The Korean Galaxy S would beg to differ. FF cam + DMB. Yes, you do lose out on 4G, but you save hundreds on the life of the contract and it isn't as much up front either. Out of those available to the U.S. it's the $10 4G tax, without necessarily receiving a 4G signal which is the bummer, but you still get the best kit subsidized state-side. Living in a 4G city, the Epic is a no-brainer. Outside, we are talking about $300 more, assuming you don't get an amazon $.01 deal which would bump the contract life of the Epic to more than $400 more than the others...just for a FF camera and (cross you fingers, hopefully) to one day get a 4G signal in your city is just asking for too much.
I have the UK version of the Galaxy S, and it's quite odd how many variants are out there. Differences on the UK version:
1) no LED flash 2) sports an FF cam 3) the micro-SD slot is on the left inside the back, with the SIM card to the right and the built-in micro-SD above that 4) the buttons are confined to Menu on the left, Back on the right, and a physical Home key in the middle 5) the headphone socket has a black plastic surround instead of chrome effect (strangely, the review states 18mm - shouldn't that be 35mm?) 6) there's a "with Google™" logo on the back along with the SAMSUNG logo but no mention of Galaxy S; there's no mention of the carrier. 7) the phone weighs less at 118g 8) The default wallpaper isn't a Live one
The single most important function of a phone is to, well, be a phone, i.e., do voice communication. And one of the characteristics most important to voice communication is the audio quality---both sending and receiving (via the earpiece or a headset; the percent of time spent listening via speakerphone is, for most, is less than for the earpiece or a headset). Yet, in a very long and otherwise thorough review, I could find only one sentence that addressed earpiece audio quality: "Earpiece performance and volume is adequate - voice quality is as good on the Fascinate as I've seen on other CDMA handsets in the testing I performed." And I could find no mention of audio quality from the headset jack, nor any mention of audio quality for someone on the receiving end of a call from this phone.
It's sort of like reading a detailed review of a new camera, in which lots of attention is given to metering, focus, etc. (all parameters that affect image quality), but with only a single sentence on how good the images are after metering, focus, etc. is dialed in. Likewise, you have several paragraphs on issues that affect audio quality -- e.g., the dependence of signal attenuation on how the phone is held-- but again, only one sentence on how good the phone actually sounds (and nothing on how good I sound to someone I'm calling) after these secondary effects are taken care of. I.e., suppose I'm receiving a call under ideal conditions (say, it's from a land line, there's a strong signal, I am holding the phone optimally, etc.). In that case, do you mean to tell me that someone with a trained ear would hear no difference in audio quality when listening through the earpieces of different CDMA handsets? While this may be true, I certainly would not be convinced of that based on reading just your one sentence, since it does not give the impression that a serious attempt to assess audio quality has been made.
As you can likely tell, I'd like to strongly suggest that, in future reviews, the comparative audio quality of these phones is addressed in a more serious and discriminating manner, by someone with extensive audio expertise and a highly trained ear. The reason your site is so well-respected is because it brings an unusual level of sophistication to computer hardware reviews. I’d like to see that same sophistication applied to audio performance, when you are reviewing devices where audio performance should be central (phones and portable music players).
I've been following this site for many years, and I think you folks are the best --- you do a fantastic job. But your expertise is computers, it's not audio. And often, when you venture into audio, I don't see it approached it with the level of sophistication with which you approach computer hardware. You can see your site's extraordinary sophistication with computer hardware with, for instance, Anand's perspicacious reviews of SSDs, in which he identified 4K random read and write speeds (as opposed to sequential large-block performance) as being the key to real-world performance. Yet, by contrast, when Anand was reviewing the audio perfomance of the iPod Nano, he just cookbooked the standard set of Rightmark Audio Analyzer measurements (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3903/apples-ipod-tou... he didn't demonstrate the audio expertise to first listen, and then make an informed decision of which measurements needed to be done. If he had, he might have realized that problems lie in areas that would only be revealed by a different set of measurements. Anand then went on to say "I believe we've hit a ceiling for PMP audio playback quality." Well, no, it could still be improved quite a bit. It is informative to contrast how Anand approached audio with, for instance, Marc Heijligers' astute analysis of iPod audio performance, at: http://homepage.mac.com/marc.heijligers/audio/ipod... [I did mention this in the comments for Anand’s review, but it was towards the end of the thread, so they may not have been noticed.]
I suspect that, if you want the audio component of your reviews to be up to the high level of sophistication you show for computer hardware, you're going to need to bring in someone with years of audio expertise and a highly trained ear.
I actually completely agree with you, 100%. When I joined on to tackle smartphones, my big objective has and still is to nail down testing for everything that's traditionally been subjective - battery life, screen quality, performance, signal strength, e.t.c, and make it just as objective as hardware reviews. Of course, audio (voice) quality is on that list as well.
I've been grappling for some time on an ideal test methodology, one that would give a much better (objective) means of testing actual call quality than - it sounded good. I honestly couldn't agree more that this level of analysis is lacking. Unfortunately, until I've got that nailed down, it's really all I can say. What shape that takes is still up in the air.
I've thought of recording the local ASOS weather station test call (which is so far what I use for measuring speakerphone volume) through both the line-out and speaker, then letting people compare those audio files directly. I've considered using some spectral analysis tools similar to determine the pass bandwidth of these phones (of course this would require some tweaking due to cellular latency and also a land line), and a few other things. If you or other commenters have suggestions, I'm more than all ears, seriously ;)
I've actually done a fair amount of playing with CDMA voice codecs in the past - a number of WinMo devices would let you change from relatively-basic EVRC to better 13k voice codecs and a number of others. That kind of discussion and reporting about what codecs each device are using is where I'd like to go, getting that from Android sometimes is very difficult unfortunately. In fact, only device I've really seen that on so far is the EVO. I'd also like to eventually be able to characterize the difference between 1x voice, GSM and UMTS.
There's a lot more we're trying to add for certain, I/we just have to figure out what the best way of testing those would be.
You may find this shocking but I highly doubt people will consider audio quality as important as you do when deciding for a smartphone.
I faintly remember some study on what consumers are looking for in portable audio/MP3 players. Audio quality was NOT in people's top 5! Design, storage capacity, and three other things I cannot recall right now were more important to them. In an audio device!!
jasperjones: Thanks for your comment. Well, one needs to be careful of these surveys, since small differences in wording can significantly change the outcome. But your point is well-taken: audio quality is not a top priority for consumers. Nevertheless, that's not to say that audio quality is of no interest to the majority of consumers, nor that it should not therefore be of significant interest to us. [Please see paragraphs 2 and 3 of my reply to kmmanety.]
Audio quality matters to me, too, thanks for fighting the good fight, chemist1. ;)
By the way, I own the phone and I have found the audio to be pretty good for calls so far. At least, I haven't found myself wishing the phone was louder or had any problems distinguishing speech.
Listening to music with headphones...I don't have golden ears, and I don't know how it stacks up to a top mp3 player like a Cowon, but it's definitely not a low-end sound like my iPod Nano 4th Gen or my 2007 Macbook Pro, anyway.
Kinda like how in CNET reviews of point and shoot cameras image quality only accounts for something like 10% of their final score.
Though a lot of consumers probably just assume audio quality is good enough. The majority are going to put compressed music on there anyway and then use cheap earbuds, so a lot of the audio quality discussion that goes on on tech sites is utterly irrelevant to the majority.
In addition to measurements of sound quality, how about a simple internal poll? Record sound samples of various phones, post them with obfuscated names for other staff members to listen to and have them judge intelligibility, clarity, harshness, etc. This should give you a decent sampling of real people's observations. Better than just your own.
Yeah unfortunately the gallery preview images are compressed even though I upload originals from all the cameras. If you click "View original size" you'll get the raw untampered JPEG though, complete with all the EXIF headers and everything you'd get from the camera. Unfortunately I can't control how the engine compresses those images for the gallery preview.
One problem is that the Audio quality changes so much with various factors (signal quality, the phone at the other end, etc..).
I would disagree that that the main purpose of these phones is to actually be a "phone". No one cares that much about call quality when they are buying these phones - you just assume it will be acceptable.
Brian, even though there are many factors, I think you can do an, "all things being equal" type of test with a couple of variations. The data will still be meaningful when you are comparing it to other specific phones.
kmmantey: Thanks for your comment. I agree audio quality does change with various factors. However, I would say that does not preclude it being of importance, nor being rateable. [ As softdrinkviking said below, one can do an "all things being equal" test.] Yes, various factors can degrade audio; but if you start with really good audio performance then, as you lose quality, at least you're losing from a higher starting point.
I think saying "no one cares that much about call quality" is too strong. Granted, most may not care as much as me :). But, even in a mainstream publication like Consumer Reports, voice quality is listed as third among the 11 criteria they use in ranking smart phones (and I think CR has a pretty good bead on what its readership cares about).
More importantly, what should be important here is not what most care about, but rather what we, as presumably more informed and discriminating consumers ;), would find desirable. And I believe that many of us —perhaps even you!—would find a phone that provides significantly better audio quality more pleasing to use.
I have to disagree Kmmatney. In fact, in the Droid 2 article I made a similar comment to Brian. For those of us with poor experiences with phones (using the phone part), making sure we get a strong quality phone for phone calls is very important. I want to know that in my car driving on the highway, I can hear someone clearly (is the volume level adequate). That if I am forced to turn it up to the highest volume, it doesn't have distortion. Things of that nature. I know Brian said he is working on it, so I will wait.
Brian,
In the meantime, I'd still even appreciate a slightly unscientific test. Take the phone in your car on the same highway at a set speed. Call a recording (make sure it on par with an average human conversation, maybe even quieter to simulate a quiet speaker). Call a friend who can play a recording from a PC at a set volume/distance from a constant phone to simulate those loud and quiet talkers. I'm sure you will think of something. As long as you state it is a placeholder and unscientific, most of the people will completely understand. I'm sure you will have those 1 or 2 idiots post a comment complaining, but don't worry about them. There are many more of us who comment rarely and read daily.
set up your own cell site and connect to that? then make your own phone server with asterick and connect to that? thats a massive about of work dude or see if anyone have mad an app that can poll the codec info using the api? this guy made hos own cell site for 2G but might work on 3G http://www.tombom.co.uk/blog/ if you said you have played with cdma codecs then ill assume you know how to use asterisk lol
there are various ways but i think can think might be better. use a really good mic and take a recording from the sidewalk where you take video from and from other busy/common places, then use those audio files for testing. setup an audio chamber with a speaker playing those recordings. then use a directional mic really close to the speaker of the phone and do analysis on that. make the whole box out of foam so wireless signal doesn't get distorted. you can later intentionally weaker the wireless signal and record how the voice quality drops if you like. This way we can see what the phone sounds like at a club, classroom, sidewalk, store, high winds etc. too shorten this up, get controlled recordings, set up phones in a controlled box then use signal analysis on what comes out of the phones line-out/speaker.
This is really starting to worry me. Why do these carriers keep messing up good phones? I know that they are trying to differentiate themselves but crippling a product like this is not good business. And this is on top of the skins from Samsung/HTC/SonyEricsson. I really hope Google will realise that they need to raise the bar again and make a vanilla phone with gingerbread (tasty :-).
"As some of our readers noted, the reason that Linpack performance on the Droid 2 isn't as high is simple - Scorpion has faster FPU performance due to a 128 bit SIMD FPU datapath compared to Cortex-A8's 64 bit implementation. Both FPUs process the same SIMD-style instructions, the Scorpion just happens to be able to do twice as much, or optionally turn off half the datapath to save power."
That's unlikely the reason. NEON requires vectorized code which -- to my knowledge -- the Dalvik JIT doesn't do on-the-fly. Hell, even Intel's best efforts at auto-vectorization doesn't really cause huge improvements unless your data and loops were already formatted for SIMD operation.
That being said, we don't know how well Scorpion does on normal VFP instructions. It could be that there are some significant improvements over the standard A8 for those as well.
Surprised about the rather poor battery life, as the device both has a bigger battery than the Nexus One and sports a 45nm custom SoC vs the older 65nm Snapdragon used in the N1 and others. I really expected the new generation of 45nm SoCs to excel in terms of battery life, especially after seeing the iPhone4 results. But it seems the iPhone4 battery life come down to software optimizations rather than more efficient hardware...
This is something Google really needs to work on, since it seems to be a software issue. Before Android went mainstream, battery life of the iPhone (3G, 3GS) wasn't even considered that great. Now it's the gold standard for smart phones... Nearly all Android devices are in the same ballpark of around 4 hours or less of 3G browsing time, with the iPhone4 and even 3GS lasting several hours longer.
I've got an i9000. The battery life issue is a major issue for me particularly during the weekends when I'm not sitting at my desk. Even compared to the original iPhone I had before the battery is poor in a couple of ways: 2 hours regular web browsing uses about 80% battery life (its hard to tell from the icon). After this some features will not operate (e.g. camera and sometimes making calls). So its a lame-duck phone with <20% battery and in reality you'll be wanting to re-charge it after ~2 hours playing with it. Re-charging it from empty takes (approx) 2.5 hours from the mains and 3.5 hours from my PCs USB port. My iPhone would re-charge from empty in about 45 min on the mains. That's a lot of extra time that my phone is out of action. The percentage of missed calls I have has gone way up.
I don't understand why AnandTech doesn't have a metric to measure charge time. Its probably the easiest of all tests!
That seems to be a common misconception. Just think about it, the processor is somewhere around ~500mW doing an intensive task. Compare that to an RF radio chip that eats 2W or so while communicating to a 3G cell tower. Or the 2-3W display....
The App Processor is a small percentage of overall power draw.
Agreed, checking the power usage utility on Android it isn't uncommon to see the screen drawing the vast majority of the power. Which AMOLED has the potential to help with if there were a way to format websites to be more friendly to it (i.e. no white backgrounds).
I'm personally banking on either Pixel Qi or Mirasol improving to the point where they can take over being the displays used. The power savings would warrant any apparent difference in image quality as long as it's "good enough".
"Just think about it, the processor is somewhere around ~500mW doing an intensive task. Compare that to an RF radio chip that eats 2W or so while communicating to a 3G cell tower. Or the 2-3W display...."
I guess you're right. I can play games and watch video on my HTC Desire without using much battery, but 3G browsing absolutely kills battery life. My daily routine involves heavy 3G web browsing on the 1-hour commute to school by train, then the phone spends most of the day in standby, then another hour of heavy usage on the way home in the afternoon. This is enough to run the battery down to ~10% by the time I get home, if I'm lucky enough to have it last the whole day.
But then, how does the iPhone4 manage nearly 7 hours of 3G browsing? Does it use a different radio chip, is it the network, or what?
RF chips don't really vary that much. I would take a guess that it's good software management. What you don't realize is that most of the time you're browsing, you're not actually loading data. You have a burst of data as the website loads, but then it stops.
I've noticed on my iPhone that periods of inactivity -- while I'm reading a webpage -- would cause the signal bar to drop a bit. It would go back up once I clicked on a link.
I suspect the software is putting the RF chip in a low-power mode more aggressively than HTC equivalents.
A lot of people discount it but software throttling is the single-most effective way of reducing power consumption.
Is there any chance you'll do an I9000 review? It's the European/Asian version of the Galaxy S. It comes unlocked, doesn't have loads of crap preinstalled, and trades the LED flash for a front VGA cam. It also doesn't have a search button, but you can long-press the menu button to search.
Also, please consider trying the voodoo lag fix in your future Galaxy S reviews. http://project-voodoo.org/ It basically changes the system partition file system from RFS to EXT4, which makes the phone noticeably faster and smoother (no stalling while installing apps, no stuttering..)
i personally have an international galaxy s with beta froyo rom (JPK), with lagfix, these are the numbers i get:
Rightware BrowserMark: 35345 : my galaxy s 2.2 29018 : fascinate 2.1
sunspider: 07375.8ms : my galaxy s 2.2 15835.0ms : fascinate 2.1
linpack: 14.399 MFLOPS : my galaxy s 2.2 08.157 MFLOPS : fascinate 2.1
NeoCore Benchmark: 55.6FPS : my galaxy s 2.2 55.6FPS : fascinate 2.1
quadrant: 2000ish : my galaxy s 2.2 w/lagfix 0800ish with my galaxy s 2.1 stock
the phone ships with a terrible filesystem setup, causes severe lag over time... as shown in the quadrant score which does some IO stuff... this is fixable with root and a lagfix app...
and gps works about as good as my nexus one (although in 2.1 builds of the firmware GPS was terrible)
this has been said by everyone, but the 4" SAMOLED displays on these things are sick... makes a nexus one display look really dated, and although props to the iphone for finally getting hi-res, 3.5" just seems comparably too small.
annoying it shipped so broken, but once dealt with, a beautiful device and over-all experience
No phone uses 1.8 mm jacks. The old smaller standard was 2.5, but that's not used all that much anymore either. The confusion arises from the american usage of the imperial system. See, 1/8"=3.5mm.
I picked up my Captivate a few days ago. For the most part, the hardware is exactly the same as the Fascinate... But it has a metal cover for the battery and a slick release system... very nice. The BAD thing about the Captivate is the lack of a FLASH for the camera! Really, no flash!?
The UI for at&t Android is very much the same shown in this review... but the branding is no-where near as bad (I'm not a Verizon fan because of this) - the at&t apps are out of the way and I believe are removable. There are no at&t book-marks, and at&t listings in the phone-book are removable.
I had a choice between the Samsung Captivate and Sony X10 (Android) - with the Sony being $50 cheaper at $150. Comparing the screen type, the USB cover and easily half as thin body - I went with the Samsung.
After a few days of use and STILL Learning how to use Android - there are a few things I don't like about using these phone which can be "fixed" with software, if they exists.
1 - Lock the main buttons to remain LIT when the screen is... YES, it sucks and I heard there is an option for this, haven't found it yet. UGH!
2 - To use the phone, press the tiny power button - THEN swipe to unlock the phone. This is a pain. I would LOVE the option to INCLUDE the Vol/Rocker buttons to activate the screen, or even the 4 main menu buttons... it should be easy. The rocker button is much bigger and easier to feel. Is there a way to do this (yet)?
Other than that, I'm good with the phone... I know its screen isn't quite as nice as the iPhone4, but I don't want an iPhone... but I am betting that future phones in 2011 will catch up, its nice that you CAN'T see the pixels.
In general, the Captivate will have the exact same performance, higher quality body, less bloat and no flash.
PS: Packaging. at&t is a very small box... not as fancy, but it is better for the environment as well as shipping.
Between the bloatware, the GPS, and the non-changeable Bing search this phone is a non-starter. No wonder Verizon is already practically giving them away. Google sure did get suckered by Verizon in a way Apple would never do. I don't care how good Verizons network is, if they keep doing this to phones they are going to lose a lot of customers.
I appreciate the testing methodology including the GPS fix times. I had an ATT Tilt (HTC 8925) which was notoriously slow in getting locked in. I got into the habit of starting the GPS app as soon as I'd get outdoors so that by the time I'd get to my vehicle it'd only have a couple minutes left. That and a few other workarounds. Sad that they still have issues these days...
Brian: Thanks for your reply. I'm pleased to hear you're trying to move in that direction. The idea of playing with CDMA voice codecs is intriguing -- I didn't occur to me that the audio quality (AQ) of smart phones could actually be user-modifiable at the software level. Though much of what determines AQ is hardware—the quality of the speaker in the earpiece, the circuitry upstream of it (and at the headphone jack output), the quality of the microphone (for those on the receiving end of your call), etc.
More broadly, I like your general program of trying to put all areas that are now subjective onto a more objective footing. The problem with doing that for AQ is that it’s tricky. Often something can measure well, yet sound mediocre—which typically means that the measurements being used aren’t the right ones (for instance, maybe you’re measuring distortion, but the real problem is a phase error); or, alternately, perhaps the measurements aren’t being weighted properly. One solution is to supplement measurements with purely subjective, yet controlled, observations (a listening panel). You could also evaluate audio under compromised conditions by checking word recognition accuracy (but the danger here is that what might help accuracy under poor conditions—say, a boosted upper midrange—might make the phone fatiguingly harsh to listen to under normal conditions). Beyond that, I’d just reiterate what I said in my first post—I’d advise bringing in someone with a trained ear and/or lots of audio testing experience (if that's possible). [You can test for a trained ear by seeing if he/she can distinguish between different codecs in a single-blind test; or, alternately, perhaps you know, say, a recording engineer or a good classical pianist.]
Also, if you would, please ask Anand to read the Heijligers link I posted in my last comment, before he next tests iPods! [And you or he might wish to test the Redwine modification available for the 4G–5.5G iPods (http://redwineaudio.com/products/imod), to hear for yourselves what difference improved output circuitry can make in PMP AQ.]
Verizon and Microsoft have an advertising contract between each other, which is why you see Bing plastered all over the Samsung Fascinate. Businesses can control mobile ads in the Bing search engine using the Microsoft Adcenter. Mind you, this is over the Verizon network, but you can also see a few Bing mobile ads on m.bing.com, or if you download the Bing app on your smartphone. If you want a more Google experience, the other carriers will probably be your thing, but I find it to be more of an extension of the Android OS.
Personally, I think Bing has a pretty awesome mobile platform.
Aside from that, the review perfectly matches up with my thoughts about my Samsung Vibrant (T-Mobile).
-The Super AMOLED is absolutely gorgeous. -The GPU is overkill, and I like it that way. -Performance is great -Battery life is mediocre -And the GPS sucks bizalls
I'm not sure how the Galaxy is clearly better. It has a better GPU which is great, but only if you can use it. I don't play games so GPU performance is less important to me.
Real-world performance with an Incredible (all of which are 2.2 now, why are you still testing or showing 2.1 results?) is close to the Nexus One 2.2 and HTC Evo 2,2. The charts show the 2.2 phones with a substantial performance advantage over the Galaxy.
Even applying just the lag fix (fixes file system) to a 2.1 Galaxy S dramatically increases performance. For example, in the Quadrant benchmark I routinely achieve over 2200 points compared to about 800 for a standard Galaxy S. The Nexus One 2.2+ by comparison achieves around 1300 points. By applying a one click solution this phone can fly.
Arghh! I love the Galaxy S phones, but why oh why can't they put phone function buttons on the phone? Remember that this is still a phone and the most common functions are answer and end call!
Looks like a fine cellphone. But I still have one concern since I never used a SAMSUNG product before. Does the SAMSUNG company offer a platform like iTunes Store for people to download the free apps like those on iFunia? If that was not true, I would not think its a vrey smart move to buy it regardless of its gorgeous appearance.
I'm so happy with my new unlocked cell phones! This has an unbelievably fast processor, great feel and easy to text on. I used to own a unlocked htc phones, but I'm so much happier with my brand new unlocked samsung phones. This Samsung Fascinate is so much better for my business and pulls my email in so much faster. And I really couldn't be happier with it since it is an unlocked verizon phones and it's a unlocked 3g phones I can take it overseas. My family loves my new phone and can't get enough of the games. I'm going to purchase another one for my son for his birthday from gsmauthority.com. Definitely would recommend this phone.
Still, as it is admitted, having phones running 2.1 compared to 2.2 tends to bias the results a bit. What would be nice is to have enough results to set up a data base and compare phones performance by selecting common criteria (such as OS, ROMs) For example, I found this site that does just that with Caffeinemark benchmark :
This company also has a product aimed at improving the performance of android phones (droidbooster), and set up this base so that one can see the benefit of it. But it's already a great kind of tools to compare ROMs for example.
I did not like the way the camera comparison was conducted. The images were taken at different time of the day and in many of the images the subject wasn't even the same. How do you expect anyone to compare the quality of the images when the subject and lighting are so different?
Fashionable, stylish, trendy - at styledrops you'll find the perfect handbag for you! Italian Made Luxury - Discount Prices - 100% Authenticity Guaranteed site:bagonhand
I just recently acquired a Samsung Vibrant (since T-Mobile is my service provider), and this phone is pretty great. I went and flashed Bionix 1.9 with Jac's OC/UV/Voodoo kernel and this thing practically *flies...*
... but I'm annoyed.
Verizon got the LED flash.
:(
Seriously, smartphone makers. Stop making phones without an LED flash on the camera.
I just purchased the Samsung Fascinate from Verizon but am concerned with the amount of RAM since it appears that the future version of Android (3.0) will require a minimum of 512mb of RAM to operate.
On most sites, it states that the Fascinate phone has 512mb of RAM. However, when I go into the properties on the phone it displays only 325mb for the total.
What is the real total memory for the Fascinate? Samsung on the galaxy comparison page hides the Fascinates memory specs however it displays them for the Epic 4G and Captivate phones. So I am not sure if it really has 512mb of RAM, or if it's pre-allocated to the operating system or if it's a unified architecture where the GPU shares the memory. Can someone please clarify?
Galaxy S as a SAMSUNG star phone in 2010, the high point is the AMOLED. Now SAMSUNG is the only company who fabricate AMOLED. For more information in website: www.mobilegoing.com
My mom just got this phone yesterday (better than her old Storm 1) so I've been doing some research. Click on one the preset bookmarks and let it load completely. Then go to your history. You'll see it listed with a star next to it indicating it's a bookmark. Click the star and BAM, no more bookmark!
Having said that, yes, TOO MUCH BING. The mail program is too basic as well. It couldn't identify / guess the proper POP / SMTP settings for her Brighthouse email, whereas my Droid Incredible had no problems at all. While the SF may be on better hardware than the DInc, the software needs a lot of attention.
For example: Her phone came with NFS and Tetris. NOT from the Android store though. The phone was on full dev mode as well as set to allow apps to be installed from unknown sources. Looks like you have those apps on your phone as well. If you still have the phone, could you check to see if it's in dev mode and allows apps from unknown sources?
Only other comment is that the guys at the store insisted over and over that it had Android 2.2 already on the phone. Kind of a spur of the moment purchase for her, so I didn't do any research in advance. When I got to check it out, it had 2.1. Called the store, they INSISTED that it had been released weeks ago and would hit the phone soon. Checked Android forums and there's no release date. Best guess is that it may be released by the end of the month.
Sub-par phone interface + the rest = possibly returning the phone before the 30 day return policy is up to get the rumored DInc HD that may or may not be coming out in 3 weeks.
Just purchased the Fascinate from Verizon this week (I know- I'm a late adopter. Had to wait for my contract to be up!) Anyhow, one of the first things the phone did after acticvation was download an OTA update and voila- the button lights now stay on as long as the screen. Really happy with the phone upgrade, coming from a Samsung Omnia running a cooked version of Winmo 6.1. Android is a great interface, even with 2.1!
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
73 Comments
Back to Article
Ethaniel - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Good thing you directly recommend rooting and flashing the device. That Verizon-pseudo Google-Bing combo is kinda creepy... and bloated.medi01 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
"Outside readability in practice is improved from the Nexus One. "Dare I ask whether it is improved from, God forbid, iPhone 4? :rolleyes:
deputc26 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
In the performance page,Loading Engadget Times
EVO Should be 2.2 not 2.1.
Brian Klug - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
I haven't included numbers from the EVO running 2.2 yet, although I've got them and will do so, those are current for 2.1 (as marked) ;)-Brian
Shlong - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
it seems the Epic with Sprint is the best out of the Galaxy S line.alovell83 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
The Korean Galaxy S would beg to differ. FF cam + DMB. Yes, you do lose out on 4G, but you save hundreds on the life of the contract and it isn't as much up front either. Out of those available to the U.S. it's the $10 4G tax, without necessarily receiving a 4G signal which is the bummer, but you still get the best kit subsidized state-side. Living in a 4G city, the Epic is a no-brainer. Outside, we are talking about $300 more, assuming you don't get an amazon $.01 deal which would bump the contract life of the Epic to more than $400 more than the others...just for a FF camera and (cross you fingers, hopefully) to one day get a 4G signal in your city is just asking for too much.silverblue - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
I have the UK version of the Galaxy S, and it's quite odd how many variants are out there. Differences on the UK version:1) no LED flash
2) sports an FF cam
3) the micro-SD slot is on the left inside the back, with the SIM card to the right and the built-in micro-SD above that
4) the buttons are confined to Menu on the left, Back on the right, and a physical Home key in the middle
5) the headphone socket has a black plastic surround instead of chrome effect (strangely, the review states 18mm - shouldn't that be 35mm?)
6) there's a "with Google™" logo on the back along with the SAMSUNG logo but no mention of Galaxy S; there's no mention of the carrier.
7) the phone weighs less at 118g
8) The default wallpaper isn't a Live one
deputc26 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Interesting and yes that should be 35mmBrian Klug - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Yeah, I meant 3.5mm, 1/8 inches. Fixed ;)-Brian
chemist1 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
The single most important function of a phone is to, well, be a phone, i.e., do voice communication. And one of the characteristics most important to voice communication is the audio quality---both sending and receiving (via the earpiece or a headset; the percent of time spent listening via speakerphone is, for most, is less than for the earpiece or a headset). Yet, in a very long and otherwise thorough review, I could find only one sentence that addressed earpiece audio quality:"Earpiece performance and volume is adequate - voice quality is as good on the Fascinate as I've seen on other CDMA handsets in the testing I performed."
And I could find no mention of audio quality from the headset jack, nor any mention of audio quality for someone on the receiving end of a call from this phone.
It's sort of like reading a detailed review of a new camera, in which lots of attention is given to metering, focus, etc. (all parameters that affect image quality), but with only a single sentence on how good the images are after metering, focus, etc. is dialed in. Likewise, you have several paragraphs on issues that affect audio quality -- e.g., the dependence of signal attenuation on how the phone is held-- but again, only one sentence on how good the phone actually sounds (and nothing on how good I sound to someone I'm calling) after these secondary effects are taken care of. I.e., suppose I'm receiving a call under ideal conditions (say, it's from a land line, there's a strong signal, I am holding the phone optimally, etc.). In that case, do you mean to tell me that someone with a trained ear would hear no difference in audio quality when listening through the earpieces of different CDMA handsets? While this may be true, I certainly would not be convinced of that based on reading just your one sentence, since it does not give the impression that a serious attempt to assess audio quality has been made.
As you can likely tell, I'd like to strongly suggest that, in future reviews, the comparative audio quality of these phones is addressed in a more serious and discriminating manner, by someone with extensive audio expertise and a highly trained ear. The reason your site is so well-respected is because it brings an unusual level of sophistication to computer hardware reviews. I’d like to see that same sophistication applied to audio performance, when you are reviewing devices where audio performance should be central (phones and portable music players).
I've been following this site for many years, and I think you folks are the best --- you do a fantastic job. But your expertise is computers, it's not audio. And often, when you venture into audio, I don't see it approached it with the level of sophistication with which you approach computer hardware. You can see your site's extraordinary sophistication with computer hardware with, for instance, Anand's perspicacious reviews of SSDs, in which he identified 4K random read and write speeds (as opposed to sequential large-block performance) as being the key to real-world performance. Yet, by contrast, when Anand was reviewing the audio perfomance of the iPod Nano, he just cookbooked the standard set of Rightmark Audio Analyzer measurements (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3903/apples-ipod-tou... he didn't demonstrate the audio expertise to first listen, and then make an informed decision of which measurements needed to be done. If he had, he might have realized that problems lie in areas that would only be revealed by a different set of measurements. Anand then went on to say "I believe we've hit a ceiling for PMP audio playback quality." Well, no, it could still be improved quite a bit. It is informative to contrast how Anand approached audio with, for instance, Marc Heijligers' astute analysis of iPod audio performance, at: http://homepage.mac.com/marc.heijligers/audio/ipod...
[I did mention this in the comments for Anand’s review, but it was towards the end of the thread, so they may not have been noticed.]
I suspect that, if you want the audio component of your reviews to be up to the high level of sophistication you show for computer hardware, you're going to need to bring in someone with years of audio expertise and a highly trained ear.
Thanks for listening to this very long comment!
Brian Klug - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Chemist1,I actually completely agree with you, 100%. When I joined on to tackle smartphones, my big objective has and still is to nail down testing for everything that's traditionally been subjective - battery life, screen quality, performance, signal strength, e.t.c, and make it just as objective as hardware reviews. Of course, audio (voice) quality is on that list as well.
I've been grappling for some time on an ideal test methodology, one that would give a much better (objective) means of testing actual call quality than - it sounded good. I honestly couldn't agree more that this level of analysis is lacking. Unfortunately, until I've got that nailed down, it's really all I can say. What shape that takes is still up in the air.
I've thought of recording the local ASOS weather station test call (which is so far what I use for measuring speakerphone volume) through both the line-out and speaker, then letting people compare those audio files directly. I've considered using some spectral analysis tools similar to determine the pass bandwidth of these phones (of course this would require some tweaking due to cellular latency and also a land line), and a few other things. If you or other commenters have suggestions, I'm more than all ears, seriously ;)
I've actually done a fair amount of playing with CDMA voice codecs in the past - a number of WinMo devices would let you change from relatively-basic EVRC to better 13k voice codecs and a number of others. That kind of discussion and reporting about what codecs each device are using is where I'd like to go, getting that from Android sometimes is very difficult unfortunately. In fact, only device I've really seen that on so far is the EVO. I'd also like to eventually be able to characterize the difference between 1x voice, GSM and UMTS.
There's a lot more we're trying to add for certain, I/we just have to figure out what the best way of testing those would be.
-Brian
jasperjones - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
You may find this shocking but I highly doubt people will consider audio quality as important as you do when deciding for a smartphone.I faintly remember some study on what consumers are looking for in portable audio/MP3 players. Audio quality was NOT in people's top 5! Design, storage capacity, and three other things I cannot recall right now were more important to them. In an audio device!!
So there you go.
chemist1 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
jasperjones: Thanks for your comment. Well, one needs to be careful of these surveys, since small differences in wording can significantly change the outcome. But your point is well-taken: audio quality is not a top priority for consumers. Nevertheless, that's not to say that audio quality is of no interest to the majority of consumers, nor that it should not therefore be of significant interest to us. [Please see paragraphs 2 and 3 of my reply to kmmanety.]MacTheSpoon - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
Audio quality matters to me, too, thanks for fighting the good fight, chemist1. ;)By the way, I own the phone and I have found the audio to be pretty good for calls so far. At least, I haven't found myself wishing the phone was louder or had any problems distinguishing speech.
Listening to music with headphones...I don't have golden ears, and I don't know how it stacks up to a top mp3 player like a Cowon, but it's definitely not a low-end sound like my iPod Nano 4th Gen or my 2007 Macbook Pro, anyway.
strikeback03 - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Kinda like how in CNET reviews of point and shoot cameras image quality only accounts for something like 10% of their final score.Though a lot of consumers probably just assume audio quality is good enough. The majority are going to put compressed music on there anyway and then use cheap earbuds, so a lot of the audio quality discussion that goes on on tech sites is utterly irrelevant to the majority.
cwebersd - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
In addition to measurements of sound quality, how about a simple internal poll? Record sound samples of various phones, post them with obfuscated names for other staff members to listen to and have them judge intelligibility, clarity, harshness, etc. This should give you a decent sampling of real people's observations. Better than just your own.dagamer34 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Brian, there are some JPEG artifacts in your gallery shots. I doubt the D80 has such visible artifacts on a downrezzed shot.Brian Klug - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Yeah unfortunately the gallery preview images are compressed even though I upload originals from all the cameras. If you click "View original size" you'll get the raw untampered JPEG though, complete with all the EXIF headers and everything you'd get from the camera. Unfortunately I can't control how the engine compresses those images for the gallery preview.-Brian
kmmatney - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
One problem is that the Audio quality changes so much with various factors (signal quality, the phone at the other end, etc..).I would disagree that that the main purpose of these phones is to actually be a "phone". No one cares that much about call quality when they are buying these phones - you just assume it will be acceptable.
softdrinkviking - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Brian, even though there are many factors, I think you can do an, "all things being equal" type of test with a couple of variations.The data will still be meaningful when you are comparing it to other specific phones.
chemist1 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
kmmantey: Thanks for your comment. I agree audio quality does change with various factors. However, I would say that does not preclude it being of importance, nor being rateable. [ As softdrinkviking said below, one can do an "all things being equal" test.] Yes, various factors can degrade audio; but if you start with really good audio performance then, as you lose quality, at least you're losing from a higher starting point.I think saying "no one cares that much about call quality" is too strong. Granted, most may not care as much as me :). But, even in a mainstream publication like Consumer Reports, voice quality is listed as third among the 11 criteria they use in ranking smart phones (and I think CR has a pretty good bead on what its readership cares about).
More importantly, what should be important here is not what most care about, but rather what we, as presumably more informed and discriminating consumers ;), would find desirable. And I believe that many of us —perhaps even you!—would find a phone that provides significantly better audio quality more pleasing to use.
awaken688 - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
I have to disagree Kmmatney. In fact, in the Droid 2 article I made a similar comment to Brian. For those of us with poor experiences with phones (using the phone part), making sure we get a strong quality phone for phone calls is very important. I want to know that in my car driving on the highway, I can hear someone clearly (is the volume level adequate). That if I am forced to turn it up to the highest volume, it doesn't have distortion. Things of that nature. I know Brian said he is working on it, so I will wait.Brian,
In the meantime, I'd still even appreciate a slightly unscientific test. Take the phone in your car on the same highway at a set speed. Call a recording (make sure it on par with an average human conversation, maybe even quieter to simulate a quiet speaker). Call a friend who can play a recording from a PC at a set volume/distance from a constant phone to simulate those loud and quiet talkers. I'm sure you will think of something. As long as you state it is a placeholder and unscientific, most of the people will completely understand. I'm sure you will have those 1 or 2 idiots post a comment complaining, but don't worry about them. There are many more of us who comment rarely and read daily.
MGSsancho - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
set up your own cell site and connect to that? then make your own phone server with asterick and connect to that? thats a massive about of work dude or see if anyone have mad an app that can poll the codec info using the api? this guy made hos own cell site for 2G but might work on 3G http://www.tombom.co.uk/blog/ if you said you have played with cdma codecs then ill assume you know how to use asterisk lolthere are various ways but i think can think might be better. use a really good mic and take a recording from the sidewalk where you take video from and from other busy/common places, then use those audio files for testing. setup an audio chamber with a speaker playing those recordings. then use a directional mic really close to the speaker of the phone and do analysis on that. make the whole box out of foam so wireless signal doesn't get distorted. you can later intentionally weaker the wireless signal and record how the voice quality drops if you like. This way we can see what the phone sounds like at a club, classroom, sidewalk, store, high winds etc. too shorten this up, get controlled recordings, set up phones in a controlled box then use signal analysis on what comes out of the phones line-out/speaker.
Good Luck
Samoht - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
This is really starting to worry me. Why do these carriers keep messing up good phones?I know that they are trying to differentiate themselves but crippling a product like this is not good business.
And this is on top of the skins from Samsung/HTC/SonyEricsson.
I really hope Google will realise that they need to raise the bar again and make a vanilla phone with gingerbread (tasty :-).
xype - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
"Wait another 6 - 8 months, and you'll probably have something even better than both of these to choose from"So the iPhone _is_ coming to Verizon! :P
FATCamaro - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Haha. My thoughts exactly...strikeback03 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Um, no, that would be something worse. 6-8 months should bring definite timeframes to LTE and A9 processor rollout, if not functional phones already.metafor - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
"As some of our readers noted, the reason that Linpack performance on the Droid 2 isn't as high is simple - Scorpion has faster FPU performance due to a 128 bit SIMD FPU datapath compared to Cortex-A8's 64 bit implementation. Both FPUs process the same SIMD-style instructions, the Scorpion just happens to be able to do twice as much, or optionally turn off half the datapath to save power."That's unlikely the reason. NEON requires vectorized code which -- to my knowledge -- the Dalvik JIT doesn't do on-the-fly. Hell, even Intel's best efforts at auto-vectorization doesn't really cause huge improvements unless your data and loops were already formatted for SIMD operation.
That being said, we don't know how well Scorpion does on normal VFP instructions. It could be that there are some significant improvements over the standard A8 for those as well.
JimmiG - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Surprised about the rather poor battery life, as the device both has a bigger battery than the Nexus One and sports a 45nm custom SoC vs the older 65nm Snapdragon used in the N1 and others. I really expected the new generation of 45nm SoCs to excel in terms of battery life, especially after seeing the iPhone4 results. But it seems the iPhone4 battery life come down to software optimizations rather than more efficient hardware...This is something Google really needs to work on, since it seems to be a software issue. Before Android went mainstream, battery life of the iPhone (3G, 3GS) wasn't even considered that great. Now it's the gold standard for smart phones... Nearly all Android devices are in the same ballpark of around 4 hours or less of 3G browsing time, with the iPhone4 and even 3GS lasting several hours longer.
DroidUser - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
I've got an i9000. The battery life issue is a major issue for me particularly during the weekends when I'm not sitting at my desk. Even compared to the original iPhone I had before the battery is poor in a couple of ways:2 hours regular web browsing uses about 80% battery life (its hard to tell from the icon). After this some features will not operate (e.g. camera and sometimes making calls). So its a lame-duck phone with <20% battery and in reality you'll be wanting to re-charge it after ~2 hours playing with it.
Re-charging it from empty takes (approx) 2.5 hours from the mains and 3.5 hours from my PCs USB port. My iPhone would re-charge from empty in about 45 min on the mains. That's a lot of extra time that my phone is out of action. The percentage of missed calls I have has gone way up.
I don't understand why AnandTech doesn't have a metric to measure charge time. Its probably the easiest of all tests!
metafor - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
That seems to be a common misconception. Just think about it, the processor is somewhere around ~500mW doing an intensive task. Compare that to an RF radio chip that eats 2W or so while communicating to a 3G cell tower. Or the 2-3W display....The App Processor is a small percentage of overall power draw.
strikeback03 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Agreed, checking the power usage utility on Android it isn't uncommon to see the screen drawing the vast majority of the power. Which AMOLED has the potential to help with if there were a way to format websites to be more friendly to it (i.e. no white backgrounds).metafor - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
I'm personally banking on either Pixel Qi or Mirasol improving to the point where they can take over being the displays used. The power savings would warrant any apparent difference in image quality as long as it's "good enough".JimmiG - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
"Just think about it, the processor is somewhere around ~500mW doing an intensive task. Compare that to an RF radio chip that eats 2W or so while communicating to a 3G cell tower. Or the 2-3W display...."I guess you're right. I can play games and watch video on my HTC Desire without using much battery, but 3G browsing absolutely kills battery life. My daily routine involves heavy 3G web browsing on the 1-hour commute to school by train, then the phone spends most of the day in standby, then another hour of heavy usage on the way home in the afternoon. This is enough to run the battery down to ~10% by the time I get home, if I'm lucky enough to have it last the whole day.
But then, how does the iPhone4 manage nearly 7 hours of 3G browsing? Does it use a different radio chip, is it the network, or what?
metafor - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
RF chips don't really vary that much. I would take a guess that it's good software management. What you don't realize is that most of the time you're browsing, you're not actually loading data. You have a burst of data as the website loads, but then it stops.I've noticed on my iPhone that periods of inactivity -- while I'm reading a webpage -- would cause the signal bar to drop a bit. It would go back up once I clicked on a link.
I suspect the software is putting the RF chip in a low-power mode more aggressively than HTC equivalents.
A lot of people discount it but software throttling is the single-most effective way of reducing power consumption.
ssj4Gogeta - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Is there any chance you'll do an I9000 review? It's the European/Asian version of the Galaxy S. It comes unlocked, doesn't have loads of crap preinstalled, and trades the LED flash for a front VGA cam. It also doesn't have a search button, but you can long-press the menu button to search.Also, please consider trying the voodoo lag fix in your future Galaxy S reviews.
http://project-voodoo.org/
It basically changes the system partition file system from RFS to EXT4, which makes the phone noticeably faster and smoother (no stalling while installing apps, no stuttering..)
8steve8 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
i personally have an international galaxy s with beta froyo rom (JPK), with lagfix, these are the numbers i get:Rightware BrowserMark:
35345 : my galaxy s 2.2
29018 : fascinate 2.1
sunspider:
07375.8ms : my galaxy s 2.2
15835.0ms : fascinate 2.1
linpack:
14.399 MFLOPS : my galaxy s 2.2
08.157 MFLOPS : fascinate 2.1
NeoCore Benchmark:
55.6FPS : my galaxy s 2.2
55.6FPS : fascinate 2.1
quadrant:
2000ish : my galaxy s 2.2 w/lagfix
0800ish with my galaxy s 2.1 stock
the phone ships with a terrible filesystem setup, causes severe lag over time... as shown in the quadrant score which does some IO stuff... this is fixable with root and a lagfix app...
and gps works about as good as my nexus one
(although in 2.1 builds of the firmware GPS was terrible)
this has been said by everyone, but the 4" SAMOLED displays on these things are sick... makes a nexus one display look really dated, and although props to the iphone for finally getting hi-res, 3.5" just seems comparably too small.
annoying it shipped so broken, but once dealt with, a beautiful device and over-all experience
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
You don't even require root for voodoo lagfix. It comes in an update.zip and changes the filesystem to ext4.webmastir - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
fantastic review. this is why i love this site! great job & great info.Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
If you can forget that a $500+ piece of hardware is in your pocket, then you need to be... outsourced.R3MF - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
when is android due to get a GPU accelerated UI?fixxxer0 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
maybe update the numbers?? i think its more or less similar to the droid 2 for the most part.(sorry if someone already posted this i only read the front page of posts)
jasperjones - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
On page 1: "There's the standard 1.8mm audio jack for headphones." Err, the standard audio jack is 3.5mm. It's a typo, right?alaricljs - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Standard audio jack "ON A PHONE" which really shouldn't need to be stated since we know this is a phone happens to be 1.8mm.fabarati - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
No phone uses 1.8 mm jacks. The old smaller standard was 2.5, but that's not used all that much anymore either. The confusion arises from the american usage of the imperial system. See, 1/8"=3.5mm.So yeah, typo.
Brian Klug - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Oops, I meant 1.8", fixed!-Brian
Vepsa - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
What GPS test app are you using?Belard - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
I picked up my Captivate a few days ago. For the most part, the hardware is exactly the same as the Fascinate... But it has a metal cover for the battery and a slick release system... very nice. The BAD thing about the Captivate is the lack of a FLASH for the camera! Really, no flash!?The UI for at&t Android is very much the same shown in this review... but the branding is no-where near as bad (I'm not a Verizon fan because of this) - the at&t apps are out of the way and I believe are removable. There are no at&t book-marks, and at&t listings in the phone-book are removable.
I had a choice between the Samsung Captivate and Sony X10 (Android) - with the Sony being $50 cheaper at $150. Comparing the screen type, the USB cover and easily half as thin body - I went with the Samsung.
After a few days of use and STILL Learning how to use Android - there are a few things I don't like about using these phone which can be "fixed" with software, if they exists.
1 - Lock the main buttons to remain LIT when the screen is... YES, it sucks and I heard there is an option for this, haven't found it yet. UGH!
2 - To use the phone, press the tiny power button - THEN swipe to unlock the phone. This is a pain. I would LOVE the option to INCLUDE the Vol/Rocker buttons to activate the screen, or even the 4 main menu buttons... it should be easy. The rocker button is much bigger and easier to feel. Is there a way to do this (yet)?
Other than that, I'm good with the phone... I know its screen isn't quite as nice as the iPhone4, but I don't want an iPhone... but I am betting that future phones in 2011 will catch up, its nice that you CAN'T see the pixels.
In general, the Captivate will have the exact same performance, higher quality body, less bloat and no flash.
PS: Packaging. at&t is a very small box... not as fancy, but it is better for the environment as well as shipping.
darwinosx - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Between the bloatware, the GPS, and the non-changeable Bing search this phone is a non-starter. No wonder Verizon is already practically giving them away. Google sure did get suckered by Verizon in a way Apple would never do. I don't care how good Verizons network is, if they keep doing this to phones they are going to lose a lot of customers.Belard - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Verizon does this to ALL their phones, for years.Oddly, at&t has sometimes copied the SONY UI style to other phones - in the past.
netmasterjohn - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
How come Fascinate & Nexus One video are the same?dman - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
I appreciate the testing methodology including the GPS fix times. I had an ATT Tilt (HTC 8925) which was notoriously slow in getting locked in. I got into the habit of starting the GPS app as soon as I'd get outdoors so that by the time I'd get to my vehicle it'd only have a couple minutes left. That and a few other workarounds. Sad that they still have issues these days...Chadder007 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
My Droid X came with a 16GB card, not 8.chemist1 - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Brian: Thanks for your reply. I'm pleased to hear you're trying to move in that direction. The idea of playing with CDMA voice codecs is intriguing -- I didn't occur to me that the audio quality (AQ) of smart phones could actually be user-modifiable at the software level. Though much of what determines AQ is hardware—the quality of the speaker in the earpiece, the circuitry upstream of it (and at the headphone jack output), the quality of the microphone (for those on the receiving end of your call), etc.More broadly, I like your general program of trying to put all areas that are now subjective onto a more objective footing. The problem with doing that for AQ is that it’s tricky. Often something can measure well, yet sound mediocre—which typically means that the measurements being used aren’t the right ones (for instance, maybe you’re measuring distortion, but the real problem is a phase error); or, alternately, perhaps the measurements aren’t being weighted properly. One solution is to supplement measurements with purely subjective, yet controlled, observations (a listening panel). You could also evaluate audio under compromised conditions by checking word recognition accuracy (but the danger here is that what might help accuracy under poor conditions—say, a boosted upper midrange—might make the phone fatiguingly harsh to listen to under normal conditions). Beyond that, I’d just reiterate what I said in my first post—I’d advise bringing in someone with a trained ear and/or lots of audio testing experience (if that's possible). [You can test for a trained ear by seeing if he/she can distinguish between different codecs in a single-blind test; or, alternately, perhaps you know, say, a recording engineer or a good classical pianist.]
Also, if you would, please ask Anand to read the Heijligers link I posted in my last comment, before he next tests iPods! [And you or he might wish to test the Redwine modification available for the 4G–5.5G iPods (http://redwineaudio.com/products/imod), to hear for yourselves what difference improved output circuitry can make in PMP AQ.]
Ranari - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
*NOTE TO AUTHOR*Verizon and Microsoft have an advertising contract between each other, which is why you see Bing plastered all over the Samsung Fascinate. Businesses can control mobile ads in the Bing search engine using the Microsoft Adcenter. Mind you, this is over the Verizon network, but you can also see a few Bing mobile ads on m.bing.com, or if you download the Bing app on your smartphone. If you want a more Google experience, the other carriers will probably be your thing, but I find it to be more of an extension of the Android OS.
Personally, I think Bing has a pretty awesome mobile platform.
Aside from that, the review perfectly matches up with my thoughts about my Samsung Vibrant (T-Mobile).
-The Super AMOLED is absolutely gorgeous.
-The GPU is overkill, and I like it that way.
-Performance is great
-Battery life is mediocre
-And the GPS sucks bizalls
Cheers!
silverblue - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
Sorry, didn't mean to be picky. :)anaxagoras1986 - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
I'm not sure how the Galaxy is clearly better. It has a better GPU which is great, but only if you can use it. I don't play games so GPU performance is less important to me.Real-world performance with an Incredible (all of which are 2.2 now, why are you still testing or showing 2.1 results?) is close to the Nexus One 2.2 and HTC Evo 2,2. The charts show the 2.2 phones with a substantial performance advantage over the Galaxy.
So how is the Galaxy clearly better?
Doppleganger77 - Wednesday, October 6, 2010 - link
Even applying just the lag fix (fixes file system) to a 2.1 Galaxy S dramatically increases performance. For example, in the Quadrant benchmark I routinely achieve over 2200 points compared to about 800 for a standard Galaxy S. The Nexus One 2.2+ by comparison achieves around 1300 points. By applying a one click solution this phone can fly.ezinner - Thursday, October 7, 2010 - link
Arghh! I love the Galaxy S phones, but why oh why can't they put phone function buttons on the phone? Remember that this is still a phone and the most common functions are answer and end call!Jumpman23 - Saturday, October 9, 2010 - link
I always thought the iPhone ran at 1 GHz. So is 800MHz a typo or...synaesthetic - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
The A4 in the iPhone 4 is underclocked to ~800MHz. CPU performance vs. the iPad confirms this.Hodgins - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link
Looks like a fine cellphone. But I still have one concern since I never used a SAMSUNG product before. Does the SAMSUNG company offer a platform like iTunes Store for people to download the free apps like those on iFunia? If that was not true, I would not think its a vrey smart move to buy it regardless of its gorgeous appearance.synaesthetic - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
Android Market... ?benjamin7890 - Thursday, October 14, 2010 - link
I'm so happy with my new unlocked cell phones! This has an unbelievably fast processor, great feel and easy to text on. I used to own a unlocked htc phones, but I'm so much happier with my brand new unlocked samsung phones. This Samsung Fascinate is so much better for my business and pulls my email in so much faster. And I really couldn't be happier with it since it is an unlocked verizon phones and it's a unlocked 3g phones I can take it overseas. My family loves my new phone and can't get enough of the games. I'm going to purchase another one for my son for his birthday from gsmauthority.com. Definitely would recommend this phone.HamTyler - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
Great review!Still, as it is admitted, having phones running 2.1 compared to 2.2 tends to bias the results a bit.
What would be nice is to have enough results to set up a data base and compare phones performance by selecting common criteria (such as OS, ROMs)
For example, I found this site that does just that with Caffeinemark benchmark :
http://www.flexycore.com/benchmark-database-access...
This company also has a product aimed at improving the performance of android phones (droidbooster), and set up this base so that one can see the benefit of it. But it's already a great kind of tools to compare ROMs for example.
krazyfrog87 - Sunday, October 17, 2010 - link
I did not like the way the camera comparison was conducted. The images were taken at different time of the day and in many of the images the subject wasn't even the same. How do you expect anyone to compare the quality of the images when the subject and lighting are so different?womensfashionroom - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
Fashionable, stylish, trendy - at styledrops you'll find the perfect handbag for you! Italian Made Luxury - Discount Prices - 100% Authenticity Guaranteed site:bagonhandsynaesthetic - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
I just recently acquired a Samsung Vibrant (since T-Mobile is my service provider), and this phone is pretty great. I went and flashed Bionix 1.9 with Jac's OC/UV/Voodoo kernel and this thing practically *flies...*... but I'm annoyed.
Verizon got the LED flash.
:(
Seriously, smartphone makers. Stop making phones without an LED flash on the camera.
agent88 - Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - link
I just purchased the Samsung Fascinate from Verizon but am concerned with the amount of RAM since it appears that the future version of Android (3.0) will require a minimum of 512mb of RAM to operate.On most sites, it states that the Fascinate phone has 512mb of RAM. However, when I go into the properties on the phone it displays only 325mb for the total.
What is the real total memory for the Fascinate? Samsung on the galaxy comparison page hides the Fascinates memory specs however it displays them for the Epic 4G and Captivate phones. So I am not sure if it really has 512mb of RAM, or if it's pre-allocated to the operating system or if it's a unified architecture where the GPU shares the memory. Can someone please clarify?
Also, how does this compare with the Droid X?
Please help!
jeans_xp - Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - link
Galaxy S as a SAMSUNG star phone in 2010, the high point is the AMOLED. Now SAMSUNG is the only company who fabricate AMOLED. For more information in website: www.mobilegoing.comWiredWired - Sunday, October 31, 2010 - link
My mom just got this phone yesterday (better than her old Storm 1) so I've been doing some research. Click on one the preset bookmarks and let it load completely. Then go to your history. You'll see it listed with a star next to it indicating it's a bookmark. Click the star and BAM, no more bookmark!Having said that, yes, TOO MUCH BING. The mail program is too basic as well. It couldn't identify / guess the proper POP / SMTP settings for her Brighthouse email, whereas my Droid Incredible had no problems at all. While the SF may be on better hardware than the DInc, the software needs a lot of attention.
For example: Her phone came with NFS and Tetris. NOT from the Android store though. The phone was on full dev mode as well as set to allow apps to be installed from unknown sources. Looks like you have those apps on your phone as well. If you still have the phone, could you check to see if it's in dev mode and allows apps from unknown sources?
Only other comment is that the guys at the store insisted over and over that it had Android 2.2 already on the phone. Kind of a spur of the moment purchase for her, so I didn't do any research in advance. When I got to check it out, it had 2.1. Called the store, they INSISTED that it had been released weeks ago and would hit the phone soon. Checked Android forums and there's no release date. Best guess is that it may be released by the end of the month.
Sub-par phone interface + the rest = possibly returning the phone before the 30 day return policy is up to get the rumored DInc HD that may or may not be coming out in 3 weeks.
bankerdude - Friday, January 28, 2011 - link
Just purchased the Fascinate from Verizon this week (I know- I'm a late adopter. Had to wait for my contract to be up!) Anyhow, one of the first things the phone did after acticvation was download an OTA update and voila- the button lights now stay on as long as the screen. Really happy with the phone upgrade, coming from a Samsung Omnia running a cooked version of Winmo 6.1. Android is a great interface, even with 2.1!290008381 - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
Does the Samsung Galaxy S take a SIM card and if so where does it go?