I went and did it. I fought the evil inside me. I spurned the iPhone like a paid up Lib Dem from the Coalition Government. I went…Android! And why not? They’ll only win in the end…so I got into bed with Google.

Samsung Galaxy S - Lovely Stuff

As my previous post indicated, I was wrestling with whether the Samsung Galaxy S ticked all the right boxes. And now having used the phone for a couple of weeks, I can say wholeheartedly that it does.  One of my big issues was the music player. I wanted to ditch my iPod and the music player on the Galaxy S is better than my iPod Touch. So much so that I am thinking of selling my iPod. The thing rocks and it actually looks and behaves differently to every other music player I have used before. While the phone does copy Apple in some ways (the build/look and OS interface) the music player seems genuinely new to me, and a great thing to play with.

Then there’s the Super AMOLED screen. My. God. It’s a thing of beauty. You know the first time you sat and watched a blu-ray on 1080p? The way that every time you saw standard definition after that you felt like you had been short changed? Well that’s this in a nutshell. I looked at my iPod Touch earlier and wanted vomit at it’s vile pixelated excuse of a display. It’s like….urgh…revolting. Maybe that means I am now a slave to super bright and juicy visuals, but I cannot go back! Everyone I showed this phone too goes “Wow!”.

Some people are concerned about Samsung not supporting their new Galaxy S with updates to the Android 2.2 OS (and possibly Gingerbread/Android 3). Sure. There’s enough justification for this as Samsung have a tendency of dropping handsets like lead weights. But the effort they are throwing into marketing the Galaxy S makes me think otherwise. There was a beta ROM of 2.2 from Samsung “released” in the last week or so, so 2.2 will materialise – at the very least we should see that. And as far as I can tell, there are no T-Mobile customisations on my SGS so I’m not worried that this should take an inordinately long time to reach my handset.

Software wise it’s a mixed bag. Some of the built in apps are great, but I wonder what is  the point of the daily briefing app being so restricted. If you could customize it a little it would be a very cool and most importantly a useful tool. The widget looks good and the app itself if well made – scrolling options etc. Very slick compared to some of the dross on the Android Market. It’s a shame it’s a so stunted though. Only being able to get news form the AP Wire is useless to virtually anyone outside of the USA without a keen interest in what happens in Washington. And the only benefit of the stock tracker is an attempt to see how low BP shares have sunk. And I couldn’t be bothered to follow that through to fruition.

Same goes for the dual zone clock widget. It looks great but you cannot turn the second zone clock off meaning it’s useless waste of screen space for me. OK – I know it is called a dual zone clock but all I want is a simple single time. I really wonder why Samsung didn’t go that extra mile and really finish their widgets off with some serious thought to how they would be used and not just how they look in the showroom. And if they’re reading this – hey! Give me a shout and I’ll tell you what needs tweaking!

There’s nothing wrong with build quality (something I was worried about to start with). It’s solid as a rock – just plastic that’s all.  It does look a little iPhone but really it’s nothing to worry about, unless that is the exact thing you don’t want to have in your pocket.

But I have to say, I love virtually everything about this phone. It’s a bloody gem – even the lack of photo flash is not a major issue for me (and I thought it would be) because everything else is so well done. The camera is great quality, it the 720p footage it records is very good indeed. The microphone seems a little too sensitive but it is not a hugeflaw.

If only Samsung had not dropped the ball with things like the lack of flash, then the SGS would be the Desire AND iPhone killer. But bonuses such as the 8Gb of onboard memory mean it is a serious contender out of the box. Word of warning to those reading reviews before buying though – I got my SGS free on a £30 18-month contract from BuyMobilePhones.net. It certianly goes against the expensive tag as that is a very attactive price point. Maybe it is a last hurrah for T-Mobile before they turn into the Orange mutant but 3Gb 3G download limit for free is excellent. along with 600 minutes. Vodaphone and O2 cannot compete with this at all. And it is substantially cheaper than an Jesus Phone.