Samsung Galaxy S review
The Samsung Galaxy S is meant to be the Korean firm's big assault on the smartphone market - packing oodles of top end technology into a handset it thinks can take on the
iPhone
There's more than just top end technology in here to beat the iPhone – the chassis looks decidedly similar too, despite the much larger screen, which comes in at a whopping four inches.
The feel of the frame is also odd, but in a good way. It's nearly a millimetre thicker than the iPhone 4 (we know, shocking) but it doesn't feel it, thanks to the curved back.
The downside of this construction is that it feels a little plasticky, which isn't the impression you're going for in a premium smartphone – but it is very light at only 118g.
The chrome bezel looks nice too, but it's the screen that it frames that really makes the Samsung Galaxy S.
While Google is intent on losing the custom overlays on modern Android smartphones, Samsung has finally decided to offer up its own skin for the search engine's mobile OS.
Known as TouchWiz 3.0, this skin is the evolution of efforts from a number of Samsung handsets – sadly most of which were pretty dire to use, with a range of widgets that underperformed compared to the competitors'.
This overlay was first used on the Samsung Wave, where new widgets were the order of the day – while these worked well, and 10 home screens was a bonus, on the Galaxy S you get seven displays to work with, and both widgets and icons alike.
The latter is great, as it means you can mess around with placement of your favourite applications. However, widgets are less of an attraction, with very few on offer from both Samsung and the default Android offering – certainly you get a lot more from the likes of the HTC Desire.
Things like Daily Briefing are very exact in what they offer – we would have preferred more customisation than simple weather and news updates, although RSS feeds are always handy, provided you have the nous to set them up.
But the interface on the Samsung Galaxy S is more than this; the large, capacitive touchscreen is just tops. We're not saying it's better than the iPhone 4, but for someone who's never picked up a touchscreen phone in their life, this cannot be beaten.
The lightest touch will produce an instant reaction, and coupled with the 1GHz processor from Samsung, the Galaxy S will rarely slow down from your input.
While we would have liked to see more from the menu system (we love swiping up from the bottom of the screen to activate the icon list), you have to hit the 'Applications' icon on the Home screen to do more.
Another feature we loved about the Samsung Wave was the intuitive menu system, where the most-used applications gradually moved to the top of the pile; sadly missing on the Galaxy S.
But the simple icons and pages way of navigating your applications makes sense, seeing as the iPhone 4 has had such runaway success with such a system.
(Reviewed by
Gareth Beavis -
TechRadar )
he internet browser on the Samsung Galaxy S is nicely in line with the best Android has to offer, making it once again a real threat to the perceived dominance of Safari Mobile on the
iPhone 4.
It's not without its foibles though, despite bringing a huge range of functionality to the table.
For instance, when it comes to page loading, it's very fast indeed, over both Wi-Fi and 3G networks.
However, while double tapping brings you closer to the text, if you want to use the (admittedly excellent) pinch and zoom to enlarge things further, the text does not resize to fit the screen as it does on the HTC Hero, Legend and Desire.
The weird thing is, it secretly does – you have to tap the screen again and watch the words whizz into place to make everything legible again. Why Samsung added this feature in we don't know, because it makes things very convoluted.
But beyond that, things are very smart indeed. There's no Flash video on board, which is a bit of a let down, but given that's coming in the new Android 2.2 update Froyo update we can live without it for now.
Another nice touch is the ability to switch the brightness from within the browser menu – sometimes you need to improve the clarity of a certain screen, and this is a neat way to do it.
Apps
The Samsung Galaxy S has two kinds of application portals: the Android Market, giving access to thousands of pieces of additional content for your phone, and the Samsung Apps portal, which offers five.
Yes, that's right: at launch Samsung is offering FIVE dedicated apps for the Galaxy S. These include old favourite racing game Asphalt 5 and RoadSMS, which allows you to see through the camera when texting so you don't bump into anything when walking down the road.
FYI Samsung, the latter app is useless unless you text with the phone DIRECTLY in front of your face. Nobody does this. If anything, you should make an app that stops people texting when walking down the road. Then everyone wins.
Why these applications aren't pre-installed, we don't know – it's not like Samsung is against them, as there are a number already on the Galaxy S out the box.
There are some decent options. The augmented reality app Layar is cool without being particularly super-useful, and the aforementioned Write and Go is good for a quick Twitter and Facebook update.
Others, like Mini Diary that allows you to take a picture and assign text to it each day, are less interesting. Daily Briefing is the same, enabling you to see some key information like the weather but not letting you customise the things you can see as much as you'd like.
However with Aldiko eBook installed at least you get access to a wide range of digital literature – it works nicely on the big screen and is especially great for out of copyright titles. We just wish it didn't look EXACTLY like Apple's iBook app.
While the Korean firm has a good history of producing decent cameras, the 5-megapixel option on offer on the Samsung Galaxy S is a little lightweight in our eyes.
That's not to say it's a poor camera, but overall we feel it could have been a little bit better in light of the excellent options on the Samsung Tocco Ultra edition and i8910HD.
Settings-wise, you're pretty spoiled. You can adjust everything from the ISO level to contrast, saturation, brightness, exposure… very well stocked, in fact, with each tweak making a genuine difference.
There are also a number of scene modes that help make the best of certain situations. For instance, when shooting into bright light or on a beach (we're not sure what happens when you shoot into bright light on a beach though).
Other photo modes and effects are included too – you can do the same old thing of making a photo look retro with sepia or black and white, or use the more helpful panorama or sports modes to get the best shot.
The Samsung Galaxy S has other focusing options too, with macro and face detection also included, although these options are buried within the menu, which makes hitting them a little annoying.
There's also no flash to speak of either, which makes night viewing a right palaver.
Yes, we have night mode, but no, we can't be bothered to take pictures at night when it requires holding the phone steady for about 12 minutes to get a grainy mess of a picture.
Instead, buy a torch for the clubs, and just switch in on when you take a snap. Plus it can be a retro kind of glowstick.
DARK NIGHT: As you can see, picking out detail in an averagely lit club is hard
COLOUR BRIGHT: Colour is well produced but still struggles to capture overall detail
FLOWER POWER: Although the macro mode worked well, background light still invades the shot
NOTHING SPECIAL: This first pic is taken with no effects added
SATURATION: With the colour saturation increased, detail improves too
Video is a lot better, what with it recording in HD and all that. You get 720p footage with 30fps video recording, which is pretty nice and comes out very clear.
There's a little bit of stutter that means it's not quite the equal of the iPhone 4's HD recording, but it's perfectly usable for day to day video recording.
The Samsung Galaxy S is the brand's premier smartphone, which means the Koreans must have prepared for the phone to receive a lot of attention and thus be hard on the battery life.
Thankfully there's a 1500mAh battery on board, among the largest on the market, meaning you've got the best chance of maximising the battery life between charges.
We got some odd battery read outs with our Galaxy S – although admittedly we were using it for a great many different things over the course of our week's trial.
Mostly, we managed to make it easily through the day on one charge – often a day and a half. However, start browsing the internet too much, or use the camera a lot, and you'll see that battery eaten up sharpish.
However, Samsung appears to have optimised the phone for media well, because when watching a lot of video we managed to still get a good day's use out of it.
Connectivity
The connections offered on the Galaxy S are numerous – we've got all the usual suspects here. GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and HSDPA with 7.2Mbps are all present.
Unsurprisingly, there's also a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top, which is just about flush enough to take your pair of headphones nicely, next to the micro-USB slot which is protected by a little cover.
The Samsung Galaxy S uses the new Kies Software to handle media and the like, however, this didn't pre-install the first time we turned on the phone, rather we had to go and download it ourselves.
You can also use the phone as a modem when connected to the PC, and through the MObile AP options in the setting menu you can use the Samsung Galaxy S as a Wi-Fi hotspot too – meaning you get a load of options for connecting it up.
Signal strength is okay too – we found the Galaxy S defaulted to roaming a little too often, which impaired data strength as it only offers GPRS speeds.
Also, Wi-Fi could have been a little bit stronger too. We often only saw one curved bar of signal when we were right next to our router.
If your computer supports it, you can also browse content on it using the AllShare application – this is basically DLNA re-badged and made a bit fancier, but the good news is that it works and you can even download songs you're listening to from your PC to your Galaxy S to take with you, although you can't with movies for some reason.
