The forgotten smartphone: Samsung Galaxy W (i8150)

September 5, 2021 Luisa Rey

A notable smartphone was released by Samsung in 2011; the Samsung Galaxy W, with the type number i8150. Do you remember this device? It was an alternative to the Galaxy S series. We discuss the Galaxy W in this edition of ‘The forgotten smartphone’.

Samsung Galaxy W

In this edition of ‘The forgotten smartphone’ we go back ten years in time. Samsung then released the Galaxy W. In the same year, in 2011, the Samsung Galaxy S II was also released, a device that scored high and had everything on board at that time. For those who didn’t want to empty their wallets and settled for a little less, there was the Galaxy W. The ‘W’ here stood for Galaxy Wonder. The Galaxy W was seen as a Lite version of the Galaxy S Plus.

But what did the (plastic) Galaxy W all offer? The i8150 offered a 3.7 inch TFT display. The resolution of the screen was 800 x 480 pixels. There was a single-core processor; a Snapdragon S2 chipset from Qualcomm with a computing power of 1.4GHz. Samsung gave the device 512MB of RAM. The internal memory of the Galaxy W came out at 2GB. This could be expanded with a memory card. At the front, the smartphone was equipped with a VGA camera; on the back a single 5 megapixel camera, with LED flash. The battery had a capacity of 1500 mAh and was removable; something we don’t see anymore these days.

Naturally, the Samsung Galaxy W with Android appeared on the market; this was Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread. The TouchWiz interface was on top of this. You could go to the Android Market to download apps and games. There were of course the various Google apps such as Google Maps, although that was clearly less extensive than the app you now use on the smartphone. With Samsung Kies (Air) you could manage the files on your phone.

Samsung released the Galaxy W i8150 in the Netherlands for an amount of around 300 euros.