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
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.
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Camera mode (left), Camcorder mode (right)
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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.
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Camera resolutions (left), Shooting mode (right)
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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
HTC Droid Incredible
Motorola Droid
Nokia N900
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73 Comments
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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