Samsung Galaxy S

Editor's Review of the Galaxy S

The first thing anyone would notice with the Samsung Galaxy S is the big screen. Measuring at 4 inches, the 480 x 800 pixels super AMOLED touch screen can display 16 million colors beautifully. It also comes with an accelerometer sensor that provides you with automatic rotation of the user interface. Featuring Samsung's own TouchWiz 3.0 user interface, you could easily see how improved the navigation is.

This is actually Samsung's second mobile phone to use a Super AMOLED screen, the first being the Wave, and touch detection is better than ever because it is integrated on the screen itself. It is also very visible even under direct sunlight, brighter and saves up to 20% battery juice.

Like the iPhone 3G S, the Galaxy S comes with two versions: one featuring 8 gigabytes of internal memory and another with 16 gigabytes. Whichever you choose, the I9000 will be ready for all your music and video files right out of the box. In the event that you should run out of memory, you can always pop in a 32 gigabyte microSD card for more.

Powered by the latest Android operating system, the Eclair, you can bet that the I9000 Galaxy S works well with Google products like search, Maps, Gmail, Picasa, Gtalk, Calendar and YouTube. It also features a social hub for your social networking accounts.

Internet connectivity is a vital component of any smart phone, and the I9000 does not disappoint. You can enjoy high speed internet with HSDPA and HSUPA on top of the standard Class 12 GPRS and Class 12 EDGE compatibility. Wireless connections are possible too. Further, you can also connect your mobile phone to any laptop or desktop computer with the microUSB port or via Bluetooth 3.0.

Samsung's latest flagship phone also features the Swype text entry. Instead of tapping on the onscreen QWERTY keyboard, you only have to slide your finger to the letters that you wanted to tap. The high level of accuracy makes inputting text a breeze.

Also, camera work should be splendid on the I9000 with its 5 megapixel camera that takes pictures with resolutions of up to 2592 x 1944 pixels. It can also take better-quality videos that have 30 frames per minute at 720 pixels. A secondary VGA camera is included that is perfect for video calls. Samsung has also thrown in a lot of goodies such as the autofocus, geo-tagging, touch focus, smile detection and face detection.

The I9000 has a music player that can accommodate MP3, eAAC+, AC3, FLAC and WAV files. It can also handle MP4, H.263, H.264, DivX and WMV video files. Further, the handset has a stereo FM radio built-in, image and video editor, document viewer and editor, and a flashlight.

With all these mouth-watering features, you would think that the I9000 would be a bulky handset, but it is actually at par with other smart phones and is even thinner. Measuring 122.4 mm. long by 64.2 mm. wide, this mobile phone is noticeably thinner at only 9.9 mm. thick!

The use of a Super AMOLED screen should mean more battery life for the I9000. It would take more than a month before you would need to charge your handset if you are on standby on a 2G network (24 days on 3G networks), while talk time is significantly increased to 13.5 hours on 2G networks and 6.5 hours on 3G.

Limitations

It would seem that the Samsung Galaxy S is a mobile phone of superlatives. It has the biggest screen among all Samsung phones, and the latest of Android OS's newest technologies. Sadly, it is also one of the most expensive mobile phones that are planned for this year.

On top of the prohibitive price, there are some small nuisances on the I9000 without which would have made the handset perfect. For one, its camera does not have an LED flash. It also has no free GPS navigation.

Further, the browser, great as it is, does not support Flash while the loudspeaker churns out poor quality audio.

Lastly, it is very difficult to keep your I9000 looking clean as its casing can really get covered with your fingerprints!