The Wave is Samsung’s latest affordably priced smart phone and the first handset to run on its own new Bada operating system. Ever since first seeing the phone at Barcelona’s MWC back in February, we’ve been itching to get our hands on it. Just how smart could an affordable smartphone be? What compromises if any have been made to accommodate the lower price tag and what would we make of Samsung’s new Bada platform?

After a week long test, we found the Wave to be an excellent handset. The device itself is very polished, while the user experience is slick and intuitive. Our only gripe is that at present there are no decent apps available for it. So, while it ticks the boxes for a smartphone in terms of performance features and specs, your ability to bolster it’s functions with downloadable apps, is hampered by the infancy of the Bada platform. For some looking to dive into the world of possibilites that smatphones promise, this with feel like an invisible wall. Nevertheless, for someone looking for a super modern, easy to use, classy device, with decent access to the mobile internet, the Wave is a great handset.

Form & Features

Right out of the box, the Wave subverts your idea of an affordable mobile; build quality is high and we were pleasantly surprised to find the handset was considerably lighter and thinner than expected. The backplate is made of brushed aluminium while the rest of the chassis is nicely nipped and tucked and overall the handset feels quite elegant.

Ergonomically, the Wave’s tall and thin frame certainly comes in handy when the handset is used in portrait and the accelerometer switches the screen’s orientation, giving you an extremely comfortable typing surface. As a Blackberry user, I have tended to shy away from touch typing, but typing at speed with both hands felt very natural indeed.

Display

Perhaps the biggest boasting point with the Wave is it’s large 3.3 Super AMOLED display which delivers a super bright and clear image with no motion blurs on video play. and is less reflective than other screens. That makes for sweet viewing even on sunny days. Do remember however, that out of the box, a phone’s default brightness setting it usually attenuated for better battery life, but tap the setting up a notch and you’ll see just how powerful this technology looks. The additional bonus of Super AMOLED technology is of lower power consumption, so your phone will hum along that much longer, even with a brighter screen. Bonus!

Touch

Remarkably, the capacitive touchscreen is as responsive as it is clear too, and its accuracy is easily on a par with the best smartphones out there. Anyone who has used a budget touchscreen will know the frustration associated with lags and inconsistencies. None of that with the Wave, as it responds to your ever command, like a well trained pedigree hound.

The Wave’s touch experience is given further depth by the integration of advanced gestures such a multi-touch input, a standard on smartphones now, but one which allows you to get the best from interacting with mobile web pages and when viewing images. A proximity sensor also intelligently locks the screen when you hold it to your face for calls, so that you don’t accidentally operate the phone.

The Wave’s software interface is based upon Samsung’s TouchWiz UI, with multiple homescreens that you can customize and flick between. So, if you want one area for organization tools like Calendar, Alarm Clock and Memo, and another for fun time stuff like your media player and social networks, then this is all very useful.

TouchWiz on previous models certainly had its detractors with noted laggy performace and a tendency to clutter. However, this latest incarnation, TouchWiz v3.0, coupled with the Wave’s smartphone specs makes for a crisp environment that is intuitive, reliable and a pleasure to operate.

Connectivity

The Wave is a fully connected device, with HSDPA enabled 3G allowing you to glide over the networks and a WiFi connection for hooking up to hotspots for even faster (and free connections).  A Bluetooth 3.0 port with A2DP then allows pairing all manner of useful devices.

Hooking up the Wave to the network and then setting up the email was particularly simple,credit due to the UI. Once connected, pages could be loaded up with ease and the performance made me realize just how slow my Blackberry browser was in comparison.

We did notice however that the maps widget was just a link to a webpage, which for first time users might not seem a problem, but it soon drew our attention to the fact that the Samsung Wave doesn’t support a Google Maps application. As perhaps the first app most people download for their new smartphone, this is sure to be a major disappointment to the seasoned smartphone user.

Media & storage

Internal storage is relatively large to start with 1.5GB to start you off with, although many other top phones with less internal storage come with a larger microSD card in the box. Ultimately the Wave’s memory banks are expandable up to 32GB however, so that would bring it in line with the beefiest that HTC have to offer, or the bossest iPhone.

Verdict

The Samsung Wave is an excellent handset with a superb performance for a snip of the cost imposed by top-of-the-range models.  

The Wave is a great piece of hardware and offers a great experience for anyone upgrading from a feature phone, or a non-touch device and is a recommended choice for anyone who is looking to tentatively dip their feet in the world of smart devices, but doesn’t want to feel at all baffled by the switch.

The major drawback with the Wave however, is the limitations of the Bada platform. At the present time, there is a dearth of decent applications available to a Bada user, which severely limits the breadth of additional functions you can endow your device with. So, if it is apps you’re after, Samsung’s Wave isn’t going to be the one for you, and Bada won’t be worthy of excitement until more developers get on board with the new platform.