A friend of mine recently reviewed the Android Samsung Galaxy S vs the iPhone. I have a few points I wish to make about this 🙂

I stayed on stock Samsung Android 2.1 (Eclair) for a month. Then gradually switched to leaked Samsung firmware based on Froyo (2.2) up to the latest version (XXJPO). At first, as I didn’t know what to expect from Android in terms of software, it was difficult to compare, now that I have been 4 month into using 2.2, I am able to draw some clear conclusions from 2.1, in short, 2.2 is the version that the Galaxy S should have been shipped with…

I will start with the responsiveness, the change between the 2 versions is so drastic that you cannot think that you are using the same device. The Galaxy S when I looked at the specs looked stunning and it really shines on the latest version of 2.2.

Battery life also improved a lot with the new firmware, this is quite significant. SD card can be used on 2.2 straight away whereas 2.1 was restricted to memory on the phone.

The Android Market allows for a lot of free apps, the best one in my view to replace a stock application on the phone is k9mail. Samsung’s mail client plainly sucks: sluggish, unstable, and not intuitive. k9mail fixes that neatly and handles multiple accounts very easily. It also analyses mail addresses and tries to fill in the configuration for you (which would be nice for Samsung mail’s app too).

My minor grudge is on the camera, it is 5MP which is nice but no flash led makes it a bit shit depending on where/when you take pictures.

So in short, would/do I recommend that phone? 100% especially now that Samsung is releasing the official 2.2 firmware worldwide (well, almost 🙂