Samsung Galaxy S Wi-Fi 5.0 ( YP-G70 ) First Impressions

18Nov11

Android has dominated the phone industry for a while now, with Google officially announcing that over 200 million devices have been activated in its life time. Although thinking about it most of these activations come from mobile phones. A area that Android has yet to make an impact on is the music/PMP industry. The iPod touch has had this area virtually to itself for years. Samsung were the first to challenge apple in their stride with the Galaxy Player series. The first devices though were slow, had OS problems and terrible displays, can Samsung come back on a high or should they give up now. Samsung phones have come a long way in the last year with their tradem

ark release of the Galaxy S II storming over Europe, with its amazing Super AMOLED Plus display and great OS can they bring some of their goodness to the PMP market. Their has been some confusion over this device, in Europe were has been released for months it is called the Galaxy S Wi-Fi 5.0, were as in America were it has been released only a month it is called the Galaxy Player 5.0, following its “Player” branding, is this a good move though with the terrible first galaxy player still fresh in their minds. Another confusion is about what type of device this is, it has  a 5 inch display some many people are calling it a small tablet. Samsung though officially call it a “mobile internet device”. For the purpose of this first impressions i will be calling it a PMP/mobile internet device, why because it runs Android 2.2 Froyo not Honeycomb.

This device features some interesting specs:

Samsung 1 ghz cpu single core ( not dual ),

512 mb of RAM,

8 gb or 16 gb internal memory with SD card slot,

note it has 8 gb internal memory as well,

TFT LCD 5 inch display,

stereo speaker,

3.5 mp camera with LED flash

and a 2500 mAh battery

I will start of with the price, I picked this device up for £130 on eBay and officially its RRP is £199. Upon opening the box the first thing that I noticed was the size of the display, and the next the great bulid quality that I come to expect of Samsung. Some of the features of this device though vary from place to nplace which in my opinion further adds to the whole “Android fragmentation”, for exaplme, in Asia there is a Mini HDMI port on the bottom of the device and a pull out arial for viewing tv shows. In europe and America these functions are non existent.  Android 2.2 comes shipped with this device if you happen to buy it in Europe wereas Americas get treated to something a little more sweeter, Gingerbread aka Android2.3.  Also another difference between these two get continents is the buttons on the bottom of the device. America users have all 3 buttons as hipatic feedback, or “touch” buttons but Europe has two touch buttons and the centre home button as a hard button. Again adding to inconsistency.

In 1 hour I was able to upgrade the device to android 2.3 from 2.2 and root the device. I wont go into the details of what changes through android 2.2 to 2.3 but I can tell you that it is definitely worth the upgrade performance wise. Again rooting is not necessary but I wanted to do this to get the best experience out of the device. On the Moding side of things, there are no ROMS available at time of writing for this device. Once I booted it up and upgraded I was greeted by the too familiar android icon asking me to set up the device and log into Google etc, this was painless and very easy. Like I said I have only had a short period of time with this device but the screen is a interesting one. So firstly don’t be expecting a amazing display. I said earlier its only LCD, and while the TFT does improve viewing angles very good the saturation of colours is poor and pixels are slightly visible, note slightly. Over all it is a good display for £130 with over average viewing angles and average to look at. Beware though if your like me coming from a “good” display like Super LCD or Super AMOLED this display will be a shock at first but you will soon get used to it.

Overall though I am very impressed with this device performance seems to be very good, fast boot up time, blazing speed and a sliglty average display. The price paid has a major part to play in my overall opinion, for £130 I cant complain at all and I would really recommend paying £199 any more than that though and I don’t think it is worth it. If you want a device that’s not as big as a 7 inch tablet that you can carrying around with you in your pocket and is not a phone this is definitely the device for you.

Design: 9/10

Preformence: 8/10

Display: 7/10

Value for money: 10/10

Filed under: First Impression, Uncategorized   |  4 Comments
Tags: 2011, 4.0, 5.0, amazing, android, average, bargain, cheap, display, first, galaxy, impression, music, new, player, product, reformed, samsung, wifi