Introduction
The Galaxy S line gets all the attention, but troopers like the Samsung Galaxy W I8150 will see plenty of action too. With a 3.7" screen, it's more compact than the original Galaxy S, but it uses the same souped-up chipset that ticks inside the S Plus.
Samsung Galaxy W official photos
If you’re after SuperAMOLED, the Galaxy S and S Plus are the phones to go to. The LCD screen of the Samsung Galaxy W I8150 has the same WVGA resolution as the S-line, which means higher pixel density (252ppi vs. 233ppi). And, we're talking proper RGB pixels here, rather than PenTile.
The Galaxy W uses the Qualcomm MSM8255T chipset (1.4GHz CPU, Adreno 205 GPU), which has been used in several upgrades of popular phones - the Galaxy S Plus, obviously, but the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc S too.
The Galaxy W is pretty high up Samsung's ladder, but unlike the S and R premium lines, the emphasis here is on value for money. And you do get quite a bit of features - here's the summary.
Key Features
- Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
- 14.4 Mbps HSDPA; 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
- 1.4GHz Snapdragon CPU; Adreno 205 GPU; Qualcomm MSM 8255ΠΆ chipset; 512MB RAM; 1GB ROM
- 2GB storage (1.7GB user accessible), microSD card support (up to 32GB)
- 3.7” LCD display of WVGA (800 x 480) resolution; 252ppi pixel density
- 5 megapixel auto-focus camera with face detection, touch focus and image stabilization; HD (720p) video recording at 30fps, LED flash
- Front-facing VGA camera for video calls
- Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread with TouchWiz 4.0 launcher
- Rich video format support out of the box
- Wi-Fi b/g/n; Hot-spot and DLNA connectivity
- Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP
- GPS with A-GPS; Digital compass
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- Accelerometer and proximity sensor
- Stereo FM radio
- DivX/XviD/X264 video support
- Office document viewer/editor
- Web browser with Adobe Flash 11 support
Main disadvantages
- All plastic construction
- Display image quality worse than Galaxy S Plus
- No memory card enclosed and only 2GB of built-in storage
- No shutter key
Samsung Galaxy W live pictures
So, shake off that deja vu feeling and proceed to the next page to see what's in the box and what the phone's hardware is like.
Unboxing the Galaxy W
There were no surprises in the retail box of the Samsung Galaxy W. It comes with a charger that ends on a microUSB plug, a separate microUSB cable and a cheapish looking one-piece headset. There are some manuals too, and that's that.
The contents of the Samsung Galaxy W I8150 retail box
Samsung Galaxy W I8150 360-degree spin
At 115.5 x 59.8 x 11.5 mm, the Galaxy W is still reasonably compact and pocket-friendly. The phone weighs a good 110 grams.Design and build quality
The Samsung Galaxy W I8150 isn't the prettiest piece of hardware around, but it's not without its charms. The phone’s curvier than the crop of rounded-corner rectangles that dominate the market, and that sets it apart. The materials are not premium, but the plastic finish is neat and likely to endure a few knocks.Anyway, the Galaxy W is equipped with a 3.7” LCD screen that does an adequate job. Sure, it isn’t a SuperAMOLED but, at this price range, it will be difficult to find one anyway. Anything you're likely to find (e.g. original Galaxy S or S Plus) will have lower pixel density and a PenTile matrix.
The LCD display is nice
Anyway, we found the screen to have good viewing angles and good sunlight legibility. The black levels however were dreadful, which results in overall poor contrast.
Here are some hard numbers to back up our personal observations.
| Display test | 50% brightness | 100% brightness | ||||
| Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | |||
| HTC Salasa | 0.26 | 167 | 653 | 0.52 | 309 | 593 |
| HTC Sensation | 0.21 | 173 | 809 | 0.61 | 438 | 720 |
| Samsung Galaxy W I8150 | 0.29 | 243 | 853 | 0.50 | 423 | 853 |
| HTC Radar | 0.26 | 204 | 794 | 0.59 | 471 | 797 |
| HTC Titan | 0.26 | 233 | 891 | 0.56 | 567 | 1007 |
| Samsung I9001 Galaxy S Plus | 0 | 251 | ∞ | 0 | 408 | ∞ |
| Sony Ericsson W8 | 0.18 | 125 | 696 | 0.34 | 250 | 737 |
| HTC Sensation XL | 0.22 | 231 | 1045 | 0.52 | 559 | 1085 |
Below the screen is a typical arrangement of a hardware Home key in the center and capacitive Menu and Back keys at its side. The Home key is basically flush against the front and not very comfortable to use. The capacitive keys don't have haptic feedback, so points are deducted here too.
Above the screen is the earpiece, the front-facing camera and proximity sensor. There's no ambient light sensor, so no automatic setting for the display's brightness.
It is business as usual below and above the screen of the Galaxy W
On the left side of the device, you will find the lonely volume rocker, which is fairly tactile. The power/lock key is on the right in typical Samsung fashion.
The volume rocker on the left • the power/lock key on the right
The unprotected 3.5 mm audio jack is on top of the Galaxy W I8150. Right next to it is the microUSB port, which is used for charging as well. This one has a neat sliding cover.
At the bottom of the device, you will find the mouthpiece and the tiny latch to open the back cover.
The 3.5mm audio jack and microUSB port are on top • Samsung Galaxy W’s bottom
The top part of the back has different finish than the actual battery cover, which makes it a distinct spot for the 5MP camera lens and the LED flash. The rear cover is made of diamond-textured plastic. At the bottom is the loudspeaker grill with a small nub to slightly lift the phone if you place it on a level surface.
5MP camera with LED flash and the loudspeaker grill
Below the battery cover is a typical sight. There is a SIM card slot, and a hot-swappable microSD slot in the top right corner.
The battery is a 1500mAh Li-Ion unit that is quoted at 570 hours of standby (in 2G, 420 hours in 3G) and nearly 18 hours of talk time in 2G (the talk time in 3G is just over 8 hours).
The view under the battery cover
The Samsung Galaxy W I8150 is not the prettiest phone around, but the differently patterned surfaces are nice accents on what’s an overall clean design. The finish and the exterior aren't bad either - the back cover material looks very similar to what was used on the Galaxy S II.
The phone is pretty light and has nicely rounded corners for comfortable fit in the hand. It's not the thinnest of phones but will slip into any pocket easily. The build is wobble and creak free.
Samsung Galaxy W I8150 handles well
That wraps it up for the physical exam, time for the psych test. We have a feeling that the Galaxy W will perform exactly like the Galaxy S Plus. Jump to the next page to see if the W has the IQ and skills for the job.
User Interface: Gingerbread and TouchWiz 4.0
The Samsung Galaxy W runs Gingerbread version 2.3.5 and, with the most recent TouchWiz launcher on board, you’ll be looking at a Galaxy S II like experience on a smaller budget.We’ve prepared a video of the device in action. Check it out below.
The lockscreen holds no surprises. It can be swiped away in any direction. The cool feature where missed events (messages, calls etc) get their own unlock patterns is still here too.
The lockscreen can be removed by swiping in any direction
The homescreen accommodates tons of widgets with lots of functionality. You can have up to 7 homescreens. A pinch zoom brings you to an aggregate view of all homescreen panes, which can be edited: rearranged, deleted or added.
Widgets, shortcuts or folders are pulled onto the homescreen from a drawer that appears at the bottom of the screen once you enter edit mode (press and hold on an empty spot or do Menu > Add).
The Galaxy W's homescreen • Editing the homescreen
The numbered dots that identify the homescreen panels serve as a scroll bar too. A press and hold on the dots lets you scroll sideways through the resized images of the available homescreen panes in one short go rather than with several swipes.
Scrolling between homescreens looks great
The app launcher is very similar to the homescreen - you can create folders to go with your shortcuts and you can add, remove and rearrange pages just like you would homescreens.
You can choose List view instead of the regular grid view if you prefer.
The app launcher • Creating a new folder • Rearranging pages in the app launcher • List view
In typical TouchWiz fashion, there are four shortcuts docked at the bottom of the screen that are visible both on the homescreen and in the app launcher. You can swap the first three with different ones (by default the shortcuts are Phone, Contacts, Messaging), the fourth one being locked. It's the app drawer/home shortcut so it makes sense to always keep it in the same place.
The notification area has been slightly remodeled in TouchWiz 4.0, but there aren’t any major changes to the functionality there.
The notification area
With the Samsung Galaxy W I8150 you get a standard Android task switcher but with one modification - it has a button to launch a task manager.
The custom task manager, which Samsung have preinstalled, offers a lot of functionality. It also comes with a handy widget which shows you the number of active applications right on your homescreen.
The task manager and its widget
Most of the time, Android does really well when it comes to managing apps by itself (in fact, some claim that using a task manager is detrimental to the performance of a phone), so you would only need the task manager to occasionally kill a buggy app.
Synthetic benchmarks
The fast single-core CPU manages to hold its own when it comes to single-threaded benchmarks like BenchmarkPi. Here the HTC Sensation XL and XE lead the Galaxy W a bit, but they are clocked 100MHz higher. The Galaxy S II uses a newer architecture than the others and beats them despite its lower clock speed.Running Linpack in single-threaded mode sees the Galaxy W and the Sensation XL almost equal. The Sensation XE exhibits some software issues that get in the way of proper multithreading in this test.
In the 3D graphics test, the Samsung Galaxy W performed surprisingly well. It left both HTCs in the dust (the XL has the same Adreno 205 GPU and the same screen resolution, so it beats us why it's almost three times slower). The Galaxy W even manages to get close to its high-end counterpart, the Galaxy S II, which has a beefy Mali-400MP GPU.
In JavaScript performance, the Galaxy W is comparable to the HTC Sensation XE, if not slightly better. The XE really doesn’t benchmark well. The Sensation XL, however, comes ahead of the Samsung Galaxy W by a comfortable margin - that's the effect of a finely tuned JavaScript engine by HTC.
The HTML5+JavaScript benchmark, BrowserMark, puts the HTCs well in the lead - again, the effect of good software optimization. The Galaxy W and Galaxy S II run identical software, so the difference we're seeing is due to differences in CPU performance.
Social phonebook is great
The phonebook has a wide range of features and practically unlimited storage capacity.There are options to filter contacts that have phone numbers, show/hide some of the groups you’ve created (including groups from social networks) and change the sorting (by first or last name).
The Galaxy W phonebook
The phonebook offers the Quick contacts feature, which lets you tap the contact photo for a popup menu with shortcuts to call, text, or email. The TouchWiz-specific swiping gesture is here too – swipe a contact right to make a call and left to compose a message.
Quick contacts • Swiping is a neat gesture for calling and texting
There are many info fields that you can assign to each contact, but it still remains perfectly organized. You have all the types listed (numbers, email addresses, etc) and there's a plus sign on the right – a tap adds another item of that type. Pressing the minus sign under it deletes the unneeded field.
Editing a contact’s details
Of course, the real flexibility of the phonebook becomes apparent when you sign into your Facebook or LinkedIn account. After syncing, the phonebook will automatically merge contacts (you can do it manually too).
The contact info screen is tabbed. The first two tabs are pretty standard – one displays the person’s contact information the other keeps call and message history. The third and fourth tabs handle the social stuff – status updates and the contact’s online galleries.
Viewing a contact’s details • check out the SNS integration
Weirdly, only Facebook and LinkedIn contacts can be synced with the phonebook - we usually see Twitter contacts in here too.
Telephony is up to snuff
The Samsung Galaxy W had no issues with reception even in areas with poor coverage. Sound in the earpiece was crisp and fairly loud.The dialer and call log have been integrated into the phonebook, each in a separate tab. Smart Dial is available and works like a charm – it searches names and numbers simultaneously.
Only one contact (with contact photo) is shown at a time in the Smart Dial suggestions. You can tap the down arrow to view the rest (a digit above the arrow indicates how many contacts have matched your query).
Smart dial is nice
The dialer also offers quick shortcuts for making a video call or sending a message instead.
Thanks to the proximity sensor, your screen will automatically turn off during a call. The available options during a call include taking a note, using the keypad, muting, holding the call or adding another call to this conversation.
The call log is the tab next to the dial pad. It displays all the dialed, received and missed calls in one list sorting your call history by contacts.
Call history
We also performed our traditional loudspeaker test. The Samsung Galaxy W I8150 scored an Average mark. The vibration on the other hand is strong, which will alert you in case you didn’t here the ringer in a loud environment. Here's how it stacks up against the competition.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overal score | |
| Nokia Lumia 800 | 60.9 | 59.0 | 61.7 | Below Average |
| Apple iPhone 4 | 65.9 | 66.5 | 67.3 | |
| 66.6 | 65.9 | 66.6 | ||
| Samsung S8600 Wave 3 | 68.0 | 65.8 | 69.7 | |
| Samsung Galaxy W I8150 | 69.6 | 66.6 | 67.0 | |
| Samsung S8500 Wave | 69.8 | 66.6 | 75.5 | |
| HTC Titan | 75.8 | 66.2 | 82.7 | Very Good |
| 76.6 | 75.7 | 84.6 | Excellent |
Messaging has it all
The messaging department is quite straightforward: there are no folders here, just a new message button. Under that button is a list of all your messages organized into threads.Swiping on a message header will do exactly the same as in the phonebook – a left swipe starts a new message, while swiping to the right will start a call.
The Galaxy W messaging department and swipe functions
There’s application-specific search that lets you quickly find a given message among all your stored SMS and MMS.
To add message recipients, just start typing the corresponding name or number and choose from the contacts offered.
Adding recipients
When you add multimedia content to the message, it automatically turns into an MMS. You can either quickly add a photo or an audio file to go with the text, or compose an MMS using all the available features (like multiple slides, slide timing, layout, etc.). The multiple slides are all shown inside the compose box.
Adding any multimedia content automatically turns an SMS into an MMS
Moving on to email, the Gmail app supports batch operations, which allows multiple emails to be archived, labeled or deleted. Multiple Gmail accounts are also supported.
The Gmail must be familiar to everyone by now
There is also a generic email app for all your other email accounts and it can support multiple POP or IMAP inboxes. You have access to the original folders that are created online, side by side with the standard local ones such as inbox, drafts and sent items.
It offers a combined inbox option, which color-codes emails from different accounts so it's easy to tell which email was pulled from which account. Conversation view is also available - it groups related emails into single entries with a number in parenthesis showing the number of emails grouped. A tap on that entry expands it to show a list of the individual messages.
The standard email app is easy to set up
Google Talk handles the Instant Messaging department. The G-Talk network is compatible with a variety of popular clients like Pidgin, Kopete, iChat and Ovi Contacts. Video chat support is also on board here.
As far as text entry goes, you have the standard Samsung keyboard at your disposal, as well as Swype. Both are fairly comfortable, although if you're coming from a bigger screen, the keys might feel a little cramped. The landscape keyboard should be good enough though.
Samsung Android keyboard • Swype
Gallery and file browsers are at your service
The Samsung Galaxy W uses the standard Android gallery. The gallery automatically locates the images and videos no matter where they are stored. It even imports the online photos from your Google Picasa web albums.
The standard Android gallery
Little about the Gallery should surprise you. It displays full resolution images and supports double tap and pinch zoom. It supports sharing images over Bluetooth, email, messaging along with uploading to Picasa or using DLNA to push the image to a compatible TV.
The Gallery also offers some editing options - cropping, 90-degree rotation and some more advanced features such as image adjustments, effects and selections.
The Gallery offers some image editing options
The My Files app is a simple to use but efficient file manager. It can move, copy, lock and rename files in bulk, even send multiple files via Bluetooth. My files will only browse the memory card and the large internal storage (it can’t access the system drive).
The My Files app
The usual TouchWiz music player
The Samsung Galaxy W I8150 uses the standard TouchWiz music player. Samsung have enabled equalizer presets (including a custom one) along with the sound-enhancing DNSe technology and 5.1 channel virtualization.By default, tracks are sorted into four categories - All, Playlists, Albums and Artists. From the settings, you can add or remove categories to set up the music player just the way you like it.
The music player is great • The DNSe settings • Choosing which categories to use
The album art has a central place in the Now Playing interface, but you can replace it with an equalizer. You can skip songs or FF/rewind by sideways swipes.
A nice feature allows you to quickly look up a song on YouTube or via Google search. The handset also prompts you to select whether to look up the artist, the song title or the album.
The Now playing interface • Looking up a track
Capable video player
The video player offers a simple list-based interface. It displays all video files stored on the phone and you can sort them by name, date, type or size. The video player also remembers the last viewed position of the video, so you can resume exactly where you left off.The video player lets you choose between three crop modes for how the video fits the screen. There’s 5.1 channel virtualization and subtitle support. You can change font size and adjust subtitle sync (time them back or forth) but there’s no option to manually load subtitles, they have to have the same filename as the video file to load.
The video player handled most videos we threw at it with ease. DivX and XviD videos at 720p resolution weren't a problem, but 720p h.264 lagged. The player had no trouble with sound codecs (most other phones choke on AC3 or DTS sound).
The video player has a simple interface but don’t let it deceive you
Good audio quality
The Samsung Galaxy W I8150 passed our audio quality test with a good overall mark. It's among the quieter phones we have seen, but its output is decently clean, so its potential user base should find it more than adequate.When connected to an external amplifier, the smartphone got some really impressive scores with a couple of minor exceptions. The IMD reading is only average and the cut-off extreme bass frequencies damage the otherwise flawless frequency response.
Fortunately, the hit that the Galaxy W audio output takes when headphones are connected is quite modest - stereo crosstalk spikes and a tiny bit of extra intermodulation distortion creeps in, but that's about it. The relative performance of the smartphone here is actually much better than in the first test.
And here come the full results so you can see for yourselves:
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.17, -1.32 | -87.8 | 87.4 | 0.011 | 0.122 | -87.3 | |
| +0.21, -0.97 | -85.2 | 85.2 | 0.013 | 0.211 | -54.7 | |
| +0.03, -0.32 | -87.0 | 86.8 | 0.0042 | 0.064 | -76.9 | |
| +0.21, -0.08 | -85.3 | 85.8 | 0.013 | 0.238 | -44.2 | |
| +0.11, -0.47 | -84.9 | 86.8 | 0.025 | 0.084 | -82.1 | |
| +0.82, -0.22 | -84.5 | 86.7 | 0.083 | 0.628 | -42.3 | |
| Samsung I9000 Galaxy S | +0.03, -0.04 | -90.7 | 90.6 | 0.014 | 0.019 | -90.6 |
| Samsung I9000 Galaxy S (headphones attached) | +0.40, -0.12 | -90.7 | 90.6 | 0.018 | 0.329 | -43.3 |
Samsung Galaxy W I8150 frequency response
Decent 5MP camera
The Samsung Galaxy W comes with a 5MP camera and an LED flash. It captures photos at a maximum resolution of 2560 x 1920 pixels.Its interface looks pretty familiar with two shortcut bars on each side of the viewfinder. On the right you get the still camera / camcorder switch, virtual shutter key and the gallery shortcut (which is a thumbnail of the last photo taken).
The camera interface
On the left, you get the front/back camera switch and the flash control. You can replace those two and add two more (for a total of four) shortcuts to any option in the Settings menu.
In terms of image quality, the Galaxy W may not the best 5MP shooter in town, but it's as good as a Galaxy S or a Galaxy S Plus. In some scenes we even noticed lower noise levels while keeping the same level of resolved detail, which is commendable. The Galaxy W photos also have good contrast and accurate white balance, but the colors are somewhat too saturated.
Samsung Galaxy W I8150 camera samples
Photo quality comparison
The Samsung Galaxy W I8150 enters our Photo Compare Tool to join the other 5MP shooters. The tool’s page will give you enough info on how to use it and what to look for.The Galaxy W performs very well on the synthetic resolution chart. There are traces of a pink spot that the processing software attempted to remove. The second chart highlights the effects of noise reduction on the white noise patch on the right. Finally, the third chart looks almost ridiculous - the colors are much too saturated and you can spot a yellowish tint on the black and white photo.
Samsung Galaxy W in our Photo Compare Tool
So-so 720p video recording
The video camera interface is identical to the still camera. You get the same customizable panel on the left with four shortcuts.The camera shoots 720p video at 30fps. Unlike the still camera, you can't use the video-call camera to shoot videos.
The video camera interface
The videos are shot in .MP4 with the nice sounding bitrate of 12Mbps. The videos themselves are less impressive as we noticed a lot of jaggies on diagonal lines - we'll see how it performs on our ISO chart, but we suspect the actual resolution is lower than 720p.
The sound recorded with the videos is mono (64Kbps bitrate, 44.1kHz sampling rate).
Here's a sample we uploaded to YouTube for your viewing pleasure.
Also, here's an untouched 720p@30fps sample straight from the phone.
Video quality comparison
As you can see the Galaxy W is on par with the original Galaxy S. The third chart shows clearly enough that the actual pixels are not even near the mark of 1280 on the horizontal and 720 on the vertical. The effect is noticeable on non-synthetic tests as our setup shows. When the lights go out, the amount of detail is even less.
Samsung Galaxy W in the Video Compare Tool
Connectivity is rich in features
The Samsung Galaxy W has quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support and dual-band 3G with HSPA+ (14.4 Mbps downlink and 5.76Mbps uplink).Moving on, there’s Bluetooth 3.0 for fast local file transfers. Then there's Wi-Fi b/g/n support and a Wi-Fi hotspot option.
The AllShare app allows you to stream content to and from various devices (TV or computer) over DLNA.
AllShare app
The web browser is good
The interface of the Android web browser has hardly changed. Its user experience is, as always, flawless.
Browsing GSMArena.com on the Samsung Galaxy W
The browser supports both double tap and pinch zooming along with the new two-finger tilt zoom. There are niceties such as multiple tabs, text reflow, and find on page and so on. A neat trick is to pinch zoom out beyond the minimum – that opens up the tabs view.
Yet another neat trick is the browser-specific brightness setting. You can, for example, boost the brightness in the browser to comfortably view your web pages but keep the general brightness low to conserve battery.
Page options and settings
There’s Flash 11 support, which means you can watch YouTube videos right in the browser (videos up to 720p worked smoothly) and play Flash games too.
Watching a YouTube video • Playing a touch-optimized Flash game
There are a couple of Samsung Hubs preinstalled
The Social hub we’ve seen before – it combines your email accounts with social networking (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and email accounts and shows all incoming messages as one list with handy shortcuts to reply, mark as favorite and so on. There’s filtering by message source too, to help manage the inflow of incoming updates.
The Social Hub
The Music Hub lets you browse music online (with search tools, charts, lists of new releases and so on). You can preview songs (30 seconds each) and buy tracks or whole albums.
The Music Hub helps you discover and buy new albums and songs
Finally, there’s the Game Hub, which will quickly become your go to place for finding new games. The titles break down into Social and Premium, and there’s a news section too. You also get to try before you buy. The nice thing about that Hub is it includes the titles by Gameloft, which are otherwise not available on the Android Market.
The Game Hub is great for mobile gaming fans
You are fully covered in the office department
The Samsung Galaxy W I8150 comes with the Polaris Office preinstalled. It’s one of the most feature-rich mobile editors we’ve seen. You can view, edit and create Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents (Office 2003 and Office 2007 are supported) and there’s a PDF viewer as well. The app enables searching your office files just like in a file explorer.There's a large number of editing options - from font size and style through justification and bullet options to table styles. You can easily pick Excel functions from a list too (a feature commonly missing in mobile editors).
Polaris Office
Capable organizer
The calendar has four different types of view: list, daily, weekly and monthly. Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder.
The calendar
The list view (often referred to as Agenda view) shows a list of all the calendar entries from the recent past to the near future. It’s a very handy tool when you need to check your appointments for the next few days.
There is also a calculator aboard. It is nicely touch optimized - the buttons are big enough and easy to hit. Turning the phone landscape reveals more advanced calculator functions.
Calculator • Advanced view
The Samsung Galaxy W features a decent alarm clock application with a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own start time and repeat pattern.
The Clock app and the alarm options
The Memo and Mini Diary are self-explanatory. The first app works with text only, while the Diary lets you also attach pictures.
You also get a To-Do app called Task and a Voice recorder to round off the organizer functionality.
The Memo and Mini Diary • Task handles your To-Do list • The Voice recorder
