Samsung Wave available to pre-order from Vodafone

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The Samsung Wave, the first smartphone to run the Korean firm's Bada operating system, is now available for pre-order through Vodafone, and is set to hit the shelves in the UK on 1 June.

Anticipation for Samsung's proprietary platform has been building since it was first announced towards the end of last year, while the Wave itself – or the S8500 to use its model number – made its [a href="http://www.itpro.co.uk/620458/mwc-2010-samsung-reveals-wave-smartphone" target="blank"]first appearance at Mobile World Congress in February.

Now with just over a week to go before its UK release, Vodafone has revealed its Wave price plans, with the Bada-powered handset coming free on deals starting at £25 per month.

That gets you 300 minutes of free calls every month for the duration of the 24-month deal, along with unlimited texts and 500MB of data.

As for the handset itself, the 3.3in display featuring Samsung's proprietary Super-AMOLED technology heads up an impressive feature list, closely followed by a beefy 1GHz processor.

Multimedia is well catered for thanks to a five megapixel camera capable of shooting 720p video, and 5.1 surround sound support. Samsung provides 2GB of on-board storage, with a microSD slot on hand for adding up to 32GB more. Bluetooth 3.0, full-speed USB and 802.11n Wi-Fi ensure plenty of connectivity options.

Samsung's TouchWiz interface is up to version 3.0, but of course it's under the surface where the real changes are to be found thanks to the presence of Bada. And as Samsung suggested in a statement when showing off the Wave at MWC in February, the social media-friendly OS may have the ideal partner in the Wave handset.

“The Bada platform enables seamless access to an abundance of quality apps, through a screen that really has to be seen to be believed,” Samsung Mobile's former UK and Ireland vice president Mark Mitchinson said in February. “The screen is fantastic for displaying 720p HD video decoding and recording capabilities, plus the new Social Hub offers a life changing user experience.”

The Wave is available from today in other European markets – including France and Germany – with wider global release set to follow in due course. The Bada online store will see applications available to download in 80 countries on release, while the complete Bada SDK 1.0.0 – currently with select application companies – will be made available for general download “shortly”.

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