Obsessed with Android OS was looking for one phone costing less than 15000 Rs INR. The choices were few like one from HTC, LG and Samsung. Around 2 months back I bought this phone.
The HTC and LG phones came with resistive touch screens but Samsung I5700 (spica) and Samsung Galaxy (I7500) came with capacitive touch screens . Capacitive touch screens are much much better than resistive ones . The flow is so smooth that it feels almost like an iphone. I5700 costs 12500 Rs while I7500 is a thousand rupees more. Hardware wise i7500 Galaxy comes with awesome AmoLED screen, 8gb inbuilt memory, 5MP camera with LED Flash and 528 Mhz processor while I5700 comes with TFT screen, around 200MB of internal memory, allows 32 GB of external memory in the form of microsd card and a good 800 Mhz processor. The I5700 spica is upgradable to 2.x Android OS and I have upgraded it already to 2.1 Eclair, although not available in India officially. But for the I7500 Galaxy its said that upgradation is possible upto only 1.6 Android.
I like - Spica I5700
Upto 32 gb external memory support (microsd card)
3.2 MP camera with autofocus (autofocus feature disabled in Android 1.5)
Very good battery backup
Accelerometer
Wifi
3G
Edge etc.
Supports Divx movies. (Decent movie clarity)
Music play back is good.
Comes with 2gb microsd free
In ear headphones which produce decent bass
Nice pouch.
And since is Android thousands of free and paid applications available in Market. All that is required is a Wifi connection or GPRS connection.
It would have been better
If it came with Android 2.1 eclair. Though it can be upgraded by anyone.
Some of the good stuff which Samsung Galaxy I7500 has got which sadly is not upgradable. If the OS or firmware is not upgradable in my opinion the phone slowly becomes obsolete. Especially with the case of android since lot of developers participate in the tools development, after some time back ward compatibility to 1.x versions of Android would be doubtful.
And with the Android 2.1 eclair its awesome. The Android 1.5 is nothing compared to 2.1.
After upgrading to 2.1 faced some issues like USB connectivity, bluetooth. But with a recent update (firmware - I570EXXJE1 available at samsung-firmwares.webs.com) its fixed .
A good wealth of info regarding upgrading firmware is available here. Please be careful and try it at your own risk.
greaky.com/2010/02/samsung-i5700-galaxy-spica-android-21.html#/
There are loads of features / tools available in Android market for free and paid also. There are a lot of advantages and good things about this phone and Android. From the day I bought this I am exploring this phone almost 2 hrs a day every day. It seems like its endless possibilities. I am sure if you have a similar mindset of exploring things you will love this.