How it works
Google’s movie rental service will allow you to rent and stream movies from the cloud onto any of your Android devices or your computer. You’ll start by choosing your rental from the Android Market – whether that’s the web browser-based version or through the new movie section on the mobile Android Market.
One you’ve selected your film (prices start from $1.99 in the US, while HD films appear to cost $4.99) they become available for viewing on any of your registered devices for 30 days, although they must be watched within 24 hours of starting them.
You might wonder how practical streaming movies – a data-intensive process at the best of times – to your Galaxy S 2 will be over a 3G network, but thankfully you shouldn’t have to worry about that. Google enables you to “pin” the films to the device, which then starts a background downloading process, thus allowing you to watch the films offline.
What’s in it for the Galaxy S 2?
Google’s movie rental hub is particularly good news for the Samsung Galaxy S 2. In the coming months, HTC will release most direct rival to the Galaxy S 2 yet, the HTC Sensation.
If you’ve been reading our site for the past month or two you’ll know that the Sensation is a serious multimedia machine, with a 16:9 screen and – vitally – the HTC Watch service that lets you stream movies to the phone. The arrival of Google’s own movie service is perfectly timed to take the sting out of what would have been a major advantage for the HTC device.
The second reason Google’s movie service is such good news for the Samsung Galaxy S 2 is that it’s one of the best smartphones for playing videos. For one thing there’s that stunning 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus screen, which has the best colour contrast and the blackest blacks in the business – two things that any film buff will look for in a display.
Another point to consider is that the Galaxy S 2′s ARM Mali-400 MP is one of the best mobile GPUs around when it comes to playing video. Thanks to support for ARM‘s Neon engine, the Galaxy S 2′s graphics chip “efficiently processes current and future multimedia formats” and can accelerate video and image processing.
Coming to a phone near you
Sadly, Google’s movie service is a US-only affair right now, although even US Samsung Galaxy S 2 users won’t be able to download the accompanying smartphone app for a couple of weeks. We’d expect the UK to be the next in line to receive the service, which should (we hope) be very soon.
When it does, we know which Android smartphone we’ll be using to stream our films to – the Galaxy S 2 was built for showing off pin-sharp videos on the go. Suddenly those dull commutes seem a lot more appealing.
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