My new phone:The Samsung Galaxy S

It just arrived - and very quickly. I ordered it on Thursday evening from Expansys and was phoned by customs Friday afternoon (on the golf course, fifth hole, 360 meters par four left dog leg) to pay GST (NZ's consumption tax, now 12.5% soon to be 15%) via credit card.

Unfortunately Fedex doesn't deliver in the weekends here so I had to wait until Monday morning (now) for it to arrive. Quick service - it's one of the advantages of living in the South Pacific and quite handy to East-Asia where these devices are manufactured and distributed.

The Box and Contents

The Phone

Here it is beside my current phone. I love the HTC Dual touch hardware, and I really really wanted to wait for an Android phone with a similar format (though it'd have to have a bigger screen). I so want a phone that slides open (up and down) because not only do I expect physical keyboards to be better but I like haptic interfaces best - slide open to answer, close to end calls.

However as no one has even announced such a phone (well, Motorola's got one, but eww) I've had to give away my hope in order to get on with using Android.

Watch This Space

And now I'm waiting for it to charge. Impatiently. Waiting. Distracting myself by preparing this page. But waiting. Watch this space.

Is charged, and wow it's responsive. Just setting it up - the onscreen keyboard works brilliantly. Haven't hit a wrong key yet.

After a while

Well, there's a lot to like but there's a few things I'm surprised are as they are with Android. Unchecked check boxes still have ticks on them? That's appalling U.I design. I was confused for a while about why check boxes were ticked but disabled when they were really unchecked.

And I find it extremely odd that an Android deivce isn't just a mountable mass storage device to Windows.

And so much of the experience is owned by Google. This isn't such an easy way to escape the domination of a single company like Apple as one may imagine.

There are lots 'n lots of small U.I parts that could be improved with a bit of polish. I understand Google is putting a lot of efffort into the U.I for the next Android release specifically to discourage fragmentation by making the core Android experience tip-top.

Just wrote a review for Expansys

This phone is great, wafer thin, but quite broard and tall to make room for it's big display.

I'm a little disappointed with Android itself, but not with this phone.

It has a single central home button rather than track ball, which I purposefully wanted. My intention was to commit to a touch U.I. But I've discovered using Remote Connections and controlling a mouse on a remote PC a bit problematic without a track ball.

Samsung has set it up to be as much like an iPhone as possible (if you squint your eyes a bit you could believe, looking at it's front, it's an older iPhone), which I figure for good marketing but a bit of an undersell of Androids possibilities.

It's taken me a day to get it to where I want it to be for getting on, but that's more about Android than the phone itself.

It's fast and bright with an excellent camera and accurate touch sensitivity.

I think the body could be made a bit smaller on phones like this without sacrificing screen size, and it would be a little better with an easier to grip material on it's back and sides. As it is it's a pretty slick plastic (textured to look like carbon fibre).

As a phone it's proving superb - good strong clear connections. Samsungs Ringtones aren't particularly good, but we all import ones we prefer anyway.

This phone is exactly what it looks like and others claim it to be, but it isn't perfect. And you can't consider it separate from it's O/S, which is a little incomplete (unchecked boxs in Android have greyed out ticks on them making them look like disabled but still ticked boxs, you can't just mount an Android device via USB as a mass storage device for simple file transfer, there are numerous inconsistencies in the U.I etc).

This is my first phone of this type, I haven't had an iPhone or other keyboard-less touch U.I before so I can't fairly compare to others without some guessing. I'm worried these big screens are vulnerable (and I'm not interested in covers for them), I don't know if finger-prints are going to bother me yet, I'm concerned the slick plastic might slip out of my fingers, I wish the usb connector was the slightly larger and more standard size for ease of connectivity, I'm worried I'll be feeling like I'm suffering a death of a thousand cuts if I have to keep buying apps to get work done, I worry about Googles nose in every thing.

So mostly my concerns are about Android rather than this phones hardware.

It is exactly what it looks like here, it is top notch responsive, it's screen is good, it's media capabilities, well I have no point of comparison, but it had no problem playing the 350meg X264, AAC rip I just took from a DVD. I am well impressed with its camera - especially the video. Crystal clear and I hadn't even taken it's protective film off.