Samsung Wave 3 review

Is Samsung riding the crest of a wave with its latest Bada smartphone?

Samsung Wave III S8600
Samsung are currently riding a wave of smartphone success - sorry

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Samsung wave iii pr image 1-1

With such a big screen media has to be a focus of the Samsung Wave III. There's a relatively generous 4GB of internal storage and support for microSD cards, so you really can push the boat out when it comes to video and music storage.

Samsung includes its Music Hub which is basically an online store where you can buy tracks after sampling small sections. It'll suggest similar artists, and includes a playlist manager for both purchased and non purchased tracks, but it is limited if you are not interested in buying songs.

Samsung wave iii music hub

There's a separate music player that can be used for tracks you've copied to microSD card or internal memory. This does a good enough job of managing single tracks and playlists, though it refused to pick up album art stored on a microSD card.

Samsung wave iii music player

Much more interestingly, the player has DLNA support. You can share tracks from the Samsung Wave III by tapping the AllShare icon at the head of the screen, controlling playback on the Wave III itself. We played tracks to our laptop quite happily in this way.

Samsung wave iii dlna controls

You can also download tracks over DLNA, though this requires leaving the music player and running the AllShare app, and then connecting to the remote device. Video and photos can be shared in this way too – in both directions.

Samsung wave iii allshare

While you are playing music you get controls on the lock screen, so you don't even have to power up fully to move around between tracks.

Samsung wave iii lock screen music controls

There is an FM radio which auto scans as soon as you plug a headset in for the first time, saving you the bother of doing this job manually. You can record simply by tapping a red icon at the top of the screen, and set up favourite stations to flick through at the bottom of the screen. It is all very easy to get to grips with.

Samsung wave iii fm radio

When it comes to playing back video we had no trouble with WMA or MP4, and the Super AMOLED wide screen does movies justice with bright sharp colours. It's worth noting at this point that sound quality is good too. Samsung provides some quite good in-ear buds that bring out the bass tones nicely. It is a real treat to get good quality headphones with a handset so thanks for that, Samsung.