Introduction
Samsung's top Bada phone has reached the third iteration - the S8600 Wave 3 maintains the slim, metal body tradition of its predecessors and goes back to SuperAMOLED (four whole inches of it). Bada OS itself has made the jump to a new major version and now offers an interface that holds its own even against high-end Androids.
The screen felt instantly familiar when we picked up the Samsung Wave 3 - no surprise, since it's the 4" WVGA SuperAMOLED of the I9000 Galaxy S, one of our all-time favorites. It beats the smaller SAMOLED of the first one and the SC-LCD screen of the second one too - score one for Wave 3.
The screen felt instantly familiar when we picked up the Samsung Wave 3 - no surprise, since it's the 4" WVGA SuperAMOLED of the I9000 Galaxy S, one of our all-time favorites. It beats the smaller SAMOLED of the first one and the SC-LCD screen of the second one too - score one for Wave 3.
Tapping on the metal back of the Wave 3 also made us realize what the Galaxy S and S II missed out on - it's possible to be both thin and all-metal.
The Samsung Wave 3 borrows more than the screen from the Galaxy S, here's the spec overview:
Samsung S8600 Wave 3 at a glance
- General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, EDGE, HSDPA 14.4 Mbps and HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
- Form factor: Touchscreen bar
- Dimensions: 125.9 x 64.2 x 9.9mm, 122g
- Display: 4" 16M-color SuperAMOLED capacitive touchscreen with 480 x 800 pixels resolution, scratch-resistant glass surface
- Platform: Bada OS 2.0
- CPU: 1.4 GHz processor
- Memory: 2GB user accessible internal memory, microSD card slot
- Camera: 5-megapixels auto-focus camera with LED flash, 720p video recording @30fps; VGA video-call camera
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with WPS support and Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, Glonass (region specific), 3.5mm audio jack
- Misc: NFC support, accelerometer for screen auto rotate and motion controls, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, FM radio with RDS, DivX/XviD support, multi-touch input and pinch-zooming gestures
- Battery: 1500 mAh battery
The S8600 Wave 3 bets on proven specs and stylish looks - not a bad strategy, we think. As good as the I9000 Galaxy S was, it did lose points on being all-plastic.
The Wave 3 has solid multitasking chops and the Bada app store has been building up content. The 1.4GHz CPU will deliver top-notch performance if the Galaxy S Plus is any indication.
Design and construction
The Samsung S8600 Wave 3 has a slim metal shell with the traditional brushed metal look. It's recognizably a successor to the Wave II but has a touch of Galaxy S in it too - it's safe to say that the Wave 3 is in good company.
The front is dominated by the 4" SuperAMOLED screen, which makes the otherwise minimalistic design come alive when it's on.
The display is the same unit that the original Galaxy S had - a 4" SuperAMOLED with WVGA resolution. It has mesmerizingly deep blacks and even though it's not as bright as LCDs, it still offers very good sunlight legibility.
It uses a PenTile matrix, which reduces the sharpness of the display - it only has two subpixels per pixel, instead of three. Still, it's one of the best mobile screens around and we consider it as one of the strong suits of the S8600 Wave 3.
Unlike its two predecessors, the Wave 3 uses capacitive call keys around the center button. The center button itself is big and easy to hit, which is good considering it's the only hardware button on the front.
Above the display are the earpiece and the video-call camera, along with the proximity sensor. Samsung Wave 3 also adds an ambient light sensor to the mix, which was missing on the Wave and Wave II.
The left side of the Samsung S8600 Wave 3 hosts the volume rocker, which is rather thin and not very comfortable to use. On the right side we only have the Power/Lock key, there's no camera shutter key this time around.
The bottom of the phone is more exciting than its stark top. Here we find the microUSB port and the 3.5mm audio jack (both left uncovered) and between the two is the mic pinhole.
The back of the Samsung Wave 3 concentrates the interesting bits at the top - the 5MP camera and its LED flash and the loudspeaker grill next to them.
The camera is actually quite recessed into the body of the phone, which keeps it out of the way of scratches and fingerprints. The loudspeaker on the other hand only has a small nub as a protection and gets muffled when you place it on a level surface.
The brushed aluminum surface on the metallic back is a real pleasure to use and shows clear ancestry. Pressing a small knob near the bottom of the phone allows you to slide open the entire back cover. Think something along the way of HTC Sensation back panel but affixed to the body of the phone at all times.
It slides up to a point, enough to reveal the 1500mAh battery and the SIM and microSD card slots. The battery is rated at 8 and a half hours of talk time and 480 hours of standby.
Both the SIM and microSD card slot are blocked by the battery, which needs to be out if you're going to be taking out or putting a card in either slot. That's something we wish Samsung would have fixed - the Wave and Wave II didn’t have a hot-swappable microSD compartment either.
The Samsung S8600 Wave 3 is well-built and a lot of the solidity is contributed by the brushed metal back cover, which hugs the sides too. On the front, the Gorilla Glass covered SuperAMOLED contributes both to looks (when it's on, it's really pretty to look at) and to the durability of the phone.
The Wave 3 is not a small phone by any measure, but isn't much bigger than a I9000 Galaxy S. It's as slim as the I9000 Galaxy S and barely heavier (just 3 grams more) despite the weighty metal on the back and should slip into bigger pockets. It feels great in the hand too.
Bada OS 2.0 ticks in this Wave
The Samsung S8600 Wave 3 runs the latest version of the Bada OS v2.0, but we’ve already seen 2.0.1 and how it dramatically changes the UI so we’re looking at the current Wave 3 interface with some reservations. Still, as things stand today, we are going to talk about Bada v.2.0, but you should know 2.0.1 will change a lot of things.
As it was with the first Bada version, the new version of the OS comes with a UI that is quite reminiscent of Samsung's TouchWiz as seen on their recent Android phones. Also the Bada OS itself has borrowed some system elements and logic from Android OS so if you come from Android, you will find your away around Bada quite quickly.
Here is a video of the user interface in action.
The novelties brought by v 2.0 include completely redesigned homescreen, new contextual menus, new gallery, players, web browser, etc. Much has changed since Bada 1.2 so let’s not lose any more time and jump into the details.
Meet the Bada OS v2.0
The lockscreen has been updated with live weather widget at the bottom, but the unlock pattern is the same - just sweep the whole screen. If the music player is running, you'll get the music widget at the top.
On the homescreen you can have up to eleven panes, but this time you can't put widgets around. The first homescreen (marked with a square) is the only available widget area. Don’t you worry, it’s vertically scrollable so it can host a lot of info widgets. Widgets are freely rearrangeable, and you can enable or disable them as you please. At this point there are only six widgets available in Bada 2.0 - Weather, Search, News, Stock, Calendar and Quick Contacts Dock nd you can’t download new ones. If you choose to enable the Quick Contacts Dock you get a constantly visible (on this screen) bar where you can put as many contacts as you want.The rest of the homescreens are for shortcuts only.Editing the panes is easy – you pinch zoom-out to display an aggregate view of all panes, which you can then easily rearrange, delete or add. It’s redundant since your whole main menu has two panes, but you get up to ten homescreens for app shortcuts.The notification area is almost the same as before. It's is a thin bar at the top of the screen with status info like battery, time and switches for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc. When you pull it down you get a list of all recent notifications and music player controls (if it’s running in the background).Bada 2.0 is a proper stage for real application multitasking, so naturally, you get that with the Wave 3.
The task manager is accessed by a long press on the Menu button so you can easily switch between currently active applications or terminate them.The main menu structure is flat, all available items and applications initially spreading across two screens of icons. If needed, you can add up to 7 more. Icons align in a 4 x 4 grid and you can change their order the way you like, you can also move icons from one screen to another. The only new thing here is the background wallpaper.
Scrolling the menu screens is looped, so when you reach the last pane you don’t have to sweep all the way back.
Bada 2.0 performs very well on the Wave 3, but it's too early to pass any judgments at this stage of development – it’s a pre-production phone.
A nice 5 megapixel sharpshooter with HD video recording
Just like its predecessor, the Samsung S8600 Wave 3 is capable of taking 5 megapixel photos and capturing 720p videos.
The camera viewfinder is quite reminiscent of company's recent cameraphones. The comfortable interface is nicely touch-optimized and has all you need on the two vertical bars on each side of the viewfinder, but there is an option to hide them both.
All the bases are covered - ISO, white balance, default storage, stabilizer, face and blink detection, geo-tagging etc. You can switch the default storage between the main memory and the microSD card. Touch-focus is enabled too.
The S8600 Wave 3 produces excellent photos for a 5-megapixel cameraphone. The amount of resolved detail and the contrast are very good, noise levels are kept under reasonable control.
Video recording
The Samsung Wave 3 captures 720p@30fps videos. The resolved detail is aa tad bit lower than we would have liked, but overall it's great. Contrast is good and the noise levels and compression are quite low. Motion is smooth.
Dolphin web browser
Samsung S8600 Wave 3 packs the latest version same Webkit-based Samsung Dolphin Browser, but this time looks a bit different - it resembles the Android's browser. Yes, we know we said that before. Twice. Once the page loads, all you see is the URL bar and the refresh button on a line at the top of the screen. Once you zoom in or pan around though even that line disappears (scroll to the top or press menu to bring it back).
You can zoom in/out with pinch gestures or use double tap. Text reflow is available on works great. There is kinetic scrolling too.
Bada 2.0 offers Flash Lite support and most of the banners and even the 360p embedded videos played well.
We noticed the Search on Page options is now gone, but we have to wait for the retail version before we are sure about the browser experience.
First impressions
The Samsung S8600 Wave 3 is an excellent phone and comes as a nice upgrade to the previous generations. Bringing back the Super AMOLED (1st generation) in the game is certainly a good move plus the new Bada OS 2.0 (and 2.0.1 later) should have a few tricks to impress the users too.
Unfortunately, the hardware used on the Wave 3 is not as impressive as it was before when the original Wave was introduced. There is still no dual-core magic, no powerful graphics or impressive RAM or storage. We are left wondering whether the new edition will be an attractive enough vessel for the still fledgling Bada OS (be it 2.0 or not).
Bada OS has been around for some time now but it failed to make the splash Samsung was hoping for. It’s certainly not a flop (largely thanks to the affordable devices available) but for a high-end phone, you gotta do better than a 5 megapixel camera with 720p video recording and a 2-year old screen tech.
The 1.4GHz Snapdragon inside the Wave 3 is a good player but it’s far from being at the edge of technology. The Wave 3 won't be the Galaxy S II of the Wave lineup. Its only chance against the droids is coming up with a cheaper price tag and seriously better battery life than the original Galaxy S or the Galaxy S Plus.
Yet, we acknowledge there is a lot work to be done on the Wave 3 and on the Bada OS 2.0 as a whole. Both are far away from release, so we expect Samsung to come up with the right mix of high-quality ingredients at the end.
We are looking forward to our next meeting with the S8600 Wave 3 and we certainly hope we’ll see it in its retail outfit and running the latest Bada 2.0.1.
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