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
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.
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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