Samsung S7230E Wave

It’s been smooth sailing for Samsung’s Bada OS and the Samsung S7230E Wave 723 is one of the first of the lineup aimed at the mass market. But beware, this smartphone may change the way you perceive feature phones forever.

Samsung S7230E Wave 723 official photos

While amazing, the S8500 Wave costs a pretty penny. It did a great job of attracting attention to the new platform (selling a million units in four weeks), but Samsung designed Bada to be the “smartphone OS for the masses”, so the relatively high priced S8500 wouldn’t be enough on its own.

Enter the Samsung S7230E Wave 723. It’s one of the first mid-range models and while it preserves some of the features from the S8500, it drops others and its lower price will help further the adoption of Bada.

Here’s the report on what’s in and what’s out of the Samsung S7230E Wave 723 spec sheet.

Key features

• 3.2" 256K-color TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen, WQVGA (240 x 400 pixels), multi-touch input support
• Solid 11.8mm-thin metal body with detachable protective flap with leather texture
• Bada OS with Samsung Apps
• Quad-band GSM support with dual-band 7.2Mbps HSDPA
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n connectivity with WPS support, Wi-Fi tethering app
• Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support, digital compass, Samsung Mobile Navigator
• 5 MP autofocus camera with touch focus, geo-tagging, smile detection and LED flash
• QVGA@15fps video recording
• 90MB user available memory; microSDHC card slot
• Standard microUSB port and Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS, FM recording
• Webkit-based Samsung Dolphin Browser 2.0 with Flash support
• YouTube client, Facebook and Twitter integration
• DNSe music enhancement
• Accelerometer for auto screen rotate; turn to mute

Cuts have been made – the one we miss the most is the brilliant SuperAMOLED, which has been replaced with a low-res LCD. And the smooth 720p video recording is gone too – another feature we loved on the S8500.

On the positive side, the excellent connectivity is one of the key features of the Wave 723. 2G and 3G with HSDPA are common ground – but Wi-Fi tethering (USB tethering too) is a pretty rare built-in feature and yet it’s salient to anyone with a data plan and a laptop. Then there’s Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth 3.0 – rare to find these days but they are the way of the future.

The Samsung Wave 723 offers an almost Android-like UI experience, a hefty number of free games in the Samsung Apps store and a 5MP camera, which produces good looking photos. When searching for a new phone based on specs and budget, the Wave 723 will pop up quite often in the search results, that’s for sure.

Samsung S7230E Wave 723 live shots

And we can’t go on without mentioning the flap – a plastic flap with a leathery texture is attached to the bottom of the phone and protects the screen against scratches and it certainly adds to the looks.

You can detach it if you think it gets in the way (after a while, it does), but it does at least offer an alternative to a carrying pouch.

LG E900 Optimus 7

Windows Phone 7 is new territory for LG to conquer and the LG E900 Optimus 7 is their first pawn in the game. However “pawn” hardly describes the rich feature set of this player. LG has done its best to set the Optimus 7 apart with great build quality and some subtle but useful software perks. With the strict hardware restrictions imposed by Microsoft, it’s really hard to make you product stand out and we hope the LG attempt turns out successful.

LG E900 Optimus 7 official photos

You must’ve heard of the strict Redmond rules outlining the hardware requirements of their latest mobile OS. Not that demanding excellence is a bad thing – but manufacturers are under a lot of strain to make their phones unique while keeping within the Microsoft-imposed guidelines.

Much like with any other WP7 smartphone, the Optimus 7 specs leave little doubt that it’s a high end gadget. But Windows Phone 7 brings with it a certain trade-off – you can bet that the hardware is top notch but the platform-specific limitations may or may not prove to be dealbreakers for you.

Here go the pros and cons of the LG E900 Optimus 7, which will give you a good idea of how well LG did in that task.

Key features:

• 3.8" 16M-color capacitive TFT touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• 3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps) and HSUPA (5.76Mbps)
• Windows Phone 7 operating system
• 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, 512MB RAM
• 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash and geo-tagging; Panorama photos with the Panorama shot app
• 720p video recording @ 24fps
• 16GB of built-in storage
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Standard microUSB port (charging)
• Wi-Fi b/g/n; DLNA support via PlayTo
• Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
• Accelerometer for screen auto rotation
• Landscape on-screen QWERTY keyboard
• FM radio with RDS
• Office document editor
• Social networking integration
• Built-in A-GPS receiver
• Comes with a choice of free apps via LG AppStore
• Voice-to-text functionality
• ScanSearch augmented reality app

WP7-specific limitations

• No system-wide file manager
• No Bluetooth file transfers
• No USB mass storage mode
• Limited third-party apps availability
• No Flash or Silverlight support in the browser
• Too dependent on Zune software for file management and syncing
• No video calls
• New ringtones available only through the Marketplace
• Music player lacks equalizer presets
• No multitasking
• No copy/paste
• No DivX/XviD video support (automatic transcoding provided by Zune software)
• No sign of free Bing maps Navigation so far
• No internet tethering support
• No handwriting recognition support
• Twitter client does not integrate with phonebook

LG has added a handful of apps that give their Windows Phone 7 some unique capabilities. First off, the PlayTo app gives the phone DLNA capabilities – so far exclusive in the Windows Phone 7 world. The Panorama shot application adds a useful feature to the stock WP7 camera. And finally, there’s Scan Search, a augmented reality app that can give you a weather forecast as well as find you the best cafe nearby – by using your smartphone camera viewfinder as a guide.

LG Optimus 7 has a smaller LCD unit than the top dogs in the WP7 game but it will try to compensate with a proper price tag. Plus we find a 3.8-inch display to be on the brink of tipping over our usability scale.

The price tag will always be a decider but with Windows Phone 7 there’s one important difference. Given the hardware requirements, you can’t really expect to buy any of those phones cheap. You’ll be getting roughly the same package in the end.

The LG E900 Optimus 7 in our office

Having reviewed a WP7 phone before, we knew almost exactly what to expect the second we opened the box. Hit the next page where we try to find out what makes the LG E900 Optimus 7 different from the rest.

Dell Streak review: Size does matter

The Dell Streak has crossed the line where phones stop – and by some distance too – but we are still not completely convinced it’s beyond the point where tablets start. Is the Dell Streak sitting on a fence or sitting right in the middle of nowhere?

Dell Streak official photos

We’ve reviewed all sorts of devices over the years but never did we have more trouble telling exactly what it is that we’re reviewing. And the device itself doesn’t help us make our mind up either. Sure it has a SIM card but those landscape-oriented buttons reveal its tablet intentions. It all boils down to what you want it to do, not what you think of it, we guess.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• Full phone functionality
• 5" 16M-color TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen of WVGA (800 x 480) pixel resolution
• Android OS v1.6 (Donut) with nicely customized homescreen
• 1GHz Snapdragon CPU
• 512 MB of RAM, 2GB internal storage
• microSD slot, 16GB card included in the package
• 5 MP autofocus camera with smile detection and geotagging
• VGA video recording at 30fps
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g support
• GPS with A-GPS; Digital compass
• Accelerometer, ambient-light and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo Bluetooth v2.0
• 10mm slim profile, impressive build quality
• Office document editor
• Secondary video-call camera
• Swype predictive text input
• Very good speaker performance

This smartphone / tablet may have identity issues but its timing is right. With smartphones getting better and bigger – and tablets riding the Android tide – the moment is ripe for the Streak. And the best chance Dell have of making a difference in the smartphone game is to take opportunities like this and make them count.

Dell Streak live shots

We for one would love to see how that experiment pans out. It’s all to play for in a segment so vastly undeveloped (and that’s an understatement really). So will the Streak prove that a 5” screen is the right balance between portable and usable or will it fail to convince?