The Samsung Wave is a big first for Samsung, but not just because it’s the phone that marks the debut of Bada – it’s also the first phone on the market to uses Samsung’s brand new Super AMOLED screen tech, which promised deep rich colours, and just as importantly, visibility outdoors. Does it deliver? And can you actually type on it? Read on and find out in our Samsung Wave review.
Read the rest of our Samsung Wave review now:
Samsung Wave review
Samsung Wave review: Build and battery life
Samsung Wave review: Bada
For those not in the know, AMOLED is a slightly different type of screen tech to traditional LCD TFT. It’s less power hungry, and capable of much deeper colours, but typically difficult to see in sunlight, and expensive (Which is why it hasn’t been used in all but the smallest TVs so far). Samsung hopes to solve that viewing problem with Super AMOLED, the display tech of the Samsung Wave’s 3.3-inch screen, and you’ll be pleased to hear it has done. While the iPhone 4’s shockingly sharp LCD screen could still stun us, right now, the Wave has the best looking screen on the market.
It’s a WVGA resolution screen (800×480), so while it’s sharp, that’s not the selling point of the Samsung Wave’s screen. The rich, vibrant colours however absolutely are: the Bada homescreen feel like they’re about to burst in a kaleidoscopic explosion. The tendency of AMOLED to over saturate colours is still there, but all is forgiven considering how close to the front of the phone the pixels appear, and the wide viewing angle – the colours don’t waver no matter where you look at it from.
Visibility outdoors is noticeably improved with the Samsung Wave too. While not quite on a part with a pricey LCD screen, the Super AMOLED panel is readable without you having to hunch over it to cast a shadow – something of a first for a phone with an AMOLED screen.
It’s also throughly responsive to touch. As you’d expect of a new smartphone, the Samsung Wave uses finger friendly capacitive touch technology to register inputs, so the typing experience is closer to an iPhone than a Samsung Jet. The keyboard on Bada works well, even in portrait, and we’d go so far as to say that it’s better than the stock keyboard on Android, if not the one HTC uses on its Sense Android phones. Pinch to zoom gestures don’t feel janky as they do on some Google phones either: you just slide in and out on pictures and web pages exactly as you would an iPhone.
Samsung Wave: Everything you need to know. Click here!
Combine the Super AMOLED screen of the Samsung Wave with Bada’s strong multimedia support (It ran all the videos we threw at it, including H.264 MP4s, Xvid encoded AVIs and 720p MKV files, albeit without subtitles) and you’ve got just about one of the most enjoyable phones to watch TV shows on yet. The judder we noticed in a pre-production Samsung Wave is gone in all but HD files, so what you’re left with is a handset that runs video clips with gorgeous colour and clarity. If you have a lot of TV shows or films stockpiled on your computer, you’ll love the Samsung Wave.
Our only real problem? The Samsung Wave’s screen is almost too small, at 3.3-inches. It’s enough for typing comfortably, granted, and the decision was no doubt in part to keep the price down. But it’s smaller than the iPhone’s 3.5-inch panel we’ve been using for years, and massively smaller than the four (and five) inch displays starting to crop up on top end mobiles. We’d love more space for our porky digits to roam, and a bigger display for watching all the videos the Samsung Wave is capable of. If you feel likewise, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S and its four inch Super AMOLED screen will be more up your street.
If all you want is a slim phone with an easy to use interface however, the Samsung Wave and its screen won’t disappoint.
Samsung Wave review unit supplied by Mobiles.co.uk
Read the rest of our Samsung Wave review now:
Samsung Wave review
Samsung Wave review: Build and battery life
Samsung Wave review: Bada
