Just bought a Samsung Wave? If you were nervy about plonking down cold hard cash for a phone with a fledgling OS, here’s some reassurance for you: Samsung’s told us it’ll be bringing future updates to the Wave. That’s not all though: sequels are on the way, and a top exec revealed that its’ “investigating” putting Bada on other devices too. Now what could they be?
We dropped by Samsung’s first Bada developer day in London today, a free conference aimed at explaining to software devs the advantages of conjuring up apps for its new platform. We saw a good 250 people getting schooled in the new operating system, but we were there to interview some of the Samsung staff behind Bada, and they dropped us some intriguing morsels of information.
Read our Samsung Wave review now
We spoke to Justin Hong, lead of the Bada platform, Philip Northam, a global marketing manager at Samsung, and Paul Wilkens, marketing director for Samsung Mobile UK, about Bada – and came away hopeful for its future.
Our interview started out on the subject of Samsung Apps, the app store for Bada which can be accessed from the Samsung Wave’s menu screen. The approval process for Apple’s massively popular iTunes App Store has proved controversial in the past, but Samsung is keen to avoid the concerns and issues of censorship Cupertino has caused by rejecting certain apps. Hong insisted that Samsung was “very open”, and that the company just has “some basic guidelines for rejection”, while Northam promised a “straight answer” for any rejected app, and the company would say “what you need to do” to remedy.
We also took the time to ask when we’d be seeing follow up Bada devices to the Samsung Wave – more mid-tier phones using the OS have just been unveiled for Asian markets. Wilkens wouldn’t confirm which we’d see, but did say that “We will have a couple of Bada devices coming to the market….it’s very likely products like that will hit our market [UK] as well.”
If you’ve already snapped up a Samsung Wave, you shouldn’t be left behind with software updates however as some handsets running Android have been, with manufacturers unable to keep up with Google’s breakneck development speed. Hong told us that Samsung plans to “release a new Bada platform for every couple of months” and that the South Korean giant will “upgrade existing devices” like the Samsung Wave – pending on networks and operators.
Hong didn’t specify what new features we’d see in Bada updates, beyond the company “preparing for advertising” on the platform, but did reveal new features would be added to the multimedia, social networking and location skillset of Bada – which if you saw our Samsung Wave review, we found to be a pleasant OS, if not particularly unique.
The Samsung execs saved the best for last though, with Hong revealing that Samsung is “looking at the possibility of deploying” Bada in devices beyond phones.
Tablets? PMPs? Anything is better than Beat DJ. Northam said that the “focus is on the mobile segment for the time being, but it’s certainly tantalising”.
Repeated leaks have pointed to a Samsung Android tablet in the pipeline, but there you have it – if Samsung drops a new line of Bada PMPs at some point, we could have some charming iPod touch rivals on our hands, especially if they have Super AMOLED screens too.
Out TBC | £TBC | Samsung
