The Samsung Galaxy is the first Android phone from the Korean manufacturer and the first Android smartphone available on Bell’s 3G network. It is a well rounded and solid piece of equipment that has some very nice features as well as a couple of drawbacks.
Overview
The Samsung Galaxy is a touch screen smartphone running an almost unmodified version of the Google Android operating system version 1.5. It has an 320×480 pixel AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) screen that is very bright and clear. Under the hood it sports a Qualcomm 528MHz processor as well as GPS, WiFi and Bluetooth.
Highlights
The Galaxy makes a great first impression with a very solid, quality feel. The look is pure professional with glossy black finish and chrome like accents. It has excellent weight despite being extremely thin (about 11 mm) and feels very good in the hand. This can be attributed to a slight concave curve to the back of the device. This gave the device an even thinner feel than it actually is, but also proved very comfortable for one handed use. I would say it is one of the best feeling devices I have used including the iPhone which feels kind of pudgy in comparison despite being almost the same thickness.
As mentioned, Samsung fitted the Galaxy with an almost completely stock version of Android 1.5, which means that they chose not to add any custom features as HTC does. Frankly, the HTC customizations really do make a huge improvement and I found myself missing several of the features, such as tight social media integration and built-in Microsoft Exchange support. On the other hand, when compared to the HTC Hero, the Galaxy actually felt slightly less laggy in general and this may be partly due to the lack of all the customizations.
The Galaxy homescreen
That being said, it benefits from some of the great features of Android, such as the excellent notification system that lets you know of any messages, IMs, mail, etc, that you may want to be aware of, and keeps a list of all current notifications that can be accessed with a quick flick of the finger. This is possibly one of the best features of Android, and is absolutely vital for a good smartphone experience (as a side note, this is something that the iPhone fails at utterly).
Notifications screen
The Galaxy uses one of the latest screen technologies called active matrix OLED which, simply put, produces a gorgeous bright and clear picture with vibrant colours while using very little battery power. The onscreen keyboard was also fairly good, and much better than the custom HTC one which I found way too cluttered.
The built- in 5 megapixel camera was fairly good for what it is, and the addition of a LED flash made low-light pictures acceptable.
The built-in browser, as with all Android devices, is second to… well… one. That one being the iPhone, which really does win at mobile browsing. But the overall experience is excellent with extremely good rendering and fairly fast loading, suffering only from slight lag in scrolling and panning.
HTC Browser
Now the bad news
I hope that I have given the impression that the Galaxy is an excellent, well rounded device that has a lot of good qualities. However, it does have a couple of issues that detract somewhat from the overall experience. The absolute worst is the bizarre placement and functionality of the unlock button. In order to unlock the screen, which locks automatically after 30 seconds by default, you have to press and hold an unlock button on the right side of the device. Ok, so far doesn’t sound too bad right? Well, let me tell you, the problem is twofold:
The length of time you need to hold the button down appears to be completely random and depends on if the system is busy or not, or something else, who knows? This wouldn’t be too too terrible in itself, but compounding the problem is that you have to hold the button down for exactly the right amount of time to unlock. If you hold it down too long it would simply lock again. This made waking the device brutally frustrating and almost impossible to get used to or learn to adapt to. I can only hope that Samsung fixes this problem with a software patch in the near future because this is a doozy!
Some other problems include the fact that the outside materials attracted finger smudges like a magnet and the screen lacks the finger oil repellent coating that devices such as the iPhone 3Gs and HTC Hero benefit from.
The battery life was also quite bad overall and would not get me though an entire work day with moderate to heavy use, and would almost die by bed time under minimal use. This is a problem plaguing most smart phones and you learn to mitigate it. It does have a removable battery, so you could keep a fresh one handy if you were going to be away from a power source for a while.
As I mentioned earlier, the overall experience of the user interface is fast and responsive, but would suffer from fairly frequent lag. The lag is occasional and not debilitating by any means, but it does detract from the overall experience.
Summary
The Samsung Galaxy is an excellent Android smart phone over all. It is one of the thinest Android phones on the market and has an excellent quality feel. The quality extends to the screen, which is one of the best I have used. It does suffer from fast battery drain, but that is minor in comparison to it’s biggest flaw, which is its unlock process which is extremely bad and the only thing preventing me from giving the device a glowing review. That being said, it may be a personal thing, and I would say that this device is worth taking a look at if you are in the market for a smart phone.
I would like to add a comment on the unlock problem. There is an option of changing your locking time from 30 seconds to even ten minutes
Absolutely agree with the comment on the unlock process, it is a real pain in the neck, I’ve the phone for more than a month but still not versed in unlocking the screen when I need to.
The unlock problem.. not a problem. the key to unlocking it is what I like to call the slow tap.
1 sec slow tap to wake up + followed by a 2 sec slow tap to unlock. works 100% of the time. just need to know the trick. you are welcome.
but agreed, its a weird way to unlock it, but keeps your friends from playing with you phone. lol.