Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G User Reviews

OSFBayArea posted on 04 Feb 2013, 12:14

8

Two steps forward from the G2/G1 legacy and two steps back

OSFBayArea has owned it for less than 3 months before publishing this review

Having owned both the G1 & G2 I was used to vanilla Android with a physical keyboard and great camera.

CPU speed, storage, screen size, weight and even battery were all items sacrificed for the strengths of the G2 & G1 phones.

PRO: Now, I have a dual core 1.5GHz CPU, a power GPU a huge bright 4" screen, 5 rows of keys, all the bells and whistles and yet I'm still longing for the old simplicity of my G2.

CON: Sure, I can play the best games now but I can't take a decent picture in anything but full sunlight. The camera lens cover get smudged so easily, even the good pictures look like they soft-focus.

PRO: Reception over 4G & Wifi is awesome, bluetooth works flawlessly, NFC, S-Beam, front camera, battery 10-12 hours with heavy use - all great things that make the hundreds of MB of bloatware even less tolerable.

CON: This bloatware is baked into the OS, remove it and you'll be factory resetting your phone - the reliability of the phone goes south when you remove the 20-30 apps built into the phone. Each of the apps is more useless than the next and they all take up CPU/Memory.

PRO: This phone will play anything, game, app, video. Speaker quality is way above average and almost has bass(!) the case is grippy, great to hold and the 5 row keyboard is made for writing a novel or two.

CON: Samsung's version of Swype is utterly useless, the huge home button isn't an optical trackball, there is no dedicated camera button and all the plastic construction is already showing signs...  

Having owned both the G1 & G2 I was used to vanilla Android with a physical keyboard and great camera.

CPU speed, storage, screen size, weight and even battery were all items sacrificed for the strengths of the G2 & G1 phones.

PRO: Now, I have a dual core 1.5GHz CPU, a power GPU a huge bright 4" screen, 5 rows of keys, all the bells and whistles and yet I'm still longing for the old simplicity of my G2.

CON: Sure, I can play the best games now but I can't take a decent picture in anything but full sunlight. The camera lens cover get smudged so easily, even the good pictures look like they soft-focus.

PRO: Reception over 4G & Wifi is awesome, bluetooth works flawlessly, NFC, S-Beam, front camera, battery 10-12 hours with heavy use - all great things that make the hundreds of MB of bloatware even less tolerable.

CON: This bloatware is baked into the OS, remove it and you'll be factory resetting your phone - the reliability of the phone goes south when you remove the 20-30 apps built into the phone. Each of the apps is more useless than the next and they all take up CPU/Memory.

PRO: This phone will play anything, game, app, video. Speaker quality is way above average and almost has bass(!) the case is grippy, great to hold and the 5 row keyboard is made for writing a novel or two.

CON: Samsung's version of Swype is utterly useless, the huge home button isn't an optical trackball, there is no dedicated camera button and all the plastic construction is already showing signs of wear.

Everything I love about this phone has a feature that makes me doubt why I bought it. All of the downsides can be fixed with software changes which makes them that much harder to understand why they need to be there.

Overall, if I could remove the bloatware, fine tune the camera with presets to overcome the natural weaknesses, get back to Vanilla Android and locate a good case - I could see calling this phone a worthy successor to my G2 called the "GS3" :)

Build quality 7/10

Reception 8/10 Easily get bars in places the G2 was unable to get a signal and holds Wifi even on the edge of service.

Call quality 8/10

Internet 8/10

Multimedia 9/10 Plays everything I throw at it, movies, audio, pictures without a hiccup

Camera 6/10

UI speed 8/10

Everyday usage 8/10

Text input 9/10 The 5 row keyboard is well spaced for quick typing and is a joy to use.

Display 8/10

Battery 9/10 10,12, 15 hours on a single charge are not uncommon. Games will eat at the battery as video watching is 4-5 hours tops. Still impressive.

Pros

• Fast CPU/GPU
• Keyboard
• Call & Speakerphone Quality
• Multimedia Playback

Cons

• Compromised Camera
• Tons of Bloatware
• Every Plus has a Minus