Samsung Wave Review

Supplied by Clove

Price: £323.13

Main features-

Powerful 1GHz Processor
Samsung Bada Operating System
Stunning 3.3 inch Wide Super AMOLED display
mDNIe Technology for free viewing angle and super fast response
Social Hub brings your social networks together
TouchWiz 3.0 intuitive and customizable user interface
Fast Wireless Networking 802.11 b/g/n
Samsung Apps for unlimited expandability

The Samsung Wave (S8500) faces an uphill battle in a smartphone market that currently consists of iPhone OS, BlackBerry, Symbian S60 3rd and 5th editions, Maemo, webOS, Windows Mobile and Android. The main reason is because it runs the new Bada operating system which will be largely unknown to most smartphone enthusiasts and is one which presents itself as highly consumer centric.

I suspect that it is marketed at consumers who are not comfortable with a full smartphone, but who want more advanced features in a friendlier interface which mimics the feel of feature phones. The market for feature phones is still way ahead of the smartphone sector and there is a gap waiting to be filled which Bada looks, on first look, to feel perfectly. However, to call it a cut down smartphone OS may be doing it a disservice because it has a lot more functionality that I expected before I used it for the first time.

First Impressions

Removing the Wave from its box reveals a sleek device which is only 10.9mm deep and 166 grams in weight. The metal construction is reminiscent of the Nexus One and it shocked me the first time I used it. It screams Samsung in every part of the design, but with much more class and style than most Samsung phones and the overall form factor is as good as I have held in a long time.

The buttons below the screen are tactile enough for normal use and work as you would like, but the diamond styling of the centre button is a bit at odds with the sleekness of the rest of the phone. On the left hand side you have the volume keys and on the right are the lock key, very useful, and camera shortcut key. There is nothing on the bottom which means that the microUSB port is housed on the top which is of course the worst place for it. Also on the top is a standard 3.5mm headphone jack which is well placed. I tested my iPhone headphones on the Wave and they did not work properly, lots of interference and buzzing, and so I had to resort to the included in-ear set. I will detail the music quality in part two once I have spent time exploring, but first impressions of the music software interface are excellent. I didn’t realise that I was browsing tracks with ease until I stopped and thought about it; it is different to other smartphones, but arguably easier to use.

Besides the headset you get a USB cable for synchronisation and charging plus a separate AC adaptor and that’s your lot. It’s a simple package, but one that gives you what you need and no more.

There are some other design quirks besides the location of the USB port such as the fact that the SIM card and microSD slots are hidden beneath the battery. This used to annoy me, but these days I rarely swap either and don’t consider these to be a major problem. If you do swap SIMs or expansion cards a lot, you can take heart in the fact that the Wave took just under 20 seconds to complete its start up from cold- very impressive indeed.

To sum up the aesthetics and the overall build quality, I am hugely impressed with what I see here. It feels solid as a brick yet is designed like a Nexus One with a quality look and feel that is usually only reserved for high-end smartphones.

First Play

Trying a brand new mobile operating system should be painful after so many years testing and reviewing BlackBerry’s, Androids, Windows Mobiles and all of the rest, but everything came so naturally to me. It dawned on me that Bada is like the love child of Android and iPhone OS which sounds like a big statement. I will qualify what I mean in part two, but if you imagine a smartphone with the build quality and high specifications of the Nexus One running an operating system which is, at times, as smooth and natural to use as iPhone OS you can start to see what I mean. The Samsung Wave genuinely is that good.

I asked Clove for a review unit purely on the basis of trying Bada and fully expected to give it a bit of a kicking like I have with many of the latest Windows Mobile smartphones, but instead I have spent a day with the best smartphone I have tested in the past year. It is the most unexpected smartphone experience of my life so far and one which I still cannot get my head around. In part two I will detail every feature of the Wave from the camera to the operating system and with some luck the Wave will keep my positive feelings going.

I have to say that so far I am struggling to find any downsides at all with the Wave, but with time comes reality and the next part will show if it lives up to its extremely positive first impressions.

PART TWO

The Samsung Wave stole my heart on the first day and I struggled to find any major faults with it. Even the new Bada operating system surprised me by its flexibility, speed and usability which I really did not expect, but let’s look deeper into the hardware features to see if it is as good underneath as it is on the surface.

Camera (8/10)

As you may be aware, I am not a skilled photographer which is actually an advantage when reviewing smartphones because most people are as clumsy as me when it comes to capturing a moment. What I would say about the Wave is that the photography experience is most impressive and perhaps near the very top of what I have used to date. The HD video recording is stunning to look at produces excellent colours and perfectly smooth videos with only the sound letting it down slightly. The actual sound capture is very good, but the microphone appears to be highly sensitive and captures much more background noise than you are likely to want.

An example video is below which loses some quality thanks to YouTube, but it gives you an idea of how well the camera works. Notice the background noise.

Photos, on the whole, turned out better than most 5 Megapixel smartphones I have used in the past and the user interface is perfectly simple. There is touch to focus alongside a selection of styles which mean you can take photos and have them automatically captured in older styles which you may well be used to from the myriad of third party iPhone apps that do this. I shouldn’t forget the face/blink detection and Geo-Tagging which are also built in.

All in all I have been quite taken by the camera setup here and especially with the ease of use, but then I discovered another trick. Built in to the Wave is software that allows you to create videos using photos, video clips and background music and it is incredibly easy to use. I need to play with it a bit more to ensure that the results are as expected, but it is a bonus and one that is quietly tucked away for when you need it.

Media (8/10)

Media is growing in importance possibly more than any other area in new smartphones and Samsung has not forgotten this. The music software interface is reminiscent of the iPhone, but with a new twist in that you are presented with a scrolling list of CDs to find the tracks you want to listen to. The included in-ear earphones work very well and after a few minutes tweaking the different sound settings I found a quality that rivals the rest in terms of crispness and the ability to make every instrument heard. I still can’t use my iPhone earphones due to interference which is a shame, but at least Samsung has bothered to include a decent set for free. The acoustic settings, such as stadium, hark back to an earlier time, but they are a bit of harmless fun and really do adjust the sound markedly. Finally, the music recognition feature is smart and is effectively Shazam thrown in for free. Not quite finally- there is a music store widget included as well, but the prices seem a little steep to me.

Video playback is very good as well and only hampered by the 3.3” screen which makes long term viewing slightly uncomfortable especially when there is a lot of action going on at one time. The video performance and display is exceptional though and if this technology (software and hardware) was implemented on a bigger screen the experience would be fantastic. The YouTube app is acceptable and easy to use, as everything appears to be on the Wave, but the video quality is strangely blurred which surprised me considering that I was testing it on Wi-Fi. I believe that a software update could fix this though.

The photo app is exceptional in the way it manages a large library of images and is super quick no matter how many are loaded onto an expansion card. You can scroll through them without a finger; simply turning the phone to the left will start smoothly moving the images across or you can choose from a lively thumbnail presentation that shows, in great detail, the photos you want to select.

Voice Quality / Signal (10/10)

This is a real surprise. The Wave has a speakerphone that rivals the best of the BlackBerry smartphones and it is also very loud and clear which are the most important qualities in any speakerphone. It gets better though because the in-ear speaker quality is the best I have heard to date. It is better than the Nokias I have used and better than the digital landline phone I use at work. The only slight downside is that it breaks up at top volume, but the loudness is high enough that you should never need to move it up to this level.

Signal strength also appears to be beyond average; I get constant 3G at home with HSDPA appearing more than 50% of the time. This has not been achieved by any other phone I have reviewed to date.

Connectivity (10/10)

Another 10??? Let me explain- besides the excellent signal reception, the Wave is loaded up with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v3.0, microUSB v2.0, A-GPS and 3G/HSDPA. This is all great and at the very high-end, but the Wi-Fi is special in a way that a simple specs sheet cannot explain. When you turn the Wi-Fi toggle on it immediately connects to the router in a style that only Apple products have achieved to date. On BlackBerry devices there is a significant wait for the phone to connect, my experience with Windows Mobile devices has been disastrous with continual drop out and failures to connect and most Android devices I have tested have also had the occasional problem. The Wave connects in the blink of an eye and stays connected; it is quick and I have not had one single problem so far. Overall I am impressed with the high-end feature set and the way in which it all works so have no reasons at all for complaint, but many to get excited about.

General Performance (10/10)

Surely not another 10? Oh yes indeed. Performance has been peerless so far and I have not experience one freeze or any slowdowns at all. It feels like a feature phone in use, but even the more intensive features open immediately and perform as you would wish them to. It is as fast as the BlackBerry OS, but with much more capability within. Time will tell how well it copes with heavy usage, but my first few days suggests that it is a performer of the highest order. The fact that there is a 1Ghz Hummingbird CPU onboard possibly makes all of the difference alongside a POWERVR SGX 3D graphics engine. There is also 2GB of internal memory so it appears that Samsung has not scrimped at all on the Wave in any area.

Screen (10/10)

Hands down the best screen I have used on a smartphone. It is highly responsive and looks splendid in all conditions. The colours are incredibly vibrant and the screen content feels as though it is closer to the glass than most other smartphones. The main advantage of this screen is the performance in bright sunlight. I tested it next to the iPhone, which is very good in bright conditions, and it is much, much better. When I saw AMOLED on the specs sheet my heart dropped because they are often unreadable in bright conditions, but the mDNIe technology (whatever that is?) used here really does work. The viewing angles are to the extreme and it is simply wonderful to look at and use. Superb!

The marketing blurb from Samsung explains why the experience is so good, and it would appear that similar technology is being used in the iPhone 4- “The Wave is equipped with the superbly brilliant AMOLED display, an improvement on the previously considered the world’s best AMOLED screen. Gone are the additional air gaps and touch sensor panel of previous touch screens.

Instead users are able to enjoy much crisper images, vividly brilliant colors, higher contrasts all packaged in a slimmer device.

Super AMOLED’s vivid clear and less reflective images far surpasses the original AMOLED. Touch sensor is right on the top of the AMOLED screen, so no additional panel is needed for the touch sensor. The ultra-brilliance of Super AMOLED, makes video so astonishingly vivid, your display almost seems alive.”

Battery (8/10)

It suffers with prolonged Wi-Fi and voice calls, but I can see myself getting through 2 days of reasonably heavy use which is yet another surprise. The standby time is superb and in a day with little usage the battery barely dropped at all. To truly judge a battery, a full week’s use is needed, but so far so very good.

Other hardware features (9/10)

There is an accelerometer which is instant when moving orientation, is even quicker than the iPhone, a digital compass, FM radio and a proximity sensor. If developers are enticed to the Bada platform the hardware on offer here gives great scope for some smart apps that will make the user experience second to none. I really do mean second to ‘none’.

That’s your lot for today. I was going to cover the Bada OS and available apps, but that will now be covered in part 3. The hardware in the Wave is exceptional and I am not one to get excited by smartphones these days. I expected to be comparing it to the high-end feature phones that the likes of Sony Ericsson are releasing, but instead I find myself pitting it against the all conquering iPhone 3GS. The Wave is faster, has a better screen, better battery life, much better call quality and speakerphone and is beautifully put together. This does not mean that it is better than the iPhone or Nexus One because I need to look at the whole package and my run though of the software in part 3 should make up my mind.

PART THREE

This review is taking a lot longer than I expected because there is a lot to talk about as far as the Samsung Wave is concerned. Besides the stunning hardware (see part two), it is running Bada OS and is the first smartphone to do so. This alone warrants a close look at what it can do and by all accounts it can do a lot.

When you first fire up the Wave you are presented with an interface that looks like any other feature phone setup, but a longer look reveals much more. Some time spent with the phone shows that Samsung has spent a lot of time looking around at the competition and building an operating system which is seemingly trying to capture more than just the consumer market. The hardware and software combined take much of the goodness from competing products and produce a solution which at first glance is too good to be true.

The image below highlights the best features found in smartphones running on competing mobile operating systems and every single one of them is present in the Samsung Wave-

It is clearly apparent that the Wave, and potentially Bada, is special and that Samsung has put a lot of effort into its first Bada OS phone, but what is it really like to use? As the operating system is new I will spend more time than usual demonstrating what it does.

Multi-tasking

Multi-tasking is not present if you read the various online Bada resources and official information, but this confuses me. For example, I can have a third party eBook running and when I leave it the app stays in the same state at the same page. Holding the centre key will bring up a selection of currently running apps and tapping one will take you back to where you left off. However, when I then run another app the eBook is not in the running apps page. It is slightly confusing and it seems to be as though Samsung is taking the Apple route and providing a dumbed down form of multi-tasking rather than a full blown effort.

Home screen

This feature screams Android to me in almost every nuance of the design; you can have multiple home screens which have a background that moves slightly to the left or right when you swipe between them. You can add widgets such as a calendar, emails, birthdays, BBC iPlayer and many more, and the press of a button brings up a table of icons just like Android.

If you tap the edit icon in the top left corner you can then move icons around by holding them and dragging them in exactly the same way you do on the iPhone. Back to Android similarities; dragging down the top bar will offer three large icons to enable and disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth plus a handy silent icon for meeting etc. It also shows what notifications you have and these are also detailed in the top bar.

PIM

This has always been a contentious area on the latest smartphones; Apple hasn’t got it right yet on the iPhone, but Android has gone some way to making it a usable experience for everyone. Bada sits somewhere in the middle and offers a PIM setup that looks like the kind you would find in a feature phone, but which performs quite well. The calendar is basic and offers a list, day and month view with MS Exchange synchronisation included. Adding a new entry is straightforward enough, but I could not find a way to set alarms by default which is an unnecessary annoyance. For a new appointment you can include a location and participants plus set the standard reoccurrences from 1 day to 1 year.

Contacts allows you to create new entries which include a photo, IM details and just about everything else you should need. Nicknames, VOIP numbers, PTT numbers, Assistant names, children etc. etc. are all there and comprehensive enough to work for serious business people who need to store lots of information for each person. You can also ‘Get Friends’ through Facebook and MySpace.

A task manager is present that allows you to set alarms and standard priorities and will suit those of you who need basic task management. If you need more, you will have to wait until someone develops something more comprehensive.

There is a basic memo app present which offers coloured memo styling and little else. The memos are listed in alphabetical order, but there appears to be no way to search for memos within the app. It feels too consumerist for me, but does what it need to.

The Clock app includes alarms which can be set for a multitude of times, world clocks, a stopwatch and a timer. It is effectively the standard iPhone clock app, but with much more flexible alarm management.

The calculator is basic until you turn the phone on its side and then a scientific version pops up. I am sure I have seen that somewhere before? The keys are just big enough to hit in the scientific view and it just passes my test for when quick calculations are needed. It could be better though.

A Mini Diary is included where you can store daily entries and also capture photos, weather, locations and notes. This reminds me of Awesome Notes on the iPhone and is a very good solution compared to many third party offerings on other platforms. You can also publish entries from the diary to a blog directly from the phone- a super clever idea which could be tweaked on other platforms to make mobile blog posting much easier than it is now. This app won’t be used by everyone, but is nice to have for free.

The default PIM apps are decidedly OK without ever verging on looking like they are designed for professionals. The sad part is that some of them include a great deal of functionality and just need tarting up to look more serious if you know what I mean. They do fall somewhere in between the default iPhone and Android PIM apps and have the potential to be great if Samsung chooses to pursue development here.

Messaging

The SMS app offers conversation views and standard folder views plus the ability to backup text messages to the memory card. There is a spambox, broadcast messaging option and folder management which is impressive. I have to say that this is the most complete SMS solution I have seen to date and it treats texts like emails which is handy for serious texters.

Now for the all important email. When you choose to set up a new email account you are presented with a list comprising of Exchange ActiveSync, Google, Yahoo!, Hotmail and Others. The setup process was very quick for my Exchange account and it has merrily grabbed my contacts, calendar entries and emails ever since. The email display is again verging on being to consumer targeted, but you get a lot of option for each email. For example pressing the bottom settings icon brings up options to print via Bluetooth, backup email, change the display mode, add to contacts, forward with or without attachment and of course to delete. It is pretty complete, but the emails do not appear as they would on a desktop. There appears to be no HTML support built in, but I may be wrong on that- I have found no option to allow such presentation.

Social Networking

Social hub is a curious app which Samsung talks about a lot in its marketing literature. You can use it to compose new emails, texts, social networking messages and the like and once you get used to it is a much quicker way to communicate than previously. It also acts as a way to access each of the apps that relate to these services. I will let Samsung explain how it works because I can’t quite get the words out- “Keep up-to-date with communities in your hands with email, Instant Messaging and SNS. Social Hub integrates contact information from all your online accounts, so you can easily find your contacts and select the best way to communicate. Social Hub’s synchronised calendar lets you manage your schedule by integrating events from all your online accounts in one convenient display.” webOS anyone?

These dedicated apps are not too bad and I quite like the Twitter client. If only I could find a way to post photos and locations? Hopefully these will be included in a future update.

The Facebook app is much more complete and offers most of the functionality you would expect such as photo uploading. I would say that it compares very well to the iPhone and Android Facebook clients.

Data Entry

OK, you may well be aware of my thoughts on touch screen data entry and they haven’t changed with the Wave. It offers landscape support in all views, but there is no haptic feedback and the keys are quite small. I have to say that this one area is a letdown when the rest of the operating system is considered and Samsung would do well to jump on it quickly and get it sorted.

My personal preference for hardware keyboards aside, the iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile data input methods are better and the Bada setup compares closely to Symbian S60 5th Edition i.e. not good at all.

Navigation

Navigation Bada is extremely fulfilling and reminds me very much of the iPhone in the way you sweep through pages of apps and use multi-touch to increase and decrease the size of photos. TouchWiz UI 3.0 is a similar solution to HTC Sense, but one which does not feel like an add-on. All in all this is the best touch experience I have known on any phone and it rivals the iPhone very closely.

GPS

The A-GPS works well in Google Maps and got a lock very quickly, but the included navigation app has not found my current location once so far. I have read about this problem elsewhere and so it appears to be a bug, a pretty big one for a navigation app. With luck more solutions will become available, but until then (or if Samsung sort out the problem) Google Maps is your only option. This feature in inconclusive at this time.

Samsung Apps

Apps are of course a major feature for any smartphone operating system and Bada needs to do well in this area to compete. Samsung Apps is included which allows you to purchase and download apps on the phone itself, but the current library is a little shallow. Here are the numbers I could find-

Entertainment: 26 items
E-Book: 20 items
Games: 35 items
Health/Life: 46 items
Music/Video: 1 item
News: 1 item
Navigation: 2 items
Reference: 12 items
Social Networking: 1 item
Utilities: 18 items

The news gets better because some big titles are already available. Astraware has released Sudoku, Board Games and Solitaire already (all retailing for £3.00 each). Let’s Golf, Real Football 2010, Dungeon Hunter, Homerun Battle and UNO are other notable releases already available. Let’s Golf is excellent on the Wave and I would argue almost as good as on the iPhone- when a larger screened Bada device becomes available gaming will be even better.

The fact that some of the big publishers have already jumped onboard is likely down to the general success of mobile apps as anything else, but they obviously see potential here to even make the effort.

Only a couple of hundred apps will be sneered at by some, but compare that to the rate at which new webOS apps were added and there is room for optimism. Android and the iPhone will always be the king of apps, but I come back to my old argument; how many apps do I need on my phone? It seems as though Bada ‘may’ soon cover most of the bases from gaming to productivity and everything in between, time will tell.

Browser

I can’t say that I am impressed by the Dolphin browser onboard. It is quite quick and uses multi-touch well, but there is no automation in terms of how web pages fit the screen. Double taps can make the text far too small and at other times the text scrolls past each side of the screen. It needs some work.

Extras

There are many extras that I could detail, but my hands are tired now and I have drunk too much coffee so I will keep this bit short. IM is a basic app that deals with instant messaging (obviously), Daily Briefing combines weather, news, feeds and a schedule in the one app and FM Radio works surprisingly well using the included headphones and is one of the better radio solutions I have come across. It also works in the background when you are doing other things and includes a neat bookmarking feature. The voice recorder is simple to use and recordings can be sent via email or Bluetooth and finally the My Accounts app offers a simple list of all the accounts that are set up on the Wave.

Quirks

Despite the overall ease of use, there are some quirks to the way Bada works. Some actions are far from obvious when you first use them and you will have to spend some time understanding where everything resides. However, there is a consistency to the menus in each app which largely overcomes the initial learning curve. The settings menu verges on the Android style of offering too many tweaks, but some will love this and I do feel that a hardware back button would be a useful addition.

I will conclude this review tomorrow and also look at where Bada could fit in, but one aspect of the Wave has surprised me more than any other. In a matter of days it has fitted into my life with little fanfare and just seems to do the jobs I need it to. From photos to gaming to PIM, I am gradually getting used to something so new, yet so familiar. Has Samsung bridged the gap between all of the other mobile operating systems and created the perfect middle ground? Maybe…

PART FOUR

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.

Available from Clove for £323.13