Samsung Exhibit 4G Review

Interface and Functionality:

You know the saying about never judging a book by its cover? Well, it’s something that applies to the Exhibit 4G seeing that it’s packing a speedy 1GHz single-core processor that provides the big guns to make the platform experience gratifying. Running the TouchWiz UI on top of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, we’re able to navigate around the platform without much fluff when a static wallpaper is used. Conversely, enabling a graphically intensive live wallpaper can strain its movement and operation – but still, it’s more than appreciable. Even though you’re treated with the usual assortment of personalization you’d expect with any Android smartphone, there are still a few useful widgets offered by Samsung – such as the Buddies Now, Feeds & Updates, Program Monitor, and Finance Clock.


Mainly because of its screen size, using its portrait style keyboards can be challenging for those with larger digits. Luckily though, both the Samsung and Swype keyboards exhibit a good amount of responsiveness to keep up with speedy nature of some people. Of course, the landscape options present the best experience with their roomier confines – thus enabling a comfortable and error-free typing experience.

Being more of the same, the Gmail experience is obviously satisfying on the Samsung Exhibit 4G primarily because it tastefully emulates the desktop experience – while essentially offering the same features. In terms of setting up alternative email accounts, it’s pretty straightforward by providing your email address and password. And in some instances, it may require additional pieces of information to properly set up.


Showing its ties to T-Mobile, the handset comes preloaded with an abundance of T-Mobile branded applications – such as T-Mobile AppPack, T-Mobile Highlight, T-Mobile Mall, T-Mobile Name ID, T-Mobile TV, and Visual Voicemail. Additionally, there are also a handful of third party ones that some might find useful – like AllShare, Bejeweled 2, Doodle Jump, DriveSmart, Scrabble, Slacker, TeleNav GPS, ThinkFree Office, and Qik Video Chat.


Camera and Multimedia:

Siding with a 3.2-megapixel auto-focus camera, its image quality isn’t terrible, but rather, tolerable enough to swallow for most people. Outdoors, it produces some soft looking tones with its details, with color production appearing washed out. Taking it indoors, its overall quality naturally drops, but its LED flash is remarkably potent with its output. In fact, it’s able to properly light up subjects that are 7 feet away.  




Sadly, the Samsung Exhibit 4G’s maximum 720 x 480 video recording quality is rather disappointing as a whole with its lackluster visuals. Although its audio recording is distortion free and that it shoots consistently at 29 frames per second, details are non-existent and tends to make the entire thing appear muddy. Come to think of it, some might confuse its quality to be some sort of QVGA video instead.

Samsung Exhibit 4G Sample Video:




Finding the TouchWiz music player on board, it’s undeniably both functional and visually appealing with its presentation. Instead of hitting the usual on-screen controls to reverse or forward a particular song, we find disc mode not only to be equally functional, but its glitzy carousel effect tastefully complements its appearance. Putting out a good amount of volume with its speaker, it can sound sharp and irritating to the ear when it’s positioned at the loudest setting. Fortunately, it packs a variety of equalizer settings to perfectly tune it with specific genres of music.



More than satisfactory to the eye, high-definition video playback isn’t a problem with the Samsung Exhibit 4G. Loading a video encoded in MPEG-4 1280 x 720 resolution, its playback is smooth with no evidence of any slowdown or lag.  Although it’s able to play 720p videos, we’re unable to load any that are in 1080p.


For some, its included 4GB microSD card might be sufficient in size, but if not, you can always switch it with others up to 32GB in capacity.


Internet and Connectivity:

We love that the Exhibit 4G is an HSPA+ enabled device for speedy web page downloads, but after attempting to navigate through our web site, we’re utterly sad to see it struggle in the face of Flash content. At times, the handset seems to stall and even locks up when trying to kinetic scroll. However, when setting the browser to load plug-ins “on demand,” it’s a little bit more tolerable with its performance.


Global trotters will adore using the handset for voice phone calls in most parts of the world, but we’re receptive to the fact that this HSPA+ enabled handset is able to get average download and upload speeds of 4Mbps and 1.3Mbps respectively. Additionally, it offers connectivity features like Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi, and aGPS. Lastly, it packs along the Wi-Fi Calling app that allows you to place and receive voice calls when connected to a Wi-Fi network.