Samsung S7230E Wave 723

Introduction

It’s been smooth sailing for Samsung’s Bada OS and the Samsung S7230E Wave 723 is one of the first of the lineup aimed at the mass market. But beware, this smartphone may change the way you perceive feature phones forever.

While amazing, the S8500 Wave costs a pretty penny. It did a great job of attracting attention to the new platform (selling a million units in four weeks), but Samsung designed Bada to be the “smartphone OS for the masses”, so the relatively high priced S8500 wouldn’t be enough on its own.

Enter the Samsung S7230E Wave 723. It’s one of the first mid-range models and while it preserves some of the features from the S8500, it drops others and its lower price will help further the adoption of Bada.

Here’s the report on what’s in and what’s out of the Samsung S7230E Wave 723 spec sheet.

Key features

3.2" 256K-color TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen, WQVGA (240 x 400 pixels), multi-touch input support
Solid 11.8mm-thin metal body with detachable protective flap with leather texture
Bada OS with Samsung Apps
Quad-band GSM support with dual-band 7.2Mbps HSDPA
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n connectivity with WPS support, Wi-Fi tethering app
Built-in GPS receiver with A-GPS support, digital compass, Samsung Mobile Navigator
5 MP autofocus camera with touch focus, geo-tagging, smile detection and LED flash
QVGA@15fps video recording
90MB user available memory; microSDHC card slot
Standard microUSB port and Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP
Standard 3.5mm audio jack
Stereo FM radio with RDS, FM recording
Webkit-based Samsung Dolphin Browser 2.0 with Flash support
YouTube client, Facebook and Twitter integration
DNSe music enhancement
Accelerometer for auto screen rotate; turn to mute

Main disadvantages

Low resolution screen
Limited number of available applications
No lens cover
No DivX/XviD video support
Web browser performs poorly with Flash
Card slot is under the battery
Preinstalled SatNav software is a trial only
No ambient light sensor to change screen brightness dynamically
No secondary video-call camera

Cuts have been made – the one we miss the most is the brilliant SuperAMOLED, which has been replaced with a low-res LCD. And the smooth 720p video recording is gone too – another feature we loved on the S8500.

On the positive side, the excellent connectivity is one of the key features of the Wave 723. 2G and 3G with HSDPA are common ground – but Wi-Fi tethering (USB tethering too) is a pretty rare built-in feature and yet it’s salient to anyone with a data plan and a laptop. Then there’s Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth 3.0 – rare to find these days but they are the way of the future.

The Samsung Wave 723 offers an almost Android-like UI experience, a hefty number of free games in the Samsung Apps store and a 5MP camera, which produces good looking photos. When searching for a new phone based on specs and budget, the Wave 723 will pop up quite often in the search results, that’s for sure.

And we can’t go on without mentioning the flap – a plastic flap with a leathery texture is attached to the bottom of the phone and protects the screen against scratches and it certainly adds to the looks.

You can detach it if you think it gets in the way (after a while, it does), but it does at least offer an alternative to a carrying pouch.

Flip to the next page to see what this flappy business is all about.

Franziska Knuppe

Friday, May 6, 2011