Samsung's Wave Is Bada-Full

Today in Barcelona Samsung unveiled its first handset to run the Bada operating system. The Wave is a touchphone that sports a 3.3-inch super AMOLED display. The hardware looks great, the software less so.The Wave is truly a pretty phone. It has a great look and feel to it. The weight is perfect, the slimness appealing and the overal fit and finish is top notch.

The 3.3-inch Super AMOLED is absolutely spectacular. It makes the displays of the Nexus One and Droid look ridiculously shoddy. It has about the same number of megapixels as its two competitors (480 x 800), but the brightness is ramped up several grades. Everything about the display is fantastic. Brightness, sharpness, colors, etc. Samsung has finally contributed some of its TV technology to its phone line up.

As for the operating system, meh. It's hard to say anything of substance about Bada itself because the Wave runs TouchWiz 3.0 on top of Bada. I can't say with authority where Bada ends and where TouchWiz 3.0 starts and vice versa. It definitely steals design elements from both iPhone OS and Android. The main menu looks exactly like the iPhone's, and users even swipe sideways to page through applications. As for Android, it steals the pull down notification tab. It has its own version of a pull-down tab that displays status messages and alerts.

The Wave is not intended to reach U.S. shores, and Samsung's Bada strategy -- at least for the U.S. -- is murky at best.

If you're interested in seeing the Wave in action, feel free to look at this video: