processor and an improved display technology called Super AMOLED.So,is it better than samsung"s other Android phones?Lets find out.
One of the best things about the Galaxy S has to be its 4-inch Super AMOLED display. This has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels (WVGA) and measures 4 inches diagonally. An Android phone with a similar screen is the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, though its resolution is slightly different at 854 x 480 pixels.
The advantages compared with regular AMOLED are that it's thinner, brighter, uses less power and has better screen legibility under direct sunlight.The touchscreen was that it's very sensitive to our fingertip touches. It responded to the lightest of touches, which is good when you want to type fast and not worry about missing letters. Watching videos was a good experience, thanks to the large display and eye-popping colors reproduced by the panel. Furthermore, you can watch DivX HD videos stored in the memory without messy format conversions,Its a fun viewing of the HD videos that are created.
Some may still find the Galaxy S a little large with a footprint of 122.4 x 64.2mm. This is almost identical to the HTC HD2's 120.5 x 67mm, and we all know how big the HD2 is.
The micro-USB port on the Galaxy S has a sliding cover. I like this small design implementation as it keeps lint out of the connector while not being as fiddly as some pull-out rubber port covers. Near the micro-USB port on the top edge is a standard 3.5mm jack for audio output.
Now that we've the standard things out of the way, let's look at what makes the Galaxy S unique, software-wise. Samsung's custom interface is called TouchWiz 3.0 for Android. TouchWiz has been used in other Samsung mobile phones and this version for the Galaxy S is in some ways similar. On the Home page, there's a fixed dock with four shortcuts to Phone, Contacts, Messaging and Applications. The rest of the Home pages (which goes up to seven screens) are pretty much what you find in other Android phones. This means you can fill them up with either widgets or shortcuts and is fully customizable.
Tapping on the Applications shortcut will bring up the main menu. Instead of one that slides upward from the bottom, the pages of apps scroll horizontally. This is consistent with Samsung's TouchWiz interface from its earlier devices. The dock at the bottom doesn't change in the menu page aside from the Applications button which now shows Home instead for getting out of the menu back to the Home page.
Google's default interface puts apps in alphabetical order and there's no way to arrange them. What's more, in the process of editing the main menu, you can even delete programs completely. Yes, you don't have to enter the settings page and go through a series of sub menus just to delete all the apps you want purged from the system. You can increase the number of menu pages according to how many apps you have. I went up to 26 pages before getting tired of going further. Essentially, there're lots of menu space for apps, so the 2GB ROM for storing programs can be put to full use.
Samsung has also tweaked the notifications bar that resides at the top of the screen. As with the vanilla Android, you access the bar by pulling it down. In Samsung's implementation though, you get four shortcuts embedded in the notifications page--Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Silent and Vibration. This makes toggling these features really convenient.
Integrating social-networking services appears to be a big deal for any Android phone these days and the Galaxy S is no exception. For starters, you can integrate your Facebook and Twitter friends into your Contacts list.For starters, setting it up takes quite a while. In the case of Facebook, you are shown your entire list of friends, which have to be sifted through to select who to appear and link with your Google contacts. For those with thousands of "friends" who are not friends that ought to appear on your mobile phone, this can be quite a chore.
Text input methods included with the Galaxy S are the Samsung keyboard and Swype. The Samsung keyboard is a simple one that's pretty effective. The size of the screen makes tapping buttons very accurate, and without much practice, we were able to type very quickly.
However, it could do with a little more complexity. The letters don't serve two purposes, so you can't, say, simply press and hold M to get a question mark. Except for the full stop (which gets a dedicated key on the QWERTY page), all other symbols require switching to the symbols page. Pressing and holding the symbols key will bring up an editing page which gives you arrow keys and other editing tools like select and copy. In the browser, the address bar doubles as a search field. The Samsung keyboard detects this as a URL field only and replaces the spacebar with ".com", so search for phrases that require spaces becomes a chore.
Photos taken with the Galaxy S' camera were of very good quality. They showed colors accurately and performed well indoors even without flash. Video recording is supported up to 720p resolution. Video quality looked good as long as expectations were kept in check--this is no Canon Legria camcorder.
One word of warning when using the camera--the photos look better on the device's screen than on the computer. While this is generally true for all digicams and mobile phones because the small display hides blurriness and noise, it's especially pronounced for the Galaxy S. The Super AMOLED seems to brighten all the colors. So once you view it on a color-corrected monitor, the images just don't seem so great anymore.
That's probably thanks to the new Samsung Hummingbird processor complete with PowerVR SGX graphics. This is rumored to be a variant of what's found in the Apple iPad and is jointly designed by Samsung and Intrinsity. Intrinsity was recently bought by Apple. 512MB of RAM is available for running applications, while there's 2GB ROM for installing apps. This is part of the internal 16GB memory, so 14GB is left for storage and appears as a removable drive when the Galaxy S is connected to a PC. There's also a micro SDHC card slot for expansion if the on board storage not sufficient.
Though the Super AMOLED screen is supposed to be more battery-efficient, the Galaxy S didn't do much better than the HTC Desire. With two email accounts and all social-networking services set to auto-sync, we got slightly under 24 hours of use before the battery depleted fully. Tweak these settings and it's possible to go about 1.5 days on a single charge.
Now the question is will it be able to rule the markets?Only the time will tell.As for now i can say that it has the potential and the quality to go much far than anyone can expect from this phone.
It has some advantages over its competitors like the Touchwiz 3.0 and a better HD video quality with its super fast 1 Ghz processor and the 4 inch AMOLED screen.
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My Rating: 3.8/5
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