Samsung S8530 Wave II - Bada All The Way

Enter the Samsung Wave II, Exit stage right, the Samsung Wave. Spotting the differences between the two devices is not an easy task. Samsung has merely tweaked the Wave ever so slightly and re-launched it, which could be a good thing to some or not, to others. The previous model fared quite well in our tests, but operating systems have evolved considerably since then and Bada is yet to make it to other devices. So far it’s been restricted to just the Wave I and II. Here’s a closer look at the Wave II to help you make decide if this is an OS and a handset you should be investing your money into.

Form Factor
There are subtle differences between the original and the Wave II – for one thing, the Wave II is heavier (135g) than its predecessor and is also about one millimeter thicker. The display is now larger at 3.7-inches as compared to the 3.3-inch version on the original. The AMOLED screen has also been replaced by a Super Clear LCD also sporting a 480 x 800 pixel resolution. Gorilla Glass also present and accounted for. The center button is larger as well with the screen lock and camera shutter release/activation buttons still on the right and volume keys on the left. The micro USB port is also still on the top (slider cover) near the 3.5mm handsfree socket. The worst part about the Wave II is still the fact that there’s no hot swap slot for the microSD card even if the handset does come with 2GB of internal storage.

Super Clear LCD is a sure fire winner

Although there isn’t anything substantially different between the two devices save the display, I’m still a big fan of the design. It’s still sleek quite sturdy in its metal enclosure.

Metal body adds class

Features and Performance
Interface
Bada has not changed… much, in the last few months since the Wave was launched. The OS is pretty much an extension of Samsung’s existing proprietary platform that powers their lower end devices on with smartphone functionality. It’s a clean OS that performs quite smoothly although there’s just a tiniest hint of lag in certain instances. Powered by the same 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor on a Hummingbird chipset, overall speed and ease of access issues are nothing to be concerned with.

I’m not particularly fond of the TouchWiz UI but it does serve a Smartphone’s purpose quite well, I’ll admit. You can customize the multiple desktops with preloaded widgets or get more off of the Samsung App Store. The apps in the main menu can also be moved around to suit your preference. What would have been just great is if Samsung managed to get Swype on board for the keypad. Handwriting recognition is supported, however.

Plenty of connectivity

Social network integration with your contacts sheet was a problem. It is a manual process and for some reason I was unable to sync my FB account with my contacts. Twitter was no problem. There was also no option to sync the device with my Google account. I also found a few bugs that prevented me from joining contacts.

A rather weird issue I noticed was that the thumbnails be it in the media, video galleries or anywhere for that matter, were all extremely pixelated to the extent that some were indecipherable. Keeping the center button pressed will pull up the task manager so you can move between running apps or close those you don’t need.

So aside from a few bug fixes and very minor cosmetic changes, Bada v2.1 is still the same, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Media
The Wave II is by far a fully loaded media friendly mobile handset. It’s provisioned with enough media functionality to deter you from even considering a purchase of a PMP. The music player dishes out clear tones with a punch in the bass line that will have you tapping your feet even in a crowded street. Seven EQ presets are provided along with a few additional audio enhancement settings that help boost audio quality. Samsung’s DNSe enhancement is the key to all of this and even adds virtual 5.1 surround to movies as well as your music. A music recognition option is also built-in. SamsunThe FM radio took about 13 seconds to find and store 6 of the 9 available radio stations while indoors. Reception was much better outdoors in almost all locations including on my commute. The app also has a built in recording feature.

Loud and clear

Thanks to the vivid colors that the handset’s display is designed to offer, the black levels on videos turned out to be superb. Very much like the Sony Ericsson Arc’s. The Wave II supports 720p HD video files in .MOV and .MKV formats and of course DivX and XviD support is also supported.

The image gallery works with on a axis based scrolling system so tilting the handset to the left or the right is an alternative to swiping your finger on the screen. A face recognition option is also provided but it really didn’t seem to do much other than locate a person’s face. You can create a video with images or even edit them to a certain extent with built-in apps. Samsung has also thrown in a few try and buy games, and for more you can download off of Samsung apps.