MWC 2010: Samsung overview

Unpacked event

In a way, Samsung jump-started the MWC a day early with their Unpacked event. Dedicated to their headline phone, the S8500 Wave, the show was heavy on multimedia in a way we've rarely seen before. The lavish event was keen to emphasize how committed Samsung are to their latest project and how hard they will be trying to make it work.

The Samsung Unpacked event

Check out this video that we took at the show to get an idea of the magnitude of the event.

Launching a smartphone OS with an appstore and all certainly won’t be easy (even for Samsung) but the S8500 Wave is a promising start.

Samsung S8500 Wave

The Samsung S8500 Wave is the first device to run the new Bada OS but it comes with a familiar TouchWiz interface. Lively and colorful, the interface packs several usability and design upgrades compared to its featurephone days.

A notification tray sits at the top always ready to show you the latest events you have missed and let you control all your connections. The video and audio players have completely revamped interfaces and all the UI icons are new. The visual task switcher and the optional ten menu screens are also nice features although not as innovative.

Samsung S8500 Wave live shots

The young Bada OS owners will source applications from Samsung Apps - an online store that is already available in 3 countries and should launch in 50 more in the coming months. For now there are only around 100 Bada apps available there but Samsung promise to put great effort in extending that number.

Samsung S8500 Wave live shots

But the innovations that the Samsung S8500 Wave brings certainly don't end up with software. The handsets runs on a 1 GHz CPU and we can confirm that it's blazing fast. It is also among the little few to support the latest Wi-Fi n standard.

The best part of the Samsung S8500 Wave hardware however is its Super AMOLED display which is simply great. You can find out more details about it in our preview and see how close it comes to perfection.

The list of noteworthy Samsung S8500 Wave features continues with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera and 720p video recording. The camera interface is familiar - it's pretty much the same as on Samsung M8910 Pixon12. Here go several camera samples and a couple of sample videos that we took with the Wave.

Samsung S8500 Wave camera/ samples