Samsung I9000 Galaxy S

Introduction Our homepage is the natural home of the deadliest smartphone carnivores. We normally don’t mind but this time is different. Are we about to start feeling a wee bit nervous or what. It’s a beast that tops the food chain, instilling fear and terror into the hearts of its prey. Our test lab is Jurassic Park, and the next predator we are about to meet is the T-Rex. Luckily we have a team of skilled keepers, capable of taming it.

The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S has so much muscle that trying to impose your will with brute force is pointless. No sir, this creature needs to be befriended, patted on the back until it starts to trust you. But once it lets you jump on its back it will give you the ride of a lifetime.

Key features Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support 4" 16M-color Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of WVGA (480 x 800 pixel) resolution Android OS v2.1 with TouchWiz 3.0 UI customization 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird CPU; 512 MB of RAM 5 MP autofocus camera with face, smile and blink detection 720p HD video recording at 30fps Wi-Fi 802.11 b, g and n support GPS with A-GPS connectivity; Digital compass 8/16GB internal storage, microSD slot Accelerometer and proximity sensor Standard 3.5 mm audio jack microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0 Stereo FM radio with RDS 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery Great audio quality Slim waistline at only 9.9mm thickness Document editor File manager comes preinstalled Secondary video-call camera Swype predictive text input Excellent choice of preinstalled applications

Design and construction The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S will be pitched against the likes of the HTC Desire and the Nexus One. Simplicity was obviously the Google and HTC game. Samsung could’ve easily said “It’s the screen, stupid!” and stopped bothering. But they didn’t – and in the end – the styling is perhaps one of the few questionable decisions in the Galaxy S.

The Galaxy S is all made of plastic and there’s nothing wrong with that. It wasn’t a problem for the Omnia, the Omnia II or the Omnia HD. The thing is the blue-dotted back of the phone, while definitely an attention-grabber, is just not everyone’s cup of tea.

But however eccentric, the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S back is nowhere near where most people will look. The magnificent 4” Super AMOLED display of WVGA resolution is as close to perfection as we have seen on a mobile phone and you just can’t help but admire it.

In case you have missed the preview, let us remind you what the Super AMOLED technology is all about. It retains the amazingly deep blacks that characterize the other AMOLED displays but gets the covering glass out of the way to vastly improve viewing angles and sunlight legibility.

Indeed, the most beautiful display to look at indoors doesn’t lose its charm in the open and the bright of day. The Galaxy S display viewing angles are bordering on perfection, onscreen content looking as if printed on paper.

The sensitivity is as good as is to be expected in a capacitive touchscreen unit. The gentlest of touches will do, but gloves and styluses are a no-go.

In a nutshell, the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S display is the key feature that will probably sell this phone to loads of users. So far, the choice of the best display was a matter of compromise for either resolution contrast or sunlight legibility. Super AMOLED units are in no mood to choose. They just let you have it all in one unit.

Below the display there are three keys only – it’s the typically minimalist new Android wave. The touch-sensitive menu and back buttons are on either side of a hardware home key.

A long press on the menu key launches the search field, so in effect users have a dedicated search key. As usual, pressing and holding the home key activates the task switcher.

The transition between the touch-sensitive screen and the touch-sensitive keys is seamless. The home key on the other hand, is well sized and solid to press, so no worries here either.

The power and screen lock key on the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is placed high up on the right side of the handset. It is a bit hard to reach but Samsung have used this spot on many of their handsets, so it shouldn’t be much trouble for those who come from another Samsung smartphone.

The microSD card slot is under the battery cover but luckily is hot-swappable. It handled a 16GB card trouble-free and support for 32GB is promised too.

The other element of interest under the Galaxy S back panel is the 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery. It has enough power to get the smartphone through almost two days of extensive usage which we consider a pretty good achievement.

User interface: TouchWiz takes Android to a new level Third time is the charm for Samsung and Android. On the I9000 Galaxy S, the TouchWiz overlay is most prominent and it improves both looks and usability.

You shouldn’t expect a miracle of course – the user experience isn’t too different but many minor changes (and good ones at that) are there to be seen. The Android approach to touchscreen is pretty good to begin with, and the final result is excellent.

The customizations start on the homescreen where you have up to seven panes to populate with widgets. In our earlier unit there were 9 screens available but Samsung obviously thought this was either too much for the device to handle or more than any user will need. The good part is that you don’t have to use all the screens all the time. If you need less, deleting the extra ones will speed up the navigation.

Next, the Galaxy S has four buttons docked at the bottom of its homescreen, which stay there even when you open the menu. The rightmost button is the Applications/home button, which alternates the main menu and the home screen, and the other three you can change with whatever icon you like.

The main menu consists of side-scrollable panes, much like the homescreen, instead of a vertical scrollable grid (like in vanilla Android). You can add new pages manually, by dragging an app to a new screen in edit mode. A list view is also available, just as on the HTC alternative, Sense UI.

When the launcher is in edit mode, you can uninstall applications (only the ones that you installed) just by tapping them.

Additionally, the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S packs all the updates brought by Android 2.1, like several new widgets and Live wallpapers. The Galaxy S even has more live images than the Google Nexus One and some of the new additions are downright impressive (mostly the pond). Just keep in mind that activating living wallpapers will put a strain on the battery.

The task switcher has been untouched by the TouchWiz changes, but the notification area has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and sound toggles on top. These are quite handy when you need to turn any of these features on or off – no more digging in the Settings.

Even better – if there are no known Wi-Fi networks available when you switch WLAN on, a tab appears that lets you pick a network. This makes connecting to any Wi-Fi network a breeze.

The lock screen has been TouchWizified as well – you now need to swipe upwards to remove the virtual lockscreen covering your phone. There are cool alternative unlocking patterns too when you have a missed event – a message or a call. Strangely enough though, this Samsung I9000 Galaxy S unit lacks the Smart Unlock functionality – something which our preview sample had.

Overall, the changes that TouchWiz brings to the table make Android easier to use. The docked icons are the fastest way to launch the most commonly used apps. The toggles in the notifications area let you easily switch off unneeded radios to save battery. And adding more homescreen panes only as you need them is better than having mostly empty screens. In short, we like what Samsung have done with the place.

The performance of the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S was great even in its early pre-release stages but the interface is now even faster and smoother. The Samsung Galaxy S 1 GHz Cortex A8 CPU is obviously doing a great job and the 512 MB of RAM on board feel more than enough. In case you are having RAM troubles (highly unlikely as it may be), you can download one of the free task managers from the Android Market and keep a tighter grasp on what’s using it.

Update 24 May: Initially our phone reported to have 256 MB of RAM memory, but after seeing so many sources claiming that the Galaxy S has 512 MB we contacted Samsung to clear this out for us. It turned out the Galaxy S will hit the shelves with good 512 MB of RAM on board.

The applications work consistently well and we can only imagine what a possible Froyo 2.2 update will do for the I9000 Galaxy S. Froyo is said to give a two to five times speed boost.

Check out the device in action in the video below that we snatched from our blog – lags are very rare and not affecting the user experience at all.

Excellent phonebook A typical Android smartphone, Samsung I9000 Galaxy S has a phonebook with massive functionality and practically unlimited capacity.

The handset displays the phone memory, SIM-stored and all Google contacts in the phonebook. There is a dedicated setting for that, so you really can have all of your contacts gathered in one place. You can search the entries by either flick-scrolling the list or using the alphabet scroll at the side of the screen (courtesy of Samsung and the TouchWiz UI).

Thanks to Android 2.1, there is also multiple account support for email and contact synchronization, including Exchange accounts.

There are many info fields that you can assign to each contact, but it still remains perfectly organized. You have all the types listed (numbers, email addresses, etc) and there's a plus sign on the right - clicking it adds another item of that type. Pressing the minus sign under it deletes the unneeded field.

Great telephony The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S caused us no trouble during calls. There were no reception issues or in-call voice quality drops.

Smart Dial is available and works like a charm – the implementation on the Galaxy S searches both contact numbers and names unlike the one on the Galaxy Spica, which went worked with numbers only.

The call log is the tab next to the dial pad. It shows all the dialed, received and missed calls in one list sorting your call history by contacts.

We shot a demo video of the Samsung Galaxy S contacts management and telephony features. We're highlighting the swipe-to-call and swipe-to-sms feature in the phonebook, the fluid contacts scrolling, the intelligent smart dialing and the handy calls log options. The Buddies now homescreen widget also gets featured. It's well worth the look.

Capable video player – 720p DivX/XviD clips are a cinch The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is among the best performers in the Android family as far as video playback is concerned. In addition to packing a dedicated video player app (though playing videos through the gallery is still possible) it also has DivX and XviD video support, which is rare in the Google OS family.

Performance with higher-res videos is great – it played 720p videos like a champ. Little wonder, considering it can record 720p videos. There’s no TV-Out but thanks to the DLNA support you can still stream videos and photos to your DLNA-enabled TV or media player (any PC with Wi-Fi and DLNA-capable software would do too).

Music player is really nice The TouchWiz UI has reskinned the music player on the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S. The interface consists of several tabs for the sorting options: current playlist, all tracks, playlists and albums, artists and composers. You are free to remove those you don’t need, to make the interface easier to navigate.