The Samsung Galaxy S is one pimped out smartphone, and while its monstrous hardware plays a big part in this, just as crucial is the impressive bake of Android it’s running. Find out why we’re in love with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI at long last in this part of our Samsung Galaxy S review.
Read the rest of our Samsung Galaxy S review
Samsung Galaxy S review
Samsung Galaxy S review: Super AMOLED screen
Samsung Galaxy S review: Build and battery
Samsung Galaxy S review: Ultimate buyer’s guide
We’re used to stock Android 2.1 by now – it was a great experience on the Google Nexus One until Android 2.2 came along, sped things up and added Flash – but Samsung’s Android 2.1 skin is the next best thing to a Froyo update, stuffing in extra features that actually work, even if they’re simply sensible additions rather than innovative ones.
At a glance, Samsung almost doesn’t appear to have made any changes to vanilla Android on the Samsung Galaxy S, beyond sticking in its own wallpaper. Dig a little deeper though, and you start to see the (useful) similarities with Samsung’s own Bada OS on the Wave.
The TouchWiz skin on top of Android 2.1 on the Samsung Galaxy S doesn’t weave your social networking accounts as tightly in to the OS as HTC Sense does on the HTC Legend, Desire and Wildfire. Instead, Samsung’s focus is on little tweaks that prove useful.
First up, the notification bar has been rejigged, and is all the better for it. You still pull it down to see what messages, apps and calls you’ve missed, but Samsung has addressed one of the major problems or plain old Android – a missing Wi-Fi toggle, and added it to the tray, so you can turn your hotspot connection on and off at anytime, along with icons for silent and vibrate modes. Play music tracks meanwhile and instead of requiring a homescreen widget for music controls, they automatically appear in the tray, so you can change songs while browsing the web. This is especially useful since you can’t adjust tracks with the supplied headphones, as one reader asked, only pause and play.
Secondly, the menu screens on the Samsung Galaxy S have been revamped. They look like Bada’s which means of course, that they look like the iPhone’s right down to the alert numbers that sprout up in a small red circle. It’s derivative, yes, but on the Samsung Galaxy S’ beautiful Super AMOLED display, it’s still prettier than Android’s boring iconography.
Contacts have also been giving a slight overhaul. The Samsung Galaxy S can suck in contacts from several Google accounts and Facebook, and it’ll do its best to match them up for you, which is always convenient, and should be enough to sway those tempted by HTC Sense if all you want is Facebook profile pics popping up when you’re called – let’s face it, more people have them than Google profile photos. Samsung has attempted to provide a similar Social Networking Service to that found on Bada, but it’s a tad disappointing – as Facebook on Android is generally – and hitting the icon to check out messages simple loads the mobile site.
We’ve saved the features that deserve the most praise though for last. First up, the keyboard on the Samsung Galaxy S is excellent: it’s as easy to type with as HTC’s Android keyboard, and far better than stock Android or the Dell Streak’s keyboard. And that’s just the regular QWERTY: hold down your finger and you can switch to Swype. If you’ve not used the software, it’s an Android keyboard that lets you drag your fingers across to spell words incredibly quickly, and while it isn’t amazing for punctuation, for more informal emails, it’s very speedy.
Finally, media support on the Samsung Galaxy S is every bit as good as Archos’ Google tablets. As well as MP3s and AACs, the phone handles high quality FLAC files with no problems, which should keep audio purists happy, and video format support is far beyond anything we’ve seen on any other Android phone. You can play WMVs, DivX AVIs and even MKV files, though not the 720p ones that ran happily on a Samsung Wave (Standard definiotn MKVs ran fine, and you can’t see the difference on a WVGA screen anyway).
You can also stream them over DLNA to supported gizmos, or vice versa, which too is rare for an Android phone. We had absolutely no trouble slinging an episode of Mad Men from our Samsung Galaxy S to a PS3 plugged into the telly, and if anything, we had less hitches than we did with the wave. Make no mistake, even though the Samsung Galaxy S lack the Flash support you can now get on the Google Nexus One, it’s still the best multimedia Android phone on the market.
The Samsung Galaxy S also uses one of the company’s own 1GHz processors, and while clockspeeds aren’t everything, Android runs as smoothly and speedily on it as the Snapdragon powered Dell Streak and HTC Desire. While some of Samsung’s skins on rival platforms have marred performance (See the Windows Mobile 6.5 Samsung Omnia 2), we didn’t see the same issues here, and account syncing doesn’t bring the phone to a halt as it can do the Samsung Wave.
One final note: we’re really not sure what Samsung is hoping to achieve with its own app store, also included. As it stands, it’s a joke, with just five programs to download, including a vaguely useful Samsung made Facebook app, and a “This Day In History” widget. Why Samsung didn’t just preload these, we’re not sure, as we’re not huge fans of exclusive apps on open platforms. Still, minor quibbles: the Samsung Galaxy S is the best Android 2.1 phone we’ve tested yet.
Read the rest of our Samsung Galaxy S review
Samsung Galaxy S review
Samsung Galaxy S review: Super AMOLED screen
Samsung Galaxy S review: Build and battery
Samsung Galaxy S review: Ultimate buyer’s guide
