There has been a deluge of smartphones in the market of late, with Apple’s army of iPhones, Nokia coming up with X6, C6(not out in India yet) and C900, Sony Ericsson coming up with a range of its own(Xperia, Xperia mini, Xperia mini pro, Vivaz and the likes), Motorola’s got its Milestone(killer specs, poor performance) and a range of Google phones from HTC. But the wildcard entry in the league of the big boys is Samsung with its own indigenously developed OS(BADA-that’s Korean for Ocean, but more on that later). Samsung’s come up with 2 smartphones in India as of now: Samsung Wave(BADA based) and Samsung Galaxy S(Android based)
The OS: Lets get the verdict out first: BADA’s got enough juice to lock horns with the might of Apple and Google. BADA offers some premium features in this phone. So, you have multipoint touch(including pinch to zoom- till date seen only in the iPhone), 3D graphics, and enhanced UI, plenty of apps to download and install. Since the OS is relatively new to the market, and does not have an aura attached to it(like the Apple OS or the Android OS), so the number of apps available for download do not yet run into hundreds of thousands. The BADA extends support for API plugins, so features like accelerometers and ambient light sensors add to the fun.
Specifications, Interface & Accessibility The Wave’s got a 3.4 inch capacitive touch display, brightened by a super AMOLED screen. That means, the screen looks extremely sharp from all angles, and even in the sunlight. The touch is extremely responsive, and there are enough applications that use this efficiently. I personally felt that Asphalt5(a motor racing game built for touch phones) runs best on the Wave. The phone is powered with a 1 GHz processor(much better than the 600 MHz running under Xperia Mini Pro’s hood), so the graphics rendering is really well done. You don’t see any shadows(the black trails that you see in car racing games), so you’ll probably drop the idea of purchasing that PSP. The phone is armed with a solid 5 MP camera and video recording at HD quality. So you can record videos on your phone and view them on your 32 inch LCD, without any loss in quality. Nothing disappoints here.The Wave’s got 2 GB on board memory and a 2 GB card comes free in the box. Then you have Wifi, Bluetooth 3.0, 3.5 inch audio jack, FM recording, twitter/Facebook support and the likes.There are some fun(and thoughtful) features in the phone. Say, for one, in case you have an unread message or missed call, your wallpaper gets converted to a jigsaw puzzle, and one piece of the jigsaw gets displaced. You have to put it at the right place to see the message/ call. You have the feature of creating multiple desktops as well.
Practical Issues Al right then, nothing’s perfect, someone said. So here’s the list of imperfections in the Wave:One, there’s no cover on the camera lens. So, in case you get a scratch on the camera lens because of the missing cover/flap, you’ll forever have pics snapped with some hazy looking lines or grains.Two, the super bright screen is also an evil in disguise. The battery drains in about 1.5 days(at max brightness, that is. You can extend this to 3 days at a lower brightness level though).Three, the Image stabilization feature is missing in the camera. Al right, not all camera phones have that, but you get so used to high quality stuff, that you set new benchmarks for the phone to match:)
Peers and Pricing purchased the Wave from Delhi for 17.5k INR. While giving the demo of the HD video shooting capabilities of the phone, the floor guy showed me a 2 minute video clip recorded at HD quality(720p), and this file occupied a whopping 86 megs of space. Now a standard 2 GB card that comes with the phone seems a minnow considering the file sizes, so I decided to upgrade the memory card to 4 Gigs(Add 550 INR to 17.5k INR). The super AMOLED screen is the USP of the phone, so cant do without a scratch guard(Add another 350 INR). So, the final damages were to the tune of 18, 400 INR. Not bad for a super charged up phone with all the features of any 30, 000 plus smartphone.