My Samsung Wave 525: A users’ review

I bought my Samsung Wave 525 (GT-S5253) in February this year. The first thing that struck me was its looks: Man, that mobile was the plainest, most-average-looking device I’d ever seen. I mean its façade almost borders on ugly. I mean if you are one with a fetish for Windows phones or any of Apple’s iPhones, you’ll know what exterior ‘specs’ I’m ranting about here. But then looks are simply a matter of taste, isn’t it?

And boy, talking of tastes, months later, I’m pleasantly surprised at the Samsung 525’s performance. In fact, I haven’t encountered any major issue with this mid-segment Smartphone. The display is great; the interface is user-friendly and almost basic even for first-time touch screen user; the phone cam isn’t too miserly for an entry-level Smartphone either (3.2 Megapixels); the features are useful and consistent with the more business-minded user’s needs; the battery life seems to go on forever. And it comes with a very nice package of in-built apps (when I say “in-built” please note my sarcasm – I hate phones that come packed with apps that you don’t even need!)

From the Amazon Store

Samsung 525’s performance:

The Interface: In lay man’s language

All in all, my Samsung Wave 525 has been a faithful and resilient workhorse. One of the best features of the Samsung 525 is its ‘desktop’– extremely user-friendly (read you needn’t be a rocket scientist), convenient and fast. The high-resolution display is multi-touch in TFT capacitive touch screen (240 x 400 pixels, 3.2 inches (146 ppi pixel density).

You can install as may apps as you want (that is, if your disk space allows!) in your phone which are then displayed in ‘pages’ on the screen. All you have to do is just swipe to and fro and back and forth.  I normally use quite a lot of apps, which also means I have 4-5 “pages” on the screen to slide back and forth on busy days! 

Anyhow, on the Samsung 525’s display, you can also edit the apps and utilities – arrange or edit specifically. For instance, on “page” one I have the apps I use the most – calculator, phone search (more on this one later), calendar, music, call logs and so on. On ‘page’ 2 I have all the apps related to multimedia – video, music player, camera, Facebook, twitter etc. On ‘page’ 3 I have games, video player and so on. At a touch and slide I can swipe back and forth. I love this feature because it is convenient (I can arrange the apps and utilities according to their importance or use for instance (you can also delete them from the screen itself instead of going all the way into phone’s storage folders).  In short, the Samsung 525’s “desktop” is one of the best, if not the one.

My favorite utility in the Samsung Wave 525? The inbuilt-Phone Search! With the phone search app you can locate virtually anything that is in your phone – apps, phone numbers, movies, music  files and even SMS text messages in case you forgot where that special text from your lover had gone! While it might not be the greatest technological piece in a phone ever, the phone search feature is most useful when it comes to tiny details such as locating something in your phone.

Camera: Photos and Images:

The Samsung Wave 525’s camera is not bad. It is, well, an average 3.2 megapixel but it is definitely handy. The one thing I like about the camera is the photo editor – the features are akin to a tiny Photoshop with basic features of cropping, transform-features, color balance, stylizing and texture additions such as blur, grain, contrasts, black-and-white and negative (there are about 15 or so textures; I haven’t tried it all yet).

Further, once you have taken a picture, you can directly upload it or edit it from there itself before taking another photo. Another interesting little feature about the camera is the tilt/inclination: You take a picture and need not have to go to the folders – you tilt sideways and all the photos you have taken (stored in your phone) start flowing to whichever direction you tilt the handset.

Oh, the video camera too. While the photos aren’t too bad, the video camera’s resolution isn’t too satisfactory unless you shoot in daylight situations. In dim, dark or fluorescent light settings the videos are too grainy and pixilated to be of any practical use.

Oh, by the way Samsung engineers forgot to put in a camera flash!  

Video Player:

You will love the video player. Unlike other phones where you have to toggle or go to the folder to chose and play videos, the video player utility in the phone is basically one touch – just go to the video player in your display and every video file in your phone will be listed there. Just tap ‘play’ and there you go!

Sadly, the only video forms the phone supports are 3GP and MP4 - you can't play even AVI files so you have to convert your videos into MP4 or 3GP before playing them on the phone.

Music Player: 

The same goes for the music player. The sound is good although without an equalizer, you’ll have to endure some sharp trebles. The bass is average too.  What I did was buy a good pair of Philips earphones that had bass optimizers – now the sound quality as played from the phone is totally so happening awesome! 

From the Amazon Store

SMS/MMS: 

The storage is good. The Samsung 525 has 100 MB internal memory and all you need is a 2 GB (microSD, you can use up to 16GB) external memory. I had at least 500 messages in the inbox alone once, not counting an almost equal number in the sent-box and drafts as well. There is an option that lets you save your already-sent texts. This is a good feature if you are someone who wants to make sure that the text message you just sent carries what you really want to say (or for future reference in case you lied!).

Connectivity: multimedia, browsing  

Let me make it blunt and short: The Facebook app in the Samsung 525 is one of the most useless apps I’d ever used. It is very slow, and the features are so basic that I still haven’t found where the log out button in the Samsung phone’s Facebook app is! Yes, I have searched for it for weeks but I still don’t know how to log out so I have to press the navigation key to return to the phone’s main menu! 

And the strangest thing? For some reasons the Facebook info on my profile is ALWAYS the same! For example, I have 10 friend requests and 10 mails in my Inbox: well, the next time I access Facebook through my phone on that particular FB app, the same 10 friend requests and the same 10 emails would be showing although I have already accepted the requests or read/replied the mails. Man, this is stupid. In fact, I got so irritated at seeing no update or the same update that I installed that amazing UC Browser and now use Facebook only from the UC Brower. 

Further, forget the inbuilt-YouTube app – it works and you can watch movies etc but if your Wi-Fi is erratic all you would be highly pixilated, nonsense, painfully slow images and videos.

Thankfully, the Twitter app is fast. The other features are (which I rarely use) in the phone include Orkut, FM radio, Social Hub, IM and Gmail. 

There is also a Samsung Apps Store app from where you can download apps for free or buy. So far I have downloaded about 7 apps. 

Tip:  If you want to use Facebook in the Samsung wave 525 download the UC Browser and install it – it is super fast, very convenient and full of user-friendly features that you won’t have to use your phone’s extremely slow, low-resolution in-built browsers (Dolphin, mob Firefox).

By the way the phone has no 3G. Just GPRS and Wi-Fi. However, if your service is good, they work really well especially if you are using fast browsers like UC Browser. 

Battery:

The Samsung Wave 525’s battery is a real bruiser – it seems to go on forever even though I use Facebook, play videos or music or text and call almost nonstop. All I do is charge for about one hour and the next charging session would be like after 700 years or so.

Stand-by: Up to 1200 h

Talk time: Up to 14 h

Summery

Like I said, so far I haven’t encountered any major problem (except for that idiotic Facebook app) with my Samsung Wave 525. I would definitely recommend it to friends (provided that they install the UC Browser to use Facebook!). The price is very economical; the features are great and well, very user-friendly. 

India price for Samsung Wave 525 (GT-S5253): Rs. 6,497 to Rs. 7900 (depends on tax provinces)

US price for Samsung Wave 525 (GT-S5253): approximately $ 115.9 to $ 140.9

Any more Cons?

Well, yes, the operating system: The phone runs on OS Bada. By any stretch of imagination, the Bada operating system is slowly going to land up in the thrash room of the tech world. In an age of Androids and Windows, the Bada OS seems so pitifully outdated. In fact, even for Samsung mobile phones there are only a few bits-and-bit apps that run on Bada – which is perhaps the reason why I found only about 7 apps even from the Samsung store! Or maybe I didn’t look far enough. 

Nonetheless, all in all the Samsung Wave 525 rocks.

I’m not a techie but if you happen to have queries please leave them in the comments section. I shall be happy to interact with you.

©2010 Prod Deals Online Al Ngullie

About the blogger: Al Ngullie is a Senior Journalist, Columnist, Writer and Documenteur based in India