Samsung I9000 Galaxy S review
When it comes to smartphones and mobile operating systems (OS), Samsung has hedged its bets.
Of the major manufacturer-agnostic smartphone operating systems, only Symbian didn’t make it into Samsung’s plans this year.
The Galaxy S is Samsung’s flagship Android device and it fares well against its high-end competition.
The handset’s list of features include a 5MP camera, dual band 3G, 1GHz ARM-based (S5PC111CPU “Hummingbird”) application processor, PowerVR SGX 540 graphics, 512 MB RAM and 8GB of on-board memory.
In South Africa the device also gets bundled with an 8GB micro SD card and supports up to 32GB cards.
What sets it apart?
It’s not just the 4” WVGA (480×800) Super AMOLED screen that sets the Galaxy S apart from its competition, the additional features and apps bundled with the version of Android it shipped with also helps make it a compelling choice.
For instance, one of the new features of Android 2.2 “FroYo” is the ability to set up your phone as a wireless access point, similar to a MiFi device. The Samsung Galaxy S shipped with this feature, even though it runs the previous version of Android, nicknamed “Éclair.”
Another particularly compelling inclusion is the Swype input application. Swype uses a gesture based typing input – users will swipe their finger across the standard QWERTY touch-key input, passing over the required letters, and the software interprets and converts this gesture into text. When typing in a language that the keyboard understands, such as English, this can greatly increase typing speed.
Unfortunately you’ll still have to pick at a software keyboard to type in any of South Africa’s native languages, however.
Build quality and interface
The Samsung Galaxy S is an incredibly light device, though the plastic housing feels flimsy next to the solid construction of devices such as the HTC Desire, iPhone 4, Nokia N8, and even its brother from another mother: the Samsung Wave.
Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface (or “skin”) for Android may also drive some users away. If you’ve ever worked with an iPhone before, it’ll feel like Samsung stole their menu interface directly from Apple.
On most Android devices menus scroll vertically, but Samsung have opted to have their application menu scroll horizontally like the iPhone. The general look of the icons also look exactly like Apple’s.
Scrolling in the menu is very responsive and the animations provide the level of polish one would associate with a high-end smartphone.
Samsung’s custom skin also provides a new SMS indicator on the screen when the device is locked. Strangely, there are no notifications on the lock screen for new mail or messages from social networking services.
Shortcuts to your email and SMS inbox on the homescreens don’t indicate whether new messages have been received either. There are indicators in the top “system tray” though.
Samsung’s other bundled Widgets aren’t that great either.
There are a few shortcomings in the user interface (UI) as well.
Sometimes the device takes a long time to respond to rotation. When you’re typing text and want to switch to the landscape keyboard, for example, the Galaxy S only responds after a few seconds. Here the iPhone remains king with mostly smooth, animated transitions between portrait and landscape typing.
We weren’t able to check our balances on Vodacom prepaid using *111# with the Samsung Galaxy S. The problem is that the result of the USSD request didn’t display the information from Vodacom – as if the application that displays results from USSD requests exited quickly after we input our selection.
Slow email application
Basic apps like email and contacts start up slowly sometimes. The default email application bundled with the device also gave us some problems.
Not only was the interface unresponsive on many occasions, messages also took forever to load. This slow loading occurred whether we were connected to 4 Mbps ADSL via Wi-Fi or the mobile broadband network (usually HSDPA).
Upgrades and conclusion
Hopefully some of these problems are addressed later this year when Samsung pushes out the official Android 2.2 upgrade it promised for the Galaxy S.
Even without the upgrade, the Samsung Galaxy S offers some stiff competition against the HTC Desire and is a decent rival to the iPhone 4.
Android device manufacturers have some lessons to learn about polishing their user interfaces and delivering upgrades, updates and fixes timeously before they can truly rival Apple’s smartphone, however.
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