A Bada Phone! Life With The Samsung Wave Y

I recently had to buy a mobile phone. From the media you would think there was just a choice of two operating systems, iOS, and Android, with Windows Phone as an also ran. Fortunately, this is not the case, there is also the likes of, Blackberry OS, SymbianOS, Meego, and Bada.

I opted for Bada!

Bada is Korean for Ocean. Bada is used on Samsungs Wave range of mobile phones. Although Bada is virtually unknown in the UK phone market it managed to outsell Windows Phone in the 1st quater of 2012, globally.

The flagship of the Wave range is the Wave 3, I opted for the bottom of the range Wave Y (GT-5380). The Wave Y is not even listed on the Samsung UK website (the Wave 3 is listed, but with the footnote not currently available in the UK). However I was able to buy my Wave Y on my local  Phones4U, at only £53.95, making it the cheapest smartphone on the UK market.

One of the main reasons for buying Bada is because I do not wish to pay the Microsoft tax on Android. If Android infringes so many Microsoft patents, why does it not sue Google? However, if my Wave Y fails to be a viable phone, then it does not amount to a viable alternative to the Microsoft tax on Android.

In use the Wave Y is a very good phone. The Dolfin browser supplied is not brilliant, but Opera Mini is available from Samsung Apps (although it did take several attempts to download) and works superb. The App store has sufficient applications for my needs, but may not have for a ardent gamer. The touch screen is responsive, and easy to use. All things considered its a superb phone, for a bargain basement price.













Identification of Bada OS.

1. With Dolfin Browser, using Browser String:

Mozilla/5.0 (SAMSUNG; SAMSUNG-GT-S5380D/S5380DXXLC1; U; Bada/2.0; en-us) AppleWebKit/534.20 (KHTML, like Gecko) Dolfin/3.0 Mobile HVGA SMM-MMS/1.2.0 OPN-B

Sniny Stats ~ Bada OS / Mozilla

Onestat & Sitemeter ~ Macintosh / Netscape 5x

Brave Stats ~ Windows / Mozilla

Go Stats ~ Unknown / Unknown

24 Log ~ Other / Mozilla

Extreme ~ Samsung Phones / Mobile Phones

Statcounter ~ (Dolphin 3 on ) Bada / GT-5380

2. With Opera Mini, Using Browser String:

Opera/9.80 (Bada; Opera Mini/6.5/28.1914; U; en) Presto/2.8.119 Version/11.10

All counters obtained some variant of either Opera or Opera Mini combined with either Other or Unknown.

Nokia Lumia 800 Traffic Identification.

Recently I went into a local phone shop and tried the Nokia Lumia 800, with Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, to see how this was reported by the various web usage trackers.

My first impressions of the much discussed Metro interface was not good, I did not find the tiles intuitive, and found the phone much easier to use when I found by swiping to the left there was a menu system!

The phone I used had the browser string:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows Phone OS 7.5; Trident/5.0; IEMobile/9.0; NOKIA; Lumia 800)

The most striking thing about the identifications made is that there was no commonality in wording between any of the results, but generally these results were accurate. Hence, I will just list the results, rather than group them.

Shiny Stats: Windows Mobile 7 / Internet Explorer Mobile 9x

BraveNet: Windows NT / Explorer

OneStat: Mobile Wap Nokia / Microsoft Internet Explorer Other

SiteMeter: Microsoft Nokia / Internet Explorer 9

StatCounter: Windows Phone / Internet Explorer Mobile 9

GoStats: Windows Phone OS 7.5 / Microsoft Internet Explorer 9.0

24 Log: Other / Internet Explorer Mobile

Extreme Tracking: Windows Phone 7 / Internet Explorer 9

W3: Windows Phone 7 / Internet Explorer 9