Hardware Impressions and Analysis

The Fascinate feels unlike almost any other high-end Android device I've had the chance to review so far. Where other smartphones are predominantly metal and thus pack some considerable heft, the Fascinate is lightweight and just a tad plasticky. It's simultaneously amazing that a smartphone can feel so insubstantial, and just a bit unnerving. 

 

The second thing that's striking about the Fascinate is that it's also incredibly thin. In fact, it's nearly as thin as the iPhone 4:

(Left to right) Motorola Droid 2, Samsung Fascinate, iPhone 4

By the numbers, the Fascinate is just 0.61 mm thicker than the iPhone 4. But it's also 10 grams lighter. You've got our usual comparison table to compare thicknesses on paper, but it's hard to really convey just how thin the Fascinate feels. The rest of the Galaxy S line - with the exception of the Epic - shares this same impressive waistline.  

To that extent, whether you like or hate how the phone feels in your hand will depend on whether you gauge quality as a function of mass. If heavier and more substantial translates to better constructed for you, the Fascinate will undoubtedly feel a bit cheap. However, if you're all for lighter and thinner devices, the Fascinate is perfect - it's the kind of device you can forget is in your pocket despite having a 4 inch screen.

 

I mentioned that the phone feels somewhat plasticky to me - it's entirely because of the build material you're in contact with. The back cover itself is entirely smooth, glossy plastic. Likewise, the sides and edges of the Fascinate are glossy plastic. The unfortunate consequence of this choice is that - like the iPhone, it's prone to scratching almost immediately and showing fingerprints. Even living completely alone in my pocket for a week or two, the Fascinate's back is now visibly scratched under the right angle of illumination. I promise it isn't as noticeable as it looks here, but it's enough to occasionally shock when the light catches it the wrong way. It's eerily reminiscent of how prone to scratching the iPhone 3G and 3GS backs are.

There's a dark glossy checkerboard pattern on the back, but the actual surface itself is completely smooth. The Fascinate's back cover material is thus very similar in nature to the Vibrant.

Getting the cover off involves sticking your thumb in a small notch the bottom of the device and literally prying the whole thing off. There's a small raised bit for the speakerphone output on the rear of the device, and two notches for getting that audio out.

The camera and flash area protrudes through the back cover and doesn't come off. This is nice, as on devices like the Nexus One, there's a second plastic layer between the camera integrated into the back cover where fingerprints and gunk collect, adding to camera glare.

Under the cover, the Fascinate is pretty spartan. There's the click-to-eject type microSD port, and down below is a 5.55 Whr Li-ion battery.

On the left are the volume rocker button and a port for the secondary microphone for noise cancellation. You can follow that port inside to a small chamber where the microphone is. There aren't any markers on the volume rocker - then again up and down are pretty obvious. The volume rocker is also a multipurpose zoom control in the browser and camera application, which is probably part of why it's left unmarked.

Left Side

The right side is pretty boring, sporting the power button (which is thankfully marked) about 2/3rds up the side of the device. Location of the power button is perfect for your thumb when held in the right hand, or index finger when held in the left hand.

Right Side

Things are interesting up top. There's the standard 1/8", 3.5 mm audio jack for headphones, a "Digital by Qualcomm" sticker, and the microUSB cover hiding the port underneath. The cover itself slides back and forth and has two detents that hold the cover open or closed. There's a groove you can get your nail into to slide the mechanism.

Putting the microUSB port on the top may seem like a strange choice - something I even pointed out in the Nokia N900 review - but it makes some sense. For one, it gets the cable out of the way when you're using the device while charging. Second, it also means you can dump the phone right side up into a cupholder in the car while on the go. For me at least, having the charger somewhere other than the side makes using the device while charging or taking screenshots a heck of a lot less of a balancing act.

It's a choice that will probably seem very strange to people at first, but definitely doesn't impede using the Fascinate plugged in.

The Fascinate's hardware for me is ultimately a mixed bag. I love the fact that it's thin and light, but it feels so insubstantial in my hands that sometimes I forget it's a tier-1 smartphone. That isn't to say that the Fascinate feels cheap or has bad build quality - it doesn't - it just doesn't really inspire gobs of confidence the first time you pick it up. There's no rattling when the Fascinate vibrates, something I find indicative of build quality, and there's no doubt about the rigidity of the structure. It just has a weird feel in an open palm.

I really like that the Fascinate is thin and lightweight - I just don't like that the back feels the way it does.

The most obvious physical comparisons to the Fascinate's 4" form factor are the Droid X and the EVO 4G. I don't have the Droid X anymore and thus couldn't grab a shot, but I do have Anand's EVO 4G. The two are almost the same size wise, with the Droid X being just a few millimeters taller. I tossed in the iPhone 4 for good measure:

125 mm (4.92")

Physical Comparison
	Apple iPhone 4	HTC EVO 4G	Motorola Droid X	Motorola Droid 2	Samsung Galaxy S Fascinate
Height	115.2 mm (4.5")	121.9 mm (4.8")	127.5 mm (5.02")	116.3 mm (4.6")	125 mm (4.92")
Width	58.6 mm (2.31")	66.0 mm (2.6")	66.5 mm (2.62")	60.5 mm (2.4")	63.5 mm (2.5")
Depth	9.3 mm ( 0.37")	12.7 mm (0.5")	9.9 mm (0.39")	13.7 mm (0.54")	9.91 mm (0.39")
Weight	137 g (4.8 oz)	170 g (6.0 oz)	155 g (5.47 oz)	169 g (5.9 oz)	117 grams (4.16 oz)
CPU	Apple A4 @ ~800MHz	Qualcomm Scorpion @ 1GHz	TI OMAP 3630 @ 1GHz	Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 @ 1 GHz	1 GHz Samsung Hummingbird
GPU	PowerVR SGX 535	Adreno 200	PowerVR SGX 530	PowerVR SGX 530	PowerVR SGX 540
RAM	512MB LPDDR1 (?)	512MB LPDDR1	512MB LPDDR1	512 MB LPDDR1	512 MB LPDDR1
NAND	16GB or 32GB integrated	8GB micro SD	8GB micro SD	8 GB integrated, preinstalled 8 GB microSD	2 GB, 16 GB microSD (Class 2)
Camera	5MP with LED Flash + Front Facing Camera	8MP with dual LED Flash + Front Facing Camera	8MP with dual LED Flash	5 MP with dual LED flash and autofocus	5 MP with auto focus and LED flash
Screen	3.5" 640 x 960 LED backlit LCD	4.3" 480 x 800	4.3" 480 x 854	3.7" 854 x 480	Super AMOLED 800 x 480
Battery	Integrated 5.254Whr	Removable 5.5Whr	Removable 5.698 Whr	Removable 5.2 Whr	Removable 5.55 Whr

Product packaging is an increasingly important aspect of smartphone presentation. Where the Motorola Droids thus far have been packaged in small and relatively basic boxes for optimal packing density, the Fascinate has more lavish, larger packaging. Inside the box you get phone on top, then below it are manuals, power adapter, and USB cables. Pretty standard fare, but still nicer than I've seen other packaging. 

Software

Like the other Galaxy S phones, the Fascinate packs Samsung's TouchWiz Android skin. Right off the bat, it's pretty obvious that Samsung has changed a lot of things here. I've changed the default applications on the homepage, but you can get a pretty good feel for what you start out with. The first and seventh home pages are completely blank.

The default wallpaper is some sort of ocean waves atop coral scene - touching the screen creates ripples in the water which distorts the coral scene underneath. Honestly, I think this is Samsung showing off the SGX 540 graphics, as it's got a heavy 3D feel to it. Run your finger back and forth, and you'll create waves of distortion all over the home pages.

The coral scene underneath is a bit low resolution, and you can pick out some JPEG artifacts just casually glancing at it. I found myself wanting to change the image underneath, but leave the water distortion effect intact. Unfortunately, that isn't possible. You either get the strangely low resolution coral and water ripples, or the normal Android wallpaper selection.

Anand already talked about how Samsung's TouchWiz takes heavy nods from iOS. The application launcher scrolls in pages to the right, and newly installed applications go to the end of the list, rather than in alphabetical order by default. It's out of place on Android to see such a blatant attempt to emulate that experience. Looking through that list of preinstalled applications though, and you'll notice something…

It's Bing.

I want to preface this by saying that I don't have a problem with Bing. I don't have anything against Microsoft's search engine, but Bing is all over the Fascinate.

Press the search button, and you're searching with Bing. There's even a widget that's a Bing-searching facsimile of the Google search widget. Want maps? There's no Google maps by default, just Bing maps. Fire up the browser and search? You guessed it, Bing.

It's not like you can change it, either. There's no way to change the in-browser search engine - it's stuck being Bing. In fact, it isn't really even Bing, it's a Verizon-hosted Bing search portal at search.vzwwap.com.

Now, that isn't so bad, but the mobile Bing interface isn't exactly stellar. In fact, I distinctly remember hearing a Microsoft employee, during a session at MIX10, proclaim that the mobile view was awful and seriously in need of work. No kidding. It's improved a bit since then, but there's still a number of out of place or low resolution Verizon and Bing logos all over. It just feels weird.

Similar to the Droid 2, you also cannot remove the Verizon bookmarks. Trying to do so gets you a nice error message. This applies to both VZW Home and My Verizon. 

Bing Maps was similarly awkward for a time, complete with strangely low resolution resources and no multitouch zooming. About a week after I got my review unit, the software was updated in the market and now includes multitouch support, but still feels clunky and occasionally slow. Thankfully, you can install bona-fide Google Maps from the marketplace and get the whole maps and navigation bundle without any problems.

Oh and that Bing widget? While you can remove it, installing the stock-Android Google widget requires hunting the APK down online.

I looked through the entire Android 2.1 install on the Fascinate, and even finding the word "google" is a challenge. It's curiously absent from the back of the phone as well.

There's also a ton of other Verizon proprietary applications installed, including the paid-service VZ Navigator (why you'd use this instead of Google Maps defies logic). The remaining set of preinstalled apps is the same as I've seen on other Verizon-bound Android phones. A trial install of NFS Shift, My Verizon Mobile, some V Cast stuff - it's all there.

The TouchWiz UI does include a nice task manager, complete with easily locatable "End All" button. You can uninstall packages and also get a glance at RAM use. It's nice to see this preloaded. Holding down the home button to bring up the recently used application list also includes a shortcut to this task manager. I think that's a nice tweak.

Another relatively useful TouchWiz thing is actually the lock screen. Miss a call or get a text message, and you'll get a puzzle piece with the corresponding number of things you've missed. Drag that to the empty piece, and you'll instantly get taken there. I think that's pretty useful.

What's most surprising about the Fascinate (and the other Galaxy S phones) is that they run Android 2.1, but don't feel slow or want for the performance increases that 2.2 brings with JIT compilation. This is the first Android 2.1 device I've used since 2.2 came to the Nexus One that I felt wasn't in dire need of the update. It needs to happen - and soon - but it isn't experience-killing.

Keyboard

Like the Epic 4G, the Fascinate comes with Swype installed and selected by default. The default android keyboard is there too, but Swype is really what you should be using. The Fascinate doesn't have quite as many keyboard options as the Droid X or Droid 2, which bundle a custom Motorola multitouch keyboard, Swype, and SwiftKey, but you can always grab something similar from the applications marketplace. 

Super AMOLED

Anand talked about the Galaxy S line's Super AMOLED display in his Epic 4G review. I thought I'd expand on that by saying that reducing the number of layers and air gaps between display, coating, capacitive digitizer, and finally top layer glass, is what the "Super" in Super AMOLED is all about.

It might not sound like a big deal, but reducing the number of interfaces between those light emitting OLED pixels and your eye is hugely important. Each successive interface - purely by being an interface with different index of refraction - creates a reflection that attenuates light. Glass to air interfaces usually have a reflection coefficient of around 4%, meaning only 96% of light makes it through. If you've got two or more air-glass interfaces, that adds up quickly, and you lose that light entirely to reflection. How much that reflection coefficient is depends on the index of materials at the interface, but more interfaces in general hurts transmission. Reflections and glare is also what makes reading displays difficult outside. 

This sort of display-digitizer lamination is quickly becoming the norm rather than the exception. The iPhone 4 did it, and now Samsung is doing it with its own AMOLED displays - expect to see others do the same. The result is that there's perceptibly less distance between the top of the digitizer and the pixels themselves (viewed from an angle), and now less glare and more light making it through. Yay for optical contact!

View this one bigger in full size to see what I mean

Next to the Nexus One, you can really see how much less distance there is between pixels and the surface of the top glass. The Samsung's Super AMOLED display literally appears to be on the surface.

The front of the Fascinate is one unbroken glass surface. Honestly, the display is probably the best part of the Fascinate. The 4" size isn't too big, but just right. At the bottom are capacitive buttons - as usual in yet a different order than I'm used to. Menu at the far left, home, back, then search from left to right.

The buttons are backlit, but only for a few seconds at a time. It's a bit frustrating, especially since right when you want them to be backlit most, they're inexplicably not lit.

I'd say AMOLED has come a long way since the Nexus One. My Nexus One routinely has ghosting and appears off-white - the Fascinate's Super AMOLED display is perfect. I used to be turned off by AMOLED's weird grain from the PenTile matrix - the Fascinate somehow has noticeably less. Either that, or I've just grown more accustomed to it. The oversaturation downside is still there, it's especially obvious when you pull screenshots from the Fascinate or any AMOLED device down to the desktop on a calibrated display.

Outside readability in practice is improved from the Nexus One. Honestly, it's still hard to read in direct sunlight outside, but it's better. For doing just about anything, seek shade.

Viewing angles on Super AMOLED are pretty awesome. I'd say contrast is pretty much unchanged even at extreme angles like 85 degrees. I've included lots of different angles and more outdoor and indoor comparison shots in the gallery below. 

The oddest parts of the Fascinate's display are all the brightness settings. There are three of them - one in settings that every Android device has, another down below that's basically dynamic contrast, and one in the browser. It can get a bit confusing controlling everything that's going on brightness wise.

I measured a bit more brightness than Anand did on the Epic 4G:

        

Black levels are perfect again, and thus so is contrast.

I have to agree with Anand - if resolution is what you care about, the iPhone 4 leads. If contrast and seriously vibrant (to the point of being oversaturated) colors are what you like, Super AMOLED is where it's at.

Camera

The Fascinate packs a 5 megapixel camera with one LED flash. There's no front facing camera like the Epic 4G, however. Camera launch is relatively speedy, at 2.8 seconds from tapping the application icon to getting a live preview. Successive captures are moderately fast, at around 2 seconds between capture and another preview.

Just like the Epic (and probably the other Galaxy S phones) the camera UI has a simple mode where everything goes away but very basic information and the control buttons. Like Anand said, the camera application repurposes buttons. Power becomes a lock button that stops input, volume controls digital zoom.

Tapping on the left brings up a small drawer with more settings - shooting modes, flash, exposure, and more settings. There's an outdoor visibility button in settings which increases brightness and contrast for composure outside, among all the usual resolution and quality options. Samsung has done a nice job providing lots of control if you want, or abstracting it away if you're inclined.

For a full tour of those settings, check out the gallery below:

Tap to focus is implemented on the Fascinate, including LED illuminated focus when it's dark. There's a confirmation sound when focus is reached as well.

The only nitpick I have about the Fascinate's camera UI is that the icons don't rotate when you switch into portrait mode from landscape. As a result, I was misled many times that images would be recorded rotated 90 degrees. There's rotation support in the captured image's EXIF header for sure, it just doesn't give any feedback in the camera application that acknowledges rotation.

The images captured on the Fascinate are impressive. There's very little distortion or edge falloff, and saturation is about right. There also isn't very much chromatic noise.

The photos taken in the lightbox with the lights on are a bit pink, however detail and dynamic range are quite good. The single LED flash on the Fascinate is actually surprisingly powerful - the photo taken with the lights off is overexposed, which is unfortunate. Apparently the Fascinate doesn't have extremely good short distance metering. This is one case where I wish my lightbox setup was a bit different, since the tradeoff is that photos taken at normal distances are very nicely illuminated. Even better, the camera application focuses with the LED on when you're in the dark, so you have good odds of actually getting focus - something the default Android camera app still doesn't do.

As usual, I've taken photos with the Fascinate in my usual bench locations, and in the lightbox. I've updated things a bit as well with new shots from the Nexus One. A number of readers pointed out that my Nexus One seems to have below average camera performance. I'm inclined to agree that performance seemed below average, and tried numerous times to improve it. I finally got HTC to replace my Nexus One, and reshot everything again, including the video tests. I'd say that the camera performance is largely unchanged between my replacement Nexus One and the old one - the Nexus One camera just isn't as impressive as other 5 MP cameras. 

Video on the Fascinate is 720P in H.264 with AAC audio. I measured an average bitrate of 11.89 megabits/s in our bench video at the usual location. Quality is decent but it seems like there's a bit of edge blur and loss of high spatial frequency possibly due to noise reduction. Luckily, you can shoot video with the Fascinate's bright LED flash enabled in the dark. As per usual, compare for yourself with the videos below:

Samsung Fascinate

Motorola Droid 2

BlackBerry Torch 9800

Motorola Droid X

HTC EVO 4G

Nexus One (redux)

iPhone 4

Cellular and WiFI Performance

The Fascinate doesn't have any antenna problems or weird baseband quirks. I experienced stable data connections and calls. We still run the phone through our now-regular tests to determine attenuation from holding devices in different positions.

The Fascinate (like the Epic 4G) seems to only expose signal changes in 5 dBm steps. Like Anand in the Epic review, I measure exactly the same thing. It's a bit frustrating to measure, but I managed to do so on the Fascinate after taking a lot of data - it didn't change. Unsurprisingly, attenuation is completely in line with what we've seen for other typical smartphones, sans iPhone 4. It's a bit frustrating that the radio stack doesn't show more granularity like other Android devices I've played with (all of them to date have showed me signal in 1 dBm steps), so I was determined to find more.

Just about every phone has special dialer codes. They're usually prefixed with "##" or asterisks, and just about every Android device has the somewhat famous "*#*#4636#*#*" special menu for doing basic things. The Captivate and Vibrant have gotten quite a bit of attention for having extremely thorough secret dialer codes, something I seriously favor in any device.

Regardless, I set out to discover whether any internal dialer codes could reveal more hardware information than I was seeing in Android through the UI and normal APIs.

To do so, I searched through the .apk files inside /system/app. Android package files are essentially zip files with a number of other files for the Android platform inside, including AndroidManifest.xml. Unfortunately, that XML file is encoded in binary, and requires some special unpacking. Regardless, I searched through and found lots of tasty goodness inside the ever so auspiciously-named hiddenmenu.apk file.

  

I found what I think are the Fascinate's internal codes, but none of the dialer prefixes I can think of work. Searching through everything in the Samsung GPL code repository for SCH-i500 (the Fascinate's model name) thoroughly revealed nothing either. The Samsung GPL code repository is here, just search SCH-i500 and you'll get the whole thing. It's possible that I missed the dialer code prefixes in there, but at the end of the day I couldn't find them. I also manually tried everything I could think of. 

If you're so inclined, that AndroidManifest.xml file is up on pastebin here. There's a few interesting things inside. At the end of the day, however, I couldn't make anything work. 

Update:

With the help of a friend with access to more information than I ;), I was able to finally figure out how to enable secret codes on the Fascinate. It's one of the most complicated procedures I've seen on a phone to date, but not impossible:

In the dialer, enter *#83786633 and tap the home button. Now, go back into the dialer, clear anything still in the dialer completely (the first code should still be there), and enter *#22745927. You'll be prompted for an SPC code, which should be 000000. Now you should get dumped to a screen like this: 

Toggle enable, hit ok, and then things should work. This is the hiddenmenuenable apk I spent forever trying to get to. The dialing prefix is then *# with a suffix of # which is just like the other Galaxy S phones I've seen. Even then, the dialer codes are somewhat obfuscated - the only one I've found so far is #*4636*1111# which brings up the testing menu standard to other Android devices. I'm sure there are more out there.

Finally, I ran well over 100 speedtests on the Fascinate using the SpeedTest.net application, and averaged a downstream speed of 0.888 megabits/s, and upstream speed of 0.673 megabits/s.  That's roughly in line with performance around town, with spikes up to 1.8 megabits/s of downstream near a tower. 

WiFi Performance

The Fascinate negotiates a 72 megabit/s link with my 802.11N network - faster than the 65 megabits/s I've seen which is the bare minimum required to meet 802.11N requirements.

Wireless range on the Fascinate isn't quite as far as the EVO 4G or iPhone 4. I can make it a few more meters to the curb before falling off my AP on other devices. That said, the WiFi performance itself is not bad - 20 megabits/s on my 802.11n network downloading a 100 MB PDF. 

    

There's also tethering support on the Fascinate, however the device I had time with wasn't provisioned for access and I couldn't test it. I could however get to the provisioning portal Verizon has, and that worked fine, but I couldn't tell if there were any hotspot issues like the Droid 2 had.

GPS on the Fascinate

I spent lots of time testing the Fascinate's GPS and unfortunately, performance was just as bad as I've heard it being on the other Galaxy S phones. It's really the entire line of device's achilles heel.

There are two real issues with the GPS - fix speed, and overall low SNR. I'll start with Fix speed.

I've seen the Fascinate get fast GPS fixes, and then 10 minutes later get extremely slow fixes. It's completely erratic, and there's no predictability to it. Right out of the box, I timed a whopping five minutes (even connected to WiFi) standing in my yard with a huge swath of visible sky.

Other times, the Fascinate gets GPS fixes quickly like any other modern smartphone - within seconds. At one point, I proclaimed to Anand that I was certain I had fixed the issue by disabling Verizon's location services - all my fixes that day took seconds. As we iChatted for the Apple 27" Cinema Display review, I tried to demonstrate my great success - and of course those fast fixes suddenly stopped. It seriously hasn't been fast since.

The other problem is fundamentally low SNR. Look at this shot, and guess which one the Fascinate is:

That's outside at night in a completely empty field with ideal sky visibility - no clouds, no rain, just cold air. Look at how many satellites the Fasciate has compared to an EVO 4G (right) and Nexus One (left).

Repeat the same thing in my office under a foot from a huge window:

This is the case indoors, outdoors, in the rain, daytime, nighttime, it doesn't matter - GPS is just poor on the Fascinate. The device is almost always at least 1 or more acquired satellites fewer, with slightly worse SNR being reported. It's small consolation that at least on Android we can have apps which read NMEA data so we can diagnose exactly what's going on.

Slow GPS fix times can probably be fixed with a software update. I've read differing reports that the Fascinate already has this fix applied - I can only hope the device I had didn't have it. Poor SNR and signal strength, however, is a problem no more fixable on the Fascinate and other Galaxy S phones than it is on the iPhone 4 - unless of course it's being reported incorrectly by the GPS receiver. I believe that GPS accuracy on the Fascinate isn't really as much of a concern when it takes minutes to get a GPS lock. Anything is better than nothing.

Until the GPS issues are fixed, using things like Google Navigation are downright frustrating. I've literally gone driving with the Fascinate, attempted to use Navigation, only to finally get a GPS lock after I'm 3/4ths of the way there and already looked it up on another smartphone-in-test I've got with me. It's frustrating and maddening to say the least.

Performance

Anand declared the Epic 4G the fastest Android phone. I think it's safe to say that right now the Galaxy S is the undisputed performance champ for 3D, at least until we start seeing SoCs built around A9 MPCore with even more powerful GPUs. CPU wise, Hummingbird is running the same architecture ARM Cortex A8 at 1 GHz that we've seen in other SoCs. For now, the Fascinate's Hummingbird SoC with the PowerVR SGX 540 GPU is really what sets it apart. It's a significant improvement over the SGX 530/535, and if you haven't already, I'd encourage you to read what Anand had to say about it in the Epic review.

That improvement is readily apparent in Quake III, where the Fascinate posts unsurprisingly similar numbers to the Epic.

Likewise, we get similarly impressive Neocore numbers out of the Fascinate, which is Qualcomm's benchmark for showing off Adreno.

Though most of Android still can't take advantage of the SGX 540, applications that are rendered using OpenGL do show a massive performance boost. The qualitative difference between the stock Android gallery application on the Nexus One compared to the Fascinate is huge. On the Nexus One, it feels occasionally slow and choppy, yet on the Fascinate it's beyond smooth.

When the Android UI finally gets GPU acceleration, that huge performance gain will be readily apparent in everyday use instead of locked away for 3D apps and games.

Of course, our CPU-bound tests show almost exactly what you'd expect from a 1 GHz Cortex-A8. Bear in mind the Fascinate is running Android 2.1 as of these tests, but you can see how much Android 2.2 changes things - in some places.

As an aside, I talked in the Droid 2 article about how I didn't quite understand why Linpack performance on Android 2.2 on the OMAP 3620 SoC wasn't what I expected it to be. The comparison I was using was to all the smartphones I had previously seen with Android 2.2 - all of which were Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC based with Scorpion CPUs at the core. The Droid 2 was my first encounter with a relatively standard Cortex-A8 running Android 2.2 with the JIT/NEON optimizations.

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.

The reason I bring this up is that we won't see as dramatic a change in benchmarks that are FPU/NEON heavy moving from Android 2.1 to 2.2 on the Fascinate. Modest gains are in order all around, but not the dramatic floating point performance boost that really doesn't translate into huge performance gains elsewhere.

I've also been doing the regular suite of page loading tests. Though the Fascinate lacks Flash and the faster browser that 2.2 brings, it renders pretty quickly: 

              

              

Speakerphone Volume

We've been testing speakerphone volume regularly on devices using a decibel meter 6" away from the device turned face up. In addition, we've been testing audio quality subjectively. The Fascinate is decently loud.

There's a raised bit right over the speaker output, so sound makes it out and around even if you've got the phone laying on a flat surface.

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. One place I noticed the Fascinate being a bit quieter than I would've liked was Google Navigation.

Battery Life

The Fascinate doesn't really set any records for battery life, but then again that's partly due to the combination of Super AMOLED and the more power hungry SGX 540. For 3G and WiFi web browsing battery life tests, we run through a series of just over 20 pages every 10 seconds with the screen set at 50% brightness until the device dies. Obviously during 3G testing, WiFi is disabled. During WiFi testing, cellular is enabled. Background applications are also all killed before launching the browser and starting our test. For call time testing, we initiate a call and play music on both ends and wait for the phone to die. 

The Fascinate does best the Epic 4G quite handily though.

The Fascinate does have a relatively beefy 1500 mAh, 5.55 Whr removable battery (same as the Epic 4G), but it still doesn't come close to its brethren in some areas. It's still better than the Epic fared with its 4G stack, but it's hard to really nail down why battery life isn't quite as good as the competition, even its Android competition. Either way, it seems like the Fascinate is designed to compete with the Nexus One and Motorola Droid, where it comes close. It can't hold a candle to the Droid 2 or Droid X. Perhaps when we finally get the Captivate and Vibrant - each with GSM/UMTS stacks - we'll be able to tell more about where this battery life deficiency lies. 

Final Thoughts

The Fascinate ultimately leaves me with two completely conflicting final conclusions.

On one hand, the hardware and platform itself is undeniably the best out there - Hummingbird and the SGX 540 make the whole experience incredibly fluid in places where it counts. There's absolutely no doubt about how snappy and smooth Android feels throughout, even on 2.1. The 1 GHz Hummingbird just does an awesome job. Everyone I've let play with the Fascinate says the same thing, it feels fast and fluid. Fire up that default gallery application and compare with a Nexus One and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

The screen is also undeniably among the best on the Android platform, given a run for its proverbial money only by the Droid and Droid 2's IPS panels. There's less glare compared to the non-super AMOLED variety we've seen in the Nexus One outside, and it's measurably brighter as well, all thanks to fewer air-glass interfaces and those pesky fresnel reflection coefficients adding up.

There camera is nicely done, including 720P video recording and a suite of customizations for camera control. Oh, and you've also got an LED flash - something the Captivate and Vibrant lack.

Battery life needs work, but it's on par with the original Motorola Droid in every area except call time.

The rest of the experience is a bit more sordid, however. There's that glaringly blatant GPS issue that the entire Galaxy S line never should have shipped with, but what really sticks out in my mind is what Verizon has done to the software side. It's hard to even tell you're on a Google phone given how much Bing there is on the device, and just about everywhere else it's possible is something Verizon branded.

For power users, this admittedly isn't a big deal. Root the thing and change it, install a custom ROM, and be done with it. To some extent, Android is the new Windows Mobile because of just how much you can change and customize, and how both enjoy strong and active ROM cooking communities. For normal users however, this is just this same kind of platform-confusion which led to Windows Mobile's eventual identity crisis and death. Every device came with different software, different carrier customizations, and different experiences. Getting that out of box install light is what makes high end smartphones feel more like smartphones and less like chintzy featurephones.

The rest of the weird, out of place Bing facsimiles of Google apps can thankfully be remedied by a quick trip to the applications marketplace. The unfortunate part is that you'll never really be rid of them since you can't uninstall them without rooting.

Then there are just completely disingenuous things like making the default search engine Bing, and not allowing users to change it or delete preinstalled carrier bookmarks - again without rooting. Android is open, sure, it's a question of just who it's open to.

Ultimately, the Fascinate is up against the HTC Incredible, Motorola Droid 2 and Droid X on Verizon. It's better than the Incredible for sure so let's just kick that out of the running. The Droid 2 has a physical keyboard which the Fascinate does not, so if you need physical keys you have your answer. Which leaves us with the Droid X. Motorola gives you better battery life, a better GPS experience and the freedom to be given Google Maps and Search from the start. Samsung on the other hand gives you a smaller form factor, a faster SoC and a punchier display. If you're on the road a lot, use GPS, and need the most out of each charge, pick the Droid X. If you don't mind Droid 1 battery life and a flaky GPS which will hopefully be fixed quickly, go for the Fascinate.

Wait another 6 - 8 months, and you'll probably have something even better than both of these to choose from.