Having owned the Samsung Galaxy S for almost 2 months now and having promised to write in more details about my experience, I have already justified why I left my iPhone 3G, now I’m thinking that I should first talk about the hardware part of the smart phone trying as best as I can not to go too much into technical details which you can always get from a spec sheet on the Samsung site itself.
I think the SGS is the thinnest smart phone (sorry Apple) if not, it certainly feels like it. It also feels much lighter than the iPhone 4 and 3GS. There’s a standard 3.5 headphone jack, volume up/down buttons and power/sleep buttons. There’s also a USB connector where you can use the cable provided to connect to a PC/Mac.
On the back there’s the 5MP/720p camera (no flash) and the loud speaker. On the front is the gorgeous Super AMOLED screen, a front facing camera, a home button, 2 touch buttons for Menu and Back functions, not to mention the speaker and the microphone.
Opening the phone from the back is easy, and you’ll have to do that to insert the SIM card, the MicroSD memory card and the battery.
Internally there is 8 GB of memory, and you can add another 32 GB any time by inserting a MicroSD card. The processor runs at a blazing 1 Ghz, and to cater for the 3D graphics and effects there’s an extra graphic processing unit on board as well.
The battery lasted 13-15 hours before dying out, I used the screen most of the time, playing games, browsing, and watching TV, using Skype, listening to MP3 music and the of course making a couple of calls. I’d like to note that after upgrading the Operating System to Android Froyo 2.2, the battery has noticeably improved.
The speaker is loud (much louder than the iPhone), and people at the other end could hear me very clearly in any situation, the screen is bright, and I had no problem using the phone outdoors.
The phone is also equipped with GPS, compass, FM radio, Bluetooth and WiFi to name a few things.
The headphones that come with the SGS are not of the best quality when it comes to listening to MP3 music, I felt that the bass is just too shallow, and the button it has doesn’t do anything to the music playing. (Update: if you install WinAmp, the button will become a multi-function remote for pausing, starting and skipping tracks). In any case I strongly suggest replacing the headset with a good quality stereo Bluetooth headset.
The 3.5 in socket is not a normal, standard one, the SGS allows you to connect to a TV using a Stereo Audio/Video cable, though not supplied, you can just find a Nokia and it’ll work perfectly, I watch many TV channels this way, I also play some games on my 42 in TV, it’s like having a portable game console, I can even play my old Amiga games on TV. Check the video below to see how this works..