Samsung Fascinate Cell Phone Review

Conclusions

We have become a bit spoiled by the high quality and capabilities of the many new smart phones. The question is no longer, “Which phone is good?” but “Which phone is better?”

The Samsung Fascinate is a very good phone with first-rate call quality and excellent Verizon coverage. Yet, it keeps up with competition rather than blowing them out of the water.

If you are easily swayed by a pretty display, you will find the screen quality of the Fascinate and other Galaxy S phones superior to all the other current smart phones except the iPhone 4. We found that screen color and clarity about equal to the iPhone 4.

Although in a side by side comparison the screen on the Fascinate may be better, the screens on Verizon’s other Droid phones are no slouches, you won’t feel like you missed something if you choose one of them. That means that other features will come into play when you purchase a smart phone. For instance, we liked the HTC overlay on the Droid Incredible better. We liked the size of the screen on the Droid X better, and we liked the keyboard on the Droid 2.

All-in-all, with the smart phone arena becoming more and more crowded, it becomes necessary to decide what is important to you and to make a purchasing decision based on that criteria. We only wish that if phone manufacturers were going to add overlays like the TouchWiz, they would allow users to turn them on or off at their discretion.

Pros

• Excellent screen
• Good sturdy design
• Good camera and video capability
• Speedy
• Wonderful camera features
• Adequate battery life
• Wi-Fi hotspot mode

Cons

• Ships with Android 2.1 instead of 2.2
• Poorly placed USB port
• Voice commands through Bluetooth not available
• Music player lacks sync’ing and playlists
• Lighted keys turn off too quickly
• Default search engine is Bing, not Google, and we couldn’t find a way to change that
• Defaults to Verizon Navigator instead of Google Navigation in all areas