Wave hello to the Samsung Wave (see what we did there?). It’s out now on Vodafone rocking a pretty impressive Super AMOLED screen as well as Samsung’s own bada app platform. Join us for a hands-on play before we get down to the nitty-gritty of the full review.
As well as the handset, we’ve got the usual array of wires: charger with plug, USB wire and some headphones with 3.5mm jack. There are also a couple of extra leaflets in there, which introduce you to the Samsung Apps, um, app and how to use it.
This is Samsung’s app store; it’s pretty much standard app store fare, with applications segmented into free and paid, top lists and different categories. The apps themselves aren’t massively impressive at first glance – there’s a lot of quite gimmicky stuff in there. We haven’t downloaded Hit My Boss (yet), for example.
It’s early days for this app store though, and Samsung is putting quite a bit of effort into ensuring developers are familiar with the platform so let’s give it a chance to grow.
The Wave is quite a slender handset, with a granite finish on the back. The camera you can see in the cheesey diamond at the top is 5-megapixels and comes with an LED flash too.
Depth-wise, the handset is about the same as an HTC Desire or an iPhone 3G. The side panels feature a number of buttons – one camera, one screen lock and the volume control.
There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack so if you don’t fancy the headphones that come with the Wave, you can just use your own. The top panel also features the USB connection point and the external speaker.
The Wave has two handy yet very familiar (some might say Android-esque) features; one is the pull-down notifications menu (on the left); the other is the pull-up in-app menu (right).
Ahh, this is Jake. We like Jake, of JakeandAmir.com. He’s nice to look at – and even nicer to look at in HD on this lovely bright, crisp Super AMOLED screen. We were watching this video on YouTube (over Wi-Fi) and not only was the skit high in comedy value, the picture quality was flawless too.
Size-wise, the Wave is slimmer but slightly taller than both the Google Nexus One and iPhone 3G. You don’t get a brilliant feel for how good that screen is until you use the Wave for yourself, but to give you an idea, we turned the brightness up to max on all three of these handsets – the Wave was by far the most crisp and high-quality.
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