Samsung Wave 723 SmartPhone Review
Samsung’s initial attempt with their very own OS, Bada, – Samsung Wave – had too many first’s to it making it an instant hit among users, thin aluminum chassis, a 1GHZ Hummingbird handset, for the first time ever Super AMOLED screen, were some of the “firsts” to name a few, making their debut. The Wave 723 is the fourth Bada handset that follows suit of the Wave 2 and Wave 2 Pro. Well for a change, the Korean manufacturer decides to democratize the smartphone making it accessible to people from almost all walks of life giving everyone a taste of remarkable smartphone experience. So let us see how this “not so” high-end phone, priced at around £200 right in the middle of the crowded smartphone market finds its way to the top? With its rather unusual feature of an attached leather, covering the touchscreen which gives it both a positive and negative rating, does the Samsung Wave 723 counter weigh for shedding its high-end chipset or the brilliant Super AMOLED like the ones found in the existing Wave? Read on to find out!
Overview:
Well! With some changes done here and there, what we have here is a low-res LCD that takes the place of the Super AMOLED of the S8500 with the 720p video recording missing too. But on a positive note, the excellent connectivity of the Samsung Wave 723 Smartphone is beyond comparison, particularly the Wi-Fi/USB tethering, not something that you can see in every other phone and would be welcomed especially by corporate users with a data plan. Also worth mentioning would be the Bluetooth 3.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11n, yet another rare feature. Beyond doubts, the Wave 723 is sure to hit the search result page of latest phones with budget and specs as the criteria. The immense free game options along with the 5MP camera pack quite a punch. Well, as mentioned above, the detachable leathery plastic flap at the bottom of the device along with enhancing the looks also safeguards the phone from users with butter fingers, who are well known for dropping the device every now and then. And for those of you who find it rather annoying, there is always the option of detaching it.
Design and Feel:
The Samsung Wave 723 measures 109.5 x 53.9 x 11.8 mm sans the flap categorising it into a relatively compact handset. With the flap on, it weighs around 113.8 g adding about 2.5mm to the thickness. With a small screen of about 3.2 inches, the pixel count is at 240 x 400, which is on the low side. While the backplate is made of sturdy metal, the rest of the body is made of plastic with a shiny front fascia. The faux leather texture finish in the front along with the brushed aluminium feel at the back sure does give users a literal feel of high-end opulence. The metal casing is any day a treat for the hands with its tough and solid feel. Though it cannot be compared to the S8500, it is quite a looker nonetheless.
Getting around the 723:
Below the display is where the hardware keys are housed namely – Call, Menu and End buttons. There is nothing more in terms of hardware control on the front panel with all controls hefty and solid, designed to fit hands of any size. While pressing the End key stops any current running app taking you to the home screen, press-holding the Menu key initiates the task switcher. Above the display stands the loner, the earpiece. Towards the left side is the thin volume rocker sitting low, something not really comfortable to be accessed at all times. Towards the right is where one can find the Power/Lock key along with the Camera Key, rather tiny buttons with an easy to use shutter key perched a little above them. Well it was pretty impressive to watch the camera launch instantly, almost at all times. The microUSB port sits on top hidden under a plastic lid, sliding in and out seamlessly along with the uncovered 3.5mm audio jack. The above mentioned leather flap sits at the bottom, guarding the screen from rough users that can be fixed by detaching the chassis’ back section at the bottom and sliding the screen back to place.
Moving on, towards the back is where we find the conventional 5MP camera, LED flash equipped along with the loudspeaker. The inset attribute of the camera lens safeguards it from scratches. The SIM card slot is right above the battery with the microSD slot sitting below.
Well, there is nothing much to complain about the 723 both in terms of quality or build. Yeah! The Super AMOLED screen was a great miss though.
User Interface:
Based on TouchWiz and Android, the Bada interface is not something that is too hard to tame, for both patron and non-patrons of the Samsung family. So, starting with the homescreen (the basic attraction of the Bada interface) has several panes to its credit that holds as many widgets you would like it to hold. In the landscape mode, the 723 allows editing of these widgets by adding, removing or even rearranging panes, with the current pane being displayed on the top via circled numbers. Tapping on the same takes you directly to that particular screen. Widgets can be pulled out or placed back on the tray at the foot of the screen when unused. Then again, the low-res screen of the 723 does not really help with handling too many widgets per pane. There is a thin notification bar on top of the screen that displays info such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, battery, time, and Music player controls, provided it is running in the background. Long pressing the centre key launches the Task Manger that helps you toggle between active apps or terminating them. Furthermore, the System Manager is more for the techies and consists of four tabs with the first tab showing info on the device like model number, MAC addresses and firmware update, the second tab provides info on the battery, while the last two tab updates you on the memory and CPU usage. It also displays the current running app enabling you to launch the Task manager. Turning the phone landscape while in the edit mode allows you to add and delete pages, akin to the homescreen. With the screen scrolling being looped, do not bother sweeping all the way back to reach the last one.
Phonebook/Call Quality:
Samsung have always been famous for their opulent functionality and literally unrestricted capacity when it comes to Phonebook. The Samsung Wave 723 Bada OS Phone continues that legacy by assimilating social networking with contacts. Contacts can be pulled in from Facebook or Twitter, provided you are logged in. In fact, you can formulate an up-to-date and detailed contact list with pulling contacts from Twitter and Facebook along with adding some from the SIM too. Searching for entries is possible by either doing an alphabet scroll that is available on the side of the screen or flick scrolling the list. Then again, typing for the search entry is there always. Despite having the option to assign numerous info fields to the contacts everything remains flawlessly organised. Trying clicking on a + sign located on the right in the contact list, this allows a new field to be added for a contact. Again by clicking on a minus sign you can get rid of any unnecessary field. Yet another cool feature similar to the Galaxy S is, swiping right on the main contact list dials instantly the number of a contact and with swiping left you are allowed to send a SMS to that contact. The side swiping feature works with other lists too in case of numbers or names being involved. Majority of the functions are pretty much Android-y.
During calls, accessing the mute button or the speaker phone is very much possible, but what was annoying was having to press-hold the On/Off lock keys located on the side that in turn takes you to the menu. There are options to make or take video calls, but then again with no front-facing camera, you might have to use the camera on the back to send your videos.
The call quality of the Wave 723 can be categorised as fair, as it was not that loud despite the max sound setting. With the absence of the proximity sensor, manual unlocking of the phone needs to be done in order to use some features amidst a call. The Smart dialing feature also was not really impressive, as it searches only with numbers and not names. We found it a bit weird, because we are more prone to forgetting numbers than names and that is exactly why a Name Search would be appreciated better. The call receiver key populates the call log showing all of the received, dialed and missed calls/messages all in the same list. There is also the option of different tabs that sorts history better.
Messaging:
Samsung has been very innovative in terms of Messaging with an array of options on offer. Well it starts with the standard, SMS, MMS, and voice mail along with Facebook and Twitter. This is just to begin with; the main menu offers an app named My Accounts. On opening that, you get to set up various email accounts. While corporate users find Exchange ActiveSync feature fairly handy, others might be happy to have their hands full with Gmail, Windows Live, Yahoo etc. MySpace is also on offer on the social networking front.
Creating messages has been kept simple and straightforward. While the capacitive touchscreen makes life easier with being spontaneous and receptive, the keyboard is no less effective by way of offering dedicated keys for symbols like @ and ‘.com’. Perched conveniently above the keyboard are three menu buttons, “Recent, Contact, Groups” which acts quickly in adding a recipient/group of recipients in a message. The Recent button also comes in pretty handy. While sending message, the predictive text offers you alternative words and the same can be availed of by pulling it down and clicking on the arrow towards the right of the box. If you find the keyboard a bit small in the tall mode try switching to wide mode to gain more space.
Typing speed in the Wave 723 was not an issue until the built-in dictionary comes in your way. Similar to its brothers, the 723 follows the same painful process with new words – coining a new word is possible only after entering the same in the dictionary, which means you might spend an eternity keying in all your buddies’ nicknames in the dictionary, unless you turn that option off. Yet another feature worth mentioning in the Samsung’s Bada is that majority of the screens display three small dotted icons at the bottom of the screen, which pops a context-sensitive menu, which is extremely handy. For eg, with messaging it allows you to easily add attachments and multimedia to your messages. Maximum attachment size is 5MB for both incoming and outgoing mails.
Check this cool feature that the Wave 723 has to offer. The SMS editor offers two tabbed folders – view and conversation. While the former displays all your folders at the bottom of the screen as tabs, the latter groups your messages. Yet another remarkable option would be the “Scheduled message” – this takes care of scheduling a composed message to be sent automatically on a specified time and date.
Multimedia:
Face Tagging-Enabled Gallery:
The Samsung Wave 723’s Media Browser can be categorized as basic with clips and images displayed together in the thumb format. The selected file can be viewed in both the landscape and portrait mode. As the phone is multi-touch supported, Pinch-Zooming is also offered and double tapping the screen allows for a zoom in and zoom out. Well it appears that Samsung needs to improvise on the zooming feature, as it appears less responsive. Organizing files via the Media Browser is done by tag, date, view favorites and the best of all View By Person. This would mean upon tagging a contact’s face, you will be allowed to view all photos pertaining to that contact.
Not so impressive Video player:
The Wave 723 does not match up to the expectations in terms of video player in comparison to the first Wave. High resolution videos and codecs appear to be a no-no with the Wave 723. While the .3GP and .MP4 files seem to work (with less resolution though) there seemed to be some resistance against DivX and XviD encoded .AVI files. Again, it did not seem to have anything against .WMV files. Well, as these files are no longer largely in use, there is nothing much to complain here. Check out this cool feature, Mosaic Search. This is how it works – clips are broken down into various parts displaying each clip’s first frame helping you fish out the scene that you are hunting for.
Decent Music player:
We have to admit that the music player experience in the Wave 723 was nowhere near the video player. Tracks get organized by artists, albums, composers and genres, with the option to hide the same while not in use. Sound Effects along with Equalizer Presets are also on offer along with Samsung’s own DNSe sound enhancement technology giving you the choice of Music Clarity, Wide, Bass enhancement and Externalization, Concert Hall and 5.1 channel virtualization too. With the music player on, the notification panel displays info on the track being played along with playback controls. Also included is Samsung’s conventional music recognition feature that allows recording a few seconds of the currently played track ultimately providing you info on the name of the artist and the track being played. Yet another similar feature is “Find similar” that uses an online service to find similar tracks to the one currently being played. This also allows for tracks to be added to the wish list.
FM on board:
The Samsung Wave 723 PDA Smartphone is loaded with FM radio along with RDS. It allows as much as 6 stations to be stored as favorites with the All Channels Menu retaining the rest. Recording of FM audio is also possible with the possibility to store the recorded music in your music folder in a MP3 format.
Audio output Quality:
Moving forward, the audio output quality leaves you with mixed feeling and is kind of hard to comment on the same. For eg., while the handset fares well with being plugged to an external amplifier, the same is just average with plugging to the headphones.
Camera:
The Samsung Wave 723 Mobile Phone comes with 5MP camera that is LED flash and auto-focus supported and it sure does match our expectations in terms of still shooting. It also feature smile detection along with geo tagging. There are several scene modes namely Party/Indoor, Dawn, Sports, Fireworks, Night, Candlelight and Text. Also available are options like Continuous Mode and Panorama Mode together with Smile Shot, so have fun exploring your shoot skills. The touch optimized interface is fairly comfortable with almost all available options by way of vertical bars on each side of the viewfinder. The settings menu allow for toggling between white balance, ISO, auto contrast and effects. Also available is the macro mode along with Scene presets. In short, the Wave 723 shoots decent photos that can be expected from a 5MP camera with great attention being paid to resolved detail while also taking care of noise levels
Connectivity And Web Browser:
The connectivity factor of the 723 is way ahead for a phone that is categorized in the mid-range level. Along with the customary quad-band GPRS/EDGE/GSM there is also dual-band 3G with 7.2Mbps HSDPA on offer. Furthermore, it is loaded with the best local wireless connectivity – b/g/n variants of Wi-Fi along with Bluetooth v3.0. In terms of mass storage, there is the microUSB port, DRM Media, internet sharing and Samsung Kies. Speaking of Internet Sharing, check out the 723 turn into a wireless router (thanks to Mobile AP) connecting to as much as three Wi-Fi clients using the HSDPA connection to access the net. Wi-Fi also pairs with WPS – well for the non-techies out there WPS or Wi-Fi Protected Setup is a secure way that helps connecting your secured network with a wireless device (that is, if your router supports the feature). Press the dedicated button and Voila watch it pairing up with your Wave 723.
The Wave 723 comes loaded with a Webkit-based browser, Dolphin 2.0 that opens multiple pages simultaneously along with Flash support also on board. The Pinch-Zoom feature works like a breeze especially with the screen being multi-touch enabled. But then again, it is fairly annoying to note the absence of text reflow that eventually leads to additional swiping in an attempt to read the zoomed stuff. Nevertheless, the Auto-complete option sure does save you some energy with entering site addresses if you have frequented the site before. Other notable features of the browser are the Find-on-Page and Translate option. Again, the volume rocker mounted on the left can be toggled to act as scroller as well, especially for those accustomed to single-handed browsing. The context-sensitive menu located in the browser page comes in very handy with sending URLs via SMS/email. So there again, the browser has its own pros and cons and sure does need a little tweaking here and there that Samsung needs to take care of.
Organiser:
The 723’s Organizer is a relatively handy app. There is also this Home screen widget displaying all impending appointments – a lifesaver really. So all those anniversaries, birthdays and meetings are just a tap away, in order to avoid any dicey scenarios. Also on board is the latest Picsel Viewer that works like a charm when it comes to Pinch- Zooming. It works perfectly well for PowerPoint docs, Excel, PDFs and Word. The 723 also comes loaded with the conventional organizer functions like the World Clock, Countdown timer, Alarm, Stopwatch etc. Another feature worth mentioning would be My Files – an efficient and simple to use file manager that also does the role of an image gallery. It also aids in copying, moving, locking and renaming bulk files and sending the same over Bluetooth.
App store:
Nothing much to be mentioned about the Samsung App store, it lags far behind in comparison to Android or Apple. While the apps are divided into categories, some have very few entries with the Social Networking having 7 to its credit and the Productivity having just 19. Well if it is just apps that you are interested in, then it would be ideal to look for options.
SatNav/GPS Navigation:
The Wave 723 comes with a dedicated Sat Nav along with the Samsung Mobile Navigator. Though the maps give out an outdated look, it is rich in features with nothing to complain about. It is also voice-guided along with a whole host of additional features, but obviously at an extra cost.
Battery Life:
Yet another disappointing feature of the 723 is its battery life. With just a meager usage, the battery dies within three days. With heavy usage, it drains rapidly requiring an almost everyday charge to continue breathing. And if you are the kind of person that listens to music a good amount of time, then be warned to do an everyday charge to avoid being appalled with a sudden battery drain. On the other hand, if you are the prudent kind, then you can expect anywhere from a day or two or maybe three, before the 723 dies out on you.
Hits:
- Solid design
- Context-sensitive app menus
- Expanding home screens with addition of widgets
- Pull down controls taking the shape of notification panel.
- Wi-Fi settings.
- Neat camera.
- Leather casing
- Integration of Facebook and Twitter contacts.
Misses:
- Not well designed app store
- Lack of text reflow.
- Low display resolution.
- Disappointing video playback
To Conclude:
The Korean manufacturer has indeed devised a mid-range compelling Bada handset that sure does steal the show in the smartphone market, but is yet to work on some rough edges like its OS, app store, and screen resolution etc. But the question still remains as to who would prefer the Bada over a Froyo or a Sense? Guess the £200 mark is after all not enough to survive the smartphone crusade, unless Samsung decides to refine the Bada big time!
Samsung Wave 723 Mobile Phone – Technical Specification Table
| Manufacturer | Samsung |
| Model Name | Samsung Wave 723 |
| Phone Type | Smartphone |
| Form Factor | Full touch |
| Dimensions (H x W x D) | 4.31 x 2.12 x 0.46 cm |
| 2G Network | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 |
| 3G Network | HSDPA 900 / 2100 |
| Release Date | August 2010 |
| Colour | Black |
| Weight | 3.53oz (100 g) |
| Operating System | BADA 1.1 |
| Display | TFT Capacitive touchscreen |
| Display size | 3.2 inches |
| Screen resolution | 240 x 400 pixels, 256K colours |
| Personal Information Management | To Do, Calendar, Scheduler, World time, Clock, Calculator, Memo, Stopwatch, Count down timer |
| Internet Browser Support | Dolphin 2.0 HTML |
| Built-in Service Support | Facebook, MySpace, Twitter |
| Messaging options | SMS, MMS, IM, RSS, Predictive text input T9, Email, Cell broadcast, Vcard/Vcalendar |
| IMAP, POP3, SMTP, Microsoft Exchange | |
| Call Functions | Speaker Phone, Caller ID, Dialled/Missed/Received calls, Multi Party, Call Cost, Call Time. |
| Memory | User memory 100MB SMS Memory 1300 Phonebook Entries – Unlimited Memory External Memory – MicroSD up to 16GB |
| Phonebook Features | Caller groups, Multiple numbers per contact, Search by first and last names, Picture ID, Ring ID |
| Messaging | SMS, MMS (vCard/vCalendar), Predictive Text Input T9, IM |
| Business & Office | Document Viewer, Mobile Printing, Offline Mode, Voice Memo/Voice Mail |
| Audio Compatibility | MP3, Music Recognition |
| Video Playback | MPEG4, H.263, H.264 |
| Fun & Entertainment | Embedded JAVA games, Embedded wallpaper, FM Radio |
| Music & Sound | Music Player, Poly ringtones, MP3 Ringtone, DRM, Music Library, 3D Sound technology |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth, WAP, Wi-Fi, SyncML (DS/DM), USB, A-GPS, PC Sync Application, internet HTML browser, USB File Transfer |
| Memory Slot Type | microSD, microSDHC |
| Special Features | Touch Phone, Mobile Tracker |
| Camera | 5 Mp Auto Focus |
| Battery | Standard battery, Li-Ion 1200 mAh |
| Warranty | One year |
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