Samsung Fascinate Cell Phone Review

Using the Fascinate

As mentioned earlier, the 800 x 480 Super AMOLED screen on the Fascinate is a joy to behold. Using the capacitive touch screen is also a delight as the response is excellent and the light sensors and accelerometer also work without a hitch. The 1 GHz Hummingbird CPU, 2 GB of internal storage, and 512 MB of RAM combine to make the Fascinate a speedy phone. Whether surfing or looking up a contact, the phone’s response was quick and smooth.

After using the phone for a few days, however, we noticed that it had an occasional stutter or hesitation. It turned out that we had gone overboard and downloaded a few too many auto-updating widgets. When we removed a few, the phone went back to its speedy and smooth operation.

Figure 9 shows the phone with the back removed revealing the 1500 mAh battery and the microSD card slot. The Fascinate comes with a 16 GB card which is expandable to 32 GB.

Figure 9: Th
e battery and SD card

The battery life of this Samsung Fascinate is respectable, projected to be 420 minutes of talk time or 312 hours of standby time.

Most average users will be able to get a full days use out of this phone, but heavy users may have to tweak their battery use by controlling things like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and auto-updating Widgets.

We had very good reception and call quality with this phone and didn’t have any dropped calls during our review period. The speakerphone was loud and clear and the phone had excellent noise cancellation.