The Samsung Wave 2 has had a seriously stealthy launch in the UK. I’s now on sale, not that Samsung has been bigging it up much, instead going all Galaxy, all Android all the time with its marketing hype – curious perhaps, since the Samsung Wave 2 runs Samsung’s own operating system, bada, which it’s poured huge amounts of investment into.
A year on from the original Wave’s splash debut at Mobile World Congress 2010, does the Samsung Wave 2 deliver? Find out in our full Samsung Wave 2 review.
Think the Samsung Wave 2 looks similar to the original 2010 Samsung Wave? That’s because it is, eerily so, and the problems is the software is all too much so. Still, it’s definitely the right fit for a certain type of gadget lover: let’s break it down.
Design and build
So little has changed in terms of design from the Samsung Wave to the Samsung Wave 2, it’s almost outrageous. In fact, the only obvious change is the shape of the physical home button below the screen, whittled down from a diamond to a bulging trapezium shape.
The Samsung Wave 2 design offers few surprises - but then what did the Wave do wrong?
But that’s perhaps no bad thing as the original Wave is still a beautiful handset, with a lovely metal backplate, smooth front face and curious curved top plate. The significant change with the Samsung Wave 2 is the size of it: it’s now sporting a 3.7-inch capacitive Super AMOLED touchscreen, as opposed to 3.3-inches, and is slightly thicker too at 11.8mm.
The screen on the Samsung Wave 2 is absolutely gorgeous - it feels painted on
The screen is as gorgeous as ever, and we love the size change: our big man paws our able to to poke the bada keyboard buttons much more easily, and we honestly find it difficult to cope with anything smaller now. But dainty hands may prefer the original Wave’s thinner 10.9mm profile and smaller screen.
Otherwise, you’re looking at a 1GHz processor under the hood of the Samsung Wave 2, a five megapixel camera with 720p video recording and flash on the back, and Wi-Fi, HSDPA and GPS. All good and welcome: the problem is that these are exactly the same specs as the original Samsung Wave.
Bada bing?
The Samsung Wave 2 actually runs bada 1.2, rather than the fabled bada 2.0 update Samsung has started talking up lately. If you don’t know what the deal is with the bada operating system, be sure to check out our original Samsung Wave review, as almost every pro and con still applies here. Samsung’s changed very little with bada on the Samsung Wave 2, and in some cases, even hidden useful features away this time.
bada makes it easy to sync Facebook, Twitter and MySpace accounts, although we've never met anyone who uses the latter still
bada is basically an amalgamation of all the UI elements of competing platforms (Android, iOS on iPhone and Symbian), and Samsung has attempted to deliver them all in an easy to use way. At a core level, it’s succeeded: the drop down notification tray shows you all your new messages and email, lets you turn Wi-Fi on and off and even control your music when it’s playing, or even locked.
The homescreens you swipe across can be populated with various widgets for quick Google searching or seeing what your friends on Facebook and Twitter are saying, and syncing your contacts from these sources and your Gmail or Exchnage email is very easy indeed – it makes a good guess at linking them, then lets you do the rest, and this time round following masses of people on Twitter doesn’t cause the phone to collapse under the load.
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The video player is top notch with wide format support, burning through even 720p HD MKV files with ease, and the web browser supports pinch to zoom gestures for zooming in and out easily as you would on any top end smartphone.
The bada keyboard is now easier to use thanks to the Samsung Wave 2′s larger screen: Samsung’s surprisingly good text prediction means you can pick up quite a reasonable pace on it, and it’s every bit as good as Samsung’s custom keyboard for its Android phones.
The problem is, this was all true of the original Wave, and the only obvious changes are features that have been hidden away. Inertial scrolling has now been turned off on the Feeds & Updates widget so you have to thumb through tweets a few at a time, and AllShare, Samsung’s excellent app for streaming media over DLNA, is now buried under connectivity in the Settings.
AllShare works a treat - it's a shame it's been buried
That’s a crying shame, as it makes it a piece of cake to stream video and music to and from and DLNA devices. Samsung’s mobile hotspot feature is also buried here, where those who don’t know what “Mobile AP” means and don’t read the manual will never realise.
Samsung’s also gone and made it a whole lot harder to connect the Samsung Wave 2 to a computer, for reasons unknown. By default, it only wants to connect to Samsung’s appalling Kies software – which is PC only. If you have a Mac, or want to use better syncing software like doubleTwist, you have to go to the settings before you plug in a micro USB cable, choose to connect as mass storage, then pop it in. And it doesn’t remember your preference, so you have to do this every time. Very annoying.
Then there’s the apps situation: The Samsung Wave 2 technically has an app store, Samsung Apps, but despite the company’s attempts to get developers onboard (Of which it’s made many), there’s still nothing we want to download on there. A quick glance at the Top Free apps on the store shows people are downloading “Space Hell” and “TouchHer Sexy” – and the latter, incidentally, has only merited a 1.5 out of 5 rating from users, so Samsung’s using an interesting measurement of “Top”.
It’s telling that Google has still not made a Google Maps app for bada: it’s our go to, essential download on any new phone, but on the Samsung Wave 2, it’s still just a janky browser based option, which locks onto your location very quickly but lacks any other modern features in mobile Google Maps.
Google Maps is fast in the browser, but lacks a powerful native app on bada
But – and it’s a big but – we have to admit that the Samsung Wave 2 isn’t the sort of phone that’s made or broken by its third party apps. As a standalone solution for listening to music, checking the web and your email and GPS only when you really need it, it works perfectly – and for many people that will still be enough.
Samsung Wave 2 HD video sample
We can’t say there’s been a great deal of improvement here. The Samsung Wave 2 shoots tolerable five megapixel stills at a fast speed – there are some nice, easy settings to tweak like exposure and shooting mode – but we never pulled off any truly crisp shots, perhaps due to the physical shutter button requiring quite a hefty push.
As for video, you can see a sample above: the HD video lacks clarity, and it could do with a slightly faster framerate. But it is easy to share clips via AllShare or upload them to YouTube or Photobucket, so we think casual phone users will be more than happy.
Performance and battery life
Call quality on the Samsung Wave 2 didn’t stand out as anything special, but we do have to single it out for praise when it came to battery life: the Samsung Wave 2′s 1500mAh battery lasts a good two or three days of usage, with account syncing on and social feeds updating. With only manual updates, it’ll last even longer.
We also never saw any sort of slowdown with the Samsung Wave 2 – you could argue that bada doesn’t let you do much that would actually tax its processor, but it won’t struggle while in AllShare mode or playing back HD video.
Verdict
Apps don't make or break bada
It’s interesting to see Samsung pursuing feature phones while all its rivals switch to a smartphone and cheap-dumbphone approach with little in between. As a result, the Samsung Wave 2′s only real rival is the original Wave: it can be had very cheaply with minutes, internet and lots of texts on 18 month contracts now.
If you’re a casual phone user who only wants the joy of a touchscreen web browser, without the expense of iPhone and apps – and have big hands – then the Samsung Wave 2 is for you. If not, you’ll get along just as well with the first Samsung Wave.
In the meantime Samsung, back to work with bada.
Review unit kindly supplied by Clove.co.uk
