“It’s just a little bit of history repeating itself.”

The thinnest smartphone ever sold, the fastest graphical processor of any smartphone, top of the range specifications in chip speed, storage, and memory, and certified for the highest resolution video of any handset. As the new Galaxy was announced, Samsung had every right to be pleased with itself.

Except this is not March 2015 at this year’s MWC Samsung Unpacked event, it is five years in the past. It is March 2010, and Samsung has just announced the Samsung Galaxy S, its first flagship ‘S’ smartphone, and the smartphone that thrust Samsung into pole position in the Android world.

As the world awaits the Galaxy S6, I want to take some time to look back to its great-great-great-grandfather. The numbers might be bigger, the specifications might be higher, but the ethos and drive that has created the Galaxy S6 are all there in the Galaxy S… and the flaws.

BARCELONA, SPAIN – MARCH 02: Visitors analyse Samsung Galaxy S6 at Fira Gran Via for the Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona (Photo by Albert Llop/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Lesson 1: Features and Specifications

In terms of features, the Galaxy S sets out Samsung’s pitch for pretty much every S handset to follow. The specifications were at the highest realistic level possible for the time. If you were looking for the ‘best’ handset in terms of power and performance, the original S was the Android handset to buy.

(Read more about how Samsung is trying to tell the story of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge).

Samsung hope that is the case now, and while benchmarks between the Exynos chip in the S6 and the equivalent SnapDragon system will be conducted in April by countless reviewers, it’s worth noting that the system on chip setup in the original Galaxy S - including the single core ARM Cortex A8 CPU and PowerVR SGX 540 GPU – would be renamed the Exynos 3 SoC. With the S6 returning Exynos into the hardware, the SoC is act of a homecoming for Samsung.

Looking back, 512 MB of RAM was tight, but still allowed the OS to be expanded right up to Android 2.3, but the low RAM coupled with the ever-expanding TouchWiz UI meant that support for 4.0 was never forthcoming (not that this hasn’t stopped hackers working with the Android Open Source Project porting the code over for the handset).

Lesson 2: Design and Styling

Looking back over the initial reviews, almost everyone decided that the Galaxy S should be compared to Apple’s iPhone. The similarities were clear at launch, and as we now know, litigation between Apple and Samsung over the styling continues, arguably to this day.

At the same time, smartphone styling has stagnated and the touchscreen slab with a home key has proven to be the design most in tune with consumer’s expectations, and the rapid adoption of the Galaxy S handsets is, in part, behind that choice.

(Read more about why every modern smartphone design is boring).

Samsung pushed the envelope to get consumers to feel comfortable with the design of the Galaxy S, and the South Korean company has never really managed to put clear air between its designs and that of the rival iPhone. Anyone looking at the Galaxy S6 when it is next to the iPhone 6 will raise an eyebrow, and think ‘same old Samsung’.

Lesson 3: Screen Display

With a four-inch Super AMOLED display, running at 800 x 480 pixels, the Galaxy S display was one of the best and most vibrant screens on the market. Samsung’s screen technology shone through then, just as it does today. The use of AMOLED (the ‘Super’ designation indicates the inclusion of a digitizer) guarantees a colourful view, and in head-to-head tests the Galaxy S provided a richer screen environment.

Although you have to look at the low-end of the market, 800 x 480 screens are still in use today (such as Microsoft’s recently announced Lumia 430. Naturally the flagships are now pushing far more pixels, but the Galaxy S display ran with Samsung’s best technology, and the inherent benefits of AMOLED. I guess all that has been added since is more pixels and the occasional curve.

 

Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge

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Next page: camera resolutions, battery life, Android, and TouchWiz…