Finally it seems to have dawned upon Samsung. They seem like they’ve had enough of selling Corby’s and Omnia’s to the unsuspecting masses. The Korean electronics giant is upping the ante with its own Bada powered Wave and Android powered Galaxy S. We got a fair bit of time with both the phones at Samsung’s recently held bloggers meet and here is my take on the Wave and Bada OS. (Thoughts on the Galaxy S coming soon)
The Wave is the first smartphone to ship with Samsung’s brand spanking new Bada OS. Its based on Linux and I was hugely sceptical about it before I saw it. ‘Why the hell do we need a brand new OS? Haven’t developers got anything better to do than keep porting apps from one platform to the other? Isn’t Android a free for all? Why not just customize Android the way you want it?’ But a mix of speedy performance from the Wave and the fantastic Touch Wiz UI blew all my pre conceived notions into the weeds. Plus a chat with the super passionate developer dude from Samsung.
‘If we managed to sell so many Corby’s around the globe, surely a more powerful and feature packed OS will offer a better experience and sell a lot more. Plus you code your Bada apps in C++, something we are being taught since 9th grade. We are giving the developers a lot of support and freedom. If you have any problem, I assure you it’ll be solved within 3 hours flat.’ Strong words.
Lets now talk about the device itself. Its got a gorgeous 3.3 inch ‘Super AMOLED’ (more about this later) display, a 1GHz processor and it feels wonderful to hold. Just the right size, neither too big and not too small either. And I have to admit, I’m slightly tired with these humongous 4 inch devices. It’s got a fairly decent 5MP camera with an LED flash that allows you to record 720p video. All of this packed into a 10 mm thick body and you know you have a winner in your hands.
Coming to the Super AMOLED display, Samsung have eliminated a layer in the screen and have improved brightness, screen readability and battery life by up to 80%. And it shows, the colours really pop out at you. Better experience + more battery life can never be a bad thing. Now that we’ve concluded that the hardware is pretty top notch, lets shift our gaze to the software.
The phone felt very responsive to touches and performed at break neck speeds. I have never seen any Samsung get this snappy. Adding apps in the background didn’t bother it too much either. The UI at first seems like a mish-mash of Android and iPhone. The slide out top bar, the 5 panel home screen are clearly Android inspired and the icon layout is very iOS like. But deep inside is a heart that is throbbing with social media written in every beat. Social Hub is Samsung’s app which connects you to other jobless people around you.
The phone book is the first place where you get to see this. When you fire up a contact, it shows you their Facebook status and is also entwined with Twitter. Also when someone calls, you again get to see their picture and FB status. Also, the one feature I really liked in the contact book was that you can slide your finger to the right on someone’s contact entry and it calls. Do that towards the left and it opens a new message. So, that solves the problem of a smartphone being a good phone in the first place.
Alright the UI is very usable and simple. Lets move on to the most important part of a smartphone these days, the apps. All the apps in the Bada app store are free of cost. As a developer you are supposed to monetize them through AdMob. Now that’s good or bad depending on which way you look at it. There are a fair number of apps from Samsung but there is a lot that’s missing as well. Hope Samsung pulls up its socks and gives us more apps.
As far as the camera and the battery performance go, I couldn’t extensively test both so I’ll reserve judgement till I get to spend some more time with it. And we got to play Asphalt 5 with the phone being hooked up to a projector. I have to admit, it was pretty awesome.
Source -
Quick Review Samsung Wave -
SatishSays dot Com
Quick Review - Samsung Wave
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