Reader review: Why I went for Samsung Wave S8500

Get Ahead reader Vinayak Gupta has contributed this review of Samsung Wave S8500  in response to our reader invite (below). Vinayak, who's completed his bachelor's in computer applications is currently pursuing chartered accountancy and runs www.tech6.com.

I was almost sure that I'd be getting the much-awaited HTC Desire. I waited for almost 2-3 months for it to launch in India. And when it did, it was priced quite high, plus unavailability in my city (even today at the time of writing this review) and lack of HTC service centre made me rethink.

Then, I just don't know how, I saw Samsung Wave in a nearby mobile shop, and much impressed by its looks and screen display quality, I researched more about it.

Got blown away by its hardware specs -- I wonder how I missed out this phone from my initial 'which-phone-to-buy' research (maybe Bada -- Samsung's proprietary operating system -- was the reason).

And the best part is its price. Samsung Wave S8500  is almost Rs 10,000 cheaper than HTC Desire, but comes with far superior hardware. I'll list in brief some points of key differences between the phones, which simply strengthened my decision about going for Wave and dump Desire.

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Here are some reasons why Wave wins hands down!

1. Wave has a complete metal body; Desire has rubberised plastic. Wave wins!

2. Wave has Super AMOLED display; Desire has Super LCD. Wave wins!

3. Wave has 1Ghz Hummingbird processor; Desire has 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, and Hummingbird is more powerful. Wave wins!

4. Wave has a dedicated graphics processor; Desire has no such dedicated graphics processor. Wave wins!

5. Wave has a 1500 mAh battery; Desire has 1400 mAh. Wave wins!

6. Wave has 5.1 Surround channel audio built in for enhancing your music experience; Desire does not. Wave wins!

7. Wave has front camera; no front camera on Desire. Wave wins!

8. Wave has 2GB/8GB internal memory; Desire has 512MB. Wave wins!

9. Wave has Wi-fi b/g/n; Desire has Wi-fi b/g. Wave wins!

10. Wave has Bluetooth 3.0; Desire has 2.1. Wave wins!

11. Wave has DivX/Xvid support out of the box; Desire does not. Wave wins!

12. Wave is capable of recording 720p videos at 30fps; Desire can record 720p videos (on Froyo the latest Android OS) at max 24-26fps. Wave wins!

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There are just a couple of things where Desire takes on Wave but these definitely are not deal breakers:

Wave has Samsung's Bada OS; Desire has Android 2.2 Froyo build. Android being much popular and mature, Desire wins! I'm just going by the rumours and hype. I've never been an Android user, so can't really comment on this. Bada OS is a breeze in usability even though it's in its earlier stage.

Desire has a 3.7-inch screen; Wave has 3.3-inch screen. Although not really a con for me, because Wave's Super AMOLED display can easily make Desire's Super LCD look dwarf anytime.

Also, I personally find 3.3-inch big enough for my use. So, I'll say they are at par at this point.

Now, read points 1-12 again. What do you think? Should I go for Desire or Wave? Lol. Desire simply looks too outdated now in front of Wave. Also, consider the fact that Wave is Rs 10,000 cheaper. OMG! With my eyes closed, I'm picking up the Wave.

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Buying experience:

Can't describe how excited I was at first. Opened the seal with my hands, we got two Waves actually (one for my friend).

Picked it up for Rs 17.5K and added a screen protector for Rs 100. Reached home with the phone, and to my shock the charger wasn't working out of the box. Yeah the charger provided with Wave looks really cheap and poorly built. But oh well, I got a brand new charger (and luckily a far better build with of course similar specs) from Samsung Service center. Now, who says Samsung are poor at support? :P.

I got the following in my sales package:

1x Samsung Wave S8500 Handset
1x Travel adaptor
1x MicroSD 2GB memory card
1x Memory card adaptor
1x USB data cable
1x Samsung headset
1x Samsung leather pouch
1x Manual
1x Warranty card
2x Software CDs
1x Rs 17,500 bill :-)

First impressions:

The phone looks stunning. I got the metallic black colour (the other colour available is Ebony Grey), the phone looks solid and sturdy in design and build quality. The complete metal body makes it feel even classier. The screen is big enough for me, and the Super AMOLED display is mind blowing. In fact, the display quality is the very first thing anybody is going to notice.

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Now:

1. I just can't stop saying the same thing again that the build quality is awesome. I think this phone has just raised the bar of what the best and my next phone should be like. Metal body is definitely a huge turn on for me on this phone. I think I would never turn back to a plastic or fibre body now.

2. The contacts application on Wave is superb. Scrolling up and down is smooth as butter. The scrolling ABCD search works great too. Grouping the contacts, adding them to favourites and then using the Buddies Now widget is all just great.

The way you can call a person by sliding your finger from left-to-right over a contact looks so freakin' awesome. And you can even message the contact by sliding from right-to-left. This is something I've being showing to a lot of my friends. They are like... whoa.

Although I did not like the fact that there is a limit of adding a maximum of 5 phone numbers per contact.

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3. I just love the calling screen on Wave. You can even record all conversation without any beep sounds. The speaker phone works great and using earphone to talk will just eliminate all your background noise, you can even hear and understand the other guy murmuring to you.

4. Messaging app, is yet another cool feature of Bada OS. The conversation view is mind blowing. But it's not without its limitations. They have not provided a feature to save messages directly to the card. However, you can always back them up to the card.

Plus, due to default storage on phone, there is a limit of 1,300 messages only, which is really annoying. The way the conversation view looks and works, you don't feel like deleting a single message so you would probably run out the 1,300 limit soon, if you're a SMS freak.

I also miss a 'Saved sent messages limit' option. There are both ABC and QWERTY keyboards and typing is a breeze. I prefer the landscape mode and after a few days' practice, I hardly make a typo on the QWERTY. There is even a handwriting recognition feature on Wave and it works just perfect.

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5. Loved the music player. Besides all common features of a music player, the 5.1 Surround channel audio is a cherry on top. The Samsung earphones provided with the phone are good enough for eliminating the background noise, ultimately enhancing your music experience. Music lovers are gonna seriously admire this phone. Music player works great while multitasking. You can pause and change tracks from the notification bar as well, and even from the lock screen. :-)

6. Widgets are amazing, although not many are available in the app store yet apart from the default ones provided. Some of the heavier widgets eat quite a lot of memory too. Some users have reported memory management issues with it; widgets eating more memory and programmes (specially games) don't load until those widgets are closed.

Installing widgets is really easy, just import the .wgt file into your phone and execute it. It gets installed on your phone and you can see it in the Widget Dashboard. And uninstalling them is as easy; simply click on the - sign on the installed widget.

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7. Samsung Apps application on the phone and the official website work great.

Samsung is aiming for 7,000 apps (currently 685 at the time of writing this review) in its store for Bada OS by the end of this year. There are already some awesome games and apps available for free download currently including Bruce Lee, NFS Shift, Asphalt 5, Kroll, Magic Torch, Piano, Tic Tac Toe etc. etc.

You can use Samsung Kies software on PC to download apps and transfer to your Wave via data cable. You can even set your Wave to be recognised as mass storage device on PC thus eliminating the need of a card reader to copy/transfer files over to your phone from PC and vice-versa.

The applications are .app files and can only be installed via Kies or over Wi-fi from Samsung Apps. Uninstalling applications is again really easy, simply click on the edit button on the menu screen and hit the - sign on the installed app.

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8. The Panaromic wallpapers look fab on the Super AMOLED screen of the Wave. And know what, you can even snap a panoramic picture with a camera app feature.

The HD video recording is outstanding. Get a Class 6 card and get rid of those annoying lags while recording 720p videos. Although, I feel Samsung should have provided a Class 6 8GB MicroSDHC card bundled but eh

I guess that's too much to ask for that price.

9. The Photo Editor and Movie Maker have numerous options to choose from and edit the image the way you like. Radio, call logs and calendar app is great and connectivity features including Wi-fi, Bluetooth and Allshare work simply outstanding.

I must add that the latest generations of Wi-fi and Bluetooth work incredibly fast. The shortcuts to Bluetooth, Wi-fi and Silent profile are very well placed on the notification bar which can be brought down from anywhere for quick viewing and enabling.

Sharing my laptop's wired Internet connection on Wave over Wi-fi could have never been easier without Connectify (free and for Windows 7 only). I highly recommend this software to share your PC's Internet connection with your phone; it works flawlessly.

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10. Browser and E-mail apps, however work fine, have a few minor glitches here and there but I'm pretty sure Samsung is aware of it and they're gonna be fixed pretty soon.

11. With all this power packed into this machine, I feel proud to say that the battery life is awesome as per my experience. With decent amount of listening to music over headphones, calling, sms-ing, little bit Internet over Wi-fi and gaming, I am getting a battery backup of almost 2 to 2.5 days.

Considering the fact, that Bada is so new, it just arrived and is in its tender 1.0.0 version. It's such a polished OS, works swift and Samsung is investing a lot of time and money on it. I just feel what they could be able to achieve with Bada 1.5 and/or 2.0.

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