Review: Samsung Wave 3

That’s what the new Samsung Wave 3 is all about, other than the better connectivity and battery that lasts for an entire day

We first got a view of Bada 2.0 on the Samsung Wave Y Young that definitely was one of the best phones in that price tag. Now, Samsung's Wave 3 ups the game with the addition of a Super AMOLED screen and some more goodies. But, it's also upped the price tag and now competes with a few powerful Androids.

Design and build quality
The Wave 3 is all about curves, smooth metal finishes, scratch resistance and fingerprint proof unibody design. It blows the Android phones out of the competition.
Nothing out of the ordinary here, except that the phone doesn't have a camera shutter button, and the microSD card slot is located under the battery cover and is not swappable.
Interface
The Wave 3 is powered by a 1.4 GHz Scorpion processor and has 512 MB of RAM with Bada 2.0 running atop. Flipping through the menus and overall navigation is smooth and seamless. About the looks of the interface — if you've used Samsung TouchWiz UI, you'll be no stranger to their Bada interface. It's extremely similar and you can't really tell one from the other unless you go into minute details.

Media
The Wave 3 comes equipped with a super awesome music player. A brief description of the interface first: The tabs and icons are neatly stacked and you get 5.1 surround channel and a few equalizer presets. The interface looks awesome in the landscape mode as well with the cover art and the jog dial for segregating artists and songs. In the audio quality department, all basic formats are played by this smartphone, but unlike the Android counterparts, you don't have too many third party players, if you need a particular format to be rendered on your phone. 720p video looks crisp and clear on the SUPER AMOLED display and as a media consumption device, the Wave 3 is definitely amongst the best out there.

Connectivity
This department has been covered pretty well with support for 3G, Wi-Fi, DLNA, Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi Direct. Samsung's Dolfin browser has been added into the mix as well and though its pretty smooth and all, flash videos would stutter and play and we reckon it's due to the software. In terms of calling, the voice quality is loud and clear. The in-call recorder option, however, was not present on this phone. Social networking is handled well with Social Hub as well as dedicated apps. Polaris Office is present as well for your document editing and viewing needs.

Misc apps
Besides Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and ChatON, Samsung has also bundled in an app called Caster that lets you share your web content. In case there are too many applications running in the background, the in-built task manager comes in handy. The app store is what is limiting the Bada platform from competing with the biggies. It is so limited that we couldn't even find basic VOIP apps like Skype or Viber.

Battery Life
The Wave 3 comes with a 1,500 mAh battery and the phone easily lasts over a day on normal usage. In our video loop test, the Wave 3 lasted for 10 hours and 25 minutes, with automatic brightness and no connectivity options (besides calling) enabled.

Verdict
The Samsung Wave 3 is priced at ₹16,500 (MOP). It impressed us in all department except the app store. If Samsung manages to sort that bit out, we've got a powerful phone capable of challenging Android and iOS. At this price bracket, there's not much to offer besides the Galaxy Ace Plus, which is quite overpriced. For ₹1,500 more you get the Neo V, but if you're looking for something under 17K, and have no requirement for 10000 apps, the Wave 3 is for you.