Manufacturer Samsung | Form factor Candybar | |
 | ||
Compatible networks HSDPA (3.5G) 900/1700/2100, Quad band GSM / GPRS / EDGE GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, First released June 2009; 7 years ago (2009-06) Successor Samsung Galaxy Spica/Lite
Samsung Galaxy S (direct) Dimensions 115 mm × 56 mm × 11.9 mm | ||
The Samsung Galaxy, known as Samsung GT-I7500 in some countries, is a mobile phone manufactured by Samsung that used the open source Android operating system. It was announced on 27 April 2009. It is succeeded by the Samsung i5700.
Contents
Features
The Galaxy is a 3.5G smartphone, offering quad-band GSM and announced with tri-band HSDPA (900/1700/2100) at 7.2Mbit/s (however, Samsung's official pages for the Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish versions only mention dual-band UMTS 900/2100). The phone features a 3.2-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with power LED flash, and a digital compass. Unlike the first Android phone, the HTC Dream (the G1), the i7500 has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, and a Directional Pad in place of a trackball.
Software-wise, the Galaxy offers a suite of Mobile Google services, including Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Calendar, and Google Talk. The phone's GPS enables Google Maps features such as My Location, and Google Latitude. It also supports MP3, AAC (including iTunes Plus downloads) (only the codec, not the .aac format), and H.264 video. A beta version of the Spotify music streaming service is also now available for this phone via the Android Marketplace.
Criticism
Due to a lack of firmware updates Samsung has received a lot of criticism from Galaxy users.
For some countries, Samsung has updated the Galaxy's firmware to Donut (1.6). Users from other countries can download and update it manually (which will void the warranty). Drakaz, a developer who has been working on getting Android v1.6, v2.2 and v2.3 to work on the i7500 for some time has made some improvements.