• Design
The Samsung Galaxy S II is not only one of the world’s most powerful smartphones; it’s also one of the lightest. Disguising its formidable interior is an incredibly sleek, stylish and wafer-thin body, and one of the highest resolution smartphone displays available.

Despite the Galaxy S II’s achievements, the Xperia Ray is lighter still. Despite looking similar in to its Xperia cousins, it throws in some interesting design features not seen on other smartphones, and has an incredibly bright and clear display.

• Hardware
To go along with its impressive 16GB or 32GB or internal storage, the Galaxy S II packs a hugely powerful 1.2GHz dual core processor, capable of running many apps, videos and music at the same time.

The Xperia Ray has 300MB onboard storage which is upgradable via Micro SD cards. The handset’s 1GHz processor is backed up Adreno 205 graphics processing unit, producing visuals previously only seen on games consoles.

• Operating System
Both handsets use Android v2.3, providing an incredibly fast, responsive and streamlined user interface. This latest version of Android is capable of extremely advanced multitasking, delivering unparalleled performance even when multiple apps are running.

The new operating system also monitors apps resource usage. This could potentially prolong the battery life of the handsets by ensuring that apps aren’t draining the phone.

There is one and only character involved in this game, and that is controlled by the player. He continuously falls owing to the artificial gravity, so you have to make sure he gets elevation by bouncing on randomly placed clouds. As you go higher and higher, there are less clouds, in order to make the game more difficult.

But in order to make Space Arks more interesting, there are bonus objects and fruits all over the place, and that helps to jump higher and collect points.

Basically the point of this Samsung Wave game is to get as high as possible, in terms of altitude that is, although the other “high” would be much cooler.

The game is currently free, and you can get it as always from Samsung Apps.

It can get a bit boring to simply find lines of circles with the same colour. There are similar games in which users themselves introduce the balls, such as Frozen Bubble for Linux, or as we reviewed right here at the blog, Bubble Bang and Hubbly Bubbly 2. SuperColorBall feels as if there is much more strategy to it, almost as a chess puzzle where the computer tries to eliminate you.

Basically there is a grid that stores a few number of differently coloured balls. The user must move the balls through the white spaces as to form contiguous lines of five or more. The problem is that after every move, there appear new balls, and believe it or not, it seems as if it is done on purpose to ruin your game.

I won’t speak any more, and at this time, the game has gone paid. If you think you can beat the CPU, buy the Samsung Wave game from Samsung Apps.

I never get tired of puzzle games, especially those that can enrich the experience with plenty of colours, that the screen reproduces very well. If you aren’t a fan of puzzle games, this one might change your mind.

It takes a while to understand the concept, since there are two players in this Samsung Wave game, either you and the CPU, or a friend. Your aim is to line up three or more objects of the same kind, using the entire grid. You can take advantage of your opponent’s silly moves, in which he/she creates two consecutive objects, and then you simply place the third one. Sounds confusing? Practise makes perfect!

Why not give it a shot and tell us what you think about it? Download this Bada game for free from Samsung Apps on your phone.

There are quite a few sudoku games in every single gaming platform, it’s a popular game like Xs and Os or Tetris. This sudoku, however, has added features that can make it more challenging  - or easier, depending on your logic capability.

I would like to jump straight into one of the additions: X-Sudoku. The normal rules of the game apply here, but in the diagonals, a number may only repeat itself once, and that makes the middle field extremely important. So this could make things more complicated because you have an extra restriction, or it could be easier because you can rule out a variable.

Hyper Sudoku basically introduces another set of 3×3 fields that have the same traditional rules. These blocks overlap the usual blocks and are indicated with a blue background. Experienced gamers can use this to their advantage.

There are the usual high score menus, and the buttons are all placed in an accessible manner, making this SudoKKu game ideal for time-pass; download it as usual from Samsung Apps.

If you are looking for a fully-fledged game similar to those for PC and video game consoles, I hate to disappoint you, but this is not one. Think of penalty shoot-out and you’re getting close.

Hockey isn’t a major sport in my country, even though I had acquaintances who practised the non-ice version of the sport. It’s certainly an interesting one that requires a lot of technique and strength too, seeing that it can get pretty violent.

The developer here managed to include excellent 3D graphics and a very fast and responsive user interface that make the gameplay enjoyable.

What is really missing from the game is a true challenge, and that could be obtained if a full game version of hockey game is released. Although the 3D models and basic game logic is in place, there is still a lot of work to be done in what concerns to defence and attack logic, collision detection, and more.

The hockey Bada game can be downloaded for free from Samsung Apps.

This is not really one of my favourite themes, it fails to impress me, but the simplicity here might win your heart – everyone sees designs differently.

The first feature of the theme that I noticed was the wallpaper. Although it looks very nice in the screenshot above, the actual wallpaper’s resolution is reduced, possibly owing to the number of homescreens, and that ruins the experience of a strong, textured look.

The icons haven’t been modified much, which reduces the originality of this free theme. Basically the author took the default theme’s icons and placed a frame around theme, to give them a “silvery” look that fits well with Carbon Coloured. This is not a great disadvantage, as it was well done, with a transparent carbon texture serving as the background of the icons – check the Facebook one, for example.

Once again, with silver being the main colour here, the colours of the Super AMOLED screen won’t be vibrantly shown. Download this Bada theme from Samsung Apps.

Usually it’s difficult to review themes because the design and layout must be evaluated in a subject way – I may like it and you may not, or the other way around. In this theme, there is a focus on 3D, so it makes things easier, I know what to look for.

If you do install the free Bada theme on your smartphone as well, you’ll notice that practically every icon pops out, as it is designed with 3D in mind. The effect would be much more obvious with an actual 3D screen, and I believe there will be a new Samsung Wave next year with such a component.

The wallpaper for the homescreen is futuristic, making use of abstract forms and a nice grey colour. The problem with all of this is that it doesn’t make use of the Wave’s best weapon – the Super AMOLED screen.

So great 3D, but not so great colours. You can download the 3D perspective Bada theme for free from Samsung Apps.

It is also nice to see that the British Council wastes/invests taxpayer’s hard earned money in promoting literacy outside schools and actual learning institutions. I’m not being ironic, it’s up to you to choose. I, for one, would like to see my Portuguese government promoting spelling and language grasping in a manner as fun as such.

Samsung Wave users will certainly find this app very fun, regardless of whether you are British or not, but of course, some US English words might not work properly (think color vs colour).

You are given a grid with several letters, and out of all those letters you must form real words, racing against a clock. It’s difficult at first, but once your mind starts working, it turns out to be a very nice time killer.

Go to the Samsung Apps repository now and look for Word Shake, a free download!

There is absolutely no doubt that illusion or magic tricks can be really awesome, but then there are those (such as that Arrested Development guy) who fail completely at this, either because the trick is lame, or poorly executed.

I sincerely believe that some of the magic tricks that were included are very lame, especially the coin one, but that’s for you to decide.

Commenting on the actual layout and design of the app, it could have been better, since it feels to simple with a list of text titles to select, and then a screen divided into an image and a scrollable text area.

Besides having only ten magic tricks and an “improvable” user interface, there isn’t much else that can be changed. Get Magic Tricks for free now from Samsung Apps.