Samsung Wave S8500

Discontinued
15th February 2010

The first handset to ship with Samsung's new Bada operating platform is the Samsung Wave S8500, a slim touchscreen smartphone with a large 3.3" Super AMOLED display and a fast 1GHz processor.

We've looked at Bada briefly before, and we feel that the world doesn't really need another mobile phone operating system, but then Bada is really just an extension of what Samsung have already been doing, and the launch of Bada allows third party developers to add their own applications to make Samsung handsets even more appealing.

The Samsung Wave handset itself is a fairly typical slabby device, although it is very slim and the brushed metal casing gives the handset an elegant air. The 3.3" screen is large, although there are smartphones with much bigger displays. Flip the phone over and there's not much on the back apart from the 5 megapixel camera and flash.

Samsung's AMOLED displays are well-known for being very bright and clear, with the Wave Samsung have gone further still by eliminating many of the different layers of material normally used with a touchscreen display. It's complicated stuff, but Samsung assure us that the Super AMOLED display used on the Wave will be very impressive indeed. The panel itself displays 800 x 480 pixels, making it ideal for web surfing or video playback.

Underneath the slim casing, the Wave supports WiFi, 3.5G high-speed data, GPS, HD (720p) video recording, microSD memory, Bluetooth v3 and USB connectivity. There's an FM radio and 3.5mm audio socket as well, and overall it's hard to see anything missing in terms of specifications. The large 1500 mAh battery should provide adequate talktime, but Samsung have not said what it is.

Most of the buzz with this handset is about the software, and this version of Bada comes with the new TouchWiz 3 interface, plus a set of social networking applications, web browser, email client and support for Exchange ActiveSync. More applications will be available for download once they are written - and Samsung are spending a lot of time and money to encourage developers to write for the Bada platform, which is promising.

It's certainly a nice looking device, and powerful too. Perhaps by the time the Samsung Wave launches in April, there might even be a library of applications available for it.. we will have to wait and see.

You can see more of the Samsung Wave at wave.samsungmobile.com.

Samsung Wave Promo Video