Hey there
i bought a samsung wave (S8500) and i'd like to share my experience with you people
first of all , Interface : the interface is ... good , not bad , not great .. just good! there are big widgets you can only fit 2 in a page (3 if it's really really small) , and ONLY widgets .. so you can forget shortcuts and stuff like that .. the menu (which looks a bit like the iphone's) is nice but i was annoyed cause once you fill those 10 apps of apps (10 of the 3x4 grid which fills pretty fast) you can't add more .. i was quiet suprised about the rotation , it rotate 3 ways in a normal list (e.g my files .. etc) .. it rotates even upside down when viewing a picture .. but you can forget the rotation in the homescreen and menu (much like a non-QWERTY android phone) .. the interface is quiet smooth and fast .. swiping or kinetec scrolling .. etc. , thanks to the 1Gigs inside , the capacitive display made a really good job though ,but i was annoyed that you can only pick ringtones/wallpapers from the phone memory .. you'd have to transform them from MC to PM

Music it comes with an 8GB memory card .. so i have on it right now 860 song .. the sound is very loud .. i was shocked to know all this sound came only from 1 loudspeaker ... and it's also clear .. but i think that the location of the speaker made it somewhat noisy .. still more clear than the n97 mini i have , there is this choice of 5.1 sound surround which is damn awesome .. only with headphones .. after i turned it on i thought i was on a concert or something cause all the music came AROUND my head .. i was shocked .. one thing i was annoyed (greatly annoyed) is that i can't edit the summary of the song (e.g artist , album .. etc) .. i'm an organised fellow so it bothers me since my friends are all messy with music like Linkin Park is writtin' Linking Park

Camera the camera has alot of settings & effects .. the photo quality are very good but the flash always ruin the photo so i turn off the flash .. and the in-bult photo editor is the best ever .. i really liked it , the video recording of the phone was even better than my Sony W170 (which is 10.1MP) by very large distance , but the video voice is a bit weaker than it should

Internet .. thats what i liked about the n900 .. which is after trying the n900 .. i thought internet on the samsung wave wasn't that good .. i can't download files from 4shared like my n97M (that annoyed me so much .. urgh!) it's just not a good feeling surfing the internet on the wave , so my limit on it is facebook , the rest is a PC business ^_^

Apps the thing that annoyed me most about the phone .. there are pretty good apps but they are paid and paid apps are only on germany and the UK ,, the free apps (beside a few good ones like NFS , Hockey Nation and Kroll) are ******** , and of course .. there is no IM app .. so the MSN should wait until i go home to my PC , what the hell .. my old SE dumbphone do that perfectly -___- , and of course .. java apps work on the wave but java is complete trash , and i really missed AngryBirds

In General the samsung wave is great .. at least for me , i only use the phone for facebook , IM (used to ) , music , camera , games and of course phone .. it's a great phone for me cause it does all that and more with a cheap price , i wish it ran on android though .. more apps and better interface (that's whats hackers are for) but all the bad stuff i mentioned is due to the phone running on the first edition of bada (1.0) i hope the software upgrade is gonna fix those issues , i'm regreting dumping android .. but not regretting dumping maemo (dont judge me) , but it was a really good experience .. im gonna keep it with me for 2 years and maybe i'll get back to android or meego if the free apps didn't get any better and the paid apps service didn't come to my country

Peace Ya'll

Just to help you out there is a project undertaking that is trying to "safely" boot Android onto the Wave.
This should be pretty awesome... a phone that has better OS (Froyo) and better hardware (Battery + SAMOLED + SGX540) than an iPhone4 but only costs about 40% its price XD

http://darkforestgroup.com/area51/forum/index.php

read wave 2 specs... seems good. Super clear LCD instead of super Amoled.

http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_anno...-news-1974.php

Samsung sold million Waves in Europe during it's first quarter. That's the best opening quarter for a new smartphone platform in Europe. Bada off to a promising start.

Got an N8 for my wife, and got way too bored with my N900 (after more than a year, a new personal record of longevity for a phone in my hands ) I would have had a N8 myself, but I want a phone with HW keyboard. So, while waiting for the N9, or whatever it will be called, if it ever comes, I got the Samsung Wave S8500, since they are laughably cheap right now and the HW is top notch (no HW keyboard though, but I get to try Bada). Android is not an option for me, don't like it, except for the SE version of it..

The Wave still only runs Bada 1.0, but an upgrade to 1.2 is coming any time now.

So which is best: N900, N8 or the Wave? and what OS is best: Maemo, Symbian or Bada?

Overall the N8 is the best phone IMO. The camera and OVI music store and superb sound/music quality is enough to push the other two out of the water. I do get the same sound/music quality through OVI with the N900, but it is not as integrated. With the N8 I can just download already paid music on demand. The phone functionality is better on the N8 as well. The Samsung is not bad at all, but the N8 is better. As a phone, the N900 falls through compared with the other two. The sound quality on the Wave, is in fact just as good as the Nokias, but the earplugs are horrible compared with the ones that comes with Nokia. They say there are better earplugs on the market than Nokia's, but so far I haven't found any, maybe it is my ears? IMO the only way to get better sound is to use high quality real headsets.

All three runs true multitasking. The N8 and N900 are more or less identical here, only slightly different ways of operation. The Wave is a bit more flaky and inconsistent, not very well thought through in this 1.0 version, but at least it has true multitasking and switching between open apps is easy enough.

The screen is incredible on both the N8 and the Wave, but more incredible on the Wave (better resolution and SAMOLED).

The internet is best on the N900, neither the N8 or the Wave can compete here. IMO, for true internet experience you need a HW keyboard as well.

The OS: Bada is nice, it really is. Everything is smooth and fluent (1 GHz processor helps as well I guess), and things are easily accessible. Symbian^3 is a bit more clunky, but still it is better overall through more and better functionality. Both OS'es will see continuous upgrades that will fix most of the quirks, and both will become better. Maemo is nice, in fact it is brilliant in its simplicity of design, but needs more (a lot more) refinement which it will never get.

The build quality looks to be similar on the Wave and the N8. Both are Aluminum slabs that somehow raises the quality feeling, although I'l bet the actual strength of the N900 is in fact larger.

Apps. I don't care for apps. They are either games or complete nonsense, and I don't play games. Some GPS related apps are nice, like GPS loggers and so on, and they exist on all platforms. So, not qualified to say anything here.

Bada is a pleasant surprise. In a way it's like Samsung's version of Symbian. It is still new, and with some quirks and limitations, but overall better than Android IMO. Bada is a platform and can run on any type of core OS, or kernel. I think the Wave use OpenBSD. Cheaper phones will (already does?) use RTOS from Samsung. This means Bada is scalable from the cheapest to the most expensive. A true mobile OS like a true mobile OS should be? I think so. Symbian^3 is still a bit clunky, but will only get better and better. Functionality vise it is way ahead of anything else, and the core OS is more adapted to mobile devices than anything else, except maybe WM? Maemo is superb in design, but is left out in the cold before it could mature and be polished.

N900 is best for internet, but that is all it got unless you are a hacker of course, then nothing else will do. The N8 is the best of the bunch, but the Wave is a steal at the prices it goes for in some places, and Bada is cool and definitely made for the future.