Samsung Fascinate Cell Phone Review

The Hardware

The first thing that you notice about the Fascinate is the Super AMOLED display which is 4” diagonal, has a resolution of 480 x 800, and supports up to 16 million colors. Our Fascinate came with a “live” background shown in Figure 3, which looked like an underground water scene with water flowing across the screen.

Figure 3: The Fascinate with “Live” background

With exceptional contrast and pure black blacks, the clarity and color of the Super AMOLED display is truly spectacular. In a side-by-side comparison with the Retina Display of the iPhone 4, the Fascinate certainly held its own. The Fascinate has better clarity in bright sunlight than most other cell phones, but the iPhone 4 bested the Fascinate in sunlight. In Figure 4, you can see the clarity of the screen as it displays the dialing pad.

Figure 4: The Fascinate showing the dial pad

Under that pad are four touch-sensitive buttons which represent Menu, Home, Back, and Search. In Figure 4, you can see that these are lighted, but light stays on for only a few seconds. We found many instances where we would have liked the light to stay on longer, but could not find a setting that would let us adjust the timing.

The earpiece can also be seen in Figure 4, just above the Verizon logo. This earpiece also has a microphone that is used in speakerphone mode or when recording the audio to go with a video.

In Figure 5, you see the Power/Lock button which you press and hold to turn the phone on or off. This can also be pressed to lock the phone or to wake the screen.

Figure 5: The right side of the Fascinate

The left side of the Fascinate is seen in Figure 6. It has just one toggle which functions as the Volume Control. When using the phone’s camera, this toggle acts as a zoom control. Next to the volume control is a place which can be used to attach an optional strap.

Figure 6: The left side

The top of the Fascinate has a standard 3.5 mm headset jack and a USB port for charging and/or sync’ing. We would have preferred to see the USB port at the bottom or side of the phone instead of the top. The top location makes it difficult to talk on the phone while it is charging, which is sometimes necessary.

Figure 7: The top of the Fascinate

The back of the phone holds the camera lens with its LED flash, with an external speaker near the bottom. Although there is a slight hatch pattern on the back, it has a shiny coating. There were several times in using it that it felt slightly slippery in the hand, and we prefer having a non-slippery finish on the back as we found in the Droid X.

Figure 8: The back of the Fascinate