Samsung has delivered its own little green robot into the world. That's right, smart-phone fans, the company's first Android handset, the Galaxy i7500, has been born. Samsung has given it some of the features it does best, like a vivid AMOLED screen and a good-quality camera, but it's left Android pretty much alone. The result is a phone that feels like an improved version of the HTC Magic, but doesn't fly with the eagles like the HTC Hero.
The Galaxy is only available on a contract from O2. You can get it for free on a £44.05-per-month,
18-month contract or a £39.15-per-month, 24-month contract. You can also pick it up for around £440 SIM-free.
Look into my screen
The crowning glory of the Galaxy is its screen, which is bright
and vivid, with satisfyingly deep blacks. Unlike with the Hero, whose screen
seems to sit slightly below the surface of the glass, the Galaxy's display is
wonderfully in-your-face. The colours are so bright and saturated
that they sometimes seem slightly inaccurate, but we'll trade accuracy for
blinding good looks any day.
We only wish Samsung had stuck the beautiful screen into a better-looking body, although, at 12mm thick, it is pleasingly slim. For us, the layout of the keys, with their thin, chrome trim, looks old-school -- and not in a good way. The all-over black plastic is pretty boring. We also found it odd that the menu key is labelled with a cryptic icon rather than the standard 'menu', and the home button is small and wedged between the back and end-call keys.
The five-way navigation key isn't as groovy-looking as HTC's trackball, and takes up more room, although you may prefer it if you have big, clumsy, sausage-like fingers. It also doesn't glow and flash seductively like the trackball, but maybe this toned-down appearance will appeal to users with more conservative tastes.
AMOLED screens are meant to suck less battery juice than LED screens, and Samsung promises up to 390 minutes of talk time with the Galaxy. The company doesn't specify whether it means 3G or 2G talk time, though. The Magic claims to provide up to 450 hours of talk time on 2G and 400 hours on 3G, but, in our long-term test, we found the Magic barely makes it through a day without requiring charging. Stay tuned for our long-term test of the Galaxy's battery life -- we'll find out if it's really worse than the Magic or if it's just more modest with its claims.
Flash and go
The Galaxy is the first Android phone to offer an LED photo light, to go with its 5-megapixel camera. It's the best camera we've seen on an Android
phone, but it's still can't compete with that of a great camera phone, like the Sony
Ericsson C903 Cyber-shot. In good light, its photos are sharp and clear,
although whites look rather grey. The LED light makes a brave stab at illuminating dark shots, but it only works well when objects are close by
and you keep a very steady hand.
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User reviews3
Add your review
Bloke1960a 22 June 2010
Good: AMOLED Screen
Bad: Its doesn't feel finished! Battery Life Terrible
Comment: Will never buy a Samsung phone again. SAMSUNG the whole point of Android and Open OS is that you regularly update them... Stuck for ever in Android 1.5
How could CNET give it 8? did the AMOLED dazzle you so you couldn't see its:
1. Terrible Battery Life.
2. Poor Keyboard.
3. Its inability to find a 3G network.
The camera was alright and the Android/google connectivity was OK for 1.5.
But Samsung just threw it out to the market with no support and no updates.
stevie_g 9 April 2010
Good: Nothing
Bad: Everything
Comment: It is the worst phone I have ever bought. The battery life is horriffic, you are lucky if it lasts 24 hours, the wireless is shockingly bad. Its just not worth it.
MikeBuck_1 27 October 2009
Good: loooks, Screen, Android
Bad: Lock button, battery life, no landscape keybaord out the box
Comment: So been playing with this for a while and generally i like it. This is my first smartphone and i couldn't decide whether to get a android, symbion or windows mobile device, but the external look of the galaxy pulled me in.
The screen is amazing and gives amazing light and colours, its makes pictures and videos look great, the response from the touchscreen is good, i've personally have seen no difference between this and the iphones from the quck play i had with the iphone.
The first thing to do me in was the lack of a support for landscape in certain porgrams, this was fixed with a quick search on the internet and a download of a free app called GSEN which gives me a landscape keyboard amongst other things.
The next thing is the lock button, you seem to have to press this forever to get the phone to unlock. hopefully samsung will update the firmware to enable you to disable this and have some kind of software lock.
Battery life isn't great out the box, a Firmware upgrade installed an app which lets you turn off WIFI, 3G, Bluetooth etc quickly and easily and that has made it better, Obviously the more you play the quicker the battery drains, but from what i've read alot of smmrtphones suffer from average battery life.
The camera is OK for 5MP, its nothing outstanding, but i didn't get the phone primarily for the camera so it more than good enough for the occasional use it will get. id say its as good as the camera in my old SE C902
The joy of Android is that there are loads of free apps out there to improve your Android experience, although it has to be noted that this isn't a full andriod phone, it's a scaled down version.
Overall I'm happy with my first smartphone, sure there does seem to be alot of firmware updates coming out from Samsung for the phone, but that generally happens with new phones as normal people find problems that reviews don't find.
apparantly o2 only have this exclusive for 3 months, so everyone can get it soon enough!
See all 3 user reviews