Samsung Galaxy S First Impressions

Yesterday, Samsung launched their very highly-anticipated smart phone, the Android-based Galaxy S (i9000). I was able to play with it for a few minutes and take some crappy photos (hard to shoot under blue lights).

Here’s my initial thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy S.

It’s surprisingly light (119g) for a big device. The first thing that entered my mind when I held it was, “œIs this a dummy phone?”. Seriously, it feels like those dummy phones you see in mobile shops. I don’t know if that’s a good thing for some people but for me it lacks the sturdy feeling you get from a typical high-end phone.

It is slim at 9.9mm making it their slimmest smartphone to date. The only smartphone that can beat its anorexic body is the iPhone 4 (9.3mm). Here’s a side-by-side shot with the HTC Desire.

The 4-inch Super AMOLED screen is simply gorgeous, bright and crisp colors. It has the same screen size as that of the SE Xperia X10. Here it is side-by-side size comparison with the HTC HD Mini, the gigantic HTC HD2 and the HTC Desire.

I didn’t check if the Galaxy S’ brightness was cranked up but the HTC phones display weren’t dull during this shot.

They have a UI (doesn’t look like their usual TouchWiz) layered over the Android 2.1 interface making it appear cooler. Still love HTC’s Sense UI though but props to Samsung for not sticking with a bare Android interface. It’s also ready for an Android 2.2 upgrade by the way.

Is the phone responsive? Very much. Thanks to its 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor. Swiping my fingers to different pages and widgets was a breeze. Similar experience I get from the HTC Desire.

Other notable features that I like was Samsung’s Social Hub, the internal memory (8GB/16GB) and the live wallpapers which you should not show to your kids if you still want to use the phone.

That’s it for now until we get a review unit. Oh, I have to mention that the 5mp camera on the Galaxy S doesn’t have flash built-in which I’m usually after for an expensive phone.

The Samsung Galaxy S is priced at Php32,995 and is exclusive only to Globe subscribers until the end of July. For subscribers to other networks, you can start getting it from Samsung Mobile stores by August.

Specs:

• 4.0″ WVGA Super AMOLED (800×480 pixels)
• 1GHz ARM Cortex A8
• 16GB / 8GB storage and external memory slot (upto 32GB)
• 3G (HSDPA 7.2Mbps, HSUPA 5.76Mbps)
• 5MP autofocus camera (no LED flash)
• 720p HD video recording at 30fps
• GPS w/ A-GPS support
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n with DLNA
• Bluetooth 3.0
• microUSB 2.0
• Android 2.1 (Eclair) OS upgradeable to 2.2 (Froyo)