The Samsung Galaxy S definitely deserves a double take at the least.  If you are a Android smart phone junkie then the Galaxy S is the must have phone to feed your fix.  A bright and beautiful screen thanks to the Super AMOLED display.  Quick and responsive to the touch makes for an enjoyable experience when getting around the device and switching from task to task.  However, not all things are perfect and there are some issues that will be brought up later in this review.

The Basics

NETWORK

HSUPA 900/1900/2100

EDGE/GPRS 850/ 900/1800/1900

DIMENSION

64.2 X 122.4 X 9.9 mm (119g)

DISPLAY

4.0” WVGA(480×800) 16M SUPER AMOLED

mDNIe(Mobile Digital Natural Image engine)

ANDROID 2.1 (ECLAIR) / ANDROID MARKET

SOCIAL HUB

Integrates SMS, Social Network Services, email, and calendar accounts

ANDROID SAMSUNG UI

Multiple Homescreens

Hybrid Widgets

PROCESSOR

1GHz CPU Speed

BATTERY (STANDARD) LI-POL, 1,500MAH

Talk time : 2G/ 769 minutes, 3G/ 391 minutes

Standby : 2G/ 750 hours, 3G/ 625 hours

CAMERA

5.0 Megapixel AF camera

Self Shot, Action Shot, Add me, Cartoon Shot, Smile Shot

VIDEO

HD Video Player & Recorder (1280 x 720) @ 30fps

codec: DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV, VC-1

format: 3gp(mp4), AVI(divx), MKV, FLV, H.263Sorenson

MUSIC

Music Player with SoundAlive

3.5mm Ear Jack

MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/OGG/WMA/AMR-NB/AMR-WB/WAV/

MID/AC3/IMY/FLAC/XMF

MEMORY

16GB + MicroSD(Up to 32GB)

ANDROID BROWSER

Flash Lite3.1, RSS reader

MULTI-TOUCH ZOOM LIGHT SENSOR

Accelerometer sensor, Proximity Sensor, Digital Compass

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

AllShare

Daily Briefing

Layar Reality Browser powered by Tele Atlas

Swype, Write & Go

ThinkFree

Aldiko e-book

Web Browsing on the Galaxy S

The on board web browser made it easy to surf the net.  Viewing most web pages was not a problem with the Galaxy S browser supporting three zoom methods.  Dedicated zoom buttons, double tapping the screen and multi-touch pinch-zooming are all available to you. Text re-flow is also supported within the browser.  With Text re-flow the text automatically adjust to the zoom level.  Hitting the menu key will prop six keys to pop up. Allowing you to open a new tab, Add RSS feeds (if any), switch tabs, refresh the page, go forward, and open bookmarks. There is also a "More" button which reveals a few more options like text copying, find on page, share page, page info, etc.  Tapping the bookmark image will show a list of thumbnail's from bookmarked pages and also get a “Most Visited” list plus a "History" list.

Although Flash is not supported in Android 2.1 there are alternative (Skyfire for example) browsers you can download for the Galaxy S that will allow you to view Flash.  However, it will not be long for the Froyo (Android 2.2) update that will make flash available. The word is that the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S will have the update around August 2010.  Although, not all is lost for now.  There is a YouTube app available that partially makes up for the lack of Flash support.

Taking Photos with the 5MP camera

The Samsung Galaxy S comes equipped with a 5MP camera which it now seems to be the standard for higher end Android smart phones.  Although, the international version does not have a flash, there will be a Galaxy S available with a flash if you are a Verizon customer.  The Samsung UI for the camera is actually pretty nice.   Easy to navigate and gives you plenty of shooting modes and scenes to work with.  A few other nice features in the camera mode is face and smile detection and Geotagging.

The camera focus feature is as easy as it gets.  Simply touch what you want it to focus on and done.

The Galaxy S camera does offer a big selection of photography features, there is almost no need to carry around that digital camera with you anymore.  With features like blink detection, image stabilization, geotagging, smile detection, face detection and auto contrast, you are just about guaranteed a great shot.

Video recording in HD with the Galaxy S

The Samsung Galaxy S is one of the few phones on the market today that can shoot in 720p HD video.  The quality is amazing with the video being captured in 1280 x 720 pixels at 30 fps.

Playing Music With TouchWiz UI

The TouchWiz UI has completely reskinned the Samsung Galaxy S.  The interface consists of several tabs for the sorting options: current playlist, all tracks, playlists and albums, artists and composers. One cool factor is that you are able to remove those you don’t need making the interface customizable easy for you to navigate.

Video Playback On The Galaxy S

In addition to the standard video formats that mobile devices are able to play the Samsung Galaxy S also supports DivX and Xvid.  Video playback of 720p videos were no problem for the device.  Although there was very little doubt since it can record in 720p.  Another great option to play video is the DLNA AllShare option.  Giving you the ability to stream videos and photos to your DLNA-enabled TV or media player.

The video player interface is simple and easy to navigate. Upon first opening the video player you get a list of all videos available on the phone.  Once you begin viewing a video the on-screen controls are play/pause and skip buttons, also the progress bar is draggable for quick searching.

One more notable feature is the Outdoor visibility settings.  Boosting the brightness and contrast of the screen so that no matter where or when you feel like watching a video you will always get a great viewing experience.

Why Text When You Can Swype?

This to me was one of the best features on the Galaxy S.  It features an on-screen QWERTY keyboard by Swype in both landscape and portrait mode.  Swype works like this, rather then tapping every letter to make a word you simply sweep your finger across the keyboard.  For example to Swype the word BEST you place your finger on the letter B and sweep over the E, S, and T.  Obviously you are sweeping across a few letters on the way but the Swype technology is extraordinarily accurate and gets the word you are trying to spell almost every time.  If there are words with similar sweeping directions it will prompt a list of a few words.  For those words that may not be in the Swype dictionary you simply have to tap out the word once so that it can learn it and every time after then you can Swype it.

There is a tutorial available for those who would like to learn all the in's and out's of Swype.  You can actually start to enter text faster then typing it out once you get the hang of it.  However, Swype may not be for everyone and can be turned off.  So it's there if you want it but don't have to use it.

The Issues

The Samsung Galaxy S does have its issues but what phone doesn't. Even with a 1GHz processor the Galaxy S did run into some lag issues.  Opening the email box and viewing a message did go to a black screen for a few seconds before being able to view the message.  After receiving a new SMS the alert in the notification bar does not go away automatically after you open it until you hit the "Clear" button. Another issue I did have traveling outside of a major city was the GPS navigation on the device.  I was able to get directions but not able to get the phone to acquire the satellite to give me turn by turn directions while on the road.  I'm hoping that a update from Samsung will fix these issues.  As far as getting the phone to run a little faster and not having to go into the application setting and close out unused apps you can download a free "Task killer application" that make it really simple to get some speed back to your device.

Yay or Nay?

Overall the pro's of the Samsung Galaxy S far out way the con's and is definitely the Android smart phone to have in the market today.  The reception even on the AT&T network worked great and the multimedia capabilities on the phone are very strong.  So if you are in the market to for a new Android powered smart phone this would definitely be my pick.