Samsung I7500 Galaxy Price , pictures , Details , model specifications
Android is set on grabbing the number two spot in the smartphone market by 2012 and the Samsung I7500 Galaxy might be the type of phone to get it there. Perhaps less for the Galaxy at this point, and more for the Samsung, but we’ll see about that.
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Samsung I7500 Galaxy official photos
The I7500 Galaxy is a “Google experience” phone, and has the intrinsic advantage of having the search giant’s infrastructure behind its back. For one, YouTube and Picasa integration sure add value to the 5-megapixel camera.
And as to people who spend their time digging around the Internet for oft hard to find information, we really appreciate the improved search widget. And that thingy is about to get better – Android is a bit like Google’s other projects, a perpetual work in progress that keeps getting new features and polishes the occasional rough edges.
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The I7500 Galaxy is the company’s first take on Android but if we put the OS aside, it should be a solid Samsung touchscreen with all the gadgetry we’ve got used to in smartphones. Of course, the Android platform still has a few issues to address and get some annoying limitations out of the way. Let’s see what this here Android by Samsung can do for you and where it might fail.
Key features
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
- 3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 5.76Mbps
- Android OS v1.5 (codenamed Cupcake) without customizations
- 3.2″ capacitive AMOLED touchscreen of HVGA resolution
- Qualcomm MSM72000A 528MHz CPU, 128MB RAM
- 5 MP autofocus camera with LED flash, geo-tagging, YouTube and Picasa integration
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and GPS receiver
- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and turn-to-mute
- Digital compass for automatic navigation of maps
- Standard microUSB port for charging and data
- microSD card slot with microSDHC support
- 8GB internal storage
- Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
- 3.5 mm audio jack
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Main disadvantages
- No smart dialing
- Camera features are a bit outdated
- No videocalling
- No multi-touch gestures
- No Flash support in the web browser (coming soon via the Open Screen Project)
- No DivX/XviD video support or a third-party application to play that
- No FM radio
- No TV-out port
- No voice dialing
- Somewhat limited 3rd party software availability
- No Bluetooth file transfers (not without rooting)
- No tethering (not without a custom ROM)
Samsung I7500 Galaxy live shots
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Samsung have established a strong presence in the touchscreen market. Their usual weapon of choice is TouchWiz, which brings PocketPCs and feature phones closer together, projecting a consistent brand image.
With the Galaxy, they’re stepping out of their comfort zone – a new OS and a new interface. TouchWiz for Android is yet to come (and in the case of I7500 never is more likely than later).
To make sure it does well, Samsung have equipped the Galaxy to match to specs of the top Android phones available on the market. And it sure needs every bit of ammo if it’s going to challenge the well-entrenched HTC Hero. The I7500 Galaxy can take it on spec for spec and even win a few rounds.
But that’s on paper, and we guess you’re curious to see the real deal. Jump to the next page for this Einstein’s worth of a question: what is the Galaxy made of?
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The Android UI is no longer sight unseen but for the review to be complete, we’ll go through it once again.
And here’s the best part – it’s a mature implementation and has been optimized and polished of bugs. It feels extremely zippy, at first we thought it was a faster CPU. Nope, it’s the same old 528MHz CPU but the interface can run circles around the original G1.
But enough of how fast it is, let’s look at what it actually does. The focal point of the interface is the homescreen. Maybe it’s because of its aspirations to be a netbook instant-on OS but it looks closer to a desktop than a mobile phone’s homescreen.
The homescreen is three times the size of the display, giving you enough room to organize all the items you want to put up front. And there are plenty of things that can go up there. The screen shows you one third of the screen and you can sweep left or right to get to the other panes.
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The three homescreens with the various widgets
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On the homescreen there are three major types of items – the good old shortcuts, then folders and finally, widgets.
First off, shortcuts are just like the shortcuts on your desktop computer, so not much to explain here.
Folders can help you keep the shortcuts organized but you can’t put folders within folders. Still, they can be used for a few quick tricks – like faking a quick-dial contact list. A shortcut to a contact uses that contact’s photo so all you have to do is put them in a folder.
But this is hardly very interesting – it’s when live folders come into play that it gets exciting. The main difference to ordinary folders is that the live folders are automatically filled with content.
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All sorts of lists can go into Live folders – for example, you can have a folder that contains all the tweets from a contact, or an RSS feed, or maybe even a folder with all the good restaurants within walking distance from a given location.
The preinstalled Live folders are “Contacts with phone numbers” and “Starred contacts”. They are filled with your Gmail contacts that either have phone numbers or are starred. We would have loved to see more – Live folders are a great feature, and quite novel – but if it isn’t promoted right, it might not pick up at all.
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Creating a live folder • the Starred contacts folder
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The other inhabitants of the Android homescreen are the widgets. There are two new preinstalled widgets that come with the Android v1.5 – a calendar and music player. The music player widget is simple enough – it has a play/pause button, a skip button and shows the currently running track name.
The traditional search widget got an update and now shows suggestions as you type, just like the Google homepage. In Android v1.6 the widget will get a further update allowing it to search for local files as well.
The calendar widget is a little limited – it only shows upcoming events. That’s nice since it manages to fit even long event descriptions but it doesn’t have a monthly view mode
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The music player and calendar widgets • preinstalled widgets
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One of the new widgets (although it seems to be an app technically) is the “Switchers”. It provides a quick and convenient way to switch GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Auto sync on and off. Its downside is that it provides no means to search and connect to a wireless network for example. Unless, it’s an already configured network, you need to go through the Settings menu.
The Switchers app
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One big advantage of Android is the notification area. It’s a thin bar at the top of the screen with status info about battery, signal strength and others such as Bluetooth or missed events.
But if you slide it down you get a list of all recent notifications – that’s the so called notifications area. Tapping on one of the listed notifications takes a context relevant action – for instance, a tap on a notification of a successful installation would launch that application; a finished download notification will open the file and so on.
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The notification area fully open
Since you can open the notification area from wherever the top bar is visible, new events won’t interrupt your work. You can pull the tray down like a window blind just enough to see more details about what has happened and if it doesn’t need your immediate atention you can let it roll back up and continue where you left off.
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Sometimes you don’t even have to slide – upon receiving a new SMS the first few words of it flash in the status bar, giving you a general idea what it’s about.
Virtual on-screen keyboard for small robotic fingers
With Samsung I7500 Galaxy all you have to type with is the virtual on-screen keyboard. It does the whole-letter pop up each time you press a key but there’s something to look out for – three dots under the letter. If those appear, a press and hold will bring up all available related symbols – the letter with all the diacritics for example. The keyboard also auto rotates to landscape thanks to the accelerometer.
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The keyboard in portrait and landscape modes
The I7500 virtual keys are smallish – especially in portrait mode – and typing could be very error-prone. Otherwise, the keyboard offers helpful features like a “.com” button when you’re typing an URL, or a “Next” button when there are more fields to fill in, with that button changing to “Done” at the end.
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Variations of the letter ‘o’ • the smilies work the same way
You will notice that the Apple iPhone keyboard is physically larger. The larger screen estate surely adds to that.
Samsung I7500 Galaxy and Apple iPhone QWERTY keyboards size comparison
Android UI 101
Here we’ll make a quick list of the basic ways to interact with the Android UI for those who haven’t used one before.
- You scroll the three panes of the homescreen by sweeping
- To move an item (be it a shortcut, folder or widget), press and hold it until the phone vibrates. Dragging it to the sides of the screen allows you to move it across the different panes of the homescreen.
- To remove an item from the screen, drag it to the Main Menu button (which temporarily turns into a trash can)
- To bring up the task switcher, press and hold the Home key
- To add an item to the homescreen, press and hold on an empty space (we like that), or use the Menu key
- Keep in mind that the “Main Menu” button is a virtual control at the bottom of the screen marked with an arrow, which opens the list of all applications. The Menu key is a hardware knob, which brings up a context specific menu (e.g. on the homescreen it brings up options to add items, change wallpaper, etc.)
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The “task switcher” is not really a task switcher, nor is it a task manager. Android automatically opens and closes applications. When resources start to run out, it might close a currently inactive app but it will restore it back to just how you left it. It’s more like the system puts the app to hibernation instead of closing it. Still, the task switcher is useful as it gives you access to the six most recently used apps.
The task switcher
Gesture lock, the secret handshake
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Gesture locks are gaining momentum and a cutting-edge OS like Android is bound to have them. While some versions require that the pattern is a letter, the Android way is to draw a pattern. The phone can be set to require a preset pattern of onscreen sweeps each time you’re unlocking it.
First you record a pattern of at least 4 dots
The way it works is you’re presented with a 3 x 3 grid of dots and you have to connect at least four dots in whatever order you choose. We’d advise against using too complex shapes, as you have to draw the shape again if you are to cancel or change it, so forgetting it would be an issue.
You can choose to have haptics enabled so with a little training you can unlock the phone without looking at the grid. There’s even an option to disable the trail that connects the dots completing the pattern.
The letter-based locks have the advantage of different letters doing different things – not just unlock, but even launch an app. Android doesn’t have it yet but maybe it will get it in the next snack-named version.
Finally, the Galaxy packs the YouTube app which partially compensates for the web browser’s lack of Flash video support. Its interface is simple enough to allow you to find what you’re looking for as quickly as possible.
The YouTube app
GPS navigation
The Samsung I7500 Galaxy GPS receiver needed a couple of minutes to achieve a satellite lock upon a cold start, which is quite a lot. Subsequent locks, as usual, were much faster to acquire.
It comes as no surprise that the only application you can rely on for navigation right out of the box is Google Maps. Its interface is slightly different from what we’ve seen before.
Quick double-tapping can no longer be used for zooming in and out; instead, you should use the two virtual buttons at the bottom of the screen. These are hidden when not in use and only appear when you touch the screen. But despite the little changes, this is still the familiar Google Maps app we know and like.
The familiar Google Maps app
Quite naturally, the app also sports Street View mode. In fact, this mode is probably the best part of the Google Maps. If the Street View is available in the area you’re interested in, you can enjoy a 360-degree view of the area. When the digital compass is turned on it feels like making a virtual tour of the surroundings!
The digital compass takes the Street View to a whole new level
Final words
So, there we are at the restaurant at the end of the Galaxy. It’s more of a sweet shop though and the next thing on the list of the specials will be donuts. But that won’t be on the Samsung I7500 Galaxy shift. Enough fooling around though, it’s time to tell the Galaxy there’s no such thing as free lunch.
The Galaxy is a great phone running an OS of great potential but some of the limitations just can’t go unnoticed. The 3.2″ AMOLED capacitive touchscreen and 5-megapixel camera are nothing to sneeze at. But then, the Galaxy takes “point and shoot” to an extreme – there are practically no camera options. The top-notch connectivity and the great browser would’ve made it the ultimate choice for surfing the web on the go – was it not for the missing Flash support. The beautiful screen is just made for video watching, never mind the squarish aspect ratio. But there’s no DivX support.
On other counts, the Galaxy takes full advantage of the ambitious OS. You can take the entire net with you and all the Google services. On top of that, Facebook and other things that don’t come preinstalled have official apps that do the trick. And it doesn’t have to all be cloud-based. You get 8GB of internal memory and a card slot for 16GB more – there’s space for all the music you would want to take with you.
The Galaxy is Samsung’s Android debut and some of its faults can be understood, if not forgiven. What’s more, the competition is dealing with similar issues – they only have been doing it a bit longer.
The HTC Hero is the Samsung I7500 Galaxy’s archenemy. It offers more RAM, but no internal storage. The display is TFT, and the HSUPA tops out at 2Mbps, but the Sense UI is certainly a treat. The camera has much more settings and, as far as looks – the white Teflon coated version is great. And yes, the Hero’s web-browser is Flash enabled.
HTC Hero
If you’re not an Android fan but it’s the specs that brought you around – have a look at the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD and the Palm Pre. The Omnia HD is more expensive but that gets you a bigger screen and a better camera. Plus, 720p video recording is still unbeaten. The Palm Pre on the other hand will try to please those who looked forward to Android as the Next Big Thing, but were left disappointed.
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD • Palm Pre
The HTC Magic isn’t really that far behind the Hero, but the price tag is a lot easier to swallow.
Then there’s the Acer Liquid. This thing promises to blow all current Android-based handsets away with its extra fast 768MHz Snapdragon CPU. It should start hitting the market within a month.
HTC MagicAcer Liquid
So, in a nutshell – if the Android OS is eyeing the number 2 spot in smartphone market share by 2012, a leading manufacturer like Samsung will perhaps play a vital role in the plan. Therefore, the Galaxy must be as important to Samsung as Samsung is for the whole Android project. At this point, the Galaxy does well to show the company’s commitment. It’s a viable option too for users who want to stay loyal to the brand but give a new OS a try. It was the Sense UI and some other home-baked additions that took the HTC Android lineup a level up. We guess, Samsung are busy giving their next Android some more of their special in-house treatment.
