Samsung Galaxy S review

Also thrown in is ShareAll, a media-streaming tool that lets you play music and video files from shared network locations to the phone, from the phone to compatible DLNA streamers or from shared locations to DLNA streamers. Think of it as a souped-up, networked remote control. You also get Aldiko (an eBook reader), the enhanced reality viewer Layar, driving game Asphalt 5, and ThinkFree Office, which allows you to view and edit documents. We shouldn't forget the inclusion of Google’s free turn-by-turn satnav as well.
Customisations
Samsung’s Android customisations, meanwhile, are subtle but useful. Pull down the status menu from the top of the screen and you’ll see shortcuts for turning Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on and off, plus a pair of buttons to put the phone into silent and vibrate mode.

Along the bottom of each of the Galaxy’s seven horizontally scrolling home screens are shortcuts for the phone screen, contacts, texting (which offers a threaded view) and applications. More important, however, is the fact that the Galaxy S runs Android 2.1, which means enhanced Exchange support.

The social networking tools are pretty good too. They’re not quite as all-encompassing as HTC’s Sense equivalents, offering only MySpace, Facebook and Twitter feeds, as well as contact and calendar synchronisation. There’s no push option for updates and the phone only lets you check once an hour for updates.

But the contacts view is very good, successfully marrying information (including photos) from all sources and it attempts to automatically link duplicates too. We’re particularly fond of the ability to view recent updates, phone calls, texts and even a person’s social networking media via his or her contacts entry.

There’s no Flash support, however, and we have a big beef with the desktop synchronisation application - Samsung Kies. Mimicking a desktop within a window, this facilitates everything from media transfer to firmware updates and includes a whole load of extra features from disc burning, video conversion and Outlook contact sync to basic photo editing.

It even includes its very own Samsung version of Windows Explorer, which you use to browse the contents of the phone’s 8GB integrated storage. It’s terribly clunky.Fortunately, once installed you can use Windows to chuck files back and forth instead.

Price and conclusion

If you can live with that, the Samsung Galaxy S’s pricing makes it a very tempting buy. You can get it for free on a £25 per month, 24-month contract for an overall cost of £600 – that’s more than £200 cheaper than the most reasonable iPhone 4 contract, and puts it on a par with the HTC Desire.

Combine that with the gorgeous 4in OLED screen, lightning-quick performance, and an excellent software complement (boosted by the huge repository of downloadable apps from the Android Market) and you have a high-class alternative to the iPhone 4.

We doubt it will dissuade those who have their hearts set on one of Apple’s handsets – the industrial design isn’t as good, the camera is a notch behind, and neither is the music player software as elegant – but if you don’t have the cash for an iPhone 4, or simply don’t like Apple, this is very nearly as good.
Price when reviewed: Free, on a £25.00 per month, 24 months contract