Samsung launches Bada Powered Wave S8500 Handset

Submitted by lalit on February 14, 2010 - 5:40pm.

Samsung today officially launched the much rumored first Bada OS powered handset Wave S8500 at MWC 2010. Samsung Wave is also the first handset to feature new Super AMOLED 3.3-inch touchscreen and Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0 user interface. The phone comes with 1GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera, 2GB/8GB memory, 720p video recording, quad band GSM/EDGE, dual band HSPA, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, A-GPS and microSD card slot. It measures 4.6” x 2.2” x 0.42” and packs 1,500mAh battery. Samsung Wave S8500 will ship globally in April 2010 and pricing yet not announced.

Engadget played with the Wave handset at MWC and they found the device had gorgeous screen and it was super fast. Their initial impressions of the device are:

  • Overall the device feels like a glorified feature phone, and speaking to some other tech folks here, the feeling seemed to be common. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot to it that we haven’t seen in other Samsung devices, especially considering the TouchWiz integration.
  • There was an issue with flipping the keyboard from portrait to landscape – as we said the phone is early, so this may change, but we had to leave an app and reopen in the other orientation to get it working. We also noticed that there doesn’t seem to be word prediction in place right now.
  • The browser is redirecting to WAP pages, so it was hard to see what the results were. We also thought the buttons were in a very odd place, making it a bit hard to navigate.
  • The display wasn’t always responding to touches and at least one unit completely froze in us.
  • For those asking, from the looks of things (and the press release) there is no multitouch on this device.

We have added a video below from Engadget showing the phone in action. The Bada OS is not that impressive.