Gadgetory

what's up everyone John rhett endure from TechnoBuffalo here's a full review of Verizon's Galaxy S offering the samsung fascinate let's go ahead and get started the name Galaxy S is starting to become synonymous with Android phones it is a branding technique that is being seen across all major carriers in the US and this is Verizon's version of it the samsung fascinate so Before we jump into the review let's go ahead and recap some of the specs and see what you're about $200 on contract is going to get you first it's gonna get you a four inch Super AMOLED touchscreen with a resolution of 480 by 800 what Super AMOLED means you're gonna get very darker darks you're gonna get brighter colors you're gonna get better visibility in the sunlight essentially what it does is it takes the touchscreen mechanism on the phone and puts it actually into the glass as opposed to putting it right on top it's gonna give you a little bit better visibility overall it features a five megapixel autofocus camera with flash it's capable of shooting HD video at 720p it's also one of the fastest smartphones around featuring Samsung's 1 gigahertz cortex a hummingbird processor which shares a lot of architecture I would apples a4 chip same thing that's in the a iPhone 4 and the iPad is running Android 2.1 commonly called Eclair with Samsung's custom skin on it would you see you right now call TouchWiz Samsung has said that it will be upgraded to 2.2 Froyo in the near future said it come with 2 gigabytes of internal memory and a 16gb micro SD card installed it's also compatible with Verizon's 3g mobile hotspot potentially going to turn your phone into a mic by device so it'll suck in Verizon's EVDO network and kick out Wi-Fi you can connect to up to five devices so now that we've recap the specs let's talk about the phone itself no matter how good a phone is or how many features it has or what touchscreen technology uses it doesn't make good phone call it's not going to be much used to you and it typical to most Verizon phones that I reviewed call quality on the fascinate is really fantastic I had no white noise on my in colors have no white noise on there and there was gonna be popping I experienced zero drop call by using this as my daily phone and it really just worked very nice so it almost sounds like the landline quality something to keep in mind this is a fantastic device but actually was able to pull in a relatively strong signal where I usually maybe got one or two bars of Verizon a video signal generally has pulled in a little bit more where I am right now sometimes they don't get any ride and signal and I'm getting two bars as we speak let's talk about battery life that's one of the negatives of the phone and there aren't many negatives battery life is not the greatest you really need to do some decent battery and memory management with your phone in order to get through a full day I'm a pretty heavy phone user I use the browser quite a bit I'm making a lot of phone calls and using email a lot and at a hard time getting through a full day I have to always find a charger to plug it in one of the nice things about the Galaxy S though it does feature a removable 1500 milliamp hour battery so if you're a power user you can always pick up another battery if they even have a fully juiced and ready to go alright so let's talk a little bit about TouchWiz interface I'm sure you're probably familiar with Android and what it looks like this is a bit different this puts four rows of icons on the bottom which are customizable and serve keeps them on each screen go ahead and view and see each screen here and you do have actually seven home screens you can choose to have more or less but seven are really what Samsung gives you I'm not the biggest fan of touch with it does have some nice enhancements more the nicest enhancements that it has is right on top you get controls for your Wi-Fi Bluetooth GPS and airplane mode and when you're in a phone call you actually get the speaker buttons right there and a call soon I have to actually jump into the phone menu do that you can just slide down the notification tab and you get all your information right there oh it really is a handy feature TouchWiz also features when you're in your contacts you slide your finger to the right to make a phone call and slide it to the left to send text they are something nice enhancements their applications look a little bit different that's sort of encapsulated in these squares and then go ahead and scroll through whatever you'd like and you download apps from the marketplace they still show up these squares you can customize these pages any way that you like the captivate does or the suti the fascinate does feature four capacitive buttons across the bottom and I'm not the biggest fan of capacitive buttons oftentimes I had to sort of tap them twice to make sure it works or once to light it up and wants to register the touch that's a little bit of a small detriment to the Galaxy S series of devices but certainly not any huge negative running this hummingbird processor this phone is blazing fast probably one of the fastest phones that I have ever tested really just works quite well on speaking of speed that's going to take a look at the browser because a browser is really fast on this device and as you can see right there there's a big flash logo unfortunately this does not yet support flash 10.1 that will supposedly come with the upgrade to 2.2 its Android 2.2 Froyo which will support flash it does have a fantastic multi-touch browser though which really capable of great pinch to zoom and I think this is really where you see the processor speed a lot of times with multi-touch device to pick up an Android the phone is underpowered you're going to see a little bit of delay I'm going to use your multi-touch gestures here it is almost instantaneous and just works very well all right you can see probably that the screens got a bit of a tint to it that is one of the I think downsides of Super AMOLED display it's got a bit of a blue tint to it which is going to give you better visibility and Rec so I'm like some people might be positive for me it's sort of hinders the experience of using this gorgeous screen but not nearly enough that it hinder it that I wouldn't want to use the device there's something to keep in mind it's gonna make the pictures and the text look a bit warmer I suppose let's go ahead and jump back here one other thing to notice about the samsung fascinate is the back of it features a plastic back which I found to actually come loose every now and then if that after you snap it back into place perhaps that the product is my review unit you can see right there there's a little speaker the speakerphone volume is not incredibly loud as when they tested many phones with a better speakerphone volume so if you rely on speakerphone when you're in a car you might want to best in a Bluetooth headset it's usable when you're in a quiet environment but you have ambient noise around it's gonna be a bit more difficult to use the phone is very very very thin and very easily pocket but I think this 4 inch screen may actually be the perfect size it doesn't create too much bulge in your pocket and you put in your purse knife and take up too much room really just worked it very well overall I'm extremely thrilled with the samsung fascinate definitely representative of my view on the galaxy s Sousa device as a whole if you don't like the way this phone looks with TouchWiz with Android being open you can customize it to your heart's content and really make it look and feel your own just one of the really big selling points of Android I've been a big fan of the phone I enjoy the phone I'm actually using the phone as my daily driver and I can recommend it wholeheartedly so on one to five scale I gave this phone a very very very solid 4.75 almost 5 just due to some build quality issues that was fixed there's going to be a very solid 5 and I can completely recommend this with two enthusiastic thumbs up if you're a Verizon user in the market for an Android phone you definitely owe yourself to take a look at the samsung fascinate I'm John renters and TechnoBuffalo be sure to check us out for all your tech news I'll see you in the next video bye bye you