Samsung Galaxy S

Samsung Galaxy S (Android 2.1) micro review as requested by more than one person (2 people).

Tech Specs at some random site (gsmarena), Comparison with other Android phones from this year.

The Galaxy is definitely big. It’s not uncomfortably bulky or anything, and is actually quite slim (about the same thickness as the iphone4 except for a slight lump at the back of the base for the antenna). But it has a 4″ 16:9 (1.67, iphone is 1.5 aspect) screen, and needs room for it. The construction is decent but obviously more plasticy and flimsy feeling than an apple device. (definitely try one in the shop before you buy it to see if this bothers you). It is really light for its size. It’s not a really beautiful phone but it’s definitely not ugly. From the front it is blatantly borrowing the 3Gs appearance.

The screen is AMOLED  and is 800×480 (iphone 4 is 960×640). It’s really nice and vivid. Text and UI elements render very smoothly.

I think I noticed some issues with the GPS, although I’m not very experienced with GPS so maybe it’s a case of expecting too much (IE inside a building etc). Also I have read that the default maps application (google maps) has an uncharacteristically long gps sync time as compared to other software on the same device so more investigation is required I guess.

Samsung (and optus) bundle some crap with the device which I’ve largely ignored. Samsung also put their own UI ‘on top of’ android. I’ve not seen a problem with it but apparently HTC custom UI is better. At some point I might have to figure out what I’m missing and see about rectifying it (this phone is easily rooted apparently, allowing you to do all sorts of unsupported things to it. ) But even out of the box you can install downloaded apps and run a file manager and it works as a mass storage device etc. It is so much more open than an iDevice just out of the box.

The down side to that is that you can definitely get it to slow down. A bad app hogging cpu while it is running in the background etc WILL hurt your battery life and slow down the UI in general and cause pauses etc so you need to be a bit technically inclined to keep things running smoothly (or don’t install anything other than stock stuff I guess). Speaking of battery life I assume it’s pretty decent, I’ve not owned a smartphone like this before so am not sure what is good. There is a nifty function in the settigns menu that shows you where you battery has been used, and it is usually 40-60% on the screen.

Swype is a keyboard input system installed on android (you can add also install others) and it blows most other soft keyboards out of the water. Basically you just drag your finger over the letters you want on a keyboard (ie don’t lift your finger up except for between words). and it just works most of the time. You can even be really sloppy and just plain miss letters and it works really well. Checkitout.

Other cool things: Divx playback, just drop movies onto it and they play, no transcoding or going through itunes, same for music. Live wallpaper (silly but nifty), change fonts system wide. Heaps of options.

So yeah, not a very structured or objective review, just a bunch of thoughts. I’m enjoying it so far. I just need a car kit so I can drop the iTouch altogether. (Though I will miss Carcassone).