Samsung Wave 533 deals & review

In a word or two

As a Pro, the Samsung Wave 2 Pro offers you the best of both worlds – all that the Wave 2 has to offer with the addition of a QWERTY keyboard.

The Design

The Samsung Wave 2 Pro looks identical to the Wave 2 with one fairly large difference – behind the 3.2 inch screen is the slide-out keyboard. If messaging is important to you and you like to have the choice between tapping the odd message onscreen and typing on a physical QWERTY for longer communication, you’ll appreciate this design.

A little thicker than the Wave 2 phone and original Wave, the Samsung Wave 2 Pro remains pretty slim at 15mm. And a few millimetres seem a small price to pay for a keyboard, especially as the frame is still pocket-friendly.

The keyboard on the Samsung Wave 2 Pro has 4 rows of clear, large keys which ensure both comfortable and confident key presses. The size of the phone overall, means it sits nicely when held in both hands for swift data entry, and the inbuilt accelerometer will automatically turn the screen from portrait to landscape mode. This means no matter what you’re typing or viewing, you can achieve the best position to support this on the phone.

The handset is available in various colours, most likely the same as the Wave 2 – pearl white, metallic black and romantic pink.

Specifications

Like the original Wave and the Wave 2, the Samsung Wave 2 Pro runs on the Bada OS and features the TouchWiz interface. This UI makes navigation a doddle and lets you customise the home screens – all 7 of them. While the four shortcuts along the bottom of each screen are constant, the rest can be removed, moved or added, to meet your needs. The Pro comes with Google features like YouTube and Search as well as social networking apps for Facebook and Twitter, and if you want more you’ll find plenty in Samsung’s App Store.

The interface focuses on social networking so you can keep contacts and communication close to you. Using the Social Hub function, messages sent to you on the different social sites or emailed to you can be viewed in the one place – and the updates made by your friends can be seen quickly in the contacts section of the Samsung Wave 2 Pro. Staying in touch with the people that matter to you is so simple on this phone, especially as you have a touchscreen and full QWERTY combination.

To keep you amused offline, the Samsung Wave 2 Pro features a decent 3.2-megapixel camera with video option, a music player and FM radio.

Considerations

There is no 3G support on the handset.

Verdict

Stylish and practical, the Samsung Wave 2 Pro offers you everything the Wave 2 model does but with a slide-out QWERTY onboard. This phone lets you type on a physical keyboard as well as a touchscreen, and enhances your mobile social networking experience in a neat design – and without too many frills or a high cost.