So, the Samsung Wave’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here. So much so, in fact, that our good friends over at SlashGear managed to get one sent to them, and sure enough, they’ve been nice enough to give us one of their famous “SlashGear Reviews.” There’s a lot to take in with the Wave, considering it’s the first with the Super AMOLED display, and it’s the first to feature their proprietary mobile Operating System (OS), bada. So, before we bore you to death with a simple introduction, let’s get right into it, shall we?
We’ll keep our version of it short and sweet, because more than anything else we like to have the original review speak volumes. Plus, we borrow all the good pictures, anyway. Hardware wise, SlashGear’s quick to point out that there’s a lot to like about the Wave. It’s got a metal chassis, which goes a long way to give it a far more durable, and not “featurephone” appeal. The 3.2-inch Super AMOLED display takes up the majority of the front of the device, leaving just enough room for the hardware buttons on the bottom. And, on the back, there’s a 5MP camera with an LED flash. You can find a microSD card slot, a 3.5mm audio jack, and the units come in two flavors: 2GB or 8GB, depending on how much space you think you need. Under the hood, you have a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, making sure that the whole thing works better than you might expect.
Of course, we have to take a moment to talk about the display, as it’s one of the defining features of the handset. Thanks to Samsung’s brilliance with displays, they managed to get the gap between the screen’s glass front and the AMOLED layer to a finer point, thus making it a lot easier to use in sunlight. However, you still won’t be using it in direct sunlight, so don’t get your hopes up too much. Samsung did well with the colors as well: they made the visuals on the screen with a high-visibility color scheme in mind, so that no matter what you’ll be able to see what you’re doing. The Super part of the AMOLED goes a long way to make it so the colors are far more saturated than the predecessor, but the display is also brighter and more crisp. It all works together to make one amazing screen.
Now, time for bada. Right off the bat, it won’t look anything different than Samsung’s proprietary User Interface (UI), known as TouchWiz. It’s the same kind of look and feel that’s been featured on all sorts of Samsung’s touchscreen devices, so if you’re at all familiar with it, you’ll probably be right at home. However, there are some changes, all of which make more of a statement in the power of the OS, as well as the features it supports. For example, there are a few more active and dynamic widgets, rather than simple icon links, or portals to the web application. There’s a widget/application pre-installed on the device to aggregate your social networking, from the likes of Twitter and Facebook, which you can use right from one of the homescreens to reply, retweet, comment, or “like,” as you see fit, and what’s appropriate for the social networking tool, of course.
In the end though, the Wave may just be too many amalgamations between the iPhone (its User Interface/icons), Android (widgets, social networking aggregators and integration), and the familiar look of TouchWiz. It just doesn’t feel fresh enough to warrant a brand new Operating System. However, the hardware speaks volumes, and there’s nothing really “negative” about the OS, so picking up a Samsung Wave won’t make you the sad kid on the block, that’s for sure. Now, for a far more in-depth review, head on over to SlashGear and check it out. In the mean time, check out the video and pictures below.
Click here to view the embedded video.
[via SlashGear]
