The Samsung Wave (or Samsung Wave GT-S8500) is a
smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
developed and produced by
Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational corporation, multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of ...
. It is the first smartphone to run the
Bada
Bada (stylized as bada; Korean: ) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Samsung Electronics for devices such as mid- to high-end smartphones and tablet computers. The name is derived from " (bada)", meaning "ocean" or "sea" in ...
operating system developed by Samsung Electronics, which was commercially released on May 24, 2010. The Wave is a touchscreen phone powered by Samsung's "Hummingbird" CPU (S5PC110), which includes 1 GHz
ARM
In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between the ...
Cortex-A8 CPU and a built-in
PowerVR
PowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies (formerly VideoLogic) that develops hardware and software for 2D and 3D rendering, and for video encoding, decoding, associated image processing and DirectX, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and OpenCL accelera ...
SGX 540 graphics engine. It also has a "
Super AMOLED
AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode, ) is a type of OLED display device technology. OLED describes a specific type of thin-film-display technology in which organic compounds form the electroluminescent material, and active matrix ...
" screen and
720p
720p (1280×720 px; also called HD ready, standard HD or just HD) is a progressive HDTV signal format with 720 horizontal lines/1280 columns and an aspect ratio (AR) of 16:9, normally known as widescreen HDTV (1.78:1). All major HDTV broadcast ...
high-definition video capture capabilities. Due to shortage of Super AMOLED screens, Samsung released a successor to the device called
Wave II and ceased production of the original S8500 model.
Specifications
Screen
The screen is a capacitive touchscreen
Super AMOLED
AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode, ) is a type of OLED display device technology. OLED describes a specific type of thin-film-display technology in which organic compounds form the electroluminescent material, and active matrix ...
with an anti-smudge oleophobic coating on top of the scratch-resistant tempered-glass ( Gorilla Glass Display ). The screen resolution is 800x480 WVGA with 283 PPI.
Processor
The phone features a 1 GHz
SoC, which internally contains an
ARM
In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between the ...
Cortex A8 CPU core, the same model as Apple's
A4 processor
The Apple A4 is a 32-bit package on package (PoP) system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc. and manufactured by Samsung. It was the first SoC Apple designed in-house. The first product to feature the A4 was the first-generation iPad, foll ...
. The graphics engine of the device is a
PowerVR
PowerVR is a division of Imagination Technologies (formerly VideoLogic) that develops hardware and software for 2D and 3D rendering, and for video encoding, decoding, associated image processing and DirectX, OpenGL ES, OpenVG, and OpenCL accelera ...
SGX 540 GPU which is said to be capable of generating 90 million triangles per second (same as the SoC used on the Samsung Galaxy S).
Camera
The phone features a 5
megapixel
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.
In most digital display devices, pixels are the smal ...
EDOF camera which supports 2560 x 1920 pixels, along with
autofocus
An autofocus (or AF) optical system uses a sensor, a control system and a motor to focus on an automatically or manually selected point or area. An electronic rangefinder has a display instead of the motor; the adjustment of the optical system ...
, LED flash,
Geo-tagging
Geotagging, or GeoTagging, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a geotagged photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, QR Codes or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata. This data u ...
, face and blink detection, image stabilization, touch focus, etc.
Shooting modes include beauty shot, smile shot, continuous, panorama and vintage shot. As a camcorder it is able to shoot HD recording (1280x720) at 30 FPS with flash. As well as this, it is also able to record slow motion video (320x240) at 120 FPS with flash.
Operating system
The Wave was the first phone with Samsung's own
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
based Operating System,
Bada
Bada (stylized as bada; Korean: ) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Samsung Electronics for devices such as mid- to high-end smartphones and tablet computers. The name is derived from " (bada)", meaning "ocean" or "sea" in ...
, meaning "Ocean". Samsung worked on the later versions of Bada 1.2 and later 2.0. Bada 1.2 was released to the world in a phased manner as it was designed to improve stability.
In January 2012, Samsung declared that it was planning to merge Bada with the Linux-based
Tizen
Tizen () is a Linux-based mobile operating system backed by the Linux Foundation, mainly developed and used primarily by Samsung Electronics.
The project was originally conceived as an HTML5-based platform for mobile devices to succeed MeeGo. Sa ...
operating system that was developed in collaboration with Intel. Despite the collaboration, was not supported by the Wave.
Unofficial ports of Android were made due to the restrictions and the eventual cease in development of Bada. Versions ported include
Android Froyo, Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jellybean, KitKat, Lollipop and Marshmallow.
Other features
Other features include
A-GPS
Assisted GNSS (A-GNSS) is a GNSS augmentation system that often significantly improves the startup performance—i.e., time-to-first-fix (TTFF)—of a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). A-GNSS works by providing the necessary data to the ...
, 2 GB/8 GB of internal storage with a
microSDHC
Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary non-volatile flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA) for use in portable devices.
The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between SanDis ...
slot for an additional 32 GB. It also has a magnetometer (compass), a proximity sensor, an accelerometer, 5.1-channel surround sound Mobile Theater, music recognition, a fake call service, smart search, Social Hub and it is the first phone to support Bluetooth version 3.0.
Radio connectivity includes
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...
3.0,
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...
802.11 b/g/n and
HSDPA
High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunicat ...
3.6 Mbit/s.
This phone is available with both European/Asian 3G bandings and the North American 3G bandings. The North American 3G bandings version of the phone is a limited availability and is not available in the US.
Software features
User interface
The phone is the first smartphone to feature the Samsung
Bada
Bada (stylized as bada; Korean: ) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Samsung Electronics for devices such as mid- to high-end smartphones and tablet computers. The name is derived from " (bada)", meaning "ocean" or "sea" in ...
operating system platform. The UI is Samsung's own Touch-wiz 3.0. Touch-wiz 3.0, like the two predecessors (Touch-wiz 2.0 and Touch-wiz), utilizes widgets. The three most notable widgets pre-installed in Touch-wiz 3.0 are Daily Briefing (which includes all essential information such as weather, finance, AP mobile news and schedule), Feeds and Updates and Buddies now (which allows users to call, send texts to and read Facebook/Twitter feeds off their favorite contacts). Users are allowed to have up to 10 home screens to add widgets.
Applications
For Internet browsing the Samsung Wave has the Dolphin Browser v2.0 (based on
WebKit
WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the PS ...
) (or 3.0 depends by the firmware version). This browser supports Flash, but it is disabled by default to improve page loading speed.
By default, the phone comes with Picsel Viewer which is capable of reading .PDF and Microsoft Office file formats. Users from selected countries can buy and download Picsel Office Editor from
Samsung Apps
The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
.
As for
Samsung Apps
The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
, users can also download applications, games and widgets from the application store.
Other software includes the GPS software that comes with this phone (LBS Route 66), Facebook, Twitter, social hub, mini diary, daily briefing, memo, video player, FM radio, media browser, voice recorder, e-mail and pre-installed Asphalt 5.
Media support
The Samsung Wave supports
MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
, AAC, AAC+, e-AAC+, WMA, AMR, WAV, MP4, MPEG4, H.263,
H.264
Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...
, WMV, FLV, DivX, XviD, MKV and FLAC file formats. It also supports subtitles.
Bada 2.0 support
In many countries at the end of December 2011, the operating system was gradually updated to
Bada
Bada (stylized as bada; Korean: ) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Samsung Electronics for devices such as mid- to high-end smartphones and tablet computers. The name is derived from " (bada)", meaning "ocean" or "sea" in ...
2.0. The first official Bada 2.0 version was LA1.
With Bada 2.0, the TouchWiz UI reached version 4.0, the GUI was completely redone, and included many new features, such as full multitasking, WAC, voice commands, text-to-speech, speech-to-text,
ChatON
ChatON was a global mobile communication service introduced by Samsung Electronics in September 2011. ChatON served more than 120 countries in 62 languages. ChatON was available on Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows Phone (Samsung Zone), Windows ...
, Caster, a new version of DLNA, social apps and the new Dolphin 3.0 browser with a download manager.
Android porting
Due to many owners of the phone disliking the Bada software many people have worked on porting the popular
Android O.S to the Wave. The ported versions known are Froyo, Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean and Kitkat. However they are still being developed and some features, such as GPS, may be limited or not function as intended.
See also
*
Exynos
Exynos, formerly Hummingbird (), is a series of ARM-based system-on-chips developed by Samsung Electronics' System LSI division and manufactured by Samsung Foundry. It is a continuation of Samsung's earlier S3C, S5L and S5P line of SoCs.
Exy ...
-
Samsung
The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
*
Amoled
AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode, ) is a type of OLED display device technology. OLED describes a specific type of thin-film-display technology in which organic compounds form the electroluminescence, electroluminescent materia ...
-
Samsung
The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
References
External links
Facebook Samsung Wave pageOfficial Samsung Wave websiteSamsung Mobile Wave websiteReviews:
Phonearena.com review by PhoneArena Team, 04 Jun 2010GSMArena.com review by GSMArena team, 01 June 2010Forums:
MySamsungWaveSamsungWaveForum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Samsung Wave
Bada (operating system)
s-8500
Mobile phones introduced in 2010
Mobile phones with user-replaceable battery
Discontinued smartphones