Samsung Waves hello to Bada

SAMSUNG HAS OPENED the floodgates at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, with the launch of the Wave, the first phone based on its Bada operating system.

First unveiled in December, Bada - which means ‘ocean' in Korean - is based on a new version of Samsung's touchwiz interface and includes several other new features designed to make smartphones more cuddly.

The Wave is a slim, touchscreen device using a 3.3-inch AMOLED display with an 800x480 resolution and powered by Samsungs mobile Digital Natural Image engine, a variation on the same technology that drives many of its TVs. It also packs in a 1GHz processor and Bluetooth 3.0 and WiFi 802.11n, making it a cut above the rest of the competition.

You also get a 5MP camera with an LED flash, 3.5mm headphone jack, GPS and there's a microSD card slot for expandable memory, with a 2GB card thrown in.

It can also handle 720p video decoding and recording and offers multi-codec support for DivX and Xvid, as well as 5.1 surround sound, just in case you carry a full audio theatre in your bag.

According to Samsung's vice president of mobile in the UK and Ireland, Mark Mitchinson, the Wave is also the company's first phone to feature an AMOLED display, as well as being able to access its new app store and the Bada Social Hub.

The Touchwiz 3.0 interface provides customizable home screen and menus, while the Social Hub mashes together your email, instant messaging and social notworking services.

There is also the, now obligatory, app store in attendance as well, which Samsung is trying to seed through the launch of Samsung Mobile Innovator in 2008 and the Samsung Application Seller Site followed by Samsung Application Store. Currently it's available in the UK, France, Italy, Singapore, Germany, Brazil and China, but is expected to be launched in another 43 countries by the end of the year.

While the specs of the Samsung Wave are certainly impressive, we're not convinced that what the mobile world needs at the moment is another platform to worry about.

The Wave will be available in the UK from April 2010, but details about pricing or operator agreements aren't available yet.  µ