Samsung is excited to announce the forthcoming release of the new Samsung Wave smartphone in South Africa. It’s the first phone ever released that runs on the new bada platform, Samsung’s brand new mobile operating system - for which an entire ecosystem is currently being created - complete with its own applications store: Samsung Apps, which will be available in 80 countries worldwide. The name of the game here is the democratization of the smartphone. This may sound like a difficult concept but really what it means is simple – rather than attempting to compete with other mobile platforms, the vision with bada is for it to turn all of Samsung’s existing conventional customers into smartphone users – and the way to do this is by making smartphones more affordable, until they become the standard phone for all users. The Wave is Samsung’s first phone that makes this vision a reality.

Apart from being the first phone to use bada, there are plenty of other reasons to get excited about the new Samsung Wave. It has been attracting attention for a number of reasons, and the main one seems to be the Super AMOLED display. Much brighter, clearer and less reflective than any display before it, it offers the best viewing experience ever seen on a mobile. The 800x480 resolution, 3.3” wide display offers a superbly vivid image, with great outdoor readability, a wider viewing angle than ever before, anti-smudge technology and video playback with no motion blurs – and it has great battery life too.

The phone’s Seamless unibody design is sleek and contemporary, with a beautifully curved, tempered-glass display that will enhance the brilliance of the Super AMOLED display. The phone also takes touchscreen to a new level, and the TouchWiz 3.0 User Interface has amazing features including customisable homescreen and menu editing, powerful multitasking capabilities and the ability to use advanced real-time widgets.

Also notable is the phone’s powerful 1GHz Application Processor, which will give users a faster and smoother UI response, simultaneous and seamless applications usage. The phone also boasts an outstanding HD (720p) video player and recorder, a Flash video compatible Dolfin internet browser and a 5.0 Megapixel camera with features including a LED Flash, AF Face/Blink Detection, Vintage Shot, Beauty Shot, Smile Shot, Panorama Shot, Geo-tagging and an Image Editor.

All of this wouldn’t matter if the Samsung Wave wasn’t geared towards social networking, but one of its features – Social Hub, offers users premium integrated messaging facilities. You can use your Wave to activate communities at your hands with email, Instant Messaging and SNS during synchronizing contacts and calendars. Social Hub also integrates contact information from all your online accounts, so you can easily find your contacts and select the best way to communicate. Social Hub also features a synchronized calendar, which lets you manage your schedule by integrating events from all your online accounts in one convenient display.

The Samsung Apps store, soon to be launched in South Africa, is fully optimized to make your smartphone smarter. You can download games, news, social networking, health related applications and more. Find out more at http://www.samsungapps.com/

The most affordable phone of its power and functionality on the market, the Samsung Wave, along with its mobile platform, bada, is set to change the way that Samsung users communicate.