Samsung ATIV S Cell Phone Review

Using the ATIV S

Using the ATIV S is easy and intuitive, with smooth sliding of the menus and quick opening of the applications. The touchscreen responds quickly and precisely. The 4.8” AMOLED screen brings crispy and vivid images, and the 1280 x 720 resolution is excellent, bringing about 306 dpi pixel density.

The Windows Phone 8 is very similar, in usage, to the Windows Phone 7.8 found on older smartphones. It may not offer the same amount of available applications as the Android operating system, but the number is growing fast.

From the three mandatory buttons for Windows Phone, only the middle one (home) is a physical button. The return button (at the left) and the search button (that opens a Bing search screen, at the right) are touch-sensitive.

The main screen shows the tiles for the applications you choose to be there. You can remove or add applications on this screen, as well as choose the size (large, medium or small) for each dynamic tile.

Figures 10 and 11 show the Main screen as it looks after you turn on the phone for the first time; you can slide this main screen up and down to show more tiles.

Figure 10: Main screen

Figure 11: Main screen

Sliding the main screen to the left, you see the list (in alphabetical order) of all installed applications, as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12: List of applications

You can install new applications using the Store, which has thousands of applications and games available.

There is a nice addition, absent in previous versions of Windows Phone: the kid’s corner. It is a second main menu screen, where you can choose which applications will be available. We found if very useful for people who have kids and want to let them play with the phone without messing with your configurations or making calls.

Figure 13: Kid’s corner

The battery lasted about one day under moderate use, with some calls and a couple of hours of web browsing. According to Samsung, the battery lasts about 14 hours on 3G navigation. In standby, the battery can last about nine days.

The quality of the photos taken with the main 8.0 Mpixel camera is excellent, and it can record videos with full HD resolution and 30 fps. In addition, it has a front camera for Skype video calls.