Samsung Gravity Q Review

Introduction

Smartphones, smartphones, smartphones, that’s what it seems like what we’re bombarded with all the time. As much as they provide a ton of features, some people just prefer the simple things – and that’s where the Samsung Gravity Q comes to mind. Being a quick messaging device, it means that it doesn’t have as many of the complexities of today’s smartphones. However, are the compromises just too much to swallow?

The package contains:

• microUSB cable
• Wall Charger
• Quick User Guide
• Important Safety and Handling Information

Design

There’s nothing particularly pretty here folks, as the Gravity Q looks and feels like the cheapo smartphones that tend to occupy the bottom of the barrel from Sammy’s camp. Indeed, its design is boring and lacks any pleasant cues, but at least it exhibits a bit of sturdiness with its all-plastic construction. We’ll give it that it’s compact to hold in the hand.


Taking a quick tour around the body of the handset, we’re presented with all the usual ports and buttons. For a quick messaging device and all, it’s great to find a microSD card slot on board with this. In the rear, it’s sporting a fixed focused 2-megapixel camera and a removable 1000 mAh battery.

Display

Ouch! Our eyes writhe in pain looking at the low quality display on the Samsung Gravity Q. To be honest though, it’s something we expect, seeing that it’s a 3-inch 240 x 320 (QVGA) TFT touchscreen on board here, which is sorely lacking in the details. At the same time, its bland color reproduction doesn’t help either, as it easily washes out when it’s tilted slightly offset. Initially, we thought it was going to be a resistive screen, but surprisingly enough, it’s a capacitive one.

Keyboard

Thankfully, there’s a snappy feel when the landscape keyboard is opened up to reveal its 4-row layout. The feel isn’t particularly great, since buttons are nearly flush and the spacing between them is minimal, but after a bit of patience of practice, we’re able to knock out a few sentences with few issues.

Interface and Functionality

Seriously, it feels like we’re in a time warp checking out the Samsung Gravity Q, mainly because its software harkens back to the good old days before smartphones. It really reminds us of the early days of TouchWiz, when it mainly consisted of being given access to widgets that could be placed on the homescreen. On one hand, it’s relatively simple to operate, but it’s just so sluggish navigating around. Furthermore, you won’t find as much diversity here, as it lacks any sort of apps ecosystem.

Crazy to say, there’s a basic email client in tow here, which works decently, but don’t expect anything serious like the Gmail experience with Android. For a device aimed for a younger audience, it’s rather perplexing to know that there are no social networking apps – making it a strict messaging-only device.

Processor and Memory

It obviously doesn’t matter what’s ticking inside of this, just because it performs very slowly – even with some basic stuff! Anyway, the Gravity Q is powered by a 416MHz single-core processor with 128MB of RAM, hardware that’s hardly imposing to say the least.

Armed with 256MB of ROM, the capacity can be supplemented by its microSD slot, which accepts cards up to 32GB in size.

Internet and Connectivity

Ugh! You’ll want to stay far away from accessing the handset’s web browser, mainly due to the fact that it’s pointless to use with complex sites. First, it takes forever to load them. Secondly, navigational controls are so delayed that the experience simply becomes a test in futility.

Sorry folks, this GSM based handset only boasts 3G connectivity. Beyond that, its connectivity features consists of only aGPS and Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR.

Camera

Without taking a single snapshot, we can already tell that its 2-megapixel camera isn’t going to blow us away. And right on cue, after taking several photos and videos, our presumptions are confirmed, as it lacks any meaningful visual elements to remotely pique our interest. Instead, we’re given results that are grainy and devoid of any bright colors. Move along people, move along indeed!

Multimedia

Flaunting an extremely basic music player, it’s at least simple and straightforward to use – just don’t expect to find much emphasis with the presentation. Cranking its volume to the max, the overall quality is still rather weak in tone, plus, it doesn’t help when it sounds screechy too.


Video playback is only limited to those in QVGA (320 x 240) resolution, a bummer indeed, but nothing surprising. Fortunately, the playback is smooth, but our eyes still can’t get over its tiny screen, poor details, and weak viewing angles.

Call Quality

You might as well stick to text messaging as your mode of communication, since call quality is absolutely horrendous. For starters, the earpiece is extremely weak, which doesn’t help when voices are muffled through it. Meanwhile, our callers don’t fare well either, seeing that the microphone picks up everything. And finally, the speakerphone has a distinct crackle to it.

Battery

Rarely using any data connection, its 1000 mAh battery permits us two solid days of normal usage. That’s not too bad, but we’re guessing that light users will be able to churn out even more time.

Conclusion

Let’s talk about cost briefly here, as the Samsung Gravity Q for T-Mobile requires a down payment of $9.99 up front, then 24 monthly installment payments of $6 each, which brings its total cost to $153.99. Looking at the figure, it’s not that bad, but come on, this is a quick messaging device we’re dealing with here. We can name a host of other prepaid entry-level Android smartphones that deliver a significantly better experience than this. Even though it’s a device that would be an ideal first phone for kids, we would totally overlook this in a heartbeat – especially when this is simply the kind of phone we could’ve gotten three years ago.