Samsung I8150 Galaxy W Sim Free Smartphone

I bought this phone a week ago, and there had not been any user reviews on this phone since then. As I really really like this phone, I think I am obligated to provide some reviews to help the others.

Prior to my purchase, I did some research between this phone, Galaxy S2 and HTC Desire S for roughly two weeks. At the end I had decided to go with this one, and yes I think IT WAS THE RIGHT CHOICE! (*huge grin*)

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Comparison
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Although on Amazon it said this phone would be released on the 18th October, for some reason Galaxy W was already available in the O2, Carphone Warehouse and 3 shops! so I had a chance to look at the phone physically. The reason that I didn't go for Galaxy S2 was I think it was slightly too big. Yes it is really powerful but I don't need all of those powerful ability and I found it a bit noticeably big to carry around. Also I didn't go for HTC Desire S as, to be honest, in my really personally opinion, I didn't think the Desire S looks good in the 'Uni-body' design, I preferred the old Desire S design. I could not get used to the four captive buttons at the bottom (but I found Galaxy W's two captive buttons were totally intuitive to me) and I found that there are some performance issues with the user interface too, for example the screen transition is not as smooth as an iPhone. On the other hand, with 1.4 GHz processor I think the user experience of the UI on the Galaxy W, especially the smoothness of the UI, is really really close to the iPhones IOS.

The Galaxy W is roughly as big as the HTC Desire S, but it is lighter (quite a lot lighter), a bit thinner, and prettier I think. Again the look is really subjective I think. But the mesh look and feel of the plastic back cover really works, I think. Unlike in some video preview the guy thought it feels cheap, I think it feels solid, firm and looks great.

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Performance
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I am a software engineer, and my colleagues sometimes referred me as the 'Performance Freak'. OK I admit, I cannot tolerate low performance electronic gadgets. But Galaxy W, is absolutely blowing my head off. For last 7 days of usage, I had never found any performance issues. All tasks have been running smoothly (note they are in the multi-threaded environment, and strictly speaking iPhone isn't!); UI has not been frozen up or anything like that, and has always been responsive; Not a single system failure, the Android system has been stable for last 7 days.

Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja have been running smoothly as well, no lagging whatsoever. Comparing to this, Angry Birds on Galaxy Ace does not run smoothly though!

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Display
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The display of Galaxy W is really impressive. I have to say, it is not as good as iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S2, and not as good as Sony Xperia Arc. However it's good enough for £270 middle range smartphone, it is not a high-end phone after all. The Print-On-Paper effect is pretty obvious on the Galaxy W LCD I found, makes the text both sharp and soft (not contradictory I think!) and the pictures really bright and stand out.

One of my colleagues commented on my phone today, he said "Your phone's display looks much better than my HTC Wild Fire S". Please note during the day I set the brightness of the phone as quite dim but he still reckon it's better. I think the problem of HTC Wild Fire S is that the picture looks quite far away from the glass, so there is a gap in between consequently it doesn't look as good?

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Battery
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It comes with a 1500 mAh battery, well, not a lot I can say, nothing surprising unfortunately. As I know that, with heavy usages, e.g. lots of gaming, GPS and internet browsing, it won't last a day. Normal internet browsing, some facebook posts, some music, maybe it will last a day and a bit. There are loads of APPs to optimize your battery performance anyway, so please look into that if you are interested.

For last three days I've not played with the phone a lot, as I've been a bit busy last weekend, and not had a chance to play with it. I managed to use only 25% of the battery on day one, 35% on day two, and if I really pushed it, I think it would've lasted over three days. Oh well, I only made two short phone calls I must admit.

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Others
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I found the internal memory is quite generous. I can't remember what the quoted internal memory was, but when the phone arrived, there were roughly 2.7 GB of available space on it. I was told this is much more than the HTC Desire S? My mate told me he struggled for the available internal memory all the time.

Software, well, what can I say, it's an Android system you know. It's all about the freedom, you can copy in or out anything you want, install anything you want. On top of that, I found the built-in Samsung's Kies Air software is really useful though, you can use it to sync files (photos, music, apps, phone books, SMS and any files) wirelessly with your PC. It's easy for a quick drop of stuff, when you are feeling lazy to plug it into the PC. I installed a number of useful apps from the Android App Market, namely the 'Go' series, Winamp, Advanced Task Killer etc. Consult any Android forum you will know which ones I am talking about.

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Conclusion
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To conclude, as the title says, I think Samsung Galaxy W is a great smartphone and this is definitely my best gadget I bought this year. If you are looking for a middle range, middle spec'ed, middle priced phone, I think it's one of the most popular choices. I chose it over HTC Desire S (with similar spec and price), and I am glad I did. Finally I hope this review could be useful to you.

Yes, there are better phones on the market - htc sensation, S2 just to mention a couple. Question I asked myself is, do I want to spend £400-500 on the best phone on the market if in about six months something better and newer will come up anyway? Simple answer. No. It's just a phone at the and of the day...

W is not dual core but 1.4Mhz, trust me it does the job, this is a core you had in your laptop not long ago.

5MP camera -takes decent pictures, do you need 8MP? - if you are planning to print large posters then yes, but then you'd do better buying a dslr camera.. otherwise, trust me 5MP is just what you need.

3.7"- yes, I know, google nexus is 4.6" but even with my massive hands this size is enough for me.

For me this phone is missing a can opener and build in screwdriver, but if you need these, wait for the iphone 5 , there are rumors it will have them.

You can't go wrong with W, you won't find anything better for £249

I decided to get this phone having read Timmy's review and having looked at a lot of alternatives (HTC Desire, Samsung Ace and Mini etc). It's my first Smartphone (I've been a Nokia user for years) and I'm no computer wizard. I've had it for 3/4 days and am enormously impressed with it's power and versatility. The Android marketplace is vast with all sorts of apps to rival I-Tunes and it seems to be cheaper. So far I've only done the basics; downloaded a couple of apps, linked to the car radio via Bluetooth for hands-free, sorted my e-mails to come direct to the phone etc. Everything has worked fine and is quite intuitive even for someone like me with average computer skills. I downloaded the handbook from the Samsung site,as the instructions that come with the phone are pretty sparse, I'm in the generation that likes an instruction book with new gadgets) and it's very comprehensive.
I'm very happy with my choice and there's still lots of capability that I havn't explored. I'm confident that the technology will cope with whatever comes up over the next couple of years. I'm sufficently impressed to be considering buying another one for my daughter for Christmas.