Smart latecomer

It may have been a late entrant into the crowded premium smartphone market, but boy, did Samsung arrive with a bang! The I9000 Galaxy S smartphone takes the out-and-out brawn route to designing a smartphone, packing it to the gills with pure grunt — a 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird CPU processor, 512MB of RAM, a decent 5 megapixel camera with HD video recording, and 16GB of onboard space, with expandability upto 48GB!

Design wise, the Galaxy S is rather iPhone inspired, with its metallic rim and single front button. At 122.4mm x 64.2mm x 9.9mm, the Galaxy S’ dimensions are larger than its contemporaries, but the all-plastic casing helps keep the weight down to an almost lightweight 118g.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of such excessive use of plastic, it really detracts from the premium image of this phone. Of course, the size, weight and the plastic fade into the horizon the moment you switch the phone on. No two ways about it, the magnificent and massive 4-in Super AMOLED display running a WVGA (480x800 pixel) resolution is unquestionably the best screen I’ve seen on a mobile phone that sells in India. It is unbelievably bright and crisp, and its use of the Super AMOLED screen technology lets Samsung keep it thinner and brighter while using less power. And with the Galaxy S supporting MKV, MP4 and DivX videos out of the box, the screen makes even more sense if you plan to use the Galaxy S as a portable media player.

Using the phone then is a delight, with the capacitive screen responding to the gentlest of finger touches, and the beefy processor ensuring that the pinch and zoom experience is as good, if not better than the iPhone. That said, there was the occasional sluggishness while launching or closing apps.

Samsung’s added a custom user interface called TouchWIZ 3.0 over the base Android 2.1, and while I personally prefer the more polished HTC Sense interface, Samsung has added some neat features and apps to personalise your phone experience. In particular, I liked the built-in Swype text entry method, which allows you to slide your fingers over the letters you want to type in a single motion, and the software figures out the word you were trying to type. It appears awkward at first, but if you get used to it, you will wonder what life was like before Swype.

Honestly, the Galaxy S has what it takes to take on the best, and at Rs 30,990 is priced in a premium manner as well. Something’s got to give, right?

• Rating: 9/10
• Price: Rs 30,990/-
• URL: http://bit.ly/9qAwFJ


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