By Samsung’s first Android phone hasn’t exactly come storming out of the gate. After launching in a few European countries, starting with Germany, the Samsung Galaxy has been kind of MIA for a handset that should command the attention of the masses. While rumors have persisted that the device has failed to pass various certification standards, we’re now hearing that the Galaxy i7500 is well on its way to making the rounds… next stop O2 UK.
If you visit the O2 UK website, check out the accessories section and try to select the Samsung Galaxy from the brand/model drop down, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find it sitting there in broad daylight:
Clicking through will yield zero results, but the existence of the I7500 Galaxy name on the website is delightfully telling. I should also mention that last week the Samsung Galaxy also launched on Israeli carrier – Cellcom.
FYI the cost of the Galaxy on O2 UK is still unknown and next week’s launch is still rumor, but I’d say its a pretty safe bet to occur within the next couple weeks at the latest.
[Thanks Moshe!]
The extra reason this is great is that O2 is the iPhone carrier in the Uk so people who are locked into O2 contracts (or just like their network) can dump the iPhone for Android.
FYI, it has been offered two weeks ago by TELE2 in Croatia:
http://www.tele2.hr/telefoni/493.html
Speculation had been building in an O2 online forum that the i7500’s launch had suffered a setback after allegedly failing to pass O2’s handset accreditation process. Exactly what it may have stumbled on isn’t clear, but the spokeswoman said that all the carrier’s phones go through a “customer experience process” prior to launch. Remains to be seen
FYI, you can get the Samsung Galaxy on contract in O2’s UK stores. Its about £100 on an 18 month contract of £35 a month.
what date will the samsung galaxy be released in the UK?
I´m currently in germany where the galaxy is available for a couple of weeks now and today I went to the strore to check it out.
Pros:
-Web browsing
The Galaxy does better than a nokia 5800 xpress. The nokia crashed reproducible on sites with a lot of nested tables (e.g. windguru.com) and has out of memory / extreme slowdown issues on other sites. The samsung did really well on this and clicking on hyper links is way more precise. Zooming and scrolling is much more smooth than on the nokia.
-Display visual quality
The galaxy has an AMOLED display(16mil colours, very bright). It is bright, has great contrast (black is really black, white is white) and the colours are vivid. It has one of the best displays on the market.
Cons:
-Touch display sensitivity
The quality of the touch sensitivity is the total opposite to the visual quality. I think its really horrible to write emails, sms and web addresses with the galaxy. First its not very precise, you often hit another letter than intended (even on the wider horizontal keyboard). Secondly it responds rather sluggish, so if you do a double tap on a letter (like in letter) you actually get only one “t”. This makes fast writing impossible. The nokia is really great when it comes to precision and sensitivity. You hit the right letters and you can do it really fast. Furthermore the nokia has more input methods, one T9 keyboard and a handwriting field (although the latter sucks). It would be great to see the T9 with android, as it is really handy when writing and holding the phone in the same hand.
Conclusion
For me the galaxy has a bad touch sensitivity which makes it useless for every day usage (I like to write fast and a lot, otherwise I will not write at all). The display looks just brilliant and its a shame that the usability is not on the same level. If it would be more usable I alread would have bought it. Although the HTC Hero does not have such a brillant display (only tft wth 65k colours) I’ll check it out soon because the shopkeeper said it is much more responsive. Looking at the specs of both of it I would give the Galaxy a go but I was really disappointed by its handling.
Still no sign of this beast in the US.
If it’s of interest to anyone, Samsung have the English manual for the galaxy up at:
http://www.samsung.com/uk/support/download/supportDown.do?model_nm=GT-I7500&mType=UM&vType=L&disp_nm=GT-I7500
Now if i could just get my hands on the damn phone!