My previous attempt at reviewing the Samsung Galaxy S/Android ended up being more of commentaries on Android in general. Here’s the follow up real deal, a practical month-old-user review of the Galaxy S.
The best part about the phone is of course the screen. 4 inches-full of bright, vibrant and high contrast (black is really black) goodness, it makes most other phones look washed out. The phone is also quite slim and lightweight. Dropped the phone twice and it survived, so i guess it’s sturdy enough.
Battery life is pretty good actually (lasting the whole day in my case) if you turn off APN (i.e. data) when you don’t need it. I also use a static wallpaper rather than livepaper, as well as a task killer to conserve battery. To find out what consumes the most battery life, go to Settings -> About phone -> Battery use.
Data connection reliability varies depending on location, and it is sub-par more often than i wish it wouldn’t be. In fact, using a Samsung Z800 HSDPA modem at the exact same location as the phone proves to be much more reliable. This is probably attributed to the higher power available and the less complex software that has the single aim of keeping the data connection up and running on the USB modem. Lets hope the upcoming Froyo firmware would improve the phone on this aspect.
General usage of the phone feels ok on the whole, though you’ll never feel the raw power of the Hummingbird A8 1GHz CPU except when you play graphics intensive games, which work very well on the phone. With Android 2.1 onboard, quite frankly the phone performance is still slightly disappointing. Again, lets hope Samsung delivers on their promise of a Froyo firmware soon.
The Samsung Kies PC software the phone is supposed to work with is quite crappy. On one installation it refuses to connect to the phone and on another it crashes upon starting up. To be fair, Samsung does update the software frequently, but quite frankly the previous experience puts me off from bothering to try again.
All in all, the Samsung Galaxy S is a worthy phone i have no reservations in recommending.
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