The Samsung Wave 723 has washed up on UK shores at last, more than six long months after the first handset with Samsung’s all new bada operating system arrived – the perfectly pleasant Samsung Wave. As promised, Samsung’s taking bada down market however, and this smaller, cheaper model is aimed at bringing bada to the masses. Does it get the job done? Find out in our Samsung Wave 723 review.
When reviewing mobile phones, it’s all too easy to check out a new mobile OS for a few days, then forget about it when the review handset goes back to the manufacturer. But we’ve had the chance to test bada OS over the last six months and see what it’s become: a very fancy feature phone OS and nothing more. Despite Samsung’s best efforts, its Samsung Apps store is still stocked like the shelves of a Cuban supermarket.
But that’s OK. As a feature phone, for a certain type of person, it’s perfect. Our partner has been using a Samsung Wave since June, and loves the battery life, keyboard, browse and one tap Google Maps GPS, plus the delicious Super AMOLED screen.
Unfortunately, despite the lower price point, the Samsung Wave 723 isn’t proportionally fun to use. Its tiny screen and cheap build make it feel like just another TouchWiz phone, the likes of which Samsung has been cranking out for years.
Build
It looks like the Samsung Tocco, but the screen is slightly improved
Physically, the Samsung Wave 723 most resembles the Samsung Tocco, and that’s not a good thing. A smooth, typically Samsung black face holds the 3.2-inch touchscreen and clacky physical buttons, while the back panel keeps the gray sahe of the original Wave, but substitutes metal for plastic. It looks cheap, it feels cheap, but at least it’s thin and sturdy, and the ports are all in the right place (3.5mm audio and micro USB on the top, volume rocker on the left and camera and lock buttons on the right).
On the plus side, it packs quite a lot more connectivity in under the bonnet. The Samsung Wave 723 can hook up to the internet over 3G and Wi-Fi and does GPS without any fuss (Although Google Maps is once again web based, so you won’t get any advanced features), and the microSD card slot is on hand for all your media storage. Inside, the Samsung Wave 723′s 1200mAh battery is good for two days on the trot, and the speaker is reasonably clear for calls, though nothing sensational.
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But for a phone that costs £200 SIM free, the screen on the Samsung Wave 723 really is rather poor. The 400×240 screen is shockingly low resolution, and makes reading anything but the briefest text message unfun. You’ll only see a small window of any web page not optimised for mobile, requiring you to zoom in every time, which is jerky to say the least.
But the touchscreen is at least capacitive (a screen technology more responsive to fingertip presses than resistive), which is good news. Pinch to zoom gestures are supported, and to our surprise, the QWERTY keyboard in portrait view is pleasingly responsive, and the same for landscape too.
Bada bing?
Bada is as bada does, which is to say a few things nicely, and thing else
Bada is as bada does, which is to say a few things nicely, and thing else
What promises to make the Samsung Wave 723 stand out from the feature phone crowd is its bada OS, Samsung’s own proprietary operating system aimed at bringing the best bits of smartphones to the mass market.
The Samsung Wave 723 does do that to a degree. In our original Samsung Wave review, we remarked how much it felt like a fusion of Symbian and Android, and it still does. The menus and navigation feel like a Nokia phone, while a drop down notification bar for alerts, music and connection toggling, is straight out of Google’s OS, and very convenient.
The Samsung Wave 723 also lets you sync popular accounts very easily, and merge contacts. Thus, having your friends’ Facebook and Twitter updates popping up when you tap them in the address book is simply a matter of entering login details once. We don’t advise doing so with Twitter if you follow more than 100 people though: accounts with 2,000 following as we do cause tremendous slowdown when it updates every few hours.
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But, and this is the kicker, many of the smartphone elements we loved about bada on the Wave are gone here. We lumped praise on the Wave’s video format support, but the Samsung Wave 723 won’t even open plain old AVI files, let alone your MKV collection. The Samsung AllShare DLNA streaming app is nowhere to be seen either, and you won’t find any of the beautiful 3D games the Wave can run on the Samsung Wave 723′s app store: you’re stuck with rubbishy isometric Java games.
What you’re left with, unfortunately, feels like a TouchWiz feature phone with a slightly better keyboard. Sure, it can multitask, but what good is that when there are no apps of interest to switch between, and performance is laggy?
Camera
Respectable stills, shoddy video
The Samsung Wave 723′s five megapixel camera actual grabs respectable stills in daylight, and packs an LED flash should you need to pop a shot at night too, though don’t expect such wondrous results. The QVGA video is pretty poor however, and good for little more than sending as a text. On the plus side, you can lace videos together for some basic editing on the go.
Verdict
Too much for too little
The Samsung Wave 723 is a nice idea in theory, since the Wave was built so beautifully, and bada was quite alright. But Samsung has fallen back into its old ways, cranking out yet another dull feature phone, which is worryingly overpriced.
Right now, the Samsung Wave 723 costs £199 on Pay As You Go. That’s a huge sum for a non-smartphone, especially when you can pick up an Orange San Francisco for £99, with access to thousands of Android apps, or a Palm Pixi Plus for £109 if you must have a keyboard.
Samsung’s had an incredible year in mobile, capping it off with the stunning Google Nexus S. But at the low end, as 2010 comes to a close, it’s finished off with a phone from 2008.
