Pictures: Samsung S8500 “Wave” - Leaked Photos
Here are some high quality pictures of the Samsung S8500 aka Wave, the first phone with the Bada operative system from Samsung. — Samsung Wave specs: — 3.3"amoled screen — 5mpix autofocus, flash — 720p video — 2gb internal memory
Context & Ripple Effects
The leaked S8500 'Wave' photos are the first hard look at hardware running Bada, the operating system Samsung has been building a platform around since mid-2009. The company had already [[a:none|announced its own mobile application store]] in August 2009 and opened the Mobile Innovator portal giving widget and TouchWiz developers early access — the leaked handset is the device half of that stack.
The timing matters because Samsung entered 2010 without a signature smartphone OS of its own, licensing alongside rivals while its app-store and developer-portal groundwork sat waiting for a flagship. A leak this detailed — 3.3-inch AMOLED screen, 5MP autofocus camera with flash, 720p video, 2GB internal memory per the rumored spec sheet — effectively forces Samsung's hand on an official reveal it had not yet staged.
First-order effects
- Samsung's pre-launch control over the Wave narrative is broken: the full spec set and industrial design are public before any official announcement, compressing whatever marketing ramp the company had planned for its first Bada device.
Second-order effects
- Developers watching the Bada ecosystem now have concrete hardware to target, which tests whether the 2009 app-store and Mobile Innovator groundwork converts into actual Bada applications or stalls at announcements.
Third-order effects
- If Samsung ships Bada at scale, the smartphone market in 2010 solidifies into a contest between licensed platforms and vertically integrated OS-plus-handset players — raising the bar for any manufacturer still dependent entirely on someone else's operating system.
The trend: Handset makers are moving from licensing mobile platforms toward owning their own OS-and-app-store stacks, with Samsung's Bada the clearest 2010 test of whether that vertical play survives against established ecosystems.