Introduction:
Samsung announced the low-range phones to carry its own bada OS back in June, naming them the Samsung Wave 2 and Wave 2 Pro. Afterwards the company took care of the mid-range with the Samsung Wave 723, which wereviewed recently. The last news from the bada camp were for a true successor to the first Samsung Wave, called the Samsung Wave II.
To avoid duplicate pronunciations, the low-end members of the bada family are now ready to enter the markets, but with names consisting strictly of numbers. The Samsung Wave 2 is now the Samsung Wave 525 and the Samsung Wave 2 Pro, which simply adds a QWERTY keyboard, is Samsung Wave 533. We have the Samsung Wave 525 of the duo announced in June, and are taking it for a spin to check how bada OS looks and behaves on a rock-bottom hardware...
Design:
The Samsung Wave 525 will not win any design awards with its plain black rectangular shape with chrome-like accents, such as a thin rim around the phone. The capacitive touchscreen screen is 3.2" with 240x400 pixels of resolution, which makes the interface and websites look scraggy, and average sunlight visibility. Underneath it is the home button, flanked by send and end keys. There is a volume rocker on the left, microUSB port and 3.5mm audio jack on top, as well as a lock/power button plus a dedicated camera key on the right. Don't ask us why bada phones have a separate shutter key, while their Android brethren by Samsung only have virtual camera buttons, as we can't answer that on behalf of the company.
The Samsung Wave 525 will not win any design awards with its plain black rectangular shape with chrome-like accents, such as a thin rim around the phone. The capacitive touchscreen screen is 3.2" with 240x400 pixels of resolution, which makes the interface and websites look scraggy, and average sunlight visibility. Underneath it is the home button, flanked by send and end keys. There is a volume rocker on the left, microUSB port and 3.5mm audio jack on top, as well as a lock/power button plus a dedicated camera key on the right. Don't ask us why bada phones have a separate shutter key, while their Android brethren by Samsung only have virtual camera buttons, as we can't answer that on behalf of the company.
