We’ve been eagerly awaiting the Samsung Wave since its first unveiling back in Barcelona in February, and the new operating system it runs, Bada, since as long ago as last year. We’ve given you the full rundown already in an extensive hands on preview, but now we’ve got our mitts on a shipping, finished version, it’s time for the full review. Can it cut it in today’s hyper competitive smartphone world? Read on and find out in our Samsung Wave review.
Read the rest of our Samsung Wave review now:
Samsung Wave review: Build and battery life
Samsung Wave review: Bada
Samsung Wave review: Super AMOLED screen skills
We talked about the growing division between mass market, easy to use smarpthones on one side (See iPhone 4) and powerful handsets for power users and tinkerers on the other (Dell Streak, Nokia N900) and it should come as no surprise that the Samsung Wave falls into the former camp, given that Samsung’s been talking about how it plans to “democratize” smartphones with Bada.
After playing with a final retail version of the Samsung Wave extensively, we think it’s pitched it at just the right point in the market, packing it with plenty of technology, but still below Apple’s trailblazer. The big difference is that the iPhone allows for customisation by way of the thousands of apps available for download, but while the Samsung Wave has an app store for Bada, it’s really for those who want an easy to use experience straight out of the box, and little more.
To that end, the build of the Samsung Wave is excellent. It’s just 11mm thin, so will slot in any pocket, has a battery life of one or two days that won’t shock anyone upgrading from a dumbphone for the first time, and shuns the ugly piano black plastic of previous Samsung smartphones in favour of a nice metallic feel. The five megapixel camera meanwhile is solid, and shoots surprisingly good 720p HD video footage.
But most importantly, the 3.3-inch Super AMOLED screen is best in class, delivering rich colours and smooth motion from any angle. It’s responsive and allows for easy typing despite its fairly small size, and a world away from the resistive AMOLED screens Samsung’s peddled on phones like the Samsung Jet.
Combined with the new Bada OS, the Samsung Wave has the potential to perfectly satisfy a less demanding segment of the market. Bada still uses the same homescreen with widgets approach that anyone who’s used a TouchWiz phone will know (and either love or hate), but has made some gentle refinements. Many of these, such as the Android-esque drop down notification tray, feel like they’ve been simply lifted from rival software platforms, but they do merge to form an easy to understand experience with a lot of power underneath, as the graphics of several preloaded games show. Indeed, Bada hasn’t crashed on us once yet, something which shouldn’t happen on any smartphone OS that doesn’t actively encourage users to start freestyling and rooting their phones.
Samsung Wave: Everything you need to know. Click here!
That “It just works” ethos extends to media support too. Whereas that’s only true of the iPhone if you happen to have bought everything off iTunes, the Samsung Wave sucks in all your music already on a microSD card and displays the cover art (There’s a well placed 3.5mm headphone socket on the top of the phone, natch), while video support is frankly superb. It’ll happily open high definition MKV container files (Even though you can’t see the difference on a WVGA screen) as well as H.263, H.264, MPEG4, DivX and XviD codec files, and we got supported files streaming happily to a PS3 over DLNA so with a large enough memory card, you could use the Samsung Wave as your media storage hub.
Unfortunately, the same isn’t quite true of the Samsung Wave’s social networking skills. The Social Hub inbox looks like it should show messages from your email, Facebook and Twitter combined, but actually opens up the individual apps instead, and while there’s a social network update stream widget, you’ll have to manually connect all the handles of your Facebook and Twitter contacts.
Of course, those apps are preloaded and made by Samsung especially for Bada and the Samsung Wave’s launch. What’s missing right now is third party support (Even Google Maps is a web app rather than a native Bada application, though GPS still works fine) for Bada: the Samsung Apps download store is fully operational, with support for paid apps already, which is good news, but there’s slim pickings on there right now. That could change over time, but if you’re the sort of person who can’t live without Google Sync, Evernote or Shozu, the Samsung Wave isn’t ready for you yet.
It is however, ready for anyone who just wants a reasonable smartphone experience out of the box. The Samsung Wave is a decent attempt at satisfying those who demand little and prefer to avoid confusion on their phone wherever possible. The potential for growth via third party apps is there too, and what makes it more than a feature phone, but if you know that certain programs are essential for you, then the Samsung Wave is not right now.
Samsung Wave review unit supplied by Mobiles.co.uk
Read the rest of our Samsung Wave review now:
Samsung Wave review: Build and battery life
Samsung Wave review: Bada
Samsung Wave review: Super AMOLED screen skills
