Samsung Fascinate Review: Verizon's Galaxy S Smartphone
by Brian Klug on October 5, 2010 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Galaxy S
- Fascinate
- Mobile
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:
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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.com