While the world outside of OSNews is wondering whether we really need yet another mobile operating system, we here are of course happy with another contender – the more, the merrier, as it equals to competition, which keeps everybody on their toes. A day before the Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona (finally a tech event in my time zone!), Samsung unveiled its Wave handset, the first sporting Samsung’s new Bada operating system.
The Samsung wave packs a pretty punch, with a 1Ghz processor, “more than” 512MB RAM, 2GB or 8GB of internal storage, miniSD slot, 5 megapixel camera, aGPS, accelerometer, 802.11n WiFi, and BlueTooth 3.0. The screen is a 3.3″ 800×480 Super AMOLED, which, as the name suggests, is an improvement over regular AMOLED; it also comes with something called a mobile Digital Natural Image engine, and whoever knows what that does, please raise your hand.
All this fancy-schmanchy hardware allows the Wave to record in and play 720p video, while also capable of doing (I kid you not) virtual 5.1 surround sound. Codec-wise, it supports DivX, Xvid, MP4, and WMV. Notably missing from the Wave: multitouch. It runs Samsung’s new TouchWiz 3.0 interface on top of Bada.
Engadget had a chance to play with the Wave, and while they were impressed with the hardware and the speed of the device, the software was still a little rough around the edges here and there.
“The Samsung Wave truly demonstrates our commitment to deliver rich, connected and innovative smartphone experiences to everyone,” said JK Shin, President and Head of Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics, “Samsung Wave sees our platform vision become a reality. For the first time, developers have the freedom to create applications across multiple platforms, for consumption on a huge range of devices. In the Wave, our developer partners can see the ocean of opportunity that is offered by the bada mobile platform and our device technology.”
The Wave is supposed to hit stores in April.
Is it using the same font as S60? That font has got to be banned, seriously…
They should have kept their Android handset (Galaxy) uptodate and not just release it with Andriod 1.5 and never update the thing.
Such moves destroy any trust you have in the brand.
And anyways: Is having total control over yet another platform really that important when you get Android for free, you can use the Google brand and you even get money from Google ads and the Android market?
NIN is strong with some Koreans.
Not many Koreans use gmail and the Google search engine. And Google is quite unnoticed in the South Korean market.
Plus, Samsung already sponsored Enlightenment.
Yeah, Korea is the country where you have to have Windows + IE because every bank website and a lot of other websites use ActiveX. Mac and Linux are mostly nonexistant.
Not using Google has really helped I guess
Total MS domination works so smoothly.
Sarcasm aside, even if noone uses Gmail or Google you can still use Android. The Google account is optional and you can replace everything you have to. The wonders of FOSS…
That explains why most Korean web sites I visit look as though they’re created by someone a desire for crossed eyes. A good number of the sites have overlapping elements which keep their relative position despite window re-sizing. Yeesh.
My experience with Samsung phones is so far down that I’d not accept one, even if I was paid to use it. Their hardware seems fine, but the software is always broken. This seems to be another example of the develop once and leave it alone mentality that serves them so well.
But it’s slowly changing thanks to this global recession.
http://openweb.or.kr/
But I’m not surprised. Both Japan and South Korea suffer from the “Galapagos Effect”.
Android, the idea, is great. In practice, Android is slow. Perhaps this new Myriad VM will speed things up 3x like they say but I doubt it.
iPhone is fast, possibly because it will only run one app at a time, but it is fast. My old crappy LG Verizon phone running its own proprietary OS could didn’t do much but when you hit a button things happened. Android is LAGGY. I get a phone call and I want to turn it on speaker… I answer it and hit the menu button, it takes like 3 to 5 seconds for the menu to show up.
I love the idea of Android, thats probably why I own one, but the implementation is bad. Don’t know if this is the fault of Linux not scaling down that well, or the fault of the Java VM, or what. It just seems very very laggy.
It’s the fault of the Dalvik (Google’s bytecode) interpreter. According to Google, JIT (just in time) compilation is ‘not important’. They are just arrogant and are probably happy with the battery life wastage and laggy performance as long as they get the hype going.
Linux scales down quite well, thank you. As is demonstrated by the N900 running Maemo and the various LiMo phones (such as the Vodaphone 360).
Building another “new” operating system is a mistake, particularly for a company like Samsung. What the iPhone and Android have done is introduce the idea that consumer phones are mobile computing devices with a focus on software.
I trust both Apple and Google to ensure their platforms survive and to encourage development of their respective ecosystems. This means that, as both a developer and a user, I can count on any investment, time-wise or financial, to retain its value into the future.
The old guard handset manufacturers like Samsung have pushed the idea that phones are one-off throwaway devices for so long that I have no reason to believe BadaOS will be around in a few years time or that any phone purchased now will receive the latest updates as they become available.
Until companies like Samsung can prove that they care as much about maintaining a platform as they do about selling hardware, I consider these things to be nothing more than nifty feature phones and not in the same league as iPhone or Android.
Hardware-wise, my old Apple II didn’t retain much value. Software-wise, if you still want to use your farting app that was written 10 years ago in J2ME, you can. Just use any phone that does J2ME (about all phones except the iPhone)
I don’t trust Apple nor Google to secure any of my investment. I can trust the Apache license of Android, but certainly not the Apple license. If you do trust them, I can only wish good luck to you and that they don’t betray you.
Over a decade after production, these devices were still in use (and useful) in elementary and middle schools across the US. I’d say that’s reasonable value.
I really must have been asleep for the portion of time in which this joke was funny.
I’m not keen on self-inflicted pain.
It is in the best interest of both Apple and Google to improve and expand their respective platforms so that they remain viable and competitive. An open license is a benefit, but it doesn’t ensure developer attention and it doesn’t provide relevance. Both of which are needed to maintain a successful platform and both of which have been attained by Apple and Google.
Until they need to sell a shiny new platform…
Allow me to disagree.
First of all, Samsung is the second larger phone maker in the world. They are also (if I am not mistaken) the largest electronic manufacture in the world.
For a company of this size, it is strategically important to have more control on the operative system that Android gives. And I assume that the engineers at Samsung are proud of what they have achieved so far and would not just throw away what they have build after years just because a new and shiny OS is in town.
Also, Samsung is by no way building a “new” operative system. They are trying to create a unified programming environment for their handsets. This is just like Nokia using Qt for development in Symbian and Maemo (MeeGo). There are no additional cost, only benefits in having a unified development environment.
In the corporate world corporate strategics aren’t noted for their longevity.
Frankly, every engineer is proud of their work, but they aren’t the ones who decide what direction the company will go.
If Bada is only a unified programming environment rather than an OS … Well then what operating system is it running? What makes it interesting?
It’s supposed to be an open platform able to run on Linux for sure, and I would guess also on Samsung’s own featurephone OS.
That is one amazing iPhone. 😉
Samsung’s Bada OS with Microsoft’s Bing search: Bada Bing!
Nice ring to it, dontcha think? :p
Has anyone tried the SDK? Is it any good?
I browsed the API when it was announced and my first reflection was that it was very simple and clean.
There are few things that I just dont understand (for example their “social” API) but in general things look good
Guess I’ll take a look. After all, they are the second-largest handset maker in the world so it can’t hurt to know what they’re up to.
Hmm… I wonder if there’s going to be a trademark issue with Google over the name of the handset – they’re both in communications, and internet-related, though they’re technically different product types, there could be an argument it’s confusing. Especially with Google entering the handset market itself now…