Samsung Fascinate Review

Introduction:

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”.


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.





You can compare the Samsung Fascinate with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Like the other Galaxy S phones, one of the main features of the Samsung Fascinate is the Super AMOLED display, coming in at 4” with a resolution of 480x800 and supporting up to 16 million colors. Images look absolutely stunning on it, as colors are very saturated and “pop” off the screen and have excellent contrast with pure blacks. Another benefit is that the Super AMOLED display on the Fascinate is brighter and easier to view outside; where as the standard AMOLED display on the HTC Droid Incredible and TFT LCD display on the Motorola DROID X are somewhat harder to see in direct sunlight. But there are two small issues that we did notice with the Fascinate’s display. The first is that the auto-brightness is a bit jumpy, as for no reason when indoors we found the display would get bright for a few seconds and then get dim again. The second is that when using the web browser or other applications, we noticed that very small text was jagged around the edges, through the same text on the DROID X was clearer. But despite these two issues, we feel that the Fascinate's screen does an amazing job, and at  4”, it is a nice compromise in size for those who want a larger screen than the Droid Incredible, but still find the DROID X to be too big.



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).

Interface:

The Samsung Fascinate i500 currently runs on Android 2.1, though we’d expect there to be an eventual update to 2.2 Froyo. Layered on-top of Android is Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0 user interface, which is pretty much identical to that of the other three Galaxy S phones we’ve reviewed. Because of that, we’re only going to touch on the main points here.

TouchWiz attempts to address some of the shortcomings of the Android 2.1 operating system by placing four dedicated buttons at the bottom (Phone, Contacts, Messaging and Applications), adding a few more home screens (7 total), reorganizing the app drawer (it uses swipeable pages instead of just a strait icon list), and some other reworking on things like the phonebook. TouchWiz also brings along a few custom widgets, including different clocks, weather, calendar, daily briefing, feeds and updates for social networking, buddies, and a program monitor widget.




Even though the TouchWiz 3.0 interface on the Fascinate is leaps ahead of the older versions, we still believe that HTC’s Sense UI the only custom skin to truly enhance the overall user experience for Android. HTC has some very nice applications, such as their contacts and dialer programs, which add significant functionality beyond what stock Android has to offer. The Buddies Now widget on the Fascinate, for example, takes up an entire screen but only displays one assigned favorite contact at a time. Furthermore, the four docked application links on the bottom of the screen can’t be user-assigned, just like on the Epic 4G. So it stands we’d recommend switching to LauncherPro if you want more customizable home screens. You can read our Samsung Epic 4G vs HTC EVO 4G comparison to see more about the two custom interfaces.

One thing that we need to point out with the Samsung Fascinate is that it does not come with the standard Google search bar widget, but instead uses a Bing search widget from Microsoft.  Regardless of the reason, we find its usability lacking and find it intolerable that there is no way to replace it with the standard Google search widget instead.

At this point, we would like to see a stock Android 2.2 Froyo operating system on the Fascinate, without the added (and not really needed) TouchWiz layer, and with the Bing search gone (or at least given the option to use Google…..as Android is a Google OS).

For a bit more in-depth look at the interface and widgets of Samsung TouchWiz 3.0, see our review of the T-Mobile Samsung Vibrant.

Organizer & Messaging:

Of the other customizations Samsung has made to the default Android interface, the most notable are in the Phonebook and Calendar. Going into the Phone screen defaults to the dial pad. There are also tabs at the top for the call log, contacts, and favorites. Tap on one of your saved contacts, and you are taken to their respective screen, where you can view their info, message history, posting activities, and media (pictures).

The Android 2.1 phonebook groups all of your phone, Google, and Facebook contacts into one scrolling list. Samsung furthers this by adding the contacts from your Twitter and MySpace accounts, as well as corporate buddies to make one very long phonebook. A variety of contacts' details are visible and editable on the screen at once.



We also appreciate the usefulness of the Calendar, which is touted by Samsung as “integrated” (what else should a calendar be anyway), since it also pulls events from your Facebook and corporate Outlook/Exchange schedules. Views are separated by day, week, or month (the default tab), or you can view a list of your recent and future appointments. Reminders are easily set, and you can choose if the phone is to mark the event only on the handset, or sync it to the cloud with Google Calendar as well. Pushing events work quickly, so adding that party to Google Calendar or Facebook saves it to the phone instantaneously as well.



The alarm function can be found under the Clock icon in the apps menu, and also includes a world clock, stopwatch and timer for all those hard boiled eggs in the morning. It's nice that you can control every aspect of its sounding, and even snooze duration and repetition. One of the phone's apps is a Desk Cradle, and it can be used as a regular alarm clock tucked neatly on your nightstand, but can also be used to access the gallery and music player. There is the so-called Smart Alarm, which rings up with soothing nature sounds before the main one. Night owls like us are certainly appreciative of any options to wake up in a prolonged and gentle manner.



The Samsung Fascinate supports every messaging standard you could want, including SMS, MMS and Email, and also comes pre-loaded with Verizon’s Mobile IM app for connecting you to your AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo! buddy lists. GMail is of course a stand-alone app that replicates the web-based experience. Other Email accounts, including POP, IMAP and Exchange are handled by the standard Email app. Since the Fascinate does not come with a physical QWERTY keyboard, like on the Epic 4G, it comes with Swype preloaded as the default on-screen keyboard. For those of you unfamiliar with it, instead of pressing each letter as you type, you simply run your finger from key to key without lifting your finger until you’re done with the word. It definitely takes some getting used to, but was remarkably accurate even when we made some mistakes. There is also the ability to change to the standard Android keyboard by long-pressing on a text input box while in a message. Naturally, since the display is smaller on the Fascinate than on the DROID X, the keyboard is also a bit smaller as well, but we didn’t have a problem using it.

Camera:

Another feature that is shared between the Samsung Galaxy S phones is the 5MP autofocus camera, and the Fascinate is no exception, though it does come with a single LED flash like on the Epic 4G. The camera menu is also the same between them, giving you options for changing the resolution, scene modes, timers, white balance, effects, ISO, and metering…among others. We weren’t that impressed with the image results we got from the other Galaxy S phones, so weren’t surprised when the Fascinate produced similar looking pictures. The images almost have a “haze” to them (we made sure the lens was clean), which takes away from the detail, though the color accuracy was pretty good. The haze issue continued with pictures taken indoors, even with plenty of light, and the quality went down even further under lower light levels. The single LED flash is mediocre at best, as it didn’t illuminate the room that much, but it is still better than nothing. At this point, the images produced by the Fascinate aren’t necessarily bad, but we expected better from such as high-end phone. The Motorola DROID X is the same price and produces much better looking images.




For recoding videos, the Samsung Fascinate does remarkably well, as it shoots in 720p at 30fps. Playing back videos from the Fascinate on the PC were the best we’ve seen from a Verizon phone to-date. Both the color and details were good, and playback was very smooth due to the higher frame rate, compared to  24fps on the Motorola DROID X. If you are one who is looking for a phone that can record good quality videos, we’d place the Fascinate at the top of Verizon’s device list.






Multimedia:

When it comes to music playback, the Samsung Fascinate is one of the few smartphones that excels in both presentation and performance, moving it into the upper echelon of Verizon’s Android pack. The tabs on the top of the music player allow sifting through your collection by artist, album and playlists, or display all at once. The landscape mode brings along some nice eye candy, like CD cover flow or an alphabetical wheel, to pick your music from. Sharing the song via email or Bluetooth is done from the context menu while playing. The current song keeps going in the background when the screen is locked, and you can even pull down the notification area to display the controls - not a bad idea, but we wish there was also a desktop widget. Aside from showing the album cover while playing a selection, we like how there's an option to enable a visualization to run. We're happy to say that music quality from its rear speaker was more than vibrant with some serious power to make every tone extremely audible to the ear. If you prefer to keep your tunes to yourself, you'll be surprised to hear the level of quality when using a pair of ear phones. There is also a 5.1 channel sound effect, which makes everything sound more full bodied and natural, and a nice selection of preset equalizer settings.



Let’s cut to the chase: there’s a good chance you’ll be looking at the Samsung Fascinate because of the Super AMOLED display, and there is nowhere else it shines more for than playing movies. We’re quite happy to report that the device handled every single one of our test files; we use H.264, MPEG-4, XviD and DivX in various resolutions and bitrate. Our test files top at out 720p and the Fascinate played them like a champ. There were no hiccups or stutters, videos played smoothly and flawlessly. The only thing that would be better here is the Fascinate had a larger screen size and a built-in kickstand.


All of your multimedia files get organized in the Gallery, which offers some nice 3D effects, batch view by date/time, and grid view. It automatically indexes the pictures and videos stored on the memory card and on the phone, which cuts down on thumbnail load times. Images can be rotated and cropped right in the gallery, uploaded to Picasa and Facebook, or sent via email, MMS or Bluetooth. The Samsung AllShare function is also here, if you happen to have a DLNA capable TV to watch the pictures or videos from the phone on the big screen. Videos can also be uploaded straight from the gallery to YouTube.



Software and Connectivity:

The Samsung Fascinate i500 is a dual-band CDMA (800/1900 MHz) handset with high speed data connectivity available through 3G EVDO Rev A or Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n. It is also the first Verizon phone to come with Bluetooth v3.0, supporting profiles for headset, handsfree, stereo, phonebook access, object push for VCard & VCalendar only, generic audio/video distribution, audio/visual distribution, audio/visual remote control.

As an Android handset, the Samsung Fascinate has access to over 70K applications via the Android Market, so the variety is great. There are a few preloaded apps, such as 3G Mobile Hotspot for connecting up to 5 devices wirelessly, Blockbuster movie service, City ID, Kindle, Skype, and Tetris. Samsung has included a file manager, memo pad and ThinkFree, which is a full Microsoft Office compatible suite that offers local and online document storage, and allows for creation and editing of Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, as well as viewing PDF files.


Since the Fascinate is a Verizon device, where would it be without included the apps for VCast Music, Tones, and Videos, as well as VZ Navigator for GPS guided driving directions (Google Maps with Navigation can be download from the Market). We tested VZ Navigator and Google Maps with Navigation, and with both we discovered that it can take up to 5 minutes to acquire the initial GPS lock . Then when driving around, or exiting and loading the app again, the GPS lock was only a few seconds. Between the two, we prefer the Google Maps with Navigation since it is free to use, unlike VZ Navigator which cost $9.99 per month.


The standard WebKit-based Android browser is on board to serve your browsing needs, and it does provide for a great overall experience. Pages load very fast and scrolling is smooth, while zooming can be accomplished by double-tap or multi-touch. Of course, the advantage of this browser is that it can reformat the text so it fits your desired zoom level exactly. Even though it doesn’t come with full Flash Player 10.1 (yet), the browser does include Fash Lite to help give you that feeling of a full web experience, but we have every reason to believe that it will get Flash 10.1 with the upcoming Android 2.2 OS update.

Performance:

The included Cortex A8 Hummingbird processor is fast, humming along at 1GHz speed. There was no delay when moving between the 7 home screens, as well as opening apps and switching between them. There is also 2GB of memory on-board, which is used for saving your apps, and also has 512MB of ROM and 384MB of RAM. We are glad to see a preinstalled 16GB microSDHC memory card to provide plenty of room to store your pictures, music, and videos. We preformed the Quadrant Benchmark on the Fascinate, which tests the CPU, memory, I/O, 2D and 3D graphics, and got a score of 892, while the Motorola DROID X got 1285, and the HTC Droid Incredible (with Android 2.2) got 1189. It appeared that the Fascinate was slow with the I/O tests, and we’ve heard that this may actually be some type of bug, but for the Graphics tests it was the fastest and showed up to 50-60fps.

There appears to be a noticeable difference in the call quality when it comes to the GSM and CDMA versions of the Galaxy S phones. Both the Captivate and Vibrant (GSM) had less than adequate voice quality on both ends of the conversation, though the Epic 4G (CDMA) sounded clear and natural. Thankfully, the Samsung Fascinate is in-line with the Epic 4G in terms of its call quality, as there was no background noise, and voices were clear and produced natural tones. The speakerphone was also quite loud but had some distortion at its highest level, so we had to turn it down a bit for it to sound clearer. Reception on the Fascinate was also good, with 3-4 bars showing and with a signal of -96 dBm, while the Motorola DROID X had a slightly better signal of -94 dBm.

The included 1500mAh battery is rated to provide up to 7 hours of talk time or 13 days of standby time on a full charge. During our testing, we were able to achieve the 7 hours of continuous talk time, though the Motorola DROID X is still king here with 9.5 hours of talk time. For mixed usage, which includes some talk, text, email, web, app use, and standby, we were able to get about a full 24 hours of use on the Fascinate, while the DROID X got up to 32 hours.

Conclusion:

When it comes right down to it, there’s a lot we like about the Samsung Fascinate, mainly its styling and hardware, such as the impressive Super AMOLED screen and 1GHz Hummingbird processor. But at the same time we feel that the software, mainly the TouchWiz UI, is holding the device back. While we can appreciate what Samsung attempted to do with the UI, it in turn makes the Fascinate feel less like an Android phone, and with the addition of the Bing search, one might mistake the device for a Windows Mobile phone upon first glance. At this point, we can only hope that the Android 2.2 update will soon give the Fascinate that “Google feel” that people expect when using an Android device, because it’s lacking that feeling right now. But if you are OK with that, or plan to use something like LauncherPro to allow for more customization of the home screens, then the Fascinate is one device that’s hard to beat.

Software on tested device: Android 2.1, Build: DH12

Samsung Fascinate Video Review: