Samsung Wave Review: Interface, Phone and Messaging

Tackling the review of Samsung Wave‘s Interface is a tricky job, but we are going to do the best we can. Wave is the first mobile with Samsung’s very own Bada OS. Bada means Ocean in Korean, and it does sound like they have an entire Water theme going. There are a couple of hints to the Water theme within operating system as well, but we’ll get to that later. The important thing is that the OS is uniform, consistent and very fluid in all its animations. It really feels like Samsung have put in a lot of thought into this piece of work. Let us check it out some of the screen shots.

The home screen allows multiple pages and is also capable of supporting widgets. The number of widgets available as such are limited, but it is an extensive collection. There are widgets for everything you will require, from calenders and birthday updates to news feed and social networking. The centre hardware key gives you access to the menu. Pressing and holding the hardware key launches the Application Manager. You can add upto 10 homescreens and adding a homescreen is extremely simple, all you need to do is add a widget and slide it over to the right of the last homescreen. A new homescreen is automatically created.

Removing a homescreen is just as simple. Hit the Widget button and turn the phone to landscape mode. A minus button will appear on all your current homescreens. The process is very similar for adding a page in the application menu as well.

The notification bar on top drops down to reveal easy access to WiFi, Bluetooth and a Silent mode toggle. It also displays unread messages, missed call and newly received email alerts. And with such a consistent UI the notification bar is always there, be it in any app, given you quick access to your alerts.

Samsung Wave functions very well as a phone. Kinetic scrolling is available through the interface and large number of contacts did not slow the phone down, not even a little. Samsung breezes through, where ever and when ever you decide to test its speed. You could attribute that to the speedy processor but we have a feeling Samsung’s Bada OS plays very well opposite to the hardware. The capacitive Super AMOLED screen is a joy to use as well, and it really gives the interface a personal touch.

You can quickly scroll through Contacts using the side bar by tapping on the letter you are searching for, and swipe left a little to scroll down the second letter. There are a lot of these small nifty additions that really make the operating system a joy to use and nothing gets between you and productivity. You can even sync your Facebook contacts along with their profile pictures their phone numbers and their birthdays to your device.

Smart dialing is currently not available on the Wave, but it features a very capable Search contacts option. Apart from that Samsung allows us to swipe Left on a contact to Send a Text Message and swipe Right on a contact to Call the person. We found this extremely useful and highly intuitive and only wish others employ something similar.

The messaging application is our favourite application on the Wave. You will find yourself sending out text messages just to use the interface. It really is a joy.

Messaging allows conversation type views and features a highly intelligent auto correct system in the landscape qwerty keyboard. Unfortunately the virtual keyboard is not multitouch capable. There also isn’t Swype preinstalled on the device.

Samsung’s implementation of the lack of a cursor or trackpad is pretty cool as well. You can slide across the screen and move the cursor to where ever you want. Cut Copy and Paste capabilities have also been included, making this a top performer in the messaging department. And to convert your message to an MMS all you need to do is add a multimedia file, it will take care of the rest. How simple is that?!

You can also enlarge the text in any text message by simply pinching the screen with two fingers

The lock screen is pretty amazing as well. Not only is it intuitive, but also functional. All alerts appear on the lock screen and you can open it directly from there itself. This was one feature we just absolutely loved.

Stay tuned for Music Player, Applications, Internet Browser and our conclusions about the device.

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