Samsung Galaxy Express Review

Introduction

One of the essential elements into building a brand is brand recognition, something that is central to the ongoing Apple/Samsung patent disputes. Over the last year, Samsung has created a signature look with the Galaxy S III and perpetuated that look with the Galaxy Note II. The Galaxy Express for AT&T is another one of those signature Samsung designs, with a pronounced physical home button beneath a rounded black slab. Running on Android 4.0, the Galaxy Express offers a solid spec sheet at an affordable $99 on contract price, but can it compete with similar offerings from HTC, LG and Pantech at half the price or less?

Design

At a glance the Galaxy Express is indistinguishable from the Galaxy S III, with a large display sitting below a silver speaker grill and atop a silver-trimmed physical home button, flanked by a capacitive menu and back button. The Galaxy Express has a slightly smaller footprint due to the 4.5” display, although there is more bezel space all around. The corners are more rounded, and the Galaxy Express is offered only in black.



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

All of the physical buttons offer enough travel, though we’d like just a touch more. The volume rocker is a bit small for our tastes, with no distinguishing characteristics between up and down. The microSD and SIM slots are under the battery door, with the latter requiring removal of the battery to access. The single speaker sits at the bottom right of the back, and is a bit weak for our tastes.

In-hand feel will depend on the size of your hands, but it’s pretty similar to any other device of its size. Build quality is on par with other Samsung products we’ve seen, meaning that the Galaxy Express is full of plastic keeping it lightweight but offering a solid build quality. All in all the Galaxy Express is a predictably designed phone that will do exactly what you expect, but won’t exactly wow you.


Display

The 4.5” Super AMOLED Plus display has a very disappointing 480x800 resolution, making for a meager 207ppi. While resolution and therefore clarity may not be up to par, the super-saturation of AMOLED displays makes up for it a bit. Its bright enough to use in most any lighting condition, and as you’d expect colors are very vibrant. Unfortunately at times we experienced screen flicker, reminiscent of a CRT TV. It was very odd; it would appear on one homescreen but not another and sometimes rearranging the widgets would make things better, but it appeared on other screens like Messaging as well.

Interface, Software

Running Samsung’s TouchWiz Nature UX, the Galaxy Express is very similar to the Galaxy S III or Note II. It does not have all of the extra features, such as multi-window support, but the basics are all familiar. The homescreens, notification shade, app drawer and lock screen are all typically Samsung and most users will be comfortable using it out of the box. If not, Samsung offers you what seem like an endless stream of pop-up tutorials as you perform actions for the first time. For the novice these are very helpful, for the experienced these are beyond annoying.



Processor and Memory

The UI speeds along thanks to the 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus processor, which is paired with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, 5 of which are available to the user. The Galaxy Express utilizes Qualcomm’s integrated Adreno 225 GPU to deliver very respectable benchmark results, which back up the fluidity of everyday use.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu	NenaMark 2
Samsung Galaxy Express	5047	10686	61,1
HTC One VX	5269	10822	58,4
LG Escape	5268	6830	59,8
Pantech Flex	5083	6974	60,5

As memory has increased on smartphones the performance impact of preloaded apps has been minimized, but they are still as annoying as ever. There are 13 AT&T loaded apps to go along with 10 Samsung apps preloaded on the Galaxy Express, not including Samsung-reworked stock apps like the dialer and gallery. The quality of these apps can be debated, but overall there is a lot of junk preloaded on the device that can be disabled via the Android app manager, but not deleted.

Connectivity and Browser

As with most new AT&T smartphones, the Galaxy Express is a 4G LTE device. If you are not lucky enough to have LTE coverage the Galaxy Express will connect to AT&T’s 4G HSPA+ network. Data speeds were acceptable but nothing to crow about. On AT&T’s LTE network we generally got speeds between 10-11Mb/s down and 7 up. On the HSPA+ network it was hit and miss; at times we got mediocre 3G speeds, generally 1-1.2Mb/s down and around 1 up, whereas other times in the exact same location we got 3-4 down and 1 up. The Galaxy Express is a quad band global device, with tri-band UMTS. Other wireless standards include GPS, Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC.


The stock browser is plenty capable, but as usual we found Chrome to be a better featured browser. Either will handle just about any page you throw at it, assuming it doesn’t have Flash content. There are of course several other browser options in the Play Store.

Camera

Samsung has fitted the Galaxy Express with a middle-of-the-road 5 megapixel camera, capable of recording 720p HD video. The camera performs acceptably, but is not a standout. Image detail is muddy and indoor shots have a good amount of grain and/or blur, but in general color reproduction is good and images are perfectly acceptable for casual shooters and social network sharers. Likewise, videos shot at 720p lack some fine detail and colors are not quite accurate, but they are acceptable for YouTube.




Samsung Galaxy Express Sample Video:



Multimedia

The Galaxy Express has both Samsung’s Music Player and Google Play Music loaded, both of which are fine music players. Google obviously gives you the advantage of a cloud locker, but if neither are to your liking there are many other options available through the Play Store.

Call quality and Battery

Callers didn’t have any major issues with the Galaxy Express, but did complain that we were hollow sound-sounding and that it picks up a lot of background noise. It didn’t hinder the conversation, however, and overall they rated it an 8/10. To us they sounded natural with plenty of volume.

The 2000mAh battery is rated for 14 hours of talk time and nearly two weeks of standby, and in our testing we had no problem getting through an average day of use with plenty juice left.

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy Express is a solid mid-range smartphone option for AT&T. Though cluttered, the OS is easy to learn thanks to the constant tips Samsung displays on-screen when accessing new areas of the device. The Snapdragon S4 Plus processor and 1GB of RAM make for a speedy experience, and the large Super AMOLED Plus display will satisfy most user’s needs. From design to performance most everything on the Galaxy Express is predictable and in a mid-range device that’s not exactly a bad thing, but with similar, cheaper and arguably better offerings from HTC, LG and Pantech in AT&T’s lineup the Galaxy Express offers nothing to stand out from the crowd.

Software: IMM76D.I437UCALI6
Android 4.0.4

Samsung Galaxy Express Video Review: