Samsung Wave S8500 Review
In brief
With a high resolution touchscreen and social networking features, the Samsung Wave S8500 is quick, vibrant and friendly.
Look and Feel
A similar size as the
iPhone albeit slightly taller and thinner, the Samsung Wave S8500 is a nice looking handset. The 3.3 inch screen sits above the call keys and main menu key, and the purple aluminium frame is good for aesthetic and comfort reasons.
The high-end technology which fuels this mobile is visible through the capacitive touchscreen of the Samsung Wave S8500. The screen is not just AMOLED, it is super AMOLED. Using some of the technology found in
Samsung’s range of LCD TVs, the display is very impressive with sharply defined colours and images, perfect for enjoying playback of HD videos, looking through your pictures or simply browsing your favourite sites online. And the multi-touch support means you can enjoy close-ups effortlessly.
The screen on the Samsung Wave S8500 responds well to your finger presses and swipes, and the QWERTY keypad in landscape allows you to comfortably type messages. The accelerometer automatically rotates the screen between portrait and landscape, depending on your preference.
Special features
The high resolution display of the screen – the Wave is the first handset to model the super AMOLED technology – is matched by other impressive pieces of technology onboard. The Samsung Wave S8500 is the first handset to run on Samsung’s new Bada platform and to feature the latest Bluetooth version 3.0 which allows for super swift data transfers.
The Bada platform seems pretty good and is enhanced by the TouchWiz interface on the phone. The UI is user-friendly and multi-tasking is so easy on the Samsung Wave S8500. You can open an app, press the home key to come out of it but leave it running – and a long press of the home key brings up all the apps which are currently open so you can easily manage them. The internal processor (ARM Cortex A8 1GHz) is powerful enough to make multi-tasking seamless.
The TouchWiz UI also has an integrated phone book, which Samsung calls Social Hub. When you click onto a friend in contacts, you can view information in four main areas: the first displays numbers, email addresses etc; the history section shows you your previous texts, emails etc; the activities has the latest updates on social networking sites; and media contains any photos or videos your friend has uploaded. It’s convenient to have the communication in the one place – the new TouchWiz interface is similar to Motoblur on
Motorola devices and the
HTC Sense UI.
Another friendly aspect of the interface on the Samsung Wave S8500 is the customisable home screens. You can press the widget button and select the apps which are most important to you to decorate your home screens – simply drag and drop the ones you want and return the ones you don’t.
The camera inbuilt on the Wave has 5-megapixels and an array of features ranging from an LED flash to face detection to ensure you can take decent pictures on the move. You can also film footage from your phone, and the camera on the front lets you make video calls. The social networking apps include Facebook and Twitter so you can easily share your images with friends online – and the internal memory of either 2GB or 8GB can be increased to up to 32GB using a microSD card.
The Samsung Wave S8500 is set to create quite a stir in the smartphone market thanks to its slim design and cutting-edge technology. You can listen to music on the phone’s media player or FM radio; play 3D games and browse the web. And the sharp, bright and responsive screen means you can truly enjoy all the phone has to offer.