The Wave 723 is the most recent of Samsung’s handsets to run Bada, the company’s own operating system. First to do so was the Samsung Wave, which boasted a fantastic AMOLED display and a stylish, quality chassis. This latest incarnation is built on a budget and it is very apparent.

Looking good

First impressions of the Wave 723 are that it is a less flashy, and cheaper-looking version of the original Wave. The metal back panel does offer a touch of class, but the rest of the frame is made from dark grey plastic. We found the three buttons on the front of the handset a bit too clicky for our liking. You’ll find the side buttons for camera, power and volume where Samsung usually places them, though we found it rather concerning that the power switch is also placed on the side. However, the top is already full with the 3.5mm headphone jack and a micro USB slot that features a sliding cover.

Once you push the oddly-situated power button and the display turns on, it’s very obvious it isn’t an AMOLED screen. The 3.2in screen has a low resolution at 400x240 pixels. Unless your existing phone is small with a basic display, you’ll be unimpressed with the quality, as the latest handsets all boast high-resolution screens. Text does not display well, which really affects the user experience when you’re surfing the net on text-heavy sites. There’s limited video playback on the handset, not that the display is very good for viewing video anyway.

Ease of use

Despite its low-rent resolution, the touch-screen is actually of the more pricey capacitive type, so you do have the facility for multi-touch, and can pinch and zoom to your heart’s content. And happily, the display is speedy and responsive.

Because the Wave 723 features the same background pictures as the more expensive handsets from Samsung, the difference in screen quality is very apparent. Nor do the blocky shortcut icons look as smart as they do on the majority of smartphones. Having said that, the first Android icons didn’t look great either, so there’s hope that in time Samsung will manage to get these looking better.

However, this is Bada, not Android. It’s a system that is designed to make smartphones user friendly and accessible. It has widgets that can be placed on a number of home screens and it does offer some versatility. If, for instance, you fill up your home screens, you can add an extra widget, and the system will automatically set up a new home screen – you can have up to seven screens.

Samsung even has its own apps store, although there’s little on it at the moment. However, we did notice a free version of Tetris among the apps on offer. And as the handset is lacking a digital compass, many of the apps that impress on Android and iPhone handsets just wouldn’t work on the Wave 723.

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Snapping and surfing

The Wave 723 does benefit from a decent snapper, which offers five megapixels and a flash. We found pictures were sharp and there was very little shutter lag. As expected, photos in low-light situations were not as good, but still not bad. You can also shoot video using the phone, but don’t expect the HD quality you find on many handsets nowadays. Mind you, as onboard memory is a poor 90MB, you’d need to splash out on a memory card if you wanted to save any more than a few seconds of movie anyway.

Data transfers are quick (up to 3.6Mbps), as the Wave 723 has HSDPA and the latest incarnation of Wi-Fi. It also offers a stereo FM radio, Bluetooth and GPS – you could even record the radio if you wanted to.

The verdict

The Wave 723 has plenty to appeal, not least its low price, decent camera and excellent connectivity. However, the display is a letdown and the Bada operating system offers neither the choice of apps nor the intuitiveness that can be found on even the lower-end smartphones.