Monthly Archives: June 2010

Years and years of writing about iPhones, BlackBerry’s, Nokias, Windows Mobile and Android devices have been put into perspective over the past week. I, like most other technology writers, tend to be mind locked into the big five when it comes to pondering on who will dominate the smartphone market over the next few years. Of course these things are fluid and Android has shown what can be done with the right amount of backing. Android has Google behind it though so we should expect something special. iPhone has Apple behind it and BlackBerry has RIM which has grown purely because of messaging and the excellent hardware. Nokia is powering Symbian, but I have no idea in what direction it is heading and as for Windows Mobile, who knows what will happen?

Bada should be a blip on the smartphone radar. It should be a consumer centric operating system that appeals to those who want a smartphone feature phone than they have now, but it is so much more than that. It really does feel like a combination of all of the above and as such produces a wonderful experience for the user, one which can do lots of complex things, but hide the technology just like the iPhone OS does.

The Samsung Wave is the first of the Bada generation and this is what makes the experience so impressive. Remember the T-Mobile G1? A smartphone with so many flaws that many wondered if Android had a future at the time. The early BlackBerry’s? Dreadful phones that were good for email and little else although to be fair they were of their generation and had little competition. The Palm Pre? Toys R Us hardware and a dreadful battery. If you look back through the smartphone years the same story repeats itself over and over again and even the first iPhone was 2G only when the others were 3G. It was slow and still managed to have a poor battery life despite the limited communication offerings. All first generation devices have been rubbish in at least one significant area, but the Samsung Wave has broken that trend and, if anything, elevated what we should expect from smartphones in the future.

Everyone is talking about the iPhone 4 and deservedly so, but the screen on the Wave is astonishing and the debate has already started surrounding which phone has the best screen. Samsungs argument is that “The visibility difference is only 3 to 5 percent. But raising resolution to that level increases battery consumption by 30 percent.” There is little doubt that the Samsung Wave screen is stunning and highly practical. It works in all lighting conditions and is very easy on the battery; two features that are always at the top of my smartphone wish list. Somehow I am expecting my enjoyment of the iPhone 4 screen to be reduced significantly after using the Wave.

On the hardware front I am struggling to fault the Wave. Everything from the screen to the camera to the speed to the battery to the build quality (I could go on) matches or beats most other phones that I have used over the past couple of years. I cannot think of one smartphone that succeeds in as many areas as the Samsung Wave does and the likes of RIM and HTC have not come close to matching this particular device. I look at the Nexus One now and all of a sudden it feels old and, dare I say it, a little cheap. The Wave is the opening act for the iPhone 4 as far as modern smartphone design goes and the others have to change significantly to compete. Screens will have to be as good as the iPhone 4 and Wave and so will build quality- no longer will people want a smartphone that looks like it costs £400. They will be expecting a Vertu feeling in a consumer phone because the bar has been raised so high.

The Bada operating system feels complete already and there are a couple of hundred apps available for it, including some very big titles. It still has many problems such as poor data entry and some lacklustre PIM apps and a bizarre situation where widgets have to be reset if you use USB or power the Wave off, but if Samsung makes the effort it does not have far to go to compete with Android in terms of performance. If the company can build a phone that makes the HTC range look mass market then it should have the ambition to develop the software to match it.

This all sounds overly positive and as if I am in being over emotional about the Wave, but feel free to look back at my previous smartphone reviews. You will see that positivity is not exactly one of my failings. I have reviewed many, many smartphones over the past few years and loved and hated them in equal measure, but the Wave is different. The Samsung Wave has the best build quality I have seen on a phone, the best screen, the best camera, the fastest performance and potentially the best operating system. I say potentially because work still needs to be done to iron out the minor glitches that are there, but I want to play with Bada more than I want to play with Android. In fact, I want to play with Bada more than I do my iPhone despite the billions of apps available for it. If Samsung can build a first generation smartphone this good, I am seriously looking forward to what will follow. A remarkable achievement so far, but more apps will be needed quick to make it truly fly.

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