Phones.com » Cell Phones » Review of the Samsung S8500 Wave

Samsung S8500, measured at 118 x 56 x 10.9 mm is compact, slim and can easily be placed in a pocket. It is 4.64 inches long by 2.2 inches wide by 0.42 inch in depth. It weighs 118 g which is ascribed by its metallic body and scratch-resistant glass that protects the screen. The handset is easy to grip due to its sleek design.

Samsung S8500 Wave's display boasts of 480 x 800 pixels, presented on a 3.3 inch screen. This comprises of  an accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate that includes a multi-touch input method, proximity senor for auto turn-off, scratch-resistant surface, smart unlock feature and a handwriting recognition attribute.

Its home key, camera lens, and LED flash are diamond-shaped which makes it very Samsung in external aesthetics. Below the screen are well-designed Send and End keys, as well as the Menu key. This brings about a multi-tasking Menu. The volume rocker can be found on the left side while the lock key and camera shutter are located on the right side. The thin volume rocker makes it very comfortable to operate while the camera shutter is very soft and easy to use by pressing it half-way. At the top is the microUSB port, hidden under a plastic lid that glides softly in and out. The concealed 3.5mm audio jack and the loudspeaker with DNSe (Digital Natural Sound Engine) capability can also be found there. The mouthpiece is strategically located at the bottom. At the back of the phone is the 5megapixel camera with 720p video recording supremacy and LED flash.

Its camera has Geo-tagging, face, smile and blink detection, image stabilization and touch focus.
The smartphone's aluminum battery cover can be opened by pressing a tiny knob at the bottom of the phone. Under it is the 1500 mAh Li-on battery that is expected to last up to 450 hours of stand-by, up to 8 hours and 30 minutes of talk-time and a non-stop music playback of up to 35 hours. Its battery life has been proven to have lasted over 3 days.

Below the battery is the microUSD card slot as well as the SIM compartment. Any user of this phone will not be able to swap its memory card. This phone holds a 16GB microSDHC card trouble-free.

In its entirety, Samsung Wave S8500 is built with class and durability, due to its metallic chassis design.

Samsung S8500 Wave is admired for its amazing touchscreen, with a 3.3 unit of WVGA resolution. The 16M-color touchscreen is absolutely stunning.

The Super AMOLED display is absolutely stunning and runs very well to duplicate over millions of colours, with its 480 x 800 pixel screen. The TouchWiz 3.0 UI is very responsive and elegantly  permits a smooth user interface experience. Smartphones with TouchWiz feature design touchscreens filled with widgets. The homescreen appears to be  part of a panoramic desktop wherein scrolling icons is very crisp and clear.

This smartphone has a 1GHz processor, Wi-Fi, a media player and proximity sensor. Samsung's built-in Dolfin 2.0 browser, with assisted GPS, multimedia and text messaging, an RSS reader, voice commands, email and  voice commands make it such an amazing high-end technology accomplishment by Samsung. Its Bluetooth 3.0 feature makes data transfer faster than other smartphones.

Its Dolphin browser enables the user to play Youtube videos; however, playback has a tendency to lag as zoom in feature is used while viewing the video.

With Samsung's unique inbox feature, seeing all emails in a single place is very impressive and easy. Different colors are designated to various emails in your phone which makes it very easy to distinguish each one of them.

Facebook and Twitter apps can be accessible through Samsung S8500 Wave, however, there is a tendency that it starts to get slow when trying to load new contents.  Also, some photos of friends on Facebook are resized when viewing them. Worse still, there is no way photos of friends on Facebook can be zoomed.

As for the gaming apps of Samsung Wave S8500 and the bada, the performance is poor, not to mention that it is using a 1GHz Snapdragon chipset. Now we would like to say a few words about the gaming abilities of the Samsung Wave S8500 and bada OS as a whole.

The Samsung Wave S8500 uses Samsung LBS Navigation app operated by Route 66 that has a good quality application in terms of its pinch-to-zoom capabilities. However, downloading maps for GPS feature to the phone is far too slow. It  suffers difficulty in pinpointing locations even if the GPS has been turned on.

Samsung Wave S8500, with its Super AMOLED Screen, has the superb ability to playback HD video files in formats like H.264, DivX and Xvid. It is just flawless! Watching a movie in HD is simply amazing!

It is a wonderful experience receiving calls using the Samsung Wave S8500. The voices are just amazingly crystal clear! Its voice quality feature is simply remarkable! The longevity of its battery life of up to 15 hours of talk time in 2G is impressive.

In terms of technology and design, this bada phone is extraordinary. It is sleek, durable and comfortable with a comfy grip.  The 3.3-inch screen displays a bright and vivid appearance. Its 5mp camera captures 720p video, and playback of videos is great.

Although it is a new development in Samsung Electronics, specifically in its smartphones, the bada operating system is not yet perfect as of this time; therefore it needs some innovations to make it run faster. Bada is too ancient compared to Android and iPhone OS in terms of diversity, entertainment options, quality and other applications. It seems that the Samsung Galaxy S's Android operating system is more advanced right now, with the 50,000 apps offered in the market.

Samsung Wave S8500 has been released in the US, UK and Canada starting February 2010. This phone is highly expensive as it has just been released in the market; however, if you have the extra money and your busy lifestyle matches its hyper features, then by all means it is a smart choice.