With Android, iPhone OS, Windows Phone, Symbian, LiMo, Meego and more out there to run your smart phone, one might be forgiven for thinking that the last thing the world needs is the introduction of another smart phone operating system (OS).
Well, Samsung, the electronics giant, and no stranger to the smart phone market, has done just that with its Bada (Korean for Ocean) OS, which has made its debut in Ireland on the Wave GT-S8500 smart phone.
The Wave GT-S8500 is a very impressive bit of kit. A largish tablet format, it is dominated by its 83.8mm screen which is a new technology developed by Samsung, Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED). To the end user what this means is that Samsung have found way to take a very power hungry layer out of the LED screen that has also allowed a massive increase in performance to make a more vibrant display. We viewed an episode of beautifully coloured and shot TV series “Mad Men” on the device by way of a test and the results were stunning. However, a greater boon for users is that an overnight charge, say seven or eight hours resulted in a four day battery life with average use, including Wi-Fi. Let me say that again, four days!
The device itself displays a very high build quality with front camera for video calls, three hard buttons and that big screen. On the back is an LED flash, camera aperture for the 5Mp camera and a beautiful brushed steel battery cover with the manufacturer’s name in bas-relief. It feels comfortable in the hand with a reassuring weight. USB and headphone connections are on the top edge with volume rocker on the left side and camera and screen buttons on the right.
From start up the impression the screen makes is huge. The TouchWiz interface, familiar to any Samsung user, has been overhauled for the Wave and allows up to seven home screens that can be scrolled through with swipe gestures. Widgets can be attached to each of these, either preinstalled or downloadable through the Samsung apps store.
The apps menu would look familiar to both Android and iPhone users, and, again, the richness of the icons and the colours stand out immediately in the display. A simple drop down gives easy access to notifications, silent mode and connectivity options.
There is an FM Radio, which is a boon, but the Exchange Active Sync holds a few secrets. In testing, we were able, after a little conferring with Samsung, to get this to synchronise Google Apps e-mail, calendar, contacts and tasks. This means that there is no real need to sync with a PC as the connectivity options mean that all information can be downloaded direct from the Internet, if you are so inclined. This is an advantage as we found that the desktop software, the Kies suite, though it works perfectly well on Windows 7 64 bit, the USB drivers that the Wave uses to connect don’t seem to like the 64 bit flavour of W7, meaning we were unable to connect the phone to the test machine. That is a small gripe though.
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