I got the new samsung 8500 wave phone running the bada OS a few months back and have been playing with it off and on. Now that the galaxy s is out, I feel like I have been given an early release.  And I like the phone. The screen is just as great as advertised, and the OS is pretty good for an early release.  There have been issues with the phone here and there, but for a 1.oh, its pretty darn good.  Now we can question why is samsung even bothering with a new iphone OS with iOS4, Android and the ‘also ran’ phone OS’s. (I dont want to hear bberry fan boys. I agree the bberry is a far better phone, but we are not talking just phones, but next gen smart phone here. So go get a sandwich or something), but they are throwing their hat into the phone OS wars.  Perhaps they are hedging there bets in case something legal goes wrong with Android and we already know they have dumped windows.  Anyway,  the phone is light, fits great in my hand, the phone works pretty well and some of the default app especially the social media apps are quite nice.

Now here is the downside.  If you are in the US, you get no love.  Crazy eh?  For the longest time when I try to use the samsung app store, it would complain that the US is not supported.  Well, a month ago the US got support, BUT the 8500l ( the one we got at the dev shows) is STILL not supported.  So we cannot even update to bada 1.5.

I have not fully given up on trying to get this updated and try to use this as a everyday phone, but I’m kind of annoyed.  Why would samsung lock it down so much?  Its a good phone and I would write about it more often if I could just get the bloddy thing to update and install apps.  Sigh… Anyone else out there figure this out?  Let me know.