Samsung Wave II S8530 Preview: First Look
Samsung Wave II S8530 Preview
Samsung has made quite a splash in the smartphone segment in the past year with its launch of some of the best Android smartphones, like the Samsung Galaxy S. Now, it is also launching a new Android tablet, which is loaded with features and killer hardware. The tablet is expected to be a huge success. Another not-so-publicized success that Samsung has had in 2010 has been that of the Bada OS. Samsung launched the Bada powered Samsung Wave with the Galaxy S, and while the Galaxy S has been a huge hit, even the Wave has had really good sales.
Samsung has already announced many new Bada phones like the Samsung Wave S5250 and the Samsung Wave S5330. Today, it announced yet another Bada phone - the Samsung Wave II S8530. It is the successor to the Wave S8500 that we reviewed earlier, and sports slightly better specifications with roughly the same hardware.
Design
The Samsung Wave II S8530 is almost identical to the Wave S8500 when it comes to design. It has the same form factor and style but is slightly bigger owing to the larger display.
It has a bigger 4 inch S-LCD display with a capacitive touchscreen and a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. Samsung probably switched the SuperAMOLED display to a S-LCD because of the shortage of the SuperAMOLED display panels worldwide.
Besides that, there seem to be no other major change.
Hardware and OS
The hardware and the OS are exactly the same as in the Wave S8500. It runs the Bada OS 1.2 (which you can upgrade your Wave S8500 to). The hardware specs are pretty impressive - it has an ARM Cortex A8 processor clocked at 1 GHz. It also has 512 MB RAM and comes with around 2 GB partitioned internal storage. It gives the user 390 MB to play with while 1.5 GB is reserved for system storage.
On top of Bada OS, it runs the TouchWiz 3.0 UI which Samsung uses even in its Android smartphones. It is very intuitive and easy to use.
Multimedia
Multimedia is easily one of the strongest suits of the Wave S8530. It has a 5 MP camera with an image capture resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It also has autofocus and LED flash. In all probability, the camera will be the same as the one in the Wave S8500, if not better, which makes it one of the best 5 MP shooters around. It also has features like geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection etc. It can also record 720p video at 30 FPS.
It will have the best video playback support, just like its predecessor. It can play 3GP, MP4, H.264, WMV, DivX, XviD and MKV videos by default. It also has a stereo FM radio with RDS.
Connectivity
The Samsung Wave II S8530 has all the connectivity options there are - it has GPRS, EDGE, 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0. It also has a GPS transceiver with A-GPS support.
It is powered by a standard Li-ion battery rated at 1500 mAh.
Conclusion
The Samsung Wave II S8530 is almost identical to the Wave S8500, except for changes in the display size. It will be one of the best smartphones, hardware wise. Bada is maturing fast as a smartphone OS and should be a force to be reckoned with, soon.
