man is slick and smooth. Same goes for the S7. Although its the same size as its predecessor the S6, the rounded edges of the S7 make it feel just a little better to hold on to. The raised mounting of the rear camera in the S6 is gone which turns the back of the phone into a solid, unbroken slate of black. Close your eyes and roll the phone around in your hands and it will be hard for you to distinguish it from its greatest competitor, the iPhone 6.

Some things are just same-same
Aside from the size, the screen specs have not changed either compared to the S6, but with a beautiful Amoled screen with such a high resolution, why would it? The screen is packed so tight you cant distinguish the individual pixels and the colors are vibrant. Thanks to the Amoled technology black is black and you can even read the screen in bright sunlight.

Same but no same
Samsung has upped the specs on the cpu and the onboard ram (we won’t bore you with the technical details, suffice to say the phone is fast and snappy). The biggest change however is the fact that the micro SD card slot has returned. You can once again slide your little Micro SD card into your S7 to upgrade the storage capacity. Although slightly slower to respond opposed to the onboard storage, the micro SD card gives you the chance to store music, movies and more without worrying that you will ‘fill up your phone’. Because Samsung did not implement one of the latest Android features into its OS, it  not possible to install apps on the micro sd card.

We are talking about the first submarine equipped with a simcard.

Just drop it in the toilet
Every week we hold a silent vigil for those moments where a loud splashing sound emerges from toilets all over the world. No, we aren’t referring to the proliferation of successful bowel movements, instead we point towards all those incidents where phones end up in the toilet. That one place where modern day technology touches that one earthly element that signals doom for many: Water.
The S7 is waterproof. When we say waterproof we aren’t talking about a couple of drops of water. We are talking about the first submarine equipped with a simcard. The S7 can stand over 20 minutes of underwatertime, more then enough for those slow to react to fish their baby out of the john when they accidentally dropped it in. We tried it (not the toilet test, just plain water) and it works indeed. The phone knows when it has been submerged and refuses to charge via the USB port until all components have dried up. Pretty impressive.

VR
The S7 is also compatible with Samsungs gear VR, its Occulus-powered virtual reality headset. Slide the phone in and sito presto you are emerged in a VR world where you can play games, watch Netflix or literally walk around in a 360 degree movie. That is until your phone gets too hot or your battery dies out. (See our review of the Gear Vr for more info on this.)

Conclusion
We give the S7 an 8/10 because its a decent phone. It’s not cheap but you do get a lot of bang for your buck. The VR technology that Samsung loves to pimp is interesting but still in its infant phase.

Links: Want to know more ? We found this excellent (Dutch) video review of the S7

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Review : The LG 55EG960V 4K Ultra HD Tv.

Oct 17

Lets face it, Reviewing stuff is cool. From time to time we get stuff in the mail that we can tweet or blog our opinions about. This lets us play with some pretty cool stuff, and sometimes we even get to review stuff that you can’t just ship. So when LG asked us to review their 55 inch 4K Oled TV, we thought we were going to need a bigger mailbox. It turns out WE got to go and review IT for a night in a fancy penthouse suite in Brussels. The life of a blogger is hard.

After we had settled into the little penthouse and managed to tear away our eyes from the wonderful view, it was time to check out the tv. The lightly curved 4K 55 inch monster is quite elegant for its size. No overdone “HERE I AM” pimped out casing, no blinking lights.. Just a 55 inch slightly curved monolith … and its “full of stars” !

We had a Dave Bowman moment here : "It's full of stars"

We had a Dave Bowman moment here : “It’s full of stars”

 

Black is Black.
Once you turn it on you see what OLED is all about. For those of you who don’t know. Regular LED tv’s have “lightbars” at the edges of the screen, “lighting up” the pixels as it where. This means that pixels that are set to “black” still “bleed” some of this light through resulting in dark grey tones instead of actual black. Depending on the quality of your LED tv this might vary.

With Oled every pixel generates its own lightsource. So when the pixel is told to go BLACK it just switches off … resulting in true black. This is of course a lot of technobabble, so what is the result ? The end result is that the colors are amazing and that black is really black. During our first demo, a scene from “House of Cards”, where Claire is standing with her back to the edge of the frame wearing a black dress, there was no way to distinguish the black dress with the black edge of the tv. Impressive !

What do you do on a 4K TV ? play 8 bit games !

What do you do on a 4K TV ? play 8 bit games !

So how about this 4K stuff ?

Double the resolution of an HD Tv and you get 4K. That’s a resolution of 4096 by 2160 pixels. Result ? Watch yourself some 4K Netflix and you get to see a whole new level of detail. During the pilot episode of “The Blacklist” we saw small motes of dust floating through the scene. Each individual hair that was somehow out of place on the head of the lead character was visible. 4K will be a makeup artists nightmare !  The level of detail is so uncanny that at some point we noticed a booger (yes a booger) up the left nostril of one of the characters. We seriously shit you not: Much resolution, So 4K wow !

One thing that was familiar on the LG was the Smart OS that runs it. One could not tell by the looks but the “smart” part is actually HP’s WEB OS. Yeah, that’s the OS that never made it to the tablet space and died in a dark corner at Wallmart. But its offspring is alive and kicking. You can control it with the remote, using the buttons OR using it as a pointer. The interface is fine and responds pretty snappy. We liked it.

The only thing we were not that impressed with was the sound. Although the Tv features Harman Kardon speakers, the sound was a little ‘flat’. But I guess when you have the budget to buy one of these beauties, getting a 600 euro sound bar is peanuts.

Our view from the penthouse suite ..  SWEET !

Our view from the penthouse suite .. SWEET !

So in the end ? 

The LG 4k TV is a little bit like driving a Tesla for a day. Its awesome, its fantastic, its the best of the best and .. its also the price of 3 kidneys. At 3999 euro’s for the 55″ model and 5999 for the 65″ model, things might be a little bit outside our price range. We worry a little about the amount of 4k content that is available right now. Sure there is some on Netflix (Costs you a little extra though) but does it satisfy the purchase today ?

Our review of the LG 55EG960V Ultra HD 4K TV (as it is officially called) showed us a peek in whats to come in the near future of TV entertainment. Bight colors, solid blacks, awesome resolutions and hopefully a more affordable price range. And lets not forget new drinking games where you have to take a shot every time you see a booger up the nose of one of the lead characters !

Links : The official LG page and the Appart Hotel where we got to review it.

 

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KW1006 Reviewing the Dell XPS 13

Aug 15

This edition of the knightwise.com podcast brings another product review. This time Knightwise cracks into the Dell XPS 13. This laptop brings with it one distinguishing feature that not many mainstream laptop vendors provide: it’s preloaded with Linux.

Pop in those earbuds or crank up the car speakers. It’s time to dive in with the Dell XPS 13.

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KW1004 Microsoft Surface Pro 3

Jun 26

This week’s show is an in-depth look at the Surface Pro 3 from Microsoft. We tackle the hardware, the software and the applications that make this device a contender for a daily driver. We also have another great track from Daniel Messer. Let’s get into it!

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KW1001 First impressions of the Ubuntu Phone

May 20

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We kick off season 10 of the Knightwise.com podcast with a hands on review of the BQ Ubuntu Phone. We review the hardware, talk about the fledgling OS and see how the phone holds up in “daily use”. Splice in some cool tunes selected by Daniel Mesner and you have yourself the first episode of the Knightwise.com podcast, season 10.

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