First Look: Samsung Wave (Samsung’s first Bada phone)

I was given a sneak preview of the first Samsung Bada phone, the Samsung Wave (S8500), last week at Samsung Singapore office. Managed to spend 2 hours hands on the device. The device is still a prototype and not ready for market. Some of the things you see here might change before it is released sometime in Q2 this year.

One thing I notice immediately when I saw the Samsung Wave is the screen. We all know that Samsung is famous for their AMOLED screen. But the Samsung is not using any ordinary AMOLED. Samsung call it the Super AMOLED screen. I could see that it is much clearer than the AMOLED screen. You should try get your hands on one of this to see the difference yourself. The Samsung Wave has a 3.3 inch screen (WVGA 800 x 480). The Samsung Wave also has HD(720p) video playing & recording, 5.1ch Mobile Theater, MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV and DivX support.

The Samsung Wave is running on a 1 ghz Cortex A8 processor. 2GB storage (possible of 8GB version) and supports up to 32GB MicroSD card. One thing weird about the design of the phone is the position of the MicroSD card slot. The slot is placed behind the battery, making it impossible to chance MicroSD card without taking out the battery. I thought they stop doing this kind of design already. HSPA, A-GPS, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. There is a 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus and LED flash. It uses a MicroUSB port for data transfer and charging.

The Samsung Wave uses TouchWiz 3.0 with 5 panels for widgets. From what I understand, the widgets on the older TouchWiz are not compatible on TouchWiz 3.0. The default browser is the Dolfin Browser 2.0 which is similar to the one you find on the Samsung Jet. To zoom in/out, just press and hold the screen and slide up/down. (I wish they could add multi-touch to the Dolfin Browser) The unit I tried didn’t have any GSM or WIFI enabled, so I wasn’t able to test the web browser. The Samsung Wave is able to multi-task (press and hold middle button to access Task Manager). It also supports Multi-touch. I managed to pinch and zoom without errors.

There is no virtual Qwerty keyboard in portray mode. You get the usual number pad which you can compose your message. The virtual keyboard on landscape mode needs some time to get used to. I keep pressing the letter above/below the intended button. Might be because the height of the letter is shorter than average. The spacebar seems like it just went on a diet. I wonder if the Bada API allows developers to create new keyboard for the phone. It would certainly be good to see better virtual keyboards.

Since the Samsung Wave is on the Bada platform, developers are able to create application for the phone using C++. Applications will be distributed on the app store. From what I understand, Samsung will be adopting the standard 70-30 profit sharing model. Consumers can purchase apps using their credit cards. It is still too early to judge the Bada platform and the apps available. But from the way things are going, it seems to be pretty good.

I didn’t get to try out the integrated messaging ‘Social Hub’. From what I understand, it’s a unified inbox and contacts from all of your social networks. We’ve seen this on several new phones already. But not all phones are able to do this right. We’ll see how Samsung tackle this issue when I get my hands on the final review unit.

Check out our first look video on Tech65.