Samsung’s Galaxy S reaches for the stars, iPhone’s throne

Samsung’s latest grab for the iPhone share is with the Samsung Galaxy S, an Android-based phone that brings a lot of new features to a market burdened by clones.

The Galaxy S is slated to be an iPhone competitor, and it’s with that aim you can see Samsung’s design inspiration. Much like the iPhone 3GS, the shape is of a softened flat brick with a slight lip at the bottom. The phone feels quite solid in its glossy and barely-1cm-thick plastic shell. With a camera on the back and a massive 4-inch Super AMOLED screen, it’s impossible not to view this as a serious player.

Samsung Galaxy S

Then you’ve got the features, and boy Samsung has this thing packed. Sporting a 1GHz processor, Samsung expect to see this thing pitted up against rivals like the Apple iPhone and HTC Desire, and with 16GB of internal memory plus a microSD card slot supporting up to 32GB more, you won’t have any problems with storage.

That’s space for photos, files, movies, music, and anything else you can figure out will work on this phone.

Getting things to work is easy, too. Out of the box, Samsung has put in support for both DivX and Xvid movie formats giving you the maximum amount of playback possible for your video files. It will still play the Mp4 files your old iPhone could handle, but here it will play them on the 4-inch Super AMOLED screen. Audio gets a boost too with support for MP3, AAC, WMA, and even OGG and FLAC formats for the audio elitists who must have their music in perfect quality.

Samsung Galaxy S

And while we havent seen any Bluetooth 3 devices yet, the inclusion of the latest wireless technology certainly puts it on a higher ground than most of Samsungs competitors.

There’s also a 5 megapixel autofocus camera, 720p video recording, GPS, WiFi b/g/n, and a cute touch that gives your microUSB port a nifty sliding cover to protect it from dust.

Samsung Swype
Swype technology used to type by drawing a path over letters.

Samsung has also included a new way of typing with this phone called “Swype”. This method allows you to drag your finger over the letters you’re typing in one continuous movement to get the words you want. Proving just how fast it is, Samsung and Swype set a new Guinness World Record for the fastest texting with the technology.

The Galaxy S certainly has a lot of things going for it, and with more competitors like the Dell Streak coming shortly, only time will tell whether it has the power to come off as the current champion.