How to migrate from MediaMonkey to Navidrome/Feishin/Symfonium

The Story behind

This is a how-to guide how to migrate your music library with mobile sync from MediaMonkey to Navidrome/Feishin/Symfonium. MediaMonkey has been my music library organizer for at least a decade and I have been mostly satisfied over the years. So why switch? If you are satisfied with MediaMonkey and plan to stay on Windows, just keep MediaMonkey.

Beeing a Linux user from nearly day one, starting with Linux 0.11, I am now completely running on Linux for years, leaving just a little dual-boot option for those few applications that I need and which are not running on Linux. And for the last years, except from gaming, MediaMonkey was the last remaining Windows application for me.

Also, MM has a few annoying flaws. Sometimes, songs are not synced to the device an I cannot figure out why. Say, I bought a new album in mp3-format, put everything in a playlist with new songs and for whatever reason, one or two songs are always missing on the device. This gets more annoying in a playlist for dancing rounds, which always consist of five different dances in a given order when by magic, one of these songs is missing. And sometimes, the cover images are missing on a few tracks. Not a showstopper, but this hasn't been fixed in years.

It was not so easy to switch because of my use case. As a ballroom dancer, I regularly buy new albums with music for our ballroom training. I imported the tracks into MediaMonkey and sync them with the MM Android App. I created smart playlist, eg. per dance like Quickstep and by rating and synced these to my phone. Rating is something, we mostly do in the car, so I also need syncing back from the app to MM on Windows.

The concept

MediaMonkey comes with a built-in sync server in the desktop app. In the Android app, just choose the playlists you want to sync and you are done ... except for the some-tracks-wont-sync issue. There is no 1:1 equivalent in the Linux world. But there is a concept, which might look more complicated at first look, but in the end offers you more flexibility and platform independence.

You need to go from 2 components (Desktop app and phone app) to 3 components: a media server running in the background, a local client for your desktop and a mobile client for your phone with sync capabilities. 

In my case, I decided to go with Navidrome as media server, Feishin as my desktop client and Symfonium as Android client. You can mix and match these to your needs, but to keep things easy and give you cookbook recipe to switch, I will concentrate on these. Important: for my use case I need clients that support 5-star ratings and smart playlists. Not all clients have these features.

The server: Navidrome

There a other servers out there with broader functionality, like movies management. But Navidrome concentrates on Music, keeping it simpler. Just look at their long list of compatible client apps to see, what choice it offers. It is available for several platforms, like Windows and Mac. Installation on Linux is simple. On Arch-based Manjaro, I found it in Add/Remove Software and installed it. It is a systemd service, start it with

sudo systemctl start navidrome.service; systemctl status navidrome.service

    

Set it to start automatically or decide to start it only when you need it. But that's it. It comes with a basic Web-UI to do some setup stuff, like where are your libraries. 

Point your Navidrome server to your music libraries, it will immediate start indexing your music and the 1st step is already done. But wait, where is all my stuff? My playlists, smart playlists and ratings that I created over decades. Where is my info in my custom fields? Don't worry, there is a way to get all that stuff on your new platform. But there is some one-time setup stuff needed. 

Import Playlists

Static playlists are the easiest part and this is also what is needed to cover the rest. In MediaMonkey, export all playlists you want to migrate as .m3u to a directory in your media library. Navidrome will pick up the playlists and import them.

There is no direct way to import ratings and smart playlists to Navidrome because there is no standard for smart playlists. And Navidrome is a multi user system, so ratings can be individual for each user. But as we can easily import playlist, we can use these as a workaround.

For ratings, in MediaMonkey create Smart Playlists for your ratings and export these as .m3u to your playlists directory, so Navidrome will pick them up. For example create a smart playlist for all titles with rating=5 and export it to rating-5.m3u Also, in MediaMonkey I made use of their custom tags to organize my Ballroom music like genre=Ballroom and custom1=Quickstep. These are non-standard tags, but multiple genres will help here. These can be sparated by a semiolon, for example genre=Ballroom;Quickstep;QS. The rest is the same as with ratings: create smart playlists with all titles that match the custom tags and export these also as .m3u to your playlists directory.

A more powerful player: Feishin

Now that we have all playlists imported into Navidrome, we need to re-create the ratings. And here comes the flexibility of this solution comes into play. What we would want to do is to tag all titles in the imported playlists with the derived metadata. For example, tag all titles in the 3-stars playlist with a 3-star rating. But the standard player from Navidrome cannot do that. But Feishin can batch tag files, so next install Feishin. Manjaro finds it in AUR, it is also available on Flathub or just download it directly from github.

Feishin will do the trick: mark all titles in a playlist and give all a common rating. I haven't found a good solution for batch genre editing. So to take over all my information from custom tags, I already exported these as genres in MediaMonkey. When I get new tracks, I set the genres in Kid first.

Feishin is also capable of creating smart playlists, so you can rebuild all of them here. As I don't have much more than a dozen smart playlists, this was done in half an hour for my setup. So for the server/desktop side, we are already done.

Mobile client and sync

As player for my Android phone, I picked Symfonium from the AppStore. Connect it to your pc or server on first startup and you are immediately good to go. Only two things need to be set up to have similar functionality to MediaMonkey.

First, recreate all smart playlist that you want on your device again in Symfonium. That is a bit cumbersome, because you have to do this twice. But on the other hand, the smart playlists are then updated on the device. I have a smart playlist Ballroom-unrated for all new songs, that need a rating from us. On MediaMonkey, when we rated songs they still remain in that playlist until I sync them back to the desktop. And as that would require booting into Windows, I did not do that very often. So we often get tracks that already have been rated when shuffeling through that list. Not a big thing, but Symfonium immediate updates the list on the device so we don't get the songs offered for rating twice.

Syncing playlists is as easy as can be. Open the properties of the playlist, go to Offline cache and downloads and click Add to permanent cache. So we have all the training music on the phone and if we make any changes to the metadata on the road, these will automatically got synced back, when Symfonium gets a Connection to Navidrome again. Sync is faster and seems more reliable compared to MediaMonkey.

Summary

What took me a bit time was figuring out everything for the first time. There are so many options to choose from and I tried different servers and clients. But with a plan, the whole migration is done in 1-2 hours. This is what this guide is meant for.

I haven't tested, if the Navidrome/Feishin/Symfonium combination does absolutely everything, that MediaMonkey does. But it does everything I need and works faster and more reliable.

Galaxy S7 Edge vs. LG G6 ThinQ: still flagships in 2018

Intro

I have been a Samsung Smartphone (and only Smartphones) user for many years. Starting with the first Galaxy S, I got addicted to AMOLED displays. Then I had the S2, S3, S4, S5neo and S7, skipping only the S6. With no expandable storage and no user changeable battery at the S6, the S5neo became my daily driver for two years. I am no Samsung fanboy and always search for a better alternative from other vendors. But in the end, Samsung always had the best overall package for me. Getting the latest Galaxy S in general means getting the best screen, best camera and leading edge performance. And even the Galaxy S series is not always leading in every aspect, they also don't fail in any. And I am one of the few, who like TouchWiz, now Galaxy Experience. Though I immediately disable most features, there are always some which I like and miss when using a non Samsung phone. But I always also lean towards LG smartphones. They always try to make things better then the other vendors and always came up with features I really like.
In 2018 I had a hard choice between the Galaxy S7 and the LG G5. The G5 still had a user replaceable battery, a great dual camera and superior audio quality with AptX HD. But the screen was only average regarding colors and brightness, though it had perfect sharpness. In the end, I sticked with what I know and got the S7, but that was very subjective choice. The G5 is overall an awesome phone, that deserved far more attention than it got. My son for example preferred the G5 and it became his daily driver (until ... see below).
But coming into age, this summer holiday where my smartphone has been my only computer I took with me, I had the desire for a larger screen for better readability. The actual models S9 and G7 ThinQ are still to pricey for what I am willing to pay.
I always recommend to go for last years top models, when buying a new smarthone unless money is not important to you. The still excellent S7 Edge and G6 ThinQ are now in the bargain range. If you are looking for a smartphone delivering 90% of the new flagships for 30% of the price, these two are excellent choices.

Overview
The LG G6 comes in different versions for Asia, Europe and the US. Don't buy the European version, that is the worst deal of the three. The US-Version at least supports Qi wireless charging. The Asian doesn't support that, but gives you 64 instead of 32 GB of storage, dual Sim capability and LG's unique quad audio DAC. I took the Asian version, though I miss Qi charging.
LG got a lot of bashing for slowly updating the Android OS. But now, both phones are on Android 8.0 Nougat with Patchlevel July 1st.
The S7 is 2016's flagship from Samsung and in general a S7 with a larger, rounded screen.

Body and build
Both vendors took different, innovative approaches to deliver a larger screen without making the device too bulky in the hand. LG was the first to move to a new aspect ratio, which is 18:9 (or 2:1). LG already had the power button / fingerprint reader on the back for some generations and that is also one of the best features of the LG G6. That approach saves space on the front panes, so LG could trim down the bezels, giving a great screen-to-body ratio. In combination with the screen aspect ratio, this resulted in a phone that is astonishingly easy to hold in the hand. It feels like a phone of the normal S7 size, though it is a millimeter or two wider. Also, according to LG the G6 passed 14 different military standard tests. Though I haven't tested that, the G6 gives a very solid feel in the hand and some tests von YouTube demonstrate it's great durability.
The S7 Edges approach to a hand compatible large screen device is to curve the edges of the screen, leaving no bezels left and right. That brings a 5.5'' 16:9 display onto a phone, that is not really wider than the LG G6. The other reason why Samsung did this is probably because they can. But having a screen on both sides with no bezel has an impact on durabilty. The S7 Edge is more durable than you might think. For example, view the After the Buzz video from Pocketnow.com. But you will probably put your phone into a stronger protective case, than the G6, where I feel comfortable with a standard EUR 5,00 case from eBay. For the S7Edge, I have chosen a Spigen Neo Hybrid Crystal which gave me a good feeling, but adds bulk and is a little sharp edge. But this leads to another problem with the Edge Display. As the case has to fit around the edges of the screen where the screen already bends, it leaves a gap between the screen and the case, making it harder to use the edges of the screen where the scrollbar lives.
Just from the looks, the S7 Edge is a gorgeous device, whereas the G6 is OK, but more bread and butter. Additional, the front of the silver G6 is like a mirror which could be a little distracting.
The fingerprint reader of the S7 Edge is under the home screen just as in former models, which is always a little stretch and heavy usage sometimes make my thunb hurt. The G6 has the fingerprint sensor on the back, just where my index finger lands when I take the G6 into my hand. After using the G6, I could not think about any other position of where a fingerprint sensor should be. When switching back and forth between the devices, I often put my finger on the S7 to where the sensor on the G6 is. Additional, the G6 sensor is fast and reliable whereas the S7 Edges sensor sometimes requires an extra try or two, especially as the thumb after the stretch touches the sensor from the side. The G6 sensor immediately brings you to the home screen, on the S7 Edge it is a two step process. First press the home button to activate the device and get to the lock screen, then leave your finger on the sensor to unlock. At least, the S7 Edge is easier to unlock with the finger, when the device lays on your desk. But you can wake up the G6 by double tapping on the home screen.
The S7 Edge is more uncomfortable to hold and to operate. The G6 should have a better durability, is comfortable to hold, I could not think about a fingerprint sensor could be any better.
Overall, the Body and Build section is won hands down by the G6.

Rating - G6: 10 - S7 Edge: 6

Displays

The G6 comes with a modern 18:9 (or 2:1) display, whereas the S7e comes in a traditional 16:9 format. Which format better suits your needs depends on your use cases. 18:9 seems become the new standard and LG has been an early adopter. The format sits in the middle of traditional PC and TV content and 21:9 cinema content. So that should be the sweet spot. If you are watching many movies on your smartphone, 18:9 should be a better choice. But for 16:9 content, you won't get more content on the G6 than on a 16:9 5.1'' Galaxy S7. The YouTube app now allows zooming for 18:9 displays. But that means cutting the top and bottom rows of the content to fit the 18:9 screen. Depending on the content, this could fit very well or it could mean to cut a head. If you mostly watch YouTube and TV content, you will get a significant larger display area on the S7e.

Display comparision: the G7 Edge is better for 16:9, the G6 is better for 18:9 content

Also, as the S7 Edge has hardware buttons, you can always use the whole screen for content. When showing the button bar on the G6, the remainig space on the display is smaller than on the S7 Edge. So the G6 only has an advantage on 18:9 or wider content, and only if the on-screen buttons are disabled. And that means to operate the buttons, a swipe up is required to display the button bar.

Though the G6 has a taller display, when showing the button bar the G6 has a narrower display

Both phones offer an always on display. But the G6's is so dark, that you can leave it switched off.
The G6's display is certified for Dolby Vision HDR content whereas the S7 Edge's doesn't. But this is a complete no contest. The Samsung AMOLED display offers so much more dynamic Range, so much more details in dark areas, so much more saturation and contrast, that these are not even in the same league. The G6's display is not really a bad one, about average for a higher end LCD and if you have never used an AMOLED display, you maybe won't care. But in a direct comparison these are worlds apart.
In direct sunlight, it is a draw. The Samsung display is getting red'ish making it harder to read, but a tad brighter. Overall, both can be used even in brightest sunlight, but you won't watch a movie or play a game in that lightning situation.
For some photos comparing both screen see this album.

Rating - G6: 5 - S7 Edge: 10

Audio

When I compared the LG G5 to the Galaxy S7, the G5 won the Bluetooth audio section by a wide margin because the G5 supported AptX-HD wherea the S7 running Nougat did not offer any HD audio option. Now with both devices on Oreo, both support AptX and Sony's LDAC, which is the best option of all if your headphone supports it. And of course, if you root your phone, you can install missing CoDec's anyways. But out-of-the-box, the G6 has a slight edge if you have a headphone that only supports AptX-HD, but not LDAC.
Overall, on my Sony WI-1000X, which supports both, AptX-HD and LDAC, both phones sound the same, while the G5 won by a wide margin over the S7. So Samsung has closed the gap. For the cable headphone test, I used my Marshall Mode EQ, which sounds good, but are no high-end headphones by any means. I don't own any high quality headphones, so I have to rely on the judgement of others. But mostly all testers praised the quality of LG's quad DAC audio output, so the G6 definitely has an edge here. According to them, no other smartphone can match those from LG, that come with that quad DAC.
For the built in speaker, both only have a bottom firing single speaker, which both sound OK, but are no match for phones with dual front-facing speakers. For my ears, the G6 sounds a tad better, but this is very subjective. But where the G6 scores a big point is, when you hold your phone in landscape mode and accidentally block the speaker with a finger. The S7 Edge hardly gives any sound, when the speaker is practically off. The G6 in contrast gets only slightly less loud and a little bit duller, but still very good. And it sounds even better to my ears when laying on a table. Maybe this is already an early version of the Boom Sound feature of G7. If the G6 had double front firing speakers, it would be king of the will with 10 points.

Rating - G6: 9 - S7 Edge: 6

Battery

In my simple test, I just run a YouTube video in an endless loop on maximum brightness. When the batteries went down, both phone tried to save some energy by lowering screen brightness, but I switched both back to maximum. The G6 delivered 5 hours of screen on time, the S7 Edge ran one hour longer and made it to 7 hours screen on time which is very good. On a normal day, I have about 30-40% battery left on the S7 Edge and even on heavy usage, I always had more than 10% left when I went to bed. With a little power saving, I could easily make it through 2 days. 

Please Note, that I root all my phones, disable or delete everything I don't want and install a firewall that blocks everything except what I really use. That helped a lot with older with older Android versions, but now with Nougat and Oreo, the effect is less noticeable than back in the days with Android 4.x.

The G6 should bring you through the day, but on heavy usage you might want to charge a bit in the evening. But please note, that after about 12-15 months of usage, depending on your charging behaviour, the battery will lose about 30% of its capacity. So while the S7 Edge should still bring you trough the day, the G6 might need some extra charging on most days.

The G6 already has USB 3.0C and QuickCharge 3.0 compared to Micro USB and QuickCharge 2.0. So the S7 Edge runs longer on battery, but the G6 charges faster. After my screen on test, the G6 took 1:43 hrs to fully get charge up. The S7 Edge needed 1:58, and it additionally supports Qi wireless charging, which the European or Asian versions of the G6 don't offer. Only the US modell of the G6 suports Qi wireless charging, but these don't have Dual-Sim, Quad-DAC and only 32 GB of storage.

Overall, the energy sections goes to the S7 Edge.

Rating - G6: 5 - S7 Edge: 8

Camera(s)

The G6 has a clear advantage over the S7 Edge with it's wide angle camera, which really helps if you cannot step back to catch a wider view for your shot. Comparing the main cameras, there is no clear Winner.

Same picture, different color science: G6 (left) vs S7 Edge (rigth)

It seems that the G6 has a larger minimal focus distance, so if macro shots are important to you, the S7 Edge might be a better choice. Overall, both have a different color science. The S7 Edge often produces warmer color tones, a little too warm for my choice. The G6 often pushes contrast a little too much and skies tend to get a red'ish tone. It is a little like Canon vs. Olympus, if you know mirrorless cameras. And it is important to mention, that the too warm color tint of the S7 Edge can be easily corrected with the imaging software of your choice. Normally I batch correct all S7 Edge photos in XNViewMP slightly to a cooler tone which works well without any noticeable loss in image quality. But the boosted contrast of many G6 images cannot be corrected afterwards, because that is a destructive manipulation.

The G6 has some kind of night mode, that really delivers better photos in night scenes, both in color and overall brightness.

 

In my album with test photos, I do not see a clear winner. Sometimes I prefer the image from one phone, sometimes that from the other and sometimes it is a draw. For me, I prefer the G6 images a little more often than the ones from the S7 Edge, but this is a close choice. And if I do a color temperature correction on the Samsung Images, it would be a draw.

So the G6 has the extra wide angle camera and a useful night mode, but delivers often too much contrast which spoils the photos. The S7 Edge has a lower minimum focus distance and often delivers sharper images. The color temperature is often unrealistically high, but this can be fixed in post.

Overall I prefer to use the S7 Edge for photos because overall I found the results a bit more reliable, though I miss the wide angle. But this is only because I am willing to fix some weird color science in post. If you want just take the photos, the G6 migth be a better choice.

For selfie lovers, both aren't a perfect choice. Samsung does too much face retouching, giving you some kind of plastic look. If you optimize your skin in your selfies, this might be your choice. But if you want a realistic look keep in mind that this cannot be disabled. At least you can install a different camera app, that does no automatic skin retouching. The G6 does not do that, but the image quality of it's front facing camera is lower.

Rating - G6: 8 - S7 Edge: 8

Summary

There has been no clear winner, both phones have their pro's and con's. From my scoring, it is a very close 37:38 with the S7 Edge leading with just one point. After all, I kept the S7 Edge as my daily driver, though I miss the wide angle camera, the better fingerprint sensor of the G6 and I still dislike the Edge display. But overall, I love OLED displays, especially the absolute black if I use it at night. But if you don't mind an illuminated dark grey instead of black, the G6 might be the better choice. If the G6 had an OLED display, I would have taken that one instead of the S7 Edge.
My son took the G6 and is very happy with it. He said, it is the best phone he ever had.
One thing, LG really drives me nuts with is their market strategy. They seem to have excellent engineers and idiots in marketing. The G6 could be a nearly perfect phone. But then, LG's market modell managers decide, that European buyers don't want wireless charging. The room for the charging coil is still there and they put a plastic dummy into it. And European buyers only get 32 GB of internal storage and no dual SIM slot. And US buyers get the wireless charging, but not the quad DAC if I get this right. Hello, LG! Just build one model that has all the features so buyers don't have to get one from the other side of the world if they want a better feature set.
For the last years, LG phones were always on my shortlist and I have been close to choosing them as my daily driver. LG's engineers created great stuff  that I loved year over year. The leather back on the G3, the wide angle camera on the G5, the Quad DAC, the best audio output in the industry. But LG always managed it to do some unnecessary stupid so in the end I choose the Samsung model instead. So for this year, it is again the Samsung for me.

Rating - G6: 37 - S7 Edge: 38

Samsung Galaxy S7 vs. LG G5 quick camera comparison

This is just a short one, because I made my decision for the S7 by the excellent SuperAMOLED screen and both cameras are good enough for what I need. Comparing the Cameras, here is the obvious. The dual cameras makes the G5 much more usefull. The wide angle lens catches about the same field of view as the human eye, which is a big plus. The narrower lens gives a slight telephoto angle. In between is the single lens of the S7, which is 4/3 compared to the 16/9 of the G5. Personally I would prefer the DSLR-like format 3/2, which is a good compromise but none of the two offers.
The autofocus of the S7 is more reliable, I dropped a few shots from the G5 because of AF misses.
Comparing the images, the G5's images look much punchier, the S7's a little dull. The S7's images need a bit more punch like the one I gave a slight edit in Darktable. For later editing the S7's approach is more usable, because the high contrast of the G5's images leads to some loss of highlights and depths. The S7 seems to try to Expose-to-the-right (ETTR) to save highlights, wheras the G5 has a few blown out highlights as in the white sections of the roof on picture 3.
Interestingly, when looking on the photos on the smartphones screens, the G5 images look dull and the S7 images are punchy. So maybe both manufacturers try to comensate the properties of the specific screen.

Picture 1: The G5's shot is out of focus, though this is a best of three

Picture 2: More punch on the G5, more sharpness on the S7

Picture 3: More punch on the G5, especially more saturated green. But also blown out highlights on the white part of the roof on the G5. The S7's image is slightly dull.

In comparison a wide angle shot of the G5, which matches about the angle of the human eye, but with visible distortion at the hut on the left.

On picture 4 again more punch from the G5, but the shadows got too dark with loss of detail. The S7's shot is too dull. The optimal look would be somewhere in the middle. The G5's image looks overprocessed, especially way too much microcontrast/clarity. In contrast, the S7's image could use some more processing.

With some editing in Darktable, I adjusted the S7's image to my taste,V adding some elvia, local contrast and vibrance.

Both smartphones are good casual shooters, but for both the results need some touching. As an alternative, RAW might be an option.

Apple iPhone 4 vs. HTC Incredible S camera comparison

I had an HTC Incredible S for a few days. It is not the right phone for me. The displays black value is too high, more a gray than a black. And though it feels solid, I personally consider it as too heavy. It is in the same class as the popular Samsung Galaxy S. Compared to the Galaxy, the software of the Incredible is much better. Samsung decided to stop updating the software of the Galaxy, unfortunately the last release of the SGS firmware has been a buggy and laggy one. HTC on the other hand became the vendor with the best software support even for older devices. So my first step has been to upgrade the firmware to Android 2.3.5 with Sense 3.0, and Android 4.0 ICS is already announced. A big compliment to HTC.
In general, I consider Sense as the most polished variant of Android. Nearly everything looks better then on stock android.
But as I also had an Galaxy S2, there is no reason for me to keep the Incredible. This is not a fair comparison, but if you once get used to the speed, brilliant display and great camera of the S2, there is no need to use the Incredible S until you get it really cheap and are not willing to pay the extra money for the SGS2.
So I did not write a complete review for the Incredible S, but I want to share a few comparison photos and videos with you.

All HTC phones before the Incredible S are well known for their crappy cameras. Though HTC phones had their strengths, like the mentioned high software quality, the cameras where just rubbish. The Incredible S has been the first HTC phone with a stronger focus on the camera. And the result does not look too bad against the iPhone 4, instead some pictures of the Incredible s look better than the iPhone 4 shots. And the iPhone 4 which has been known for its good camera for quite some time. The Incredible's camera is not great, but at least average.

Incredible S video

iPhone 4 video

Comparing the video results of both phones, without going too much into detail it's a draw in my eyes. Depending on where you stop the video, you will see some parts are better on one phone and vice versa.

To sum it up: if you are looking for a phone with a very good camera, then go for a Galaxy S2, iPhone 4S or Nokia N8. If you are instead looking for a phone with a good software, the camera is not so important for you and you get a good offer (not more than 60% of the SGS2 price), then the Incredible S might be worth a try.

HTC Sensation Video & Photo Samples

I did some photo and video testing with the HTC Sensation. After HTC's camera quality already got better with the Incredible S, now this is the first HTC smartphone with a really good camera. Congratulations HTC, it has been a long way. Don't get me wrong: this camera is not very good like the one from the iPhone 4 or some high end Nokia devices. But the Sensation's camera is definitely above average and the camera won't be the reason to leave it on the shelf.

And even the video is very good.

Here is a short comparison of the displays of the Sensation, Galaxy S and iPhone 4

Using the Sensation, you will probably never complain about it's display, but in direct comparison it can not keep up with the very good display of the iPhone 4. And compared to Samsung's high contrast SuperAMOLED, it looks washed out.

Also in bright sunlight, the Sensation can not keep up with the SGS and the iPhone 4.

Though it can not keep up with the best displays on the market, the Sensation has quite a good screen. And this is the best camera in any HTC phone until now, at least on par with the Galaxy S.

Phone 3GS and 4 vs. Samsung Galasy S i9000 video comparison

Additional to my photo comparison, I also did a short video comparison. Like in the photo comparison, the sharpness of the SGS looks best to me, but the iPhone 4 shows better color and exposure. Overall, I would rate the iPhone 4 slightly ahead of the SGS, the old 3GS is a distant 3rd.

Test Update: Samsung Galaxy S with Android 2.21 Update

Nearly a year after the release of the Galaxy S, Samsung released two significant updates: Android 2.2.1 and Kies 2.0. The hopes were high already for the Android 2.2 update, but main problems like the nearly not working sync and the heavy laggs. So after all, 2.2 has been only a little update. But despite the little change in the version number, 2.2.1 has been a huge improvement. The laggs and sync problems are history, so it is time to update my rating. In the meantime, Samsung already released Android 2.3.3, but this one is not a big improvement whereas 2.2.1 is a must.

Radios
Samsung seemes to have fixed the WIFI problems, so it gets the same connection quality as my other devices, so one addtional point for the SGS On GSM, Edge and 3G it has been better anyways.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 9 (of 10)

Battery life
The battery problems I had with the SGS must have been software issues. Regarding battery life, the SGS with 2.2.1 feels like a complete different phone. It battery time is not only much better than before, it easily beats the iPhone 3GS's battery life. The charging problem is also gone. Now with 2.2.1, on my 30 minutes drive into the office, the SGS fully charges. With 2.1, I wrote that a fully charged SGS won't make it through my average business day. Now, in the evening I have more than 60% battery left with my average usage. So this is about 3 times of battery life compared to the first Android 2.2.1 firmware. Wow, this must have been a serious bug in power management. And they also fixed the issue of fast uncharging in airplane mode. When in airplane mode, the battery of the SGS will last for 4-5 days.
To make this great battery life even better, Samsung offers a 1650mAH battery as a spare part for some Galaxy phones like the Armani Edition. This one is available at eBay for about € 25,- and will add 10% of battery life to the SGS.
So the SGS, which has been one of the smartphones with the worst battery life is now one with the best. This is why I updated my rating.
3GS: 5 - SGS: 7 (of 10)

Hardware Ecosystem
The iPhone has still the largest hardware ecosystem around it. But the SGS is closing up a little, with add ons by Samsung itself like the desk stand or the external battery case (comparable to the Mophie Juice Pack. But also from 2nd sources there a lots of cases and car mounts, like the ones from Brodit which is my favorite car mount manufacturer. But there are still some hardware accessories, which are only available for the iPhone, like audio sets with iPhone adapter.
3GS: 10 - SGS: 7 (of 10)

Responsiveness
Since Android 2.2.1, all the lags that I criticized in my former test are completely gone. And I had not a single crash since the upgrade. In head-to-head comparision, the iPhone feels slow compared to the SGS. Scrolling, swiping, everything is much quicker and more responsive on the iPhone. So the iPhone is no longer the reference in UI speed and responsiveness, this title goes to the SGS. This is why the SGS now gets 10 out of 10 points and the iPhone gets rated down to 7.
3GS: 7 - SGS: 10 (of 10)

Desktop Software
Samsungs Desktop Software Kies needed a lot of development in the last relase, and Samsung did some of the needed work. Kies 2.x now works without any problems after a simple installation, well done. And it is also available for MacOS now. So the biggest annoyances are fixed now, but iTunes is still way ahead of Kies. But at least this gives Kies an increase from 4 to 6 points.
3GS: 10 - SGS: 6 (of 10)

Costs
Since my test last year, the SGS became cheaper, whereas the iPhone prices kept high. The SGS 8 GB is down to € 320,- and you might add € 20,- for a 16GB SD card, whereas the iPhone 3GS 16GB still comes at € 560,- (which probably noone would buy, because for € 600,- one could get the iPhone 4 16GB). The iPhone 3GS 32GB comes at € 600,- , the SGS with a 32GB SD card costs about € 370,-.
So the price difference grew significant, the SGS even more gives the better value for the money. It is probably the cheapest deal to get a top end smartphone.
3GS: 4 - SGS: 8 (of 10)

Conclusion (again)
Samsung made good use of the last 6 months and erased all flaws of their software. These improvements made a huge difference and the SGS also got a lot cheaper. So if you plan to buy an Android device now, you could get one of the brand new 2011 devices, which might have some new flaws. Or you get the SGS with a very mature software at an unbeatable price. There are not much reasons to get the iPhone instead, as long as you are not an Apple fanboy or completely locked in Apples ecosystem anyway.
But Apple did not sleep, the iPhone 4 is out for about a year and iOS 5 is already annonced for next month. The iPhone 4 alone is not a big improvement over the 3GS, but mine is already waiting for it's iOS 5 update. So the 3rd round in this battle will be SGS with Android 2.3.4 vs. the the iPhone 4 with iOS 5. But for now, the SGS is the clear winner.

3GS SGS Hardware Display 7 10 Speaker 7 5 Camera 7 5 Radios 7 9 Battery life 5 7 Interfaces & Memory 6 9 Hardware Buttons 5 6 Build Quality 10 5 Hardware Ecosystem 10 7 Hardware Summary 64 63 System Multitasking 10 8 Storage Support 7 4 User Interface 4 9 Responsiveness 7 10 Ringtones 2 5

Phone Application 5 5 System Summary 35 41 Software On screen Keyboard 7 9 PIM 6 5 Audio Player 8 9 Video Player 6 10 Web Browser 7 10 Email Client 8 8 Software Ecosystem 7 6 Desktop Software 10 6 Software Summary 59 63 Costs 4 8 Summary

Hardware 64 63 System 35 41 Software 59 63 Costs 4 8 165 175