Samsung Wave first hands-on: Bada-packed and super fast (video!)

Well, we just had our first encounter with Samsung's new Bada-sporting Wave handset. We'll say this to start... the screen is gorgeous, and the phone itself is super fast. No hesitation almost anywhere, but it's hard to make a judgment call at this point. A lot of the software seemed unfinished, and we saw a few crashes and weird behavior. Still, it's clearly a device capable of handling some pretty intense work, and a Samsung rep we spoke to wanted to emphasize its ability to multitask. We were also told that the phone has more than 512MB of RAM, which is notable for a device of this type. We're going to play with it a bit more and flesh out our impressions, but for now feast your eyes on the gallery... and check the video after the break!

A few more takeaways (with some input from senior editor Thomas Ricker):

• Overall the device feels like a glorified feature phone, and speaking to some other tech folks here, that feeling seemed to be common. There just doesn't seem to be a lot to it that we haven't seen in other Samsung devices, especially considering the TouchWiz integration.
• There was an issue with flipping the keyboard from portrait to landscape -- as we said the phone is early, so this may change, but we had to leave an app and reopen in the other orientation to get it working. We also noticed that there doesn't seem to be word prediction in place right now.
• The browser is redirecting to WAP pages, so it was hard to see what the results were. We also thought the buttons were in a very odd place, making it a bit hard to navigate.
• The display wasn't always responding to touches, and at least one unit completely froze on us.
• For those asking, from the looks of things (and the press release) there is no multitouch on this device. Correction... we just tried pinching and zooming on the phone and while it did create some kind of zoom result, it also kept giving us an error! Furthermore, when we tried to load an image heavy site, it forced the phone into its task manager mode and made us close all applications before we could proceed with using the phone. Clearly there is work to be done.

Samsung Wave first hands-on

[didimac Posted Feb 15th 2010 2:14AM]

Looks pretty cool, but the UI is too "Android" like...

[zxiixz Posted Feb 15th 2010 2:21AM]

they need to refine the OS a bit more.

little bit more user-friendly interface through more user testing.
not tech savvy people but regular consumers, older younger people.

better icons .. maybe they should commission people for icon facelift before their release.

lastly, font.. gosh,.

[BIGBERTA Posted Feb 15th 2010 5:56AM]

I just hate copying the iPhone UI

[FlasH Posted Feb 15th 2010 5:25PM]

@BIGBERTA

and you are a moron.

[dyyz Posted Feb 15th 2010 8:24AM]

the ul looks same like some 100$ "iphone" that u can buy from interweeeb. ( http://www.dealextreme.com/productimages/sku_31876_1.jpg ) allmost liek it?

[FlasH Posted Feb 15th 2010 5:24PM]

@dyyz

Not from What I see....

not 100% iphone.

[micanuck Posted Feb 15th 2010 9:03AM]

just watched the vids... adding the widgets being able to add and remove a bunch of homescreens is quite cool... goddamnit... yet another choice on the market!!! ;) LOL

[sctx Posted Feb 15th 2010 11:30AM]

The phone itself looks beautiful but this "Bada OS" looks like a horrible mess.

[FlasH Posted Feb 15th 2010 5:24PM]

@sctx

UI is over-rated. If the UI works well and can operate, customizable... that 's great...

Phone functions..

Video
Camera
MP3 compatibility
Flash
Resolution
Phone quality
COS Speed
RAM
HSDPA.

etc..

[curio Posted Feb 16th 2010 1:07PM]

Still shocked after seeing so many "Not enough space to add widget" in videos of Bada OS.

Just an illustration that they don't care much about user experience. Big UI design failure!

Concerning speed, ok, some animations are fluid.
But don't be fooled by some hardware-accelerated graphic gimmicks, the rest looks really slow.
Best illustration of this slowness is the Facebook app. So much time to load a basic login page, for an app that is said to use "always on" system social services ? That's crazy !
Did they even heard of the concept of "Lazy Loading"

[prometeum Posted Feb 18th 2010 10:00PM]

E- Does it have widgets?

S- Yes

E- Do you change desktops like this?

S- Yes

E- What about the RAM on it

S- Yes

E- is it higher that 512 or lower?

S- yes

E- So, it's higher than 512...

S- Yes.

Extra:

E- I'm a huge, blue European elefant that lives in a petry dish...

S- Yes.