Customer Reviews

Samsung Wave S8500 Unlocked Quad-band GSM Phone in Black.

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3G mode frequency used by this phone has not supported in the USA. Frequency is uncompatible, so you can use Samsung Wave only as old 2G phone. Also Samsung Apps store closed for US customers, so you can't download and use new applications.
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Summation: This piece of hardware is easily the equal of the iPhone 4. But because it runs the BADA operating system, you're going to have to learn to live with that. Worth it? I think so.

The Super AMOLED screen stacks up very well against the new 4's retina screen, and it makes the 3gs's screen and most other phones look oldschool. It's super, super bright and sharp and has a 180 degree viewing angle, something you have to see to appreciate - it's like a piece of paper. It's weird. Weird good.

Processing time and multi-tasking are solid - this phone shoots video at 720p at 30 frames per second.

The battery lasts for days.

The operating systems works really well:

1. Comms management is excellent. The interface for comms is at your fingertips and it takes litearlly 1 second to switch from 3g to wifi. Once wifi is on it just won't let it go. When I leave for work in the morning I boot up my phone - it remembers I had wifi on last night, connects, and downloads my email. Then I leave and it flips to 3g. Then I get to work and it signs itself in to THAT wifi, without asking me or having any other issue.

2. Menu setup and navigation is easy and fast. There are widgets and home screens, as well as an "apps" button or "home" button. Both widget home screens and the app screens are configuarable with easy drag and drop interaction. Checking your calendar while in a call works just fine.

3. Alerts / messages works well. There are several different ways to access data coming in and most are at your finger tips

4. Phone works very well. The speaker design is proud of the glass and it's loud, so you can have a conversation without smearing the screen against your face, this is very nice. The touch screen on/off/against face issues are sorted out very well and it all "just works" - make a call, listen, pull the phone away to access the keypad sure no problem, go back to your ear the screen is off again, pull away again to go to speaker phone, no problem.

5. Nice bling - puzzle piece message alert is nice, it has scrolling wallpaper.

6. Push works great, and you can point several feeds (hotmail, facebook, etc) into one inbox or - nice feature - link to contacts so in your contact list you see all their incoming text/facebook status/etc etc. There are several widgets around social media, this part works well.

So what's the problem? There is really only one - it's not Android or Apple.

How bad is this? Depends.

Example - I say push works great. It does. Pushing back? Not so much.

So I can fill in my google calendar on line, and it will push to my phone's calendar. Great. But anything I input on the phone so far won't make it back to google. Looking around at the forums, I'm not the only one. I've had the phone 3 weeks so perhaps I'll figure it out at some point. But it's not as easy as setting up the push, which admittedly was very easy.

The point is - there is one other calendar on Samsung's app store - it doesn't push back either and it's not as good as the native calendar. And...that's it.

Example two - there is no voice dial on the phone, and there is no app for voice dial. Android market? The search "voice dial" returns "about 363 results".

Do you care? So far I don't. Everything I need my phone to do, it's doing. It looks and works great and it has some very nice games - most were free. And with that screen, the metal case and the unusual operating system, people tend to play with my phone over others.

And for hardware of this calibre it's very reasonably priced. I tend to drop things and break them, an iPhone just made me nervous.

Pros and cons - but my vote is pro.

In love with this phone.....awesome phone with great price. Just hoping that people develop more apps for the 'bada' operating system.

Overall a great phone to have :)