Samsung Fascinate

Posted by on Friday, 15 October, 2010 Leave a comment (0) Go to comments

BUILD & DESIGN

The Samsung Fascinate seems to have been at first confused for an Apple iPhone, but then turned around so that it offers an exciting opinion that it is very much not an iPhone.

Overall, there’s no creak or bend to the Fascinate. But I have this weird feeling that it might be a bit too slick. Many times after sliding it into my pocket, I flat out forgot that it was there. Some other people that I asked about it expressed similar concerns, but were overall impressed with the weight and design.

Screen
As with many smartphones these days, everything starts with the screen, and the Fascinate doesn’t disappoint. The 4-inch WVGA (800 x 480) display is bright and clear in most situations, taking solid advantage of the Super AMOLED screen technology which is both thinner and gives off some truer blacks than other types of screens.

I did notice though that the default (and adjusted) brightness levels were noticeably lower than that of the Epic 4G (the Sprint variant of the Samsung Galaxy S). I’m not exactly sure if this is a manufacturing issue, or a conscious decision on Verizon’s part in order to eek out a bit more life from the Fascinate

An improvement seems to have been made with the screen’s refresh rate, though. With other Galaxy variants, I noticed just a little bit in the way of screen lag with gestures, but not so with the Fascinate. And there was even a bit of an improvement after a recent system update in terms of how fast touches and gestures register.

The screen is not a fingerprint magnet. Most taps on the display are acknowledged by an audible “pop”, but you can turn this off if you wish.

Keyboard
As the Fascinate is a tablet-style smartphone, all input is done via the screen using either the landscape keyboard, portrait keyboard, or voice.

By default, the keyboard is set up to use the Swype input system. This works very well, and after using it with various Android OS and Symbian devices I’m finding it very easy to use for all but the most complicated of words.

The landscape keyboard is well spaced and easy to deal with for most input needs, but I find that it takes a lot of the screen real estate and I only use it when I needed longer phrases, or when Swype in portrait mode was becoming cumbersome in longer SMS/IM sessions.

Other Buttons and Controls
The main buttons below the screen (Menu, Home, Back, and Search) respond nearly instantly to the touch, and nicely fade into the background when not in use. When touching them, the haptic feedback feels like a buzzing button.

Looking around the Fascinate, there’s the micro-USB and 3.5 mm headset jack at the top, and a toggle button on the left side for volume controls.

The power/lock button sits on the right side, but it sits a bit lower on the device than the other Galaxy S models and takes some getting used to in respect to placing my finger at the right spot to activate it.

The rear of the Fascinate is literally a single, hard plastic battery cover with a cutout for the 5-megapixel camera and its LED flash. Under the battery cover is a 1500 mAh battery and the removable microSDHC memory card (16 GB card included with device).

As with the other Galaxy S models, there’s no camera button, but I would assume that for most people that this won’t present too much of a problem unless the picture is something that you’d like to take quickly.

PERFORMANCE

The Samsung Fascinate runs Google Android OS, a powerful operating system that is good for both consumers and business users. This model currently has OS 2.1, not the latest version, but an upgrade is in development. This will allow this smartphone to use websites with Adobe Flash content.

It features a very speedy and efficient 1 GHz processor. It was up to just about every task that I threw at it, and performed quite well. And unlike the other Galaxy S devices, I didn’t notice nearly the amount of heat coming from the rear of the device (near the battery) during high intensity operations such as watching longer video clips or web browsing.

While I’ve been using this device, Verizon released a system software update which brought a welcome uptake in performance.

There is about 2 GB of space internally bolstered by an included 16 GB microSD/SDHC card, which so far seems like more than enough space given how well Android works with many online services. Any issues with managing content are easily addressed with included software, and what I can’t manage (outside of Adobe Flash content) can be addressed easily through the Android Market.

Wireless/Call Quality
My travels with the Fascinate took me through Las Vegas, Atlanta, and metro and rural North Carolina. At no time did I have any issues with the device holding a signal or providing anything less than superb coverage.

It did seem to suffer from an issue that crops up when I was on the speaker phone and the volume is maxed out – the sound would go in between sounding clear and being garbled. After using this as well as the other Galaxy S devices, it’s probably safe to assume that pushing volume levels is probably not a great thing.

This isn’t a bad thing, as most of the time you can hear callers nice and clear unless there’s a large amount of background noise and you aren’t using a headset. With my Jawbone Prime, I was able to hear people better, but usually had to have the volume a bit higher than normal for outside when in louder settings.

Similar to other Android OS devices, you can connect to your Google, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter accounts to get an aggregate view of contacts stored in all these services. You can merge contacts between these on the device for easier management.

Just keep in mind, this isn’t one of Verizon’s worldphones, so you won’t be able to do much globetrotting with it,

The Fascinate includes Skype Mobile, which allows you to make calls over a data connection. This app doesn’t integrate with the device’s Contact book, but is able to be initialized and runs easily in the background. Calls with Skype Mobile over 3G were mostly clear but there was occasionally choppy sound from either end, usually as a result of me trying to do something else on the device while on a call. Be aware, Skype Mobile doesn’t support video calling.

User Interface
This Samsung smartphone has seven homescreens which can be customized with widgets, shortcuts, or themes to your liking. Out of the box, five of the screens have some kind of widget on them, such as a Buddy widget, shortcuts to Bing, the Bing search box, VZ Navigator, and a Daily Briefing widget which shows weather, finance, and AP News.

An enhancement made during the major system update to the Fascinate is the addition of a few more icons and a My Verizon Account manager app to deal with your account billing, usage, and other statistics.

Also similar to other Android devices is an Applications view which shows three screens of apps (default, there can be more.

The Android Market is available for downloading additional software. And similar to many devices today, there’s a carrier-branded tab featuring top picks by Verizon. Many of these are free apps, and produced by Verizon.

The system update feature is handled a bit different than other Google Android devices. Instead of seeing the normal Android system update screen, there’s a module called InnoPath ActiveCare that checks and manages the system update process. There doesn’t seem to be anything different here than stock updating, so again, it’s an addition, but I’m not clear of its relevance.

Communications
The Samsung Fascinate supports SMS, MMS, and email messaging methods. There’s a generic email app, in addition to the Gmail application that virtually all Android OS devices come with.

The SMS application is able to do threaded messages within the texting window. — which allows you to see the entire back-and-forth conversation. You can also compose text messages with your voice using the built in speech-to-text engine. Outside of punctuation, I found it much simpler sometimes to speak a text than to type it.

Managing your address book is done through the Contacts application. Here, the Fascinate pulls information from your Google Address book — which might include both those people you’ve saved there and all those persons you’ve messaged with any Google products. You can merge up to five contacts, which is helpful. Unfortunately, that merging doesn’t reflect back on the Google service, so if you ever need to replace your device, you will need to redo the contact merging. Contact cards include address and contact information, and can be linked to various social networking services such as Twitter, and even linked to media such as photos and music.

The My Verizon Mobile Account Manager program allows you to handle your entire device and service needs without calling/messaging customer service and is not only well put together, but very handy. From editing your account features, to monitoring your voice, messaging, and data usage rates, its pretty slick and many other mobile devices could use such a service add-on.

Entertainment
The Fascinate is a more than competent device when it comes to browsing, mapping and multimedia. General performance is snappy, and, despite some turning of things towards Bing, the overall experience isn’t disjointed for most uses.

The web browser is the stock Android OS variety, based on the Webkit engine. Browsing over Wi-Fi or Verizon’s 3G network is fairly speedy. I didn’t notice any issues with slow-downs on any of the sites that are heavier with JavaScript, which might point to some tuning of this versus the other Galaxy S devices. Because this Samsung model doesn’t yet have Android OS 2.2, its browser doesn’t yet support Adobe Flash.

Instead of Google Maps, the Fascinate uses VZ Navigator. On the Fascinate this uses the Bing search engine to optimize and display results as you navigate local areas. There are two aspects to VZ Navigator: VZ Navigator Maps (free) and VZ Navigator. The latter supplies maps, turn-by-turn directions, 3D navigation, and traffic, and can use speech input to find locations and places on a subscription basis (monthly, weekly, and day pass options).

Compared to the (free) Google Maps offering on other Android OS devices, I didn’t find VZ Navigator particularly compelling for navigation, but it came in handy for quickly finding events and places of interest. Most folks might be fine with the VZ Navigator Maps option which is free, and then using the day pass option for vacation or holiday traveling.

Thankfully, the music player doesn’t come with those subscription-led surprises.It showed a nice ability to scan about 2 GB of music on my microSD card in less than 2 minutes. There’s no Internet Radio feature, but applications such as Pandora or Amazon Music can be downloaded from the to play and purchase music easily from the device.

Productivity:
The Fascinate is bundled with ThinkFree Office for viewing and managing documents. It is simply a viewer but skillfully handles Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF documents. It also includes an ability to connect to ThinkFree’s Online document service which allows you to view/manage documents saved on its servers rather than on the device.

For simpler documents there’s the Memos application to take notes, but also included is the well-designed Write & Go application. This can not just play the role of a notepad, but can send messages via SMS or Twitter.

Calendaring is handled by the default Android OS calendar, which syncs simply to your Google account’s online calendar.

Tasks aren’t handled well, but I found that aspect easier to handle with a third-party application.

Camera
The Fascinate’s 5-megapixel camera is a bit of a mixed bag. Similar to the Captivate (AT&T) and Vibrant (T-Mobile) Galaxy S models, this device doesn’t have a camera shutter/launch button. Navigating though the Android UI can take two to five clicks to get to the app depending on where you are in the system.

However, once there you are presented with the entire screen as the viewfinder and 5 megapixels with a LED flash and auto-focus at your beck and call.

As with most mobile phone cameras, the best pictures come in bright, natural daylight. You can get some solid pics using the LED flash if you have a good rear light source that’s on the warmer side of the spectrum, as the LED tints things blue because of its intensity.

You also have the option to record video in 720p.

Battery Life
The Samsung Fascinate honestly surprised me with its battery life. I was already used to seeing better than normal usage with the Galaxy S models, but this one seems to have been tweaked even more. It was only when I pushed the battery with heavy Wi-Fi or video usage that it would not last all of my waking hours (about an 18 hour day).

Normally speaking, I got a clear 2 days of productive use with the Fascinate, with it needing a charge not long before bedtime on the second say. This was definitely better than the other Galaxy S models.

With heavier use, the battery life was closer to what I’ve seen with other smartphones: constant Wi-Fi usage peters out the battery in a little less than 3 hours, while extended 3G usage (or at least using many applications that use 3G) put the battery at a state where you’d need to charge it by mid/late evening times.

Most people should not have any issues whatsoever with the battery life of the Fascinate, and should in fact will be surprised without resorting to traditional battery-saving techniques.

CONCLUSION

When I initially powered up the Samsung Fascinate, I expected that this would be very similar to its sister models, T-Mobile’s Vibrant and AT&T’s Captivate. I was mistaken. The deck of Verizon applications, the impressive battery life, and lack of issues with heat leads me to believe that Verizon might have done best to wait so long to bring their variant to market.

And at the same time, it’s possible that Verizon has gone too far with some of its modifications. I don’t so much mind seeing Bing — it works, but not always as accurately as Google.

I do think that taking away Google Maps for VZ Navigator was a bit of a power grab on Verizon’s end. This is something they can do — it just seems like an area they could have left alone, or worked towards selling to users differently.

I would have no qualms in recommending the Fascinate to anyone who is interested in a Galaxy S device, prefers something that looks like an iPhone, but wants the service quality of Verizon.

This is nevertheless a solid model for users who are used to the type of “put together” products that Verizon offers.

Pros