Overview

The Samsung Galaxy S is the South Korean manfacturer’s most powerful smartphone to date, so interest in this handset has been suitably immense. Looks-wise there are some striking similarities between this and the iPhone 3Gs, but without the iconic status of Apple, buyers might hesitate to choose this over a new iPhone. Nevertheless, the Galaxy S is one of the quickest and easiest handsets to get to grips with which we’ve used to date.  Coupled with some features that are arguably best-in-class, such as its Mp3 player and video playback, this certainly makes it a worthy contender to iPhone. See how the Galaxy S performed in the following categories:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Design

The first impression is that the Galaxy S is much lighter than you would think from the sight of its 4.0” wide fascia. Combined with the plastic construction, some might interpret this as a trade off on quality, but the sleek design and ergonomic “lip” on the underside of the handset could persuade otherwise.

Display

Without a doubt, the centre-piece of the Galaxy S is its large Super AMOLED display.  At 4” across and with 480 x 800 resolution the display on the Galaxy S renders web pages, pictures and video in splendor. Viewed in landscape video you could even be fooled into thinking you’ve got a mini-tablet on your hands.

Comparisons have been drawn between the display on the Galaxy S and that on the iPhone 4. Indeed, Samsung themselves have claimed that their Super AMOLED technology is superior to Apple’s Retina display.

Certainly, the display on the Galaxy S matches the iPhone 4 on colours and brightness and the screen can be viewed clearly even in bright sunlight conditions. However, screen resolution is visibly higher on Apple’s new device, the difference being especially apparent when trying to read e-books.

Nevertheless, the Galaxy S does enjoy the benefit of an intelligent sensor which adjusts the brightness of the screen which helps to optimize both visibility and battery life.

Touch Interface

After the display, the second thing you appreciate about the Galaxy S is the responsiveness of its capacitive touchscreen. Navigating between the phone’s multiple homescreen feels extremely natural and skipping through your contacts is extremely fluid. Moreover, navigating webpages is a doddle thanks to advanced gestures such as pinch-to-zoom.

The Samsung’s huge 4” screen demands a fast processor and lots of user memory in order for it to operate without lag. Thankfully, the Galaxy S has these in bounds though. Under the hood, it packs a super fast ARM Cortex 1Ghz Processor plus 512 MB RAM

Connectivity

In terms of connections, the Galaxy S is fully kitted out to provide you with fast access over both the 3G network and WiFi, when available. HSDPA-enable 3G connections allow 7.2mbps download speeds and 5.76 Mbps upload speeds, which is as quick as you can expect the iPhone 3Gs or iPhone 4 to achieve.

For connecting the phone to other devices such as printers, other handsets or pairing with headsets, there’s also a Bluetooth 3.0 connection.

Setting up the Galaxy S for email and access to your WLAN could not be more simple and out of the box, you’re a few fields away from connecting up to your preferred email client and connecting to your favourite social networks.

Media & Storage

As a media player, the Galaxy S is one of the best in it’s class. The interface for the music play is extremely convenient and easy to use and when it’s running in the background, it can be tucked away and pulled down from the top of the screen when required. The player also supports a wide range of media formats, from Mp3, WAV, FLAC, AC3 and AAC.

However, video playback is a supreme pleasure on the Galaxy S and playback is fluid, vibrant and has a depth of colour that I’ve not seen in any other handset’s screen yet. Video formats supported are MP4/DivX/WMV/H.264/H.263

In terms of media capture the device is extremely capable, with the (now smartphone standard) 5MPsnapper cabable ofcapturing 2592x1944 pixel images with ease thanks to a steady autofocus on the lens. Thanks to it’s HD quality video recording (720p @ 30frames per second) you’ll might even capture the hairs up the nose of your subjects.

Our only gripe here though it that the Galaxy S only comes with 16GB memory, and for the same price you could get a 32GB iPhone.

Apps

Navigating with the Galaxy S is possible straight out of the box: as an Android phone running v2.1 (Éclair) of Google’s operating system, the Samsung Galaxy S comes fitted with Google Maps.

Swype – the next generation in predictive touch-typing software also comes as standard. Swype works so that you don’t have to lift your finger from the screen when typing and duplicate letters are created by looping around a character. While it looks fiddly at first, it really is child’s play. Even seasoned touchphone typists will be nicely surprised to find that Swype can help you type accurate messages even quicker. For novices, it’s a great way to get up to speed typing on a touchscreen with just one hand.

Verdict

The Galaxy S is a great alternative to iPhone: it’s one of the fastest, most capable smartphones we’ve used to date, so performance wise, will provide the user with a very able smartphone experience. In terms of ease of use, the TouchWiz interface is an extremely intuitive layer to the Android OS, which is a particular success as Android can often feel a bit complex, especially for first-time smartphone users.

However, for many the plastic construction is likely to detract from the handset’s image as a serious alternative to Apple's iPhone 4. That’s not to say the Galaxy S feels cheap, but laid side by side with more classy hardware, people paying a premium for their handset will naturally be drawn to more metallic construction.

Nevertheless, the Galaxy S does boast some incredibly good media functions that make for an eminently capable multi-function device and if you can forgive Samsung for some of their attempts to emulate the iPhone (the samey design, menus and keypad screen) then you will enjoy usuing an extremely powerful handset.