Samsung I9000 Galaxy S preview: First Look

1. Introduction

• Competition is certainly one of the things that make the Android OS so much fun. There are already several manufacturers involved in the Google OS game and each of them has already released a flagship that aims at the peak of the food chain.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S official shots

• Samsung might be coming a tad late to the party but they are obviously entering with a bang. The I9000 Galaxy S packs a display of the greatest technology that the mobile world has ever seen and a pretty big one at that. A snappy 1GHz Cortex A8 CPU, HD video recording and a sweetly slim waistline make it look like the real deal in the eyes of every real geek.

• Let’s take a look at the other features that the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S puts to the table.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S at a glance:

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/1900/2100 MHz, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps
• Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone
• Dimensions: 122.4 x 64.2 x 9.9 mm, 118 g
• Display: 4" 16M-color Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 480 x 800 pixels
• CPU: Samsung Cortex A8 Hummingbird 1 GHz processor
• OS: Android 2.1 (Eclair)
• Memory: 8/16GB storage, microSD card slot
• Camera: 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with face detection and touch focus; 720p video recording at 30fps
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, standard microUSB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS, 3.5mm audio jack
• Misc: TouchWiz 3.0 UI, built-in accelerometer, multi-touch input, proximity sensor, Swype text input

As you can see the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S specs sheet is long enough to be considered high-end. What’s even better is that it manages to put something on top, namely the large 4” Super AMOLED display, which should become the new thing to beat if it has the performance of the Samsung S8500 Wave unit.

The Samsung I9000 Galaxy S at ours

The TouchWiz-like Android customization still had some performance issues on the Galaxy Spica so we will have to see if those are fixed for the Galaxy S. We are also yet to check out how the new 1GHz Samsung Cortex A8 CPU compares to its Snapdragon peers in the Android environment, but we have a good feeling about it.

At any rate the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S is a fine piece of mobile technology and we are as eager as you to see if it will actually manage to top the charts or end up in the chasing pack. So let’s not waste any more time and head to the hardware part of the preview where we’ll examine the Galaxy S ergonomics.