Samsung Fascinate Review
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The saga is now complete, as Samsung’s fourth Galaxy S phone has been released to the US market; the Fascinate i500 for Verizon Wireless. The Fascinate follows in the footsteps of the Captivate (AT&T), Vibrant (T-Mobile), and Epic 4G (Sprint), as all share an impressive 4” Super AMOLED display, 1GHz Hummingbird processor, and Android 2.1 OS with Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface. But with lofty competition within Verizon’s own smartphone line-up, most notably from the Motorola DROID X, DROID 2, and HTC Droid Incredible, does the Samsung Fascinate have what it takes to stand out from the crowd? Let’s see if it is truly fascinating, or just “another Android smartphone”.
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Included in the retail package is the Samsung Fascinate smartphone with a pre-installed 16GB Class 2 microSDHC memory card, 1500mAh battery, wall charger with detachable microUSB cable, and user guides.
Design:
The design of the Samsung Fascinate closely resembles that of the Samsung Vibrant, and almost has an iPhone-esque style to it, with the all-black plastic construction and chrome accent encompassing the sides. It feels well made overall, almost like it’s one solid slab, though the back is slippery and occasionally it felt like it would slip out of our hand while using it; unlike the soft-touch coating used on the back of the Motorola DROID X (among others) that provides a good grip. Due to its slim size and rounded corners, the Fascinate sits comfortably in the palm of your hand, and at only 0.39” thick, it can be tucked away in the thinnest of pockets without the extra bulge that’s atop of the DROID X.
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The design of the Samsung Fascinate closely resembles that of the Samsung Vibrant | ||
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You can compare the Samsung Fascinate with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.
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From left to right - Samsung Fascinate, Motorola DROID X, HTC Droid Incredible | ||
Located at the bottom of the front are four touch-sensitive buttons for the menu, home, back, and search. Since they are further down from the display, accidental presses don’t happen as frequently as on the Droid Incredible, and it gives the front a nice clean appearance, though we still think the advantage goes to the DROID X, which uses physical buttons. One annoyance we discovered is that the touch buttons on the Fascinate only light up for 2 seconds and then turn off, which can be a bit of a pain when using the phone at night or in a dark room. Furthermore, there appears to be no way for the user to have them on for a longer period. There aren’t too many other buttons on the Fascinate, with the volume rocker on the left side and the power/lock button on the right. Up on the top is the 3.5mm headset jack and poorly located microUSB port, which would be better suited on one of the sides or at the bottom of the phone. The 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash and external speaker is on the back, and removing the battery cover will reveal the microSDHC memory card slot (up to 32GB supported).
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The sides of Samsung Fascinate | |
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37 Comments
1. remixfa posted on 20 Oct 2010, 01:55 1 0
sooooo.. i just want to get this right.. this is the exact same phone as the vibrant/facinate but +an LED flash.... but you bitch about the exclusion of google for bing, its got less memory than its brothers (they have 16gig INTERNAL memory with up to 32mb on top), removal of google native apps, no Avatar or any other movie to show off, and they run the exact same otherwise.. yet the loaded vibrant gets an 8.5 and the gimped and stripped fascinate gets a 9.2? Can someone at PA explain this? Were used to the iphone getting cracked out scores even though the whole review is "but it doesnt have this, it doesnt have that, it cant keep a signal, it cant make a call, but its perfect".. but now you have the exact same phone on 2 carriers getting different scores and the one with the stuff people are PISSED about like Bing and lacking other things that the vibrant/captivate come with... gets the higher score. Carrier preference influencing score? What gives.. if anything, the vibrant/captivate should be rated higher than the fascinate for those very reasons.
2. lewislee (unregistered) posted on 10 Sep 2010, 13:58 0 0
I am with you 100% the vibrant is a great phone that deserves to be rated much higher. The only thing it lacks is a flash
3. anarkie posted on 10 Sep 2010, 14:58 0 0
I'm with you there. I love my X, but my fiancee was really looking forward to the Fascinate...until the reports were confirmed about the Bing, lower RAM, lower internal memory and poor GPS performance. She still doesn't want a X, but if nothing better comes out by November, she's getting one. I'm disappointed, because it had way too much potential. Not enough for me to trade, but it could have been a more solid alternative to the X.
4. Kranbes (unregistered) posted on 10 Sep 2010, 18:01 0 0
1) Bing wont be a problem by the end of september when 2.2 is released. 2) RAM is exactly the same as all the other Galaxy S phones. Do some research, the lower number shown can be confusing, but it really is 512 mb. A portion of it is allotted to either the OS or the GPU, theyre not sure, but that's why a lower number is shown. 3) Internal memory doesn't matter with 2.2. Apps can be saved to SD cards. The overall memory that comes with the phone is plenty at 18 GB. 4) GPS works fine. It'll supposedly be even more brushed up in the bundled update with 2.2. So far mine has worked perfectly fine though. --summary: people complain about the dumbest things that really aren't issues. The phone itself is awesome. The hardware can't be beat. You can also just root it and do what you want with it, that's what's great about Android :)
5. DroidCLH (unregistered) posted on 10 Sep 2010, 21:56 0 0
some people dont want to have to root their phone to un gimp it, bing will most likely not be changed by the 2.2 update (they put it in their for a reason), it doesnt matter is the real number is 512, if your phone or OS is taking up that much memory than you basically only have 300ish mb to work with, i dont think that 18 Gbs is plenty, i have a droid with 8 Gb of internal memory and a 16 Gb sd card and im almost full.
8. remixfa posted on 11 Sep 2010, 09:06 0 0
the phone has 2g of internal memory to throw your apps and system stuff on. it comes with a 16g card on top. 1) bing will still be there.. and its only on the fascinate, so its a - 2)internal memory matters now. Never buy a phone based on a future upgrade. Ask owners of the Cliq,Behold2, Devour, ect. The over all memory that comes with the phone may be plenty for YOU, but the point is its still LESS than its lower rated brother, the Vibrant wich comes with 16 INTERNAL + a 2gig external with Avatar on it...with the ability to add another 32 on top... = 38g total. 4)GPS "works" on occasion. keep using it, it will stop being fine. GPS will be fixed in a seperate update sometime this month. 2.2 will be sometime afterwards. Your limited use with the phone doesnt mean that all the others have magically started working correctly. When my GPS quits telling me I'm in Berlin, Germany instead of FL, ill believe you... lol. summary: the complaint isnt that its not still a great phone. I reccomend the GalaxyS to everyone. The complaint is that its a vibrant + flash LED, yet is gimped and stripped comparitively, yet somehow attained a higher score and we want to know why.
17. beez posted on 12 Sep 2010, 12:18 0 0
Read all of the comments. I'm still w you on this all the way. Arguments aside. No reason for 8.5/9.3 score... I don't care what your argument logic is.
24. DonkeyPunched posted on 14 Sep 2010, 02:12 0 0
Yea, I agree. I don't know why the scores I like this. That's the first thing I thought when I saw the score. And people, you can talk about Android 2.2, but we all know those updates take a hella long time to finally come out. They haven't announced when they would roll out an update for the fascinate and I have a feeling, they won't do it first. It will probably happen to the vibrant/captivate first, then epic, then finally fascinate. :\ By then, there should be newer phones that should beat the specs of this phone. Probably not the screen, but still, they will have something better.
7. osanilevich posted on 11 Sep 2010, 02:17 0 0
honestly I am sick and tired of this Galaxy S gimmick. One phone has 4G, the other has flash, the other has Avatar, the other has metal casing blah blah blah. They're all great phones but Samsung has taken it over the top by making this whole Galaxy Mess. Why not just give each company the exact same phone so everyone can watch Avatar in 4G, knowing their camera has flash in case they see something they wanna take a picture of? Why just make a mess of it by putting 4 phones that have almost nothing in common (by design anyway) and put them all under the same product name? It just doesn't make any sense
9. remixfa posted on 11 Sep 2010, 09:13 0 0
osan, they are all the same phone.. same screen, same internals. some have more memory some have a flash. Its not completely up to samsung. They have to change the design of the phone based on what the carriers want, or the carriers wont sell it. Its not Sammy you should be mad at, its the carriers. They all want something to differentiate themselves. No phone is "exactly" the same on multiple carriers.. they all demand it do different things. Even the all mighty Razr had different functions on each carrier. Of the group, the Vibrant is still the best one. The fascinate SHOULD have been, but they gimped it too much. Ill take lack of flash over all the other crap.
10. lolololol (unregistered) posted on 11 Sep 2010, 11:11 0 0
Because not every company has an opperable 4g band yet for one. For two, only tard-mobile users would want Avatar on their phone. If that was a buying point for the Vibrant GTFO, seriously. Overall if you want every aspect of the Galaxy S the only way to get it is with the Epic. The Epic has everything else that all the other Galaxy S phones have plus a physical keyboard and 4g capabilities. If you want form factor, I'd say the Captivate is the most attractive of all four to be completely honest. The Verizon and T-Mo. versions just look like slightly larger, slightly uglier Iphone 3G(S)s. Or you could just throw out this crappy Galaxy S line all together and get an EVO, Incredible, Pre-Order a G2, or if you're on AT&T just wait a month or so until the new AT&T HTC phone comes out and get that. HTC>All. That being said Sense>All. I don't care how neat your Motorola is, if it's running Blur it's ass.
21. remixfa posted on 13 Sep 2010, 21:09 0 0
Dude, all those phones you mentioned dont hold a candle to the GalaxyS series. Go look at some benchmarks. They are ALL yesterdays news.. The only one that may be close would be the G2 and its new chipset or the Mytouch HD and its dual core 1ghz.. They still dont BEAT it though, they just keep up. The selling point of the "vibrant" isnt Avatar.. its just an "oooh" factor that makes alot of impulse buying. The movie looks absolutely beautiful on that screen, and thats the point. Also, while the Epic has the keyboard and FFC as well as 4g, it lacks all the internal memory. The vibrant comes with 18gig upgradable to 48. Its all preference. The vibrant is almost as fast as the epic when they are both in their high speed areas, but Tmobile has a much larger HSPA+ footprint than Sprint has 4g so the chances of you having a faster Epic than my Vibrant are not that great. Owning the Vibrant is also much cheaper monthly, as well as its part of the BOGO Tmobile has going. The only thing the vibrant is missing is a camera flash. I could care less about the FFC as its at least 1-2 years away from being useful for more than the novelty of having it. The vibrant is also the LEAST customized and locked down of the group, making it much easier to flash custom ROMS on it. In the end its all preference. Each phone is gimped in some silly way. You have to choose which one you want. None of them suck, even gimped they are all ahead of the pack. The only ones that are not gimped are the european/korean versions.
11. Joshing4fun posted on 11 Sep 2010, 14:52 0 1
I really wanted to like this phone but it seems to me that the only that this phone has going for it is the super amoled screen and the fast processor. Other than that it doesn't impress me that much. Not enough that i think it deserves a 9.3 anyways.
12. mr. droid posted on 11 Sep 2010, 22:09 0 0
honestly, I have owned EVERY blackberry, three windows phones, and ALL the android phones from verizon (except the devour, which is a pile of junk all the way around) and the fascinate has NO competition at this point. better processor, screen, and over all construction than the cheaply made lego phone, the droid incredible makes the droid x look like a free cereal box toy and the droid 2 something that came out of a McDonalds happy meal. and ALL of those are MILES ahead of the more than over-rated iPhone.. stick to what you know best apple.. mp3 players. and even iPhone is better than ANY blackberry. as for bing.. thank you samsung! I hate google! (they are a spoiled company thats only about the all mighty dollar, shoving constant advertisements in my face when ever i search for something) I am glad to see it go.i welcome the bing search engine with open arms. message me for the real review i have of all the phones. i will be more than happy to chat about them
13. DroidCLH (unregistered) posted on 12 Sep 2010, 00:00 0 0
wow lol, your the weirdiest person here, you said like one correct thing and the rest was total garbage.
33. WhatSheSaid (unregistered) posted on 27 Sep 2010, 12:13 0 0
"Correct" thing... or just one thing that you "agree with"?
14. Cubdukat (unregistered) posted on 12 Sep 2010, 03:52 0 0
I had my doubts after reading about the entire Bing debacle, but I actually had a chance to play with a Fascinate at my local Verizon store. I'm hooked. Yeah, it's jacked-up what Verizon did by locking out Google Search (and I have to wonder why Google didn't just yank Android right out from under them for that), but that's just one problem I can see with a phone that otherwise rocks. For all its faults, it still kicks the iPhone's ass--even if it does look like one. I'm getting ready to graduate from Verizon prepaid to a big-boy phone, and this is gonna be it--for at least thirty days, anyway. Maybe my opinion of the Fascinate will change in that time, once I've actually had more intimate contact with it. But somehow I doubt it.
16. phonedemocracy posted on 12 Sep 2010, 12:16 0 0
You guys know the voice search still searches Google, instead of Bing, right? And its actually eerily accurate. I use it for Navigation too. Unbiased Droid 2 user here.
18. aja626 posted on 13 Sep 2010, 06:01 0 0
What I don't understand is that this site posted an article that includes three pages of know issues and yet it give this phone a rating almost the same as the Motorola Droid X. In your video review you mention the widgets are OK, the reception not as high as the Droid X. You say that the Touchwiz interface does not feel like a Droid phone and that you prefer the Android feel. I don't get it. How you can give the Droid 2 an 8.5, the HTC Incredible an 8.8 and give this phone a 9.3. It does not make sense to me.
