Reviews

Samsung Galaxy S review

We review Samsung's Galaxy S smartphone to see if it really is as smart as they come.

20 Jul 2010

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This means that there are seven home screens for you to customise plenty of space to apply your favourite shortcuts and widgets.

Other advantages of Android 2.1 (soon to be updated to 2.2) include better Exchange support (although it's not as advanced at OS 2.2's support), live wallpapers if you fancying sprucing up your phone and Live View that allows you to take a look at all of your home screens at one time, from one place.

Samsung has applied its Touchwiz UI on the Samsung Galaxy, as it has on most of its touch screen devices, which isn't massively different to the Android front end in comparison to HTC's Sense interface.

You'll notice that the applications system is somewhat different to the Vanilla Android UI. It looks like the iPhone's because you have to scroll across the access your next page of apps rather than up and down. We think this is a better way of navigating because the Android UI can sometimes be a little over-sensitive, meaning you open up applications when sweeping your finger up and down.

The Galaxy S really is a super powerhouse with an ARM Cortex A8 1GHz processor. This, coupled with the improved power management features of Android 2.1 means that it's quick to whiz between menus, home screens, switch applications and run multiple applications at any one time.

Many devices, such as premium tablets like the Dell Streak seem to struggle with multitasking and browsing and here it's obvious that Android 2.1 really does speed up the running of the Android platform.

The Samsung Galaxy S does have a rather big focus on multimedia and it's no surprise with such a massive screen. The major video and music formats are supported, including DivX and XviD, plus you can watch and record in HD.