Big Big BADA Boom!

The title of this blog post lends itself to a scene from one of my all-time favourite movies, the Fifth Element. Mila Jovovich plays the ‘perfect’ human being sent to save the Earth from doom. As she tries to communicate to Korben Dallas (played by Bruce Willis,) the words “Big Bada Boom” are all they can understand of each other. Remarkably, this little exchange plants the seed for their everlasting love for each other, which ends up being the secret ingredient saving mankind from complete death and destruction… 

Riveting stuff really... So what’s this got to do with me being a Samsung Mob!ler? Well today I’m writing a concise reflection on Samsung’s new operating software “Bada” – of course the first thing that came to mind was this infamous taxi scene, go watch the film you if you haven't!! This blog post will still be here when you get back!

Anyways, the Bada operating software (OS for short) is Samsung’s own attempt to create a user interface for their powerful new generation of Smartphones – it’s essentially what brings the fancy bit of kit in your hands alive.

Samsung faces stiff competition from giants like Google (with their Android OS,) Microsoft (with their newly launched Windows 7 OS) and others including the iPhone’s OS. You can read plenty about each of them online (just check the twitter feed on the right.) Here are a few of my thoughts.

For many years I was an avid user of the Symbian OS offered by Nokia however the most recent set of mobile phones I’ve had include the HTC Magic, the Google Nexus One and the Samsung Galaxy S; all use the Android OS. Like all things Google, Android works like a dream, and I have since been converted.

I find that Blackberry’s are very much business phones and iPhone’s are very much ‘play’ phones, Android phones however, tend to fit somewhere in the middle. Almost perfect one would say; a great combination between work and play. So where will Samsung’s Bada bode in this big boom of operating software’s?

Well like every other human being, we experience change as initially uncomfortable. I was… am still happy with Android, moving to Bada was like switching my car from Auto to Manual. Competition in the Smartphone world is stiff and I expected Samsung’s Bada to perform as fast and efficiently as my previous Android phones, but in all honesty, after a week’s use it still feels like I’m writing with my left hand. (I’m right handed by the way!)

It would seem Samsung are investing a lot into their Bada OS – they’re in it for the long run. Using my new Samsung Wave there are a fair amount of promising features; the social network integration is pretty cool, as is web browsing and multimedia use. There’s also a lot of talk about the scope for applications to be developed using the Bada OS, but for regular lay users like myself, this capacity to make fantastic apps is yet to be realised. There are only a limited number of games and handy apps, Bada just can’t contend with Apple or Android… not yet anyway.

In the grand scale of things I think Samsung are wise to have their own OS, but it’s not going to be an easy ride. They really need to push the bounds if they are to keep people interested. Bada just hasn’t done this, so for now it’s more of a “baby Bada boom” than a “big Bada Boom” – Here’s hoping nonetheless!