The Samsung Wave is like a runner-up in Britain's Got Talent. In its own wee feature-phone village, it's the star of the show, but put it upagainst a truly talented smart phone, and it struggles to compete. The Wave'sgood looks and stacks of features, including a stunning Super AMOLED screen,make it one of the best feature phones around. But it overreaches with social-networking widgets that are hard to setup and underwhelming to use.
Samsung Wave GT-S8500
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The Samsung Wave costs from free on a £20-a-month, two-yearcontract, or £300 on pay as you go.
Hardware heavyweight
Samsung makes many of the screens, chips and other hardware for othermobile phone makers, so it's no surprise that when it puts its mind to it, itcan whip up a fine piece of kit. Everything from the solid metal body to thelittle clasp that releases the back cover shows Samsung pulling out its A-gameto produce a phone worth craving.
The Wave is thin and sleek, with an amazing Super AMOLEDscreen that looks so sharp and close, it's like looking into the limpid poolsof your lover's eyes, if your lover had a Facebook widget on their eyeball.Samsung says the Super AMOLED screen is brighter, clearer and lessreflective than the AMOLED screen we've seen on phones such as the GoogleNexus One.
For use, the most important factor is the reflectiveness, whichmakes AMOLED screens very hard to see in bright sunlight. We did see anoticeable difference outdoors with the Wave compared to the Nexus One,although a standard TFT screen such as on the iPhone 3GSstill trumps them both for outdoor visibility.
The Wave's screen is also fast and responsive to the touch,which makes navigation a dream. It supports multi-touch, so you can zoominto a Web page or a photo with a pinch of your fingers, and we found it zippyand smooth.
Samsung hasn't skimped on the brains of the operationeither. The Wave includes the latest 802.11n standard of Wi-Fi, HSDPA for fastWeb browsing over 3G, and GPS. There's 2GB of built-in memory and room for upto 32GB more in the microSD card slot, although a card wasn't included with ourreview sample.
HD hysteria
The camera is another treat. Advanced features such as touch tofocus make it easier to tweak the Wave's photos quickly and intuitively. Touch thescreen to focus on a dark area, and the exposure automatically compensates bylightening up the photo, for example. There's also a bundle of editing optionsso you can crop and adjust your snaps. Once you're happy with your masterpiece,you can send it by MMS or email, print over USB or Bluetooth, or upload it toFacebook, Flickr and other photo sites.
The camera also shoots 720p HD video, which we found brightand clear. Shots on the Wave won't compete with a dedicated compact camera or camcorder, but it does a fantastic job of capturing quick snapshots andvideos on the fly. The biggest hurdle we found was the focus, which wasn'tquick enough to capture shots with almost any movement. Our still-life photos looked fine, but action shots were a blur.
Bigger and Bada
Samsung says the Wave is the flagship phone for its new operatingsystem, called Bada, which it says will bring more smart-phone features toless expensive feature phones.
The Wave and the Bada OS are up against low-price phonesrunning Google's Android OS, such as the SamsungGalaxy Portal, which tend to cut corners on hardware and leave the softwarealone, delivering a full smart-phone experience in a slightly janky package.The Wave is the opposite, with the hardware as slick as a greased otter, butsoftware that's rough around the edges.
The line between smart phone and dumb phone is becoming more blurredevery day, but we think Bada makes the Wave feel more like a pumped-up feature phone. Ithas a powerful 1GHz processor, and plenty of the features that used to beexclusive to smart phones -- it can handle multiple email accounts, includingOutlook email, and it does a good job of surfing the Web.
It even offers basic multi-tasking, and you can switchbetween running apps by holding down the main button on the front. Its appsare rudimentary though -- the Samsung Apps store is full of simple tools, ring tonesand themes, rather than the more complicated apps that are available on theAndroid or iPhone app stores.
There's also a bundle of social-networking tools on board,such as an address book that links with your Facebook contacts to show you whateveryone's been up to online. There's a hub where you can see links to youremail inboxes and Facebook messages -- although we found this feature underwhelmingcompared to the more powerful merged inbox on BlackBerryphones.
The main problem with Bada is it's not easy enough to setup and use. We struggled to get ourvarious Gmail, Outlook, Google Apps and Facebook accounts syncing correctly,although setting up Twitter was easier. The included manual is no help at all,and focuses on simple tasks, such as making calls, that we don't need help with.
By contrast, the HTC Legend,which runs Android, does a grand job of walking you through setup as you needit. Without that help to get up and running, the Wave's more advanced features are justfrustrating.
Widget wonderland
Although the Wave's cutting-edge features aren't impressive, it doesimprove on the more basic features you may know from previous Samsungphones.
The home screen widgets, for example, have had a good polish.You can add up to ten home screens on the Wave, and fill each one with livewidgets that do everything from display your Twitter feed to show you theweather.
Compared to other Samsung phones, we love that the widgetsdon't slide around when you touch them -- you have to touch a button to add andremove them, so you don't end up dragging them around by accident like you doon the SamsungJet, for example.
But the widgets areless customisable than on phones such as the MotorolaFlipout, and you can't put shortcuts to your apps on the home screenseither. So again, the Wave feels more advanced than a typical feature phone, butit doesn't offer the power of a smart phone in terms of customisation.
Conclusion
We have to give the Samsung Wave credit for its gorgeous case and screen,and for introducing the Bada software, which is definitely an improvement onprevious Samsung feature phones. But if Bada is going to drag complicated smart-phone features, such as multiple email and social networking accounts, kicking andscreaming into the mainstream, it needs to be much easier to setup.
If you're upgrading from a feature phone, and you're willing to spend some time wrestlingwith making it work, we think the Wave is a good option for an upgrade, especially with its relatively low price. If you're looking to move to a smart phone, however, we suggest youcheck out one of the cheaper BlackBerrys or Android-powered phones instead.
Edited by Nick Hide