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
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.
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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.