Friday, Feb 04, 2011
Rating:
Dubai The Bada mobile operating system is consolidating its hold on Samsung’s portfolio as the Wave family gets bigger and better. The Samsung Wave II S8530 is quite an impressive advance over its predecessor — the S8500. The screen has grown to 3.7 inches from the 3.3-inch in S8500.
Samsung Wave II keeps the aluminium chassis, but I welcome the growth in size and thickness, which makes it easier to handle, more so if you have large hands as I do. One drawback is that the Super AMOLED screen and Wave 11 features a super LCD screen capacitive touchscreen, but with the same 480x800 pixels of resolution.
The super AMOLED unit has wider viewing angles, and its colours remain unchanged to the very edge. The super clear LCD on the other hand tends to lose some contrast when viewed at a wider angle and this is certainly a step down.
At least the new Wave’s sunlight legibility is still spotless and you will easily see what’s on the screen even under a blinding sun. The lack of an ambient light sensor to automatically adjust the screen’s brightness is a letdown.
The Samsung Wave II runs the latest version of the Bada OS 1.2 version. The user interface has been designed from scratch and Samsung has even ported it as TouchWiz on their recent Android phones. So you’ll find they have a lot in common with the Bada user experience.
The Bada OS has borrowed some elements and logic from Android OS too. Samsung has brought some performance tweaks in 1.2 version with over-the-air software updates and the new T9 Trace, a Swype-like text-input method.
Bada OS has another cool feature in the phonebook, also available in the Android OS. In the main contact list, a swipe to the right on a name will dial the contact’s default number, and one to the left will start the New message interface. The side-sweep thing works in other lists too where you have names or numbers.
By Naushad K. Cherrayil?Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2011. All rights reserved.
