AT A GLANCE

•  Wi-Fi enabled
•  HD video recording
• 5MP camera
• Linking of contacts to Facebook details

I've been in the market for a new phone, so I was pleased when I got the Samsung Wave to play with for a while. It hasn't been an easy ride with it though. It took a while to set up all the synchronizing and I got very frustrated in the beginning... but I am pleased to report that I've got used to it, and I'm not as frustrated as I was in the beginning.

The touch screen is very responsive. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but I love it now. The predictive text is a little slow though, but it's very useful.

The home screen allows you to add widgets to make navigation to different areas easy. My favourite widget is the "Buddies Now" widget which lets you have quick access to frequently contacted contacts. My only complaint about the home screen is that you can't change the default apps that appear at the bottom, and you're stuck with Keypad, Contacts and Messages. That's fine if you SMS a lot, however, a mail app would have been better suited to the way I use my phone.

The full menu was quite bewildering at first because of the sheer volume of options available. I did, however, like the way that you could change the menu layout though to reflect the most-used applications first. It's a little confusing in the beginning while it changes as you're navigating to your favourite applications, but once you've used the phone for a while, it's really handy to have your favourites at the top of the screen. You can however, change the menu layout manually too, by dragging the icons around.

The contact list, once I'd finally got it synchronised, was awesome to use. I really liked the way that you can see all the history and media associated with the contact from the contact page. The phone also allows you to download your Facebook contacts and then link them to your other contacts... the only problem is you have to do it one by one.

All in all, I actually like the way that it's been designed. The menus are intuitive and the settings screens are simple to use and cater for endless amounts of customization.

If you've got a simple setup with only a desktop mailbox client and 1 other calendar to synchronise to, and you're not very active in Social Media, then this phone is awesome to use. But if like me, you're on Twitter and Facebook and other social sites for a large portion of the day, and you have work email and home email and multiple calendars that need to be synchronised, then this phone will frustrate you immensely.

Turn ons:

• Camera quality is awesome
• Ability to see history of contacts from the contact information page
• Touch screen is awesome
•  Battery life is fantastic
•  Free games that come with the phone are fabulous

Turn offs:

• Google synchronization for the calendar and contacts was impossible to set up, and caused much frustration until I gave up and synchronized with my desktop mail client instead.
• Twitter and Facebook apps that come with the phone are too basic
• Foursquare is not available as an app for the phone, only a link to the mobile website, and that's virtually impossible to navigate with the touch screen

Overall Rating: 3/5

SRP: R4199.95