With the Wave, Samsung created a vehicle for its Bada open mobile platform. It received positive reviews from critics and consumers bought it at a respectable rate. This prompted Samsung to penetrate growing markets and gain a foothold with the Bada OS. Including regions such as Russia, Samsung plans to release the Wave 2 into these areas in order to be first on the market with its technology.

Since the Wave 2 is not intended for use in established smartphone regions, 3G network support has been replaced with GPRS/EDGE capabilities. The Wave 2 still provides WiFi b/g/n, but Bluetooth v3.0 is gone for v2.1. The Wave 2s companion model, the Wave 2 Pro, experiences a change in design by way of a slide out QWERTY keyboard. A touch only screen is found on the standard Wave 2. Samsungs TouchWiz is the user interface installed and the screen is 3.2 inches.

The Wave 2 comes equipped with 80MB of onboard memory and a microSD slot that allows for up to 16GB. Maybe its not as much memory as is found on the lighting fast, high priced smartphones on the market, but there is still plenty to keep the Wave 2 from bogging down while performing tasks. It is, after all, a smartphone geared toward social networking. Facebook and Twitter are already installed on the Wave 2 and plenty of other applications can obtained from the Samsung Apps store.

The Wave 2 is meant to introduce growing markets to smartphones, specifically the Bada OS, so there have been sacrifices in order to retain affordability. This doesnt mean that the phone is bereft of features. DIvX and Xvid playback are not here, but there is an FM radio and GPS. And dont forget the microUSB and previously mentioned microSD slot. Samsung has also provided its own Social Hub with the Wave 2 in order to focus on social networking. Social Hub combines Twitter, Facebook, IM, and email into one easy location. There is no need to install additional software in order to download apps like games and navigational tools. For bigger files, the Wave 2 can be synched to a PC. Rounding out the package is a 3-megapixel camera.

With the Wave still making its rounds, the Samsung Wave 2 is a nice companion intended to penetrate new markets. Not large on the latest bells and whistles, the Wave 2 focuses on affordability and reliability. The Wave series of smartphones has a winner with the Samsung Wave 2.