Samsung I7500 Galaxy (GT-I7500)

Discontinued
27th April 2009

The Samsung I7500 Galaxy (with a capital "i") is Samsung's first Android-powered phone, and it is likely to be the first alternative to HTC as far as Android-buying consumers are concerned.

It's a powerful device, even if the control keys at the bottom do look a bit retro. It's a little better in terms of specification than the HTC Magic, especially when it comes to the camera, but on most features the Magic and the I7500 are very similar.

The most obvious feature on the I7500 is the large 3.2" 320 x 480 pixel AMOLED touch-sensitive display. On the back is a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash. Apart from the control pad and buttons on the bottom of the screen and some ancillary buttons elsewhere, the I7500 has quite a simple layout.

The Android operating system isn't as well known as Windows Mobile or Symbian, but the Samsung I7500 comes with a pretty comprehensive set of applications including a comprehensive audio player, MPEG4, H.263, H.264 and Windows Media video playback plus a full web browser, Gmail application, YouTube application, personal information management tools and access to the Android Market for additional downloads. One very useful feature that the I7500 has is a 3.5mm audio jack, so you can listen to music or video clips using a standard headset rather than the proprietary arrangement that HTC use.

GPS is included in the Samsung I7500, and this works alongside Google Maps, Latitude, local search and even Street View (yes, you can look at a picture of the street you are standing on).

Underneath, this is a tri-band UMTS device with HSDPA download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA upload speeds of up to 5.76 Mbps. The Samsung I7500 also supports quad-band GSM, plus GPRS, EDGE and WiFi connections.

The large 1500 mAh battery is a little bigger than that found in the HTC, although Samsung have not quoted figures for talktime or standby time. It's a bit slimmer than the HTC Magic with overall measurements of 115 x 56 x 12mm and it weighs in at 119 grams. Internal memory is 8GB and up to 32GB more can be added through the microSD slot. The Samsung I7500 also comes with Bluetooth 2.0 and USB 2.0 support.

Possibly the biggest weakness that we can see with the Samsung I7500 is the screen. Although the 3.2" display is large enough and the AMOLED technology being used should mean that it is very bright and clear, the resolution of 320 x 480 pixels does seem a bit limited when some of the competition is managing 640 or even 800 pixels wide. To be fair, the HTC Android devices have the same problem - but it may be a little off-putting for some customers.

Samsung say that the I7500 should be available in major European countries from June 2009, although it didn't give any guidance as to which carriers might have it. This could well be the first opportunity that many customers will have of owning an Android device.