Samsung Galaxy S review

The hardware

Anyway, let's start with the phone itself. Like the iPhone, this one has no hard keyboard. The benefit this offers is a slim and light handset, made even more so by Samsung's decision to use plastic, as opposed to aluminium, for the back. On the flip side, this gives it a somewhat flimsy feel and makes me worry if it could cope with being dropped.

On the two key hardware features, however, Samsung seems to have done well. The Hummingbird SoC is Samsung's take on the ARM Cortex A8 (much as the A4 is Apple's), with Imagination Technologies graphics and a pinch of ARM Neon multimedia goodness thrown in. The result seems to compare favourably to the TI OMAP 3430 - also Cortex A8-based - which is probably due, in large part, to it being clocked to 1GHz, while the 3430 is restricted to 600MHz.

The result is a more snappy experience. Transitions are quicker, apps load faster and things like watching YouTube happen smoothly. Furthermore all this extra horsepower doesn't seem to affect the battery life unduly, with it comfortably lasting a full day of normal usage. Having said that, I wouldn't want to overnight without a charger.

The screen is a four inch WVGA super AMOLED job with 800x480 resolution and it's nice. Video and gaming are a pleasure and the touchscreen functionality seems a bit more responsive. Having said that, it doesn't feel like massive improvement over other screens I've used. There are the standard ‘menu', ‘home' and ‘back' hard buttons.

Other notable quirks include a front-facing camera to enable the video calls that seems to get some geek media all aroused, but which I can see little use for. One issue I had was the apparent lack of LED alerts. You get a little noise when an email, or whatever, arrives, but there's no visual clue while the screen is in sleep mode. What I thought might have been LEDs on the top left of the phone turned out to be the proximity and light sensors.

Here's the full spec list.