Gadgetory

no California blue or banana yellow here the aluminum silver Samsung ativ s is all business but is it too button-down to have a little fun let's find out I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is the Samsung ativ s full review the atif s shares some commonalities with many of its Windows Phone competitors it's powered by a dual-core 1.5 gigahertz Qualcomm s4 backed up by a gig of ram and it packs an 8 megapixel camera and either 16 or 32 gigs of on-board storage but the similarities stop there and then some fairly major ways unlike the HTC Windows Phone 8x and the Nokia Lumia 920 the atif s features expandable memory via micro SDXC and a user-accessible 2300 milliamp hour battery and it's bright four-point eight inch 306 PPI Super AMOLED display familiar to anyone who's seen a Galaxy s3 is the biggest available in the Windows Phone 8 space the screens not the only thing that's familiar about the atif s the chassis bears a visual signature that is vintage Samsung looking like an updated Galaxy s2 or maybe a squared off galaxy s3 love it or hate it the home button is back again the phone is light and 135 grams and it's slim at eight point seven millimeters it feels nice in the hand if a little slippery Samsung has really mastered the art of faux aluminium with the hairline metallic finish on the back which looks incredible in person this isn't a phone that'll turn a lot of heads at the club but it'll definitely earn you some points in the boardroom the atif s runs Windows Phone 8 and our unit packs a newer version of the OS that allows Wi-Fi to remain on when the device is locked and also allows for text replies to rejected voice calls both welcome improvements the achieve s Hardware runs the OS as smoothly as you'd expect and it really pops on this big display especially with the inclusion of more accent color in Windows Phone 8 in our testing the large screen has led to pure typos on the commensurately larger keyboard and visually the platform scales nicely to this larger scale especially with the new smaller tile sizes we only encountered one real bug auto-brightness on this device is awful always setting the wrong levels and always lagging behind changing conditions but that's easily fixable with an update samsung has its own version of the Windows Phone 8 store where its own section called Samsung's own where you can download Samsung exclusive apps much like on a Nokia device most of them come pre-installed on the ateam s Samsung's apps aren't as numerous or useful as Nokia's but we like them but without a larger more robust assortment of apps ideally with some enhanced camera features and some navigation options Samsung's collection continues to lag behind Nokia's we tested the ax T of s on t-mobile USA in the Greater Boston area colors said we sounded fine in normal mode with a slight but manageable reverb when switching to speakerphone and that's pretty normal unfortunately as on most smartphones though the speakerphone is capable of delivering ear-splitting ringtones and media volume it's limited to perhaps half intensity on voice calls that's annoying data speeds over t-mobile's network were fairly good when we were in an HSPA coverage area averaging about 7 megabits per second down and about 3 up we're still conducting battery life testing see those results on our full written review at pocketnow.com but as of the recording of this video performance looks promising it took approximately nine hours of moderate use to reach the 25% mark which is pretty good the 8 megapixel camera seems to cope adequately with most lighting situations and there's a fair amount of tweaking you can do in the software to either get a great shot or just have some fun with filters shots came out sharp and richly colored for the most part and they look great on the achieves Super AMOLED display video is acceptable though autofocus is a little slow compared to other devices the atif S delivers a very good Windows Phone 8 experience in all while its physical design is conservative and not as flashy as the Nokia's and HTC's it packs the huge advantage of both a removable battery and expandable memory something you have to go into the mid-range for to find on the other brands in addition there's that huge display a solid camera and a good feel in the hand and it's light and thin enough to disappear in a pocket we wish Samsung had more custom software available but we also think fires will be quite satisfied with this device the unique features of the achieve s combined with its many pluses to earn this device an 8.5 out of 10 everyone thank you for watching our Samsung ativ s video review if you'd like more detail including benchmark scores more screenshots more camera sample photos and embedded camera video visit us pocketnow.com that's where we have our full written review of the Samsung ativ s we'll also be discussing the achieve S on the pocket now a weekly podcast and on the pocket now daily broadcast so make sure and check those out and to make sure you don't miss anything follow us on Twitter pocket now tweets is the official account if you'd like to follow me I'm at captain two phones in the meantime leave us a thumbs up here on YouTube if you liked what you saw leave us a comment on the review at pocketnow.com if you have something to say and thank you for watching we'll see you next time and stay tuned for a lot more coverage on the atif s other windows phones Android phones and iOS devices tablets devices electronics all kinds of I just keep talking and it doesn't get any better Carly Rivera will be discussing it on the pocket now daily broadcasts so be sure and I need I need I need more caffeine one more time now calm if you have something to say and thank you for watching we'll see you next time there's the winner