Samsung Wave S8500

Samsung Electronics
Industry	Consumer electronics
Founded	January 13, 1969; 57 years ago in Suwon, South Korea
Headquarters	Suwon, South Korea
Products	Smartphones, consumer electronics
Website	www.samsung.com

Samsung Wave GT-S8500 Overview

The Samsung Wave (model GT-S8500) represents a smartphone designed and manufactured by Samsung Electronics. It holds the distinction of being the inaugural device to operate on Samsung's proprietary Bada platform, which officially launched on May 24, 2010. This device features a 3.3-inch Capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 800x480 pixels at 283 PPI, utilizing a Super AMOLED display based on the PenTile configuration, protected by Gorilla Glass for enhanced durability.

Powered by Samsung’s "Hummingbird" processor (S5PC110), the Wave incorporates a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU coupled with an integrated PowerVR SGX 540 GPU. Its imaging capabilities include a 5-megapixel rear camera equipped with autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, and face detection, alongside a front-facing camera capable of recording 720p HD video at 30 frames per second, including slow-motion capture and video lighting.

The smartphone runs on the Bada OS augmented with TouchWiz 3.0 and supports various input methods such as T9 trace (on bada 1.2), ABC, QWERTY keyboards, multi-touch gestures, and handwriting recognition. Memory specifications include 256MB of RAM and internal storage options ranging from 1GB to 8GB, expandable via microSD(HC) cards up to 32GB.

Connectivity features cover GSM bands (850/900/1800/1900/2100 MHz), 3G support on multiple frequencies including HSDPA at speeds up to 3.6 Mbps, Wi-Fi standards 802.11b/g/n, A-GPS functionality, Bluetooth 3.0, and a microUSB port. The device is powered by a 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery and measures 118 x 56 x 10.9 mm with a weight of 118 grams in a slate form factor.

Multimedia support spans formats such as MP3, AAC variants, WMA, AMR, WAV audio files; and MP4, MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV video codecs along with DivX, XviD, MKV formats; FLAC support was added in bada version 1.2. The handset also supports OpenGL ES 2.0 for graphical applications.

Due to limited availability of AMOLED panels during production, Samsung introduced the Wave II featuring a PLS display as the follow-up model and discontinued the original S8500 variant.

Additional functionalities include scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass protection, smart unlock features, an accelerometer, proximity sensor, magnetometer for digital compass capabilities, and more.

The Wave is part of Samsung’s S-Series lineup and is related to devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S, Samsung Wave II S8530, Samsung Wave Y, and Samsung Wave 575.

Display

The device boasts a 3.3-inch capacitive touchscreen utilizing Super AMOLED technology, enhanced with an oleophobic layer to resist fingerprints, layered over a durable tempered glass surface (Gorilla Glass). Its screen resolution measures 800 by 480 pixels (WVGA), delivering a pixel density of 283 PPI.

Processor

Equipped with a 1 GHz System-on-a-Chip (SoC), the smartphone incorporates an ARM Cortex A8 CPU core, identical to the one found in Apple's A4 processor. For graphics processing, it employs a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU, capable of rendering up to 90 million triangles per second, matching the SoC used in the Samsung Galaxy S.

Camera

The handset includes a 5-megapixel EDOF camera capable of capturing images at a resolution of 2560 × 1920 pixels. Features include autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, face and blink detection, image stabilization, and touch focus. Available shooting modes encompass beauty shot, smile shot, continuous shooting, panorama, and vintage filters. Video recording supports HD capture at 1280×720 pixels and 30 frames per second with flash functionality.

Operating system

The Wave marked Samsung's inaugural device running its proprietary Linux-based platform named Bada—meaning "Ocean" in Korean. Samsung continued development through versions 1.2 and later 2.0, with Bada 1.2 released gradually to enhance system stability.

In January 2012, Samsung announced intentions to integrate Bada with Tizen, a Linux-based OS developed jointly with Intel; however, this integration was not supported on the Wave model.

Due to limitations and the eventual discontinuation of Bada's development, unofficial Android ports were created for the device. These custom versions include Android releases such as Froyo, Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jellybean, KitKat, Lollipop, and Marshmallow.

Additional capabilities

Among its various functionalities are Assisted GPS (A-GPS), internal memory options of 2 GB or 8 GB, and a microSDHC slot supporting expansion up to 32 GB. The device is equipped with sensors including a magnetometer (compass), proximity detector, and accelerometer. Audio features boast a 5.1-channel surround sound Mobile Theater system. It also offers music identification, a fake call feature, intelligent search, and Social Hub integration. Notably, this model was the first to incorporate Bluetooth version 3.0 technology.

Wireless connectivity encompasses Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi standards 802.11 b/g/n, and HSDPA with speeds up to 3.6 Mbit/s.

This handset is produced with different 3G band configurations for European/Asian markets and North American regions. The North American 3G variant is produced in limited quantities and is not distributed within the United States.

Interface

This smartphone marks the debut of Samsung's proprietary Bada operating system platform. Its user interface is Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0, building upon its predecessors TouchWiz and TouchWiz 2.0 by continuing the use of widgets. Among the preloaded widgets on TouchWiz 3.0 are Daily Briefing—which consolidates key information such as weather updates, finance news, AP mobile headlines, and schedules—Feeds and Updates, and Buddies Now, which enables users to call, text, and view Facebook or Twitter feeds from preferred contacts directly. Users can customize up to ten distinct home screens by adding widgets.

Pre-installed applications

The device includes the Dolphin Browser version 2.0 or 3.0 depending on firmware version, which is based on WebKit technology. While it supports Flash content, this feature is disabled by default to enhance page loading performance.

Picsel Viewer comes standard for viewing PDFs and Microsoft Office documents. In select regions, users can purchase and install Picsel Office Editor via Samsung Apps.

Samsung Apps serves as the platform for downloading additional applications, games, and widgets.

Other included software comprises GPS navigation powered by LBS Route 66, social networking apps like Facebook and Twitter, Social Hub integration, mini diary, daily briefing tool, memo pad, video player, FM radio tuner, media browser, voice recorder, email client, and the preloaded racing game Asphalt 5.

Supported media formats

The device supports a wide range of audio and video file types including MP3, AAC variants (AAC+, e-AAC+), WMA, AMR, WAV for audio; MP4, MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV, FLV, DivX, XviD, MKV for video; as well as FLAC files for high-quality audio playback. Subtitle support is also provided.

Bada OS 2.0 upgrade

By late December 2011 in numerous countries, the operating system was progressively upgraded to Bada version 2.0 with the initial official release labeled LA1.

The update brought TouchWiz UI to version 4.0 featuring a comprehensive redesign of the graphical interface along with enhancements such as full multitasking capability, WAC support, voice command functions, text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies, ChatON messaging service, Caster application, an updated DLNA version for media sharing, expanded social networking apps integration, and Dolphin Browser version 3.0 with an integrated download manager.

Android OS adaptation

Due to dissatisfaction expressed by many users regarding the Bada platform, community developers have undertaken efforts to port various Android operating system versions onto the Wave device. Known ports include Froyo, Gingerbread, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, and KitKat iterations. These projects remain under development with some functionalities—such as GPS—being partially supported or non-operational at present.

References

External links

Reviews:

Community forums:

MySamsungWave community
SamsungWaveForum Archived 2014-02-09 at the Wayback Machine

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