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 2’s 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. Samsung’s TouchWiz is the user interface installed and the screen is 3.2 inches.

Samsung placed 80MB of onboard memory in the Wave 2, with an additional 16MB possible by using the microSD slot. Higher end models obviously provide more memory, but the Wave 2 has more than enough to perform what it needs to do. The Wave 2 is being marketed as a social networking device, so it has been provided with Facebook and Twitter apps right out of the box. It doesn’t end there, as many other applications can be found in the Samsung Apps store.

Of course, since the Wave 2 is being marketed as an introduction for developing markets, there are sacrifices to be made in order to keep the phone affordable. That is not to say that the device is barebones, however. There may be no DivX or Xvid playback, but there is an FM radio, GPS, microUSB, and the aforementioned microSD slot on the Wave 2. And since the phone is designed to focus on social networking, Samsung installed its own Social Hub that combines Twitter, Facebook, IM, and email all into one location. Apps such as games and navigation tools can be downloaded without installing additional software onto the phone, or the user can synch the phone to a PC for larger files. And since cameras are a necessity on smartphones these days, the Wave 2 comes complete with the 3-megapixel variety.

A fine complement to the already popular Wave, Samsung’s Wave 2 is a nice introduction to users who are not already familiar with much smartphone technology. What the Samsung Wave 2 lacks in innovation, it makes up for in affordability and reliability. It is a quality continuation of the Wave series of phones.