The Galaxy is a smartphone, offering quad-band GSM and announced with tri-band HSDPA (900/1700/2100) at 7.2 Mbit/s (however, Samsung's official pages for the Danish,[4] Finnish,[5] Norwegian[6] and Swedish[7] versions only mention dual-band UMTS 900/2100). The phone features a 3.2-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with power LED flash, and a digital compass. Unlike the first Android phone, the HTC Dream (known as the T-Mobile G1 in the USA), the i7500 has a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack,[8] and a Directional Pad in place of a trackball.[9]
The Galaxy offers a suite of Mobile Google services, including Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Calendar, and Google Talk. The phone's GPS enables Google Maps features such as My Location, and Google Latitude. It also supports MP3, AAC (including iTunes Plus downloads) (only the codec, not the .aac format), and H.264 video.[10] A beta version of the Spotify music streaming service was also available for this phone via the Android Marketplace.
Due to a lack of firmware updates, Samsung received criticism from original Galaxy users.[11]
For some countries, Samsung updated the Galaxy's firmware to Android Donut (1.6) version. Users from other countries could download and update manually at the risk of voiding the warranty.[12]
