Samsung S8500 Wave Mobile Phone Review

Samsung is initially correctly assessed in the potential market of touch phones which has already ranked first in this segment in the past year. It was promoted by a very strong lineup, which, in particular, was attended by such popular devices as S8300 Ultra Touch, S8000 Jet, S5230 Star and S3650 Corby. In 2010, the company intends to further consolidate its position. And, apparently, it will succeed. At least, the new flagship of the touch line, Samsung S8500 Wave, even in the form of a crude prototype makes a strong impression.

A few words on the bada platform


Before going into the phone directly, I would like to say a few words about the "bada" platform (that's right and with a small letter) on which it is based.


The Samsung Company has been stressed on that bada - this is not an operating system. However, once this is followed by the reservation so that it can be considered as the operating system "in its own way". In fact, bada involves a set of libraries and API to work with them. As an analogy, one can bring Android, which is considered as the operating system, although in fact it is a set of add-on for Linux. Closest analogue (truth of the "desktop" world) is a set of Qt libraries, which allow developers to create applications for Windows, and for different variants of Linux and other Unix-like systems.


Recall that last year the company has adapted the proprietary TouchWiz interface for multiple mobile operating systems (Windows Mobile, Symbian and its own closed platform). Currently the network is working on a beta version of new firmware for the Galaxy Spica, in which TouchWiz is stretched to Android 2.0. One can expect that the same will happen with the bada.


For this approach, a typical example of the strategy would be "win-win". It is easy to calculate, that benefit in this situation. Samsung (traditionally supports all major mobile platforms) can unify its product line in terms of interface and opportunities. Developers are able to develop applications for touch phones of Samsung (sales of which in 2009 exceeded 40 million units), regardless of what operating system they use. Users are able to use them on their devices as an application for bada, and "native" for your system (whether Windows Mobile, Symbian or Android).


In contrast to the same Android, whose code is freely available to anyone who wishes, bada is a closed platform. In it, as in the iPhone OS, all the API are divided into two levels: public (public API), available for third-party developers, and closed (private API), which has access only for Samsung programmers. At the first stage the possibility of public API will be significantly limited, but in future more and more features will be open for third party developers. In any case, the platform looks promising and I personally will be very interesting to look at its development.

Samsung S8500 Wave Specifications