Galaxy S : Initial Impressions

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desiibond

desiibond

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my friend got this phone (Galaxy S) and here are my initial impressions:

1) The display is truly stunning. my Legend looked like an el-cheapo ass before GS. From normal text to movie playback, thd display is worth a thousand tech salutes! Its the greatest thing in this phone. Nothing can come close.

2) touchwiz 3.0 still has long way to catch up with SenseUI. It still is confusing like hell, not many good widgets.

3) the build quality is damn good. It's totally lightweight and thin. easily pocketable and one handed operation is very easy to do

4) Samsung Kies sucks. my friend came to my place. Phone is not connecting to windows 7 or ubuntu in mass storage mode. It just doesn' have this option. Will report back on this in two days.

5) Touch sensitivity is really high and finally, I think there is a phone whose touch response matches that of iphone.

6) music quality is similar to what I get on Legend. Though not as refined and clean as that on ipod touch, it's decent (I didn't like mids and highs that much)

7) bundled earphones are great (as per my friend). comes with in-ear headphones

8) it's damn fast. But when I started copying 280 files form SD card to phone storage, the phone came down to a crawl. everything became super slow.

9) you cannot do anything when the phone is connected to PC for data copy or sync. Unlike Legend, you have to leave the phone alone. And when you connect the phone to PC when some app is open, the phone rejects to sync. Damn you Samsung

Finally, I am left with mixed emotions on this one :) I just couldn't say "oh my god. this phone is so perfect" like I said when I started using Legend or maybe I am too used to SenseUI that I am not able to come out of it.

A lot of research needs to be done on the phone still. Will give a more and clear update by this weekend.
 
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desiibond said:
Shripad, that post by me was directed towards wr8_utd to show that it's the model that matters not the brand! (of course, with few exceptions) :)
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True true but I have had bad experiences with Samsungs in the past and a fair number of my friends too have suffered. So I would take a HTC over it :)
 
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jovi said:
is there overheating problem in sgs n not having flash will the pictures quality will be bad in day time or in room light
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picture quality in day light is good but video quality is really good. regarding overheating, it heats up a bit when 3D games are played else not much. Definitely better than my Legend.
 
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Today I went to a samsung privilege store to get a demo of Galaxy S. The phone itself was not in stock (existing stock already sold out and new stock expected by Monday or Tuesday) but they had a demo piece which i played with for about half an hour. Seems like Wave and Galaxy S are selling really well. There were at least 4~5 more people there trying to decide between Wave and Galaxy S. Interestingly they have quite a line of Galaxy S and Wave boxes lined up on the shelves, but apparently they are empty lol.. I wonder why they bothered putting empty boxes on the shelves.

I am planning (99% confirmed) to buy this phone as soon as stocks arrive. Here are my own impressions of the Phone from the demo unit.

  • Shape in general looked very similar to any of the previous iPhone's. (which was something I never considered to be anything special or unique despite a lot of iPhone users saying otherwise) In fact one might easily confuse it for an iPhone at a quick glace. With iPhone's being pretty common place these days, Galaxy S is not something you would like to buy if you need your phone to stand out in terms of external looks. I am myself more interested in what it offers in terms of features, functionality and flexibility rather than cosmetic things like shape or smooth UI, so I am not too bothered what it looks like.

  • The phone is very thin, but at the same time pretty large (especially width wise) and felt a bit weird holding in the hands. You will not get a very comfortable grip on both edges of the phone. Grip was still in the tolerable level for me, but people who are not used to large phones and contemplating a purchase should definitely try out a demo of the phone first rather than rushing out and ordering it online.

  • Build quality was pretty average. I was expecting worse from what I saw in online videos and although it was better than expected, it was still nothing that great to write home about. the back cover is pretty flimsy and you will realize that once you remove the cover. A metal back side would have gone a long way in adding to the build quality even if it added a few more grams to the weight. In any case I don't think this phone would survive a fall and that is something I am concerned about.

  • Screen is fantastic. This is simply the best screen I have seen in any mobile device. Blacks are really black and the colors are vibrant. Although I have seen people complain of over saturation in AMOLED screen's, I am not at all unhappy with the end result. The screen also fared pretty good in evening time sunlight coming in from the glass door of the shop. The content on the screen looks as if its on top of the screen rather than below a glass sheet. This is just like what has been mentioned for LG's retina display used in the iPhone 4. From what I read S-AMOLED uses a process where by gap between the screen and the display has been eliminated. I think it was the end result of this process. In any case, the end result is pretty nice and something I liked about the iPhone 4 as well from its videos.

  • UI was completely lag free. I read that the daily briefing widget causes lags some times, but I had it enabled on the main home screen and tried starting a few apps (multi-task) and the phone was still lag free in the transitions. I guess people who get easily frustrated from the occasional nano-second lags would find this phone satisfactory. As for myself, any transition and eye-candy related lags are not much of a concern and I am happy as long the app on top remains usable and functional.

  • Touch is super sensitive, some thing I did not like too well about the iPhone as well. I hope there is some way to adjust the sensitivity. Also since this is a capacitive screen, I would need to buy a special stylus that works with the screen. Regardless of what people say about stylus, I believe that there are times when you would prefer to operate with fingers and times when you prefer a stylus.

  • The demo unit did not have Swype installed which was something I was really interested in (mainly because back in my college days, I tried to implement something similar for inputting text with mouse and this is a much more practical implementation of the same) . I am not sure why it was not installed, I wanted to ask the dealer about it, but the guy did not seem too knowledgeable judging from some of the BS he was occasionally throwing at the other customers, In fact I don't think he realizes the difference between the Bada OS on Wave and Android on Galaxy S. So I did not bother asking him.

  • Camera quality looked pretty avg from what I could see on the phone screen. This seems to be in contrast to others/reviews reported. Of course I may be wrong since I was judging it from what I could see on the phone screen. The demo unit may be having some issue with the camera as well. In any case it is not much of an issue for me since all I want is a 3MP camera to take shots of the whiteboard during brainstorming sessions.

Some other minor things.

  • Capacitive buttons suck on a phone like this. But at least the tactile feedback makes up for it a bit.

  • No led flash. I don't know why Samsung opted this out. From what I read, the camera night mode is pretty good and that may be one possible reason Samsung have not included the flash. I don't care about it's use for camera, but led flash makes for a good torch light. My mobile is one of the handiest things that I keep around me inside or outside my home and the led flash in my phone was a life saver during power cuts or while walking home late and street lights are off.

  • Requires removal of the back cover to access the card slot. IMO it kind of defeats half the usability of the memory card slot. My current phone has a spring loaded side slot which is easily assessable to change cards without too much effort. I think this should be standardized in all mobile phones just like micro USB charging. The saving grace in Galaxy S is that at least you can change the card without removing the battery.

Finally the price quoted by the dealer is 28k (inclusive of everything). In fact I also got a reference so I could buy the phone directly from the distributor (courtesy of Amarbir's contact's), but since the the showroom also belongs to same people, I am not sure there would be any drastic difference in price from the distributor.
 
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^^

1. Its more of an initial impression (from half an hour of use) rather than a review. I basically listed what I felt about each aspect of the phone.

2. There is no such thing like a perfect product for everyone. Its all relative to each person. What's positive to me may be negative to you and vice-versa. While some of my observations may sound negative, they do not essentially mean that they matter to me too much.

3. Negatives and positives do not have a unit weight attached to them. So its always possible for the positives to outweigh the negatives even if the negatives outnumber the positives. ;)

As for my motivation for buying the phone.

1. My current phone was supposed to be a temporarily unit purchased in an emergency and supposed to be used till the time I find a more suitable phone and I have been using it for too long. :ashamed:

2. The Geek in me compels me to try out different platforms. :P I am also interested in the latest Symbian and Win Mobile at the moment, but I have already used Symbian in my last two phones and latest Win Mo is not out yet. However Android devices are readily available. I initially wanted to get my Android fix via Notion Ink ADAM, but with no concrete announcements so far, I am opting for an alternative Android device and one of the best available devices is Galaxy S. I will probably buy ADAM as well when it releases.

3. I want to try my hand at development on Android. I had played around with the SDK a bit during the initial stages of Android long time back, I want to get back to it. There is more important reasons behind this, but I don't want to put it here.
 
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@Lord Nemesis, how is the loudspeaker volume? The gsmarena review indicates that it is very feeble (almost as bad as the iPhone). Did you happen to listen to some music/ringtone when you checked it?
 
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Got to play around with the phone for a while. Must say that the screen was super awesome to look at. I have not seen the Iphone 4 yet but I feel it cannot get better than this. The touch sensitivity was top class, comparable to the iPhone 3GS if not better. The kinetic scroll works like a charm although a little too fast for my liking but it adds to the overall snappiness of the device.

The build quality was not as bad as it is made out to be. I mean with the cover closed it feels pretty solid (no creaks or stuff - it is not expected either for a premium phone). But it is indeed a fingerprint magnet.

The camera quality is decent, the low light pictures had quite a lot of noise (although not sure whether they were taken with the proper settings).

Could not test the audio quality or video playback as my friend did not get a chance to load any stuff till now (and me being in office did not help matters much). Radio reception and quality was not too great though.

The much talked about (?) text input method SWYPE was fun to play with. It worked perfectly right from the first time (the first word i tried was xylophone followed by accommodate). Although i feel it will be a feature which will remain as a feature to show off initially rather than being really used.

Overall I am mightily impressed. I was planning to go for the wave but playing around with it made me contemplate whether i should wait for a while to see if the price comes down. Anything around 22k-23k in some months and i will be banging my head if i pay 17k for the wave now.

P.S. Did i mention about the gorgeous display?
 
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Saw the Galaxy S for the first time and i must say that the screen is nothing like i have ever seen. Felt like something from those Sci-fi movies :P
Actually the screen looks as if it is floating without the glass. I did a comparison of the iPhone4 screen and the Galaxy and Galaxy beats the crap out of the iphone screen. Its so colorful and absolutely stunning in all possible ways. There is no way that screen can match the awesomeness of the Super AMOLED. And as they say, u have to see it to appreciate it :)

Also browsed about some apps and widgets and evrything was so smooth. Th feedback for the screen is very very good. I couldn't find any difference between iphone4 and Galaxy's touch recognition et all. Played a game called Asphalt and it looked mindblowing on the SUPER AMOLED.

At the end, didn't want to give the phone away but alas i forgot that i was checking a demo model ;)
 
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