Random Mumblings

I decided since I paid a lot of money for my current phone, I’d at least try and take a look at some of the features on it. The one feature that I’ve been rather curious about was Kies air on my phone. I knew what Kies was (Software suite for Samsung phones, not too disimilar than iTunes for iPhones and Zune for Windows phones), and I thought I had an idea as to what Kies air would be. I thought Samsung just gave connecting to Kies via WiFi direct a funny name. Nope. Kies air doesn’t even use the Kies software at all, it runs a web server on the phone, which only allows one connection to it at a time. There are some similarities between the two backup options, but there are also some differences.

Kies air does give you the option to save all of your music, pictures, and videos to your PC, just as the Kies software would do for you. It isn’t as clean, though. With Kies, everything you would want to back up on your phone is bunched together in one nice little menu, aptly named Back up/Restore. You just go in and check a few boxes and hit a button, and all of your items will be backed up to your PC. Hit a button, and everything will be restored. With Kies air, it isn’t as easy. You would have to go in and download items to your PC one folder at a time, and then you choose where you download it to. Instead of being in a default folder that would be hard to accidentally delete (for example, in the Program Files directory), air defaults to My Documents. So unless you make back up directories by naming them What you’re backing up, that it is a back up, and the date that you backed it up, you could easily think that it might be safe to delete if you need to free up space or remove some clutter.

So backing up isn’t nearly as clean or as easy in air as it is in Kies. What about text messaging? While you can back up your messages in Kies, you cannot in Kies air. This isn’t a problem for me, as I rarely get text messages, and when I do, they’re generally not very important. If I lose a message, I don’t care. This is not an option for some people (which my I’m reminded every time I tell a customer at work they may need to master reset their phone to fix it). So if you need to back up your messages, you either need to use Kies or a third party program.

What Kies air lacks in backing up, it adds in awesomeness. While I’m sitting at my computer, I can actually send text messages with my PC instead of trying to type on my phone. Kies air adds the functionality of being able to send text messages from your PC. I don’t mean by sending them out as an email to a phone either. I mean if you check your phone, it will show as the message originated from the phone (i.e. it shows up in your sent messages). Although, as awesome as this feature is, I don’t see myself using it very often. Why? Because as I stated before, I don’t text very often.

Both Kies and Kies air also allow you to view the contents of the storage on the phone. Once again, Kies wins by having a cleaner interface. You hit a button and it opens an explorer window. Kies air allows you to explore the contents via a java browser which works as well as you would think a java browser would work. You can also view phone books and calendars, but once again, only Kies can back up.

Overall, both programs are great. I would say that Kies air is more of a novelty than anything. For me, it’s just one extra way to attempt to back up newer Samsung devices for customers.