By Craig Lam (Aberdeen, Scotland)
The first thing anyone notices about the Galaxy S is the screen. There are other smartphones out with the same size of screen (the HTC HD2, I believe) but the "super AMOLED" display really pops with brightness and colour. Normally I dismiss claims of "20% extra brightness, 80% sunlight reduction, 20% extra battery" as marketing guff, however, in the case of this technology, it appears to be at least somewhat true. The screen makes even mundane usage of the device something of a joy.
The phone is sold with Samsung's own interface on top, and in many ways it reminds me of the Sense UI on the HTC devices, though it does lack some of the widgets that came with my wife's HTC Hero, such as as the homescreen weather/time widget and the email widget. Similar applications were easily found on the Android Market. The touch whiz interface is clearly somewhat less polished and pretty than Sense, but it essentially does the same things.
And this phone is fast. The capacitive screen requires the lightest of touches to set the processor in motion and switching between apps, screens, pictures, albums is almost instantaneous. The machine is built on a 1ghz processor like the Nexus 1 and Desire, but it beats both in benchmarks and includes a dedicated graphics engine. I haven't had much opportunity to try many games, though the few I've tried (including Asphalt, a 3d heavy game) have run extremely well. It's just a shame that there aren't more big developers working in the Android Market at the moment.
Swype is a brilliant addition to text input on the device. You may have heard of it, or something similar - it allows you to trace a "path" including the letters you want in a word, rather than pecking them out individually. This sounds somewhat silly until you try it. The software has an uncanny knack of choosing the correct word out of the letters you trace and it makes typing out long words fast and easy. It isn't so good for the fiddly bits of messaging - punctuation, capitalisation - but you can combine it with hunt and peck for finer editing.
Now the bad.
The design of the phone is inoffensive, yes, and also generic. It's what you'd draw if you wanted to represent a distillation of 2010 smartphones. It's basically an oblong screen with filleted edges. It has one clicky physical home button flanked by capacitive menu and back buttons. I found that I missed the physical trackball of the Hero, if only to flip between screens or fidget with. The case is a shiny, slippery plastic, and the back is composed of tiny, faintly iridescent polkadots. Not very nice to look at or hold, especially since this is a large, thin slab. Don't ever rest it on your knees, it'll just slide off. I expect that I'll get a case with a bit more grip for it when a wider selection becomes available.
The battery life isn't great either, though I am able to get at least a regular day of use out of it. It has never given up on me when I've needed it, but it does get worrying low late in the day. Bear in mind that it's my new toy and, as with any new gadget, I play with it all the time: installing new apps, changing backgrounds, taking pictures, messing with the GPS, etc. So when I calm down a bit I expect the battery will go proportionally further.
Overall, this is a very polished device. It's packed with cutting edge hardware that works in efficient tandem with a quickly maturing Android. I dislike its physical design and it's a shame that Samsung didn't plump for higher quality materials and a more daring style to match the hardware. However, we don't (at least, I don't) buy phones for what they look like when they're switched off, lying on a table. No, we spend most of the time looking at the screen, and the Galaxy's display more than makes up for its ugly chassis.
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