Recently, Samsung has been receiving praise for its high-end Galaxy S III smartphone, though it will cost you a few hundred bucks to buy one, even with a 2-year contract. But let’s face it, not everyone can afford it. Verizon hopes to appease those customers with the new Samsung Galaxy Stellar – and the main thing that is “stellar” is its price: FREE with contract. We recently looked at another budget smartphone from Verizon, the Pantech Marauder, but we weren’t that pleased with it. Let’s see is the Samsung Galaxy Stellar can do better.
Included in the retail package is the Samsung Galaxy Stellar SCH-I200 smartphone, 2100 mAh battery, wall charger with detachable microUSB cable, and user guides.
Design:
There isn’t anything inspiring about the overall design and appearance of the Samsung Galaxy Stellar, as it features a basic all-black plastic form and finish. Be that as it may, the device is comfortable to hold, since it is only 4.80” in height, but does feel a bit chubby at 0.47” thick.
You can compare the Samsung Galaxy Stellar with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.
Above the display is a 1.3MP camera, and below it are four touch sensitive buttons for back, home, recent apps, and menu. Along the left side is the volume rocker and microSD port, while up on top is the 3.5mm headset jack. On the rear is a 3.2MP autofocus camera and external speaker.
Display:
Most Samsung smartphones we’ve seen recently have been incorporating an AMOLED display in some fashion, but the Galaxy Stellar is using a standard 4.0” 480x800 pixel TFT display. The size of the display isn’t bad, and is actually 0.2” larger than the display on the Pantech Marauder. Text and images both look adequate on the Galaxy Stellar’s display, but our real disappointment was that it is not bright enough to view in sunny conditions and has poor viewing angles.
Samsung Galaxy Stellar 360-degrees View:
Drag the picture or use the keyboard arrows to rotate the phone. Double click or press keyboard
Space to zoom in/out.
Drag the picture in the desired orientation to rotate the phone.
User Interface:
Similar to the Pantech Marauder, the Samsung Galaxy Stellar comes equipped with a Starter Mode, which is designed for people that are new to Android or may have never used a smartphone before. While in the starter mode, there are new widgets placed on the 7 homescreens that allow quick-access to your favorite contacts, dialpad, favorite apps and settings, though the app drawer remains unchanged and does not populate into specific groups like on the Pantech Marauder’s starter mode. You can also easily change over to the Standard Mode, which basically just replaces the starter widgets with regular Android widgets. Regardless of which mode you are using, you will see nothing of the stock Android Ice Cream Sandwich interface, as Samsung uses their TouchWiz layer on top, but we’re still glad ICS is on board.
One thing that we found missing on the device was any form of haptic (vibration) feedback. Most all Android smartphones have this option, which is most useful when using the on-screen QWERTY keyboard, but for some reason the Galaxy Stellar lacks it.
On-screen QWERTY keyboard
Processor and Memory:
Even though the Samsung Galaxy Stellar is free with a signed 2-year contract, the device still features a great 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 processor and 1GB of RAM.
Quadrant Standard
AnTuTu
NenaMark 2
Samsung Galaxy Stellar
4104
5692
59
Pantech Marauder
4882
6601
56,3
Motorola DROID RAZR M
4864
6715
61,3
Samsung Galaxy S III
5022
6745
58,7
Despite the Galaxy Stellar not having quite as high benchmark numbers as the other phones listed above, it still feels plenty quick when moving between the home screens and running apps.
The Galaxy Stellar does come with 4GB of internal memory, but since it is used by preloaded apps, files, and the OS, there is only 1.5GB available to use out of the box. Thankfully, there is a microSD memory card slot that can accommodate cards up to 32GB.
Internet and Connectivity:
Just because the Samsung Galaxy Stellar is a budget phone, doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice data connectivity, as the device supports Verizon’s 4G LTE data network. Even though using the 4” screen can feel a bit cramped while viewing web sites (when compared to larger screens), pages were still properly rendered and we were able to view them and navigate around just fine.
When using the Speedtest.net app, we were able to get download speeds between 5.49-6.83 Mbps and upload speeds between 1.32-2.50 Mbps. Even though this is not as fast as what we’ve seen on other Verizon 4G LTE smartphones, including the Samsung Galaxy S III and Motorola DROID RAZR M, it is still fast enough for sending and receiving E-Mails and viewing most web sites. The Galaxy Stellar can also use Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n networks at 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies.
Camera:
Our main disappointment with the Samsung Galaxy Stellar is with images that were captured while using its 3.2MP camera. Every image that we took outside not only is extremely overexposed, but has a “cool blue” hue to them, which makes them look like they were taken by a camerphone from 2006, not a new smartphone in 2012. Inside images are also below average with a lot of visible grain, and there’s no built-in flash to help with low-light images.
Videos can be recorded at a maximum resolution of 640x480 VGA. Colors are blotchy and the video look fuzzy overall – again not a surprise. Is a half-way decent camera & 720p camcorder too much to ask for…even if it is a budget phone?
Samsung Galaxy Stellar Sample Video:
Multimedia:
One thing that we are glad to see on the Galaxy Stellar is that it is using the same Music player that is on the Galaxy S III. Naturally, you can list your music by playlists, albums, and artists, but there are also about a dozen preset equalizer settings, or you can manually set your own. The music quality through the rear speaker isn’t that great, but with a set of earbuds connected (or Stereo Bluetooth headset), it sounds just fine.
The standard Android Gallery will show all of your pictures and videos categorized into folders for easy viewing. We were able to playback all of our MP4 H.264/263videos from 320x240 to 1280x720 resolution without any problems, including DivX and XviD videos.
Call Quality:
The overall call quality is a bit lacking, as we noticed that voices were choppy and digital sounding at times, and there was a continual “high-pitch” background sound that we couldn’t get rid of. People that we called also said we sounded “choppy” on their end as well, and could easily tell we were using a cell phone, though we did not drop any calls.
Battery:
The included 2100 mAh battery is rated to provide up to 17 hours of talk time or 9 days of standby time. In our testing, we were able to get about 9 hours of continuous talk time, or about 2 days of mixed usage (which includes some talk, email, internet, app usage and standby).
Conclusion:
The old saying “you can’t get something for nothing” still applies today, as you have to sign a 2-year contract in order to get the Samsung Galaxy Stellar for free, as the full retail price is $330. The Galaxy Stellar doesn’t have any stellar features or specs, but does provide the basics, such as a usable 4” screen, nice 1.2GHz dual-core processor, and is running Android ICS. But the poor camera quality is a disappointment, as is the lackluster call quality.
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