Samsung Wave Review

In a nutshell: The Samsung Wave is a flagship phone running Samsung's brand new Bada smartphone operating system. The Wave has plenty of headline-grabbing features such as the world's first Super AMOLED display, HD video recording, a superfast 1GHz Hummingbird CPU, GPS satnav, 5.1 surround sound and 1GB of built-in memory. Overall this is a high quality package, but remember that it's not a smartphone. Now replaced by the Samsung Wave 2.

The Samsung Wave is the first phone to use the new Samsung Bada OS and features the world�s first Super AMOLED display, for sharper, brighter images and a super fast response. It's a phone with an awful lot going for it, but at the same time it's hard to see it going head-to-head against the best smartphones.

Let's take a look at the Super AMOLED display first. Yep, it's outstanding and as good as the hype suggests. Samsung are the world's pioneers of Super AMOLED technology, and only Samsung phones will have this for the immediate future. The big thing about Super AMOLED is that the screen itself is touch sensitive, instead of the touch sensitive layer being placed on top of the screen. This results is a brighter display and up to 80% less reflected light, so when outdoors the display is much sharper and brighter than an ordinary TFT display. That's the theory, and we have to say it works in practice! The Wave has a gorgeous 800 x 480 pixel capacitive touchscreen, and the result is a pin-sharp display.

While we're talking about appearance, it's worth stopping to mention just how good the Wave looks in the flesh. It looks a whole lot better than in the photo here. What this photo fails to get across is how shiny and metallic the Wave looks, and how tactile it is. It's ultraslim too, at under 11mm in thickness, yet it feels solid and weighs in at 118g. It looks good, it feels good. You want to hold it, you want to own it. And the Super AMOLED screen isn't the only place where Samsung have crammed quality into their new flagship phone. But before we investigate the insides, let's consider the operating system next. For the Wave is also the first phone to run Samsung's new Bada smartphone operating system.

Bada is a multi-tasking mobile operating system designed by Samsung for use in phones and tablet devices. While the Wave has standard apps such as facebook, twitter and email, the number of useful apps available for download is minimal at present. Frankly, we doubt that Bada will ever rival Apple's OS X, Google's Android or Microsoft's WinMobile operating systems for apps.

Sitting on top of Bada is Samsung's usual touchscreen user interface, TouchWiz 3D 3.0. This 3.0 version is the very latest and has been redesigned after user feedback from earlier releases. We've always been fans of TouchWiz, and the 3D 3.0 version is fantastic. Existing Samsung users will love it, and we think everyone else will too! TouchWiz features a number of home screens that are fully customisable, so you can add your own widgets and shortcuts to create an interface that works for you. Looks like Samsung may have picked up a few tips from Android here, which is no bad thing. You also have access to a full-sized virtual QWERTY keyboard, which makes texting and email a breeze. The keyboard changes when you rotate between landscape and portrait modes, with larger keys available when in landscape. The new Social Hub has been designed from the ground up to seamlessly integrate all major email providers, IM and social networking services such as Yahoo, MSN, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

The web browser isn't the best, with no support for flash, but the AMOLED screen does provide a good platform for viewing at least. You can however watch YouTube videos.

The Wave is a flagship phone for Samsung, and they've packed in the kind of hardware that impresses. Top of the bill is a super-fast 1GHz Hummingbird processor that delivers a lightning fast response to key presses and generally enables the phone to fly. The camera's impressive, with 5 megapixels, autofocus and flash. The video camera is outstanding too and can record in high definition (720p) and in slow motion and the Wave also support video calling. The music player is excellent, with 5.1 surround sound and an FM radio with RDS too. When playing back video, the Wave supports pretty much all formats, including DivX and Xvid. The fast processor and Super AMOLED screen make all the difference here. A GPS receiver is built in too, with Samsung's own proprietary mapping system.

There's plenty of memory for all the multimedia features too, with a full 1GB of memory built-in, plus support for microSD cards up to 32GB. Battery life is good, with the monster 1500mAh battery delivering plenty of grunt, and connectivity is excellent with support for 3G HSPDA 7.2Mbps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and USB. The 3.5mm audio jack enables a third-party stereo headphone to be plugged in.

Overall we like the Wave very much. It has a few shortcomings, but excels in so many other areas. It's a logical upgrade for users of previous Samsung phones such as the Jet. As a smartphone, we feel that at present it can't compete on a level playing field with phones such as the iPhone 3G S or the Android-based HTC Desire. But if you regard it instead as a high-end non-smart phone with a few extra features, then you'll find it meets your expectations. Remember that the Wave is considerably cheaper than the iPhone 3G S, and has some very impressive features that outperform the iPhone in some ways. Just don't hope for too many apps in the near future!

Samsung G600 Review

In a nutshell: The G600 is still a fantastic phone. It combines fab looks with a superb 5 megapixel camera, a fully featured music player and 1 Gbyte of memory. It avoids the touch-sensitive keys of the U600, making it a totally practical phone to use. Available in black, pink, purple and silver.

The Samsung G600 offers the power of a 5 megapixel camera in Samsung's now-classic slimline slider format. Although it's two years old, the G600 has an amazing spec and a beautiful design to match. Samsung don't always make perfect phones - the E900 and U600 irritated some users with their touch-sensitive buttons - but the G600 gets everything just right and is a real classic. Whilst it lacks the wow factor of newer phones, it's just a fantastically good phone to use with nothing to detract from the experience.

At Mobile Phones UK, we like to start reviewing phones with a look at the outside. Samsung's slider design has been around for about 5 years now, and is tried and tested. The G600 opens and closes with an easy sliding action, and has a smooth silky finish that's glossy but not a fingerprint magnet like some. The G600 is not an ultra-slim phone like the U600, but at 15mm it's certainly not a fatty. It's a good practical size, and at 48mm wide it's a couple of millimetres narrower than some of the ultra-slims, which doesn't sound like much, but makes the phone easier to hold. The keypad is responsive when pressed and there are no touch-sensitive keys. The screen is large at 2.2 inches diagonally, and with 16 million colours and 240 x 320 pixels is Samsung's best screen ever. The camera is well protected behind the slide: to use it you open the slide to reveal the lens and flash. Frankly it's hard to see how the physical design could have been improved. 5 stars so far.

The G600's camera is a 5 megapixel beast with autofocus, LED flash and 4x digital zoom. The G600 is still an impressive camera phone and one of the best in the budget category. The G600 features two useful camera modes - panorama mode lets you take pictures of wide views such as landscapes, and macro mode lets you take close-up shots. There's a built-in picture editor, and direct printing to a Pictbridge-compatible printer is supported. High quality video recording at 640 x 480 pixels is also available.

After a camera, the next most important gadget in a mobile is a music player, and the G600 doesn't disappoint. Every major format is supported (MP3, AAC, AAC+, 3-AAC+ and WMA). There's support for wireless Bluetooth stereo headsets - in fact there's support for dual headsets, which means that a friend can listen to your music at the same time if you wish. The G600 has a music player interface with a dedicated music library. You can create playlists and organise your music by artist, album or genre. It's as easy to use as an iPod. An FM radio is also built in. Memory isn't a big problem either as the G600 has built-in user memory of 40 Mbytes plus a 1 Gbyte memory card supplied in the sales package. OK, this isn't a lot but it's enough to store a few hundred songs.

There are plenty of other features - highlights include a document viewer, offline mode, Bluetooth and USB connectivity, and quadband. Battery life seems to be quite good - you should get a few days' usage, depending on how much you use the multimedia features and the Bluetooth.

Can we find fault with the G600? Nope! Do we love it to bits? You bet! The G600 was a very strong contender for Phone of the Year 2007 and is still one of Samsung's best-sellers in 2009!

We've been surprised how many of our user reviews have criticised the G600. The main complaint seems to be the camera. We can only assume that people are using the wrong camera settings (make sure that you set the camera resolution to maximum). The G600 may not be able to match the picture quality of the best, but it's still a darn good camera phonefor its price!

One or two people have complained about the G600 freezing or cutting out when sliding the phone open or closed. Jay from the UK offers this advice: the battery on these phones is a little loose and so breaks contact with sudden movement off phone e.g sliding it up or down or placing it on a hard (or soft surface) too firmly. SIMPLY place a bit of sticky tape around the curved end of the battery at the opposite side of the gold contacts which will push the battery closer to the contacts on the phone. Problem solved, it works fine tho might need two pieces. hope this helps.. love the g600 again now.

Samsung Galaxy S Review

In a nutshell: One year after its launch, the Samsung Galaxy S is still one of the very best phones on the market. It's an Android smartphone and has a host of world-beating features including a 4" Super AMOLED screen, HD video recording and playback, a superfast 1GHz processor, surround sound, GPS with Google Maps, a monster 8GB or 16GB of memory and good battery life. Available in Black or White.

The Samsung Galaxy S is Samsung's answer to the HTC Desire. Like the Desire, the Galaxy S runs Android, the bad boy operating system for 2010, and we're delighted (and a little relieved) to find that it's version 2.1 (Eclair) - the same as on the Desire. The Desire is by far the biggest selling contract phone of the moment, so to beat it Samsung had better deliver the goods, and it seems that with the Galaxy S they really have.

At Mobile Phones UK, the first thing we always do when we get a new phone is to pick it up and paw it a little. Try this with us at home if you like. Pick up the Galaxy S in one hand and the HTC Desire in the other. You'll notice that the Galaxy S is a couple of millimetres wider than the Desire, but several millimetres thinner, making it quite astonishingly thin and significantly lighter too. You'll notice the two touch-sensitive buttons and one physical button below the screen, and then you'll notice the screen itself. It's enormous! At 4 inches from corner to corner, the display completely fills the device, leaving you wondering why HTC couldn't have done the same with the Desire. It's 30% bigger than the display on the iPhone 4 by the way. But turn the phone on and the screen reveals its true power, because it's a Super AMOLED display, like the one on the Samsung Wave. With a Super AMOLED display, the screen itself is touch sensitive, instead of a touch sensitive layer being placed on top. The result is a brighter display and up to 80% less reflected light, so when outdoors the display is much sharper and brighter than an ordinary TFT display. We don't have a photo of how the Galaxy S compares with the Desire, but the difference is quite noticeable. Being a capacitive touchscreen it responds effortlessly to the touch too.

We've said that the Galaxy S runs Android 2.1, so you'll have access to thousands of apps, many of which are free and rival the apps for the iPhone. Pre-installed apps include the Layar Reality Browser (an augmented reality app that overlays digital content about your surroundings as viewed through the phone's camera), a document editor, the Aldiko ebook reader and the new Social Hub which has been designed from the ground up to seamlessly integrate all major email providers, IM and social networking services such as Yahoo, MSN, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Android is a powerful and intuitive operating system, and Samsung's implementation works very well. Android is overlayed with Samsung's TouchWiz 3.0 interface, which resembles the HTC Sense interface and gives you customisation options and plenty of icons and widgets to play with. We understand that TouchWiz can be disabled if you're an Android purist.

To turn up the heat on rival HTC, Samsung have packed the very best hardware into the Galaxy S. The processor runs at a super-fast 1GHz and has a dedicated GPU to assist it, so any interaction with the user interface takes place at lightning speed, and video playback is flicker-free even in high definition. The device has a built-in memory of either 8GB or 16GB and can also accept memory cards up to 32GB, so storage isn't going to be a problem.

The Galaxy S has a 5 megapixel camera with touch autofocus (but no flash) and can also record HD video at 720p resolution.

The music player is outstanding too. As well as the benefits of the enormous onboard memory and the 3.5mm audio jack, the audio quality is fantastic, with support for full surround sound. Video playback on the Super AMOLED screen is also outstanding and the Galaxy S has multi-codec support including DivX support.

Connectivity ticks all known boxes: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, USB 2.0, a 3.5mm audio jack, DLNA support and TV-Out. DLNA lets you wirelessly connect and share videos, photos and music between your phone, your TV and PC. A Wireless Tethering app lets you use your phone as a broadband modem for your laptop or other device. The 3G connection on the galaxy S supports download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps and uploads of 5.76 Mbps using HSPA.

The phone comes with built-in AGPS with Google Maps pre-installed and providing three different views - real street view, traffic view and satellite view.

As you'd expect from an Android phone, accessing the web is a delight on the Galaxy S. With the Chrome-lite web browser, the huge pin-sharp capacitive display and fast data access via HSPA, there's really nothing to beat it.

Finally, as if this weren't enough, there's one final reason to choose the Galaxy S over the HTC Desire: battery life. Not only does it have a larger 1500 mAh battery, but the Super AMOLED screen is considerably more energy efficient than a conventional display. The result is a quoted talktime of double that of the HTC Desire. In practice, we seriously doubt you'll get the quoted 13.5 hours of talktime, but it should easily be enough to see you through even a heavy day's use.

The Galaxy S is quite possibly Samsung's best phone ever, and that's saying a lot. They've taken the latest version of the best operating system and thrown to-die-for hardware at it. In our opinion this outperforms even the HTC Desire in a number of key areas: battery life, HD video recording, the Super AMOLED display, built-in memory. And it's cheaper than the iPhone too! If only the camera had a flash it would be perfect.

Update: now upgraded to the Samsung Galaxy S2.

Samsung Galaxy S2

Samsung Galaxy S2: Build

Samsung Galaxy S2 - Pick up the phone and the first thing you notice is how light it is – it’s just 116g. Measuring 8.49mm, it’s incredibly slim in comparison to 9.9mm for the original Galaxy S; 9.3mm for the Apple iPhone 4 and 8.7mm for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc.

While the Galaxy S2 will certainly fit into the tightest jeans pocket, the compromise is build quality - the body just feels cheap and uninspiring. Things don't improve when you remove the wafer thin back to insert a sim - we’d be seriously worried about snapping it.
Controls are limited to volume on one side, power on the other, MHL port, which serves a dual purpose of charging via USB and outputting to HDMI, and a 3.5mm jack on the top, Samsung includes a range of streaming options including DLNA.

Samsung Galaxy S2: Screen

The highlight of S2 is the 4.3-inch 800x480 screen, which incorporates Super AMOLED Plus technology. Colours are eye popping and blues and greens literally jump out of the screen at you. Off-angle viewing is excellent too - the first phone we’ve seen to match the iPhone 4.

A larger screen sizes means that the phone is bulky, but it’s a joy for movies. When playing back our test HD movie clips, detail is sharp and action smooth. We found that whites aren’t as pure or bright as those on the iPhone 4, although blacks seem darker and colours are bolder and warmer. It handles action smoothly too.

Samsung Galaxy S2: Android

Running Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread), you get seven homescreens customisable with widgets and shortcuts. Swipe down to quickly activate WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and Auto Rotation settings. Phone, Contact, Messaging and Application settings along the bottom are static when you are browsing the homescreens. Like other Android phones, press down to customise with Shortcuts, Folders, Wallpaper and numerous Samsung widgets.

Samsung’s overlayed Android with its TouchWiz UI which is functional and adds some neat features, including four hubs: Music (see below), Games, Readers and Social Hub, which acts as a portal to Kobo bookstore and Magazines via Zinio.

Social Hub syncs social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, to IM accounts including Google Talk; and MySpace and Linked-in. It’s functional, syncing your contacts, but we prefer HTC Sense. In addition Sony Ericsson’s Xperia skin is slightly easier to use, for example here you can only organize the Applications via grid or list and to create App Folders you make the folder first before dragging items onto it.

Samsung Galaxy S2: Processor

The Galaxy S2 has a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. In use the phone feels incredibly quick – one of the fastest smartphones we’ve used, whether you’re browsing a web page or swapping between applications it never feels slow. During our tests it loads web pages over WiFi quicker than the iPhone 4 - loading a content-rich website like T3.com in just 15 seconds.

This isn’t a Nvidia Tegra 2 chip, so we couldn't download  games designed specifically for this (such as Samurai II: Vengence THD), but there are a decent selection of games to play. We defy anyone to not enjoy Shrek Karting with the 3-axis gyroscope, and it ably handles speedy gameplay.

Samsung Galaxy S2: Camera

Samsung has boosted the camera resolution from 5-megapixels to 8-megapixels, instead of a dedicated shutter; you tap the virtual shutter, which is fairly quick if not quite as nippy as the offering on the iPhone 4.

There are plenty of manual controls. Adjust the ISO from 100-800, choose from five white balance settings and choose between three metering settings. Samsung has also included Smile Shot, Beauty, Action, Cartoon and Panorama scene modes. Alongside auto focus, Macro mode captures sharp shots to around 10cm and there’s an effective Face Detection mode.

Still results are pleasing, the S2 is pretty good at controlling noise, and we’d like them to be a little sharper, colours are very natural. The S2 shoots HD video at 720p and 1080p at 30fps and results are pleasing; it’s smooth, with natural colours, perhaps lacking a little definition.

Samsung Galaxy S2: Music

Music Hub lets you browse and buy tracks from 7Digital, downloading directly to your phone, expect to pay around 99p. It’s very well laid out with Featured, Genres, My Music and My page icons along the top.

Confusingly there’s also a Music Player, the interface is very similar, although can create playlists here. We’ve no complaints about the sound quality, when you plug some headphones into the 3.5mm jack, and here you can access nine Equalizer modes and some Sound Effects, including the useful Bass enhancement and Wide.

Samsung Galaxy S2: Other features,

Samsung’s included motion controls. Hold an app down then move the phone left or right to scroll through the homescreens and reposition it. Elsewhere hold two fingers on the screen and move towards you and away from you to zoom in and out. We're not sure how useful these are - to us they felt awkward, but maybe with more time with the phone  you will become more familiar with them.

Polaris Office lets you create and edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents. In portrait mode we did find the keyboard a bit cramped and frequently tapped the wrong keys and the predictive text isn’t as impressive as the iPhone 4. Alternatively the Swipe keyboard detects words as you drag your fingers over the keys, it works pretty well, although frequently didn’t recognize our choices, although this probably has more to do with us hitting the wrong keys. In landscape mode typing is far easier.

Elsewher you get Exchange Activesync, and Kies Air for accessing phone content over WiFi from a PC

Samsung Galaxy S2: Battery

With WiFi on, maximum brightness, moderate browsing, some video and photos we got into our second day. One of the most useful features is Task Manager, where you can view and kill active applications and clear the RAM, and you can enable Power Saving Mode to cut in when the power gets to 50%

Samsung Galaxy S2: Verdict

Our main complaint about the S2 is the build. It’s doesn’t feel premium and considering it will set you back close to £500 on pre-order, this isn’t good enough.

From the HTC Incredible S to the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, there have been some great Android handsets this year; however none have been fantastic, until now. Combining top-notch connectivity with one of the best screens available on a smartphone, backed by a powerful dual-core and good camera, the Samsung Galaxy  S2 is quite simply a fantastic phone, we just wish the Korean giant had produced a handset with build closer to the feel of a top-end HTC or Apple handset.