With two daughters, one now with a iPhone 4 and the other a Samsung Galaxy S, I was suddenly only too aware how old and behind the times my O2 XDA Orbit 2 had really become...
 

I have to say that the experience of taking on a new smart phone has been a complete eye-opener for me.  I hadn't realised how far the technology and the quality of the products had progressed in the short time since I first had a phone of this sort. OK the XDA Orbit 2 still works fine and I'll keep it as a standby but what a pleasure the Galaxy W is to use in comparison.

I'll be honest I wasn't about to take yet another contract or splash out £450 plus just to get a Galaxy S or an iPhone handset, so I was looking to buy the cheaper Galaxy Ace initially and bung in my existing contract sim. The reviews however for the Ace were disappointing mainly with the amount of peeps criticising the battery life, so I took my time in a decision.

Then along comes the Galaxy W!  So I did a bit of searching and found that a few early reviewers were less critical about this one, so armed with some dosh, I called in to my local Carphone Warehouse.

Interestingly, the salesperson advised me that if I had a pay-as-you-go phone/sim with O2, and I could prove it was active, I could get an extra £50 off the deal.  That'll do nicely then!

The W, smaller than the S, which means it will fit easily in my shirt pocket, and is comfortable in the hand, and strangely fits the car holder made for the O2 XDA perfectly!  However I couldn't get a screen protector from Carphone Warehouse and after tiddling about with trying to cut larger ones down then wasting a pack of the cut to fit type, take my word for it, don't bother.  Go for a proper fit one...got mine via Amazon.

The screen quality is very good, not as good as the S with the Amoled display given, however it's more than adequate for average use.  Battery life if you turn off GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi etc when you don't need such, is good.  I'm charging up every 2 to 3 days.  Mind you the more use the thing the quicker the battery drains, so it's in the users hands really.

While I mention the GPS, this boots up pretty quickly and locates fairly rapidly.  Linked to the Google Maps app, you have a very able Sat Nav.  This has been used quite a bit recently and I'm sure I've noticed it auto switch to night colours when needed.  Get a car power adapter if you intend to use it on a long journey though...

Phone-wise it has excellent sound and signal quality with O2 as the provider is very good.  Dialling from the stored contacts is absolutely easy.  Now while we're on contacts.  I didn't want to use Google or an app to copy my Outlook contacts over, so I exported them from Outlook as VCARD files in bulk, copied them on to the microSD, put it back into the phone, then imported in to the phone contacts. Simples.

The camera image quality is sharp.  Only 5mp, but not bad at all for snaps...OK yes I know if you're used to using something like a Canon EOS 7D DSLR with something like 4 times the mega-pixels and you take proper photographs / HD video then this ain't going to match even close but hey!  The gallery application incidentally is really smart and works particularly well. So all things considered not a bad result for a phone based camera.

As an aside, the W runs the Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread OS, slightly different to what's on the S, but comparable.  I found my way round it fairly quickly, and the TouchWiz 4.0 front end is very easy to customise how you need it.

Hooking up to WiFi is a doddle trust me, and doing some email on the handset is a pleasurable experience.  However doing a bit of browsing the internet is OK for  occasional use, but after a while the smaller screen is rather confined. 

So to round up, I'm glad personally I waited for the W to reach the shops. 

A pretty good very usable smart phone at a realistic price...

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