Samsung Galaxy Beam With Built-in HD Projector

The world’s leading provider of smartphones, Samsung has introduced its new powerful and stylish Samsung Galaxy Beam, which Samsung claims as its first Android device that built-in HD projector, impressive features 4-inch WVGA TFT touch screen display, a 5.0-megapixel rear-facing camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and microSD card slot to enhance users experiences. The built-in projector situated at the top of the phone that capable of beaming photos, videos, presentations, and so forth. The projector comes with brightness of 15 lumes, resolution of 640 x 360 pixels, and LED bulb, which has a life span of almost 20,000 hours.

Features of Samsung Galaxy Beam:
4-inch Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen (480 x 800) display
Built-in projector 640 x 360-pixel resolution
1GHz dual-core processor
768MB of RAM
8GB built in storage with microSD memory card slot (up to 32GB)
5-megapixel rear camera LED flash and 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera
HSPA 14.4+ connectivity, WiFi networking
Geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection
High capacity 2,000mAh battery to power the entire set up
Android 2.3 Gingerbread platform

Samsung Galaxy Beam which measures 124 x 64.2 x 12.5 mm and weighs 145.3g is slated to hit the market during the second quarter but its exact launch date are yet to be known.

Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G Refreshingly compact

In a world where smartphone displays are getting more and more gargantuan, the 3.97-inch display on the Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G is refreshingly compact. Not everybody needs a 5.3-inch display on their phone (Galaxy Note, I'm looking at you!), and it's nice to see a more pocketable phone for those consumers. In addition, the Galaxy S Blaze 4G ($150 with a two-year contract on T-Mobile; price as of March 20, 2012) has fast data speeds (thanks to T-Mobile's HSPA+ 42 network) and smooth performance powered by a dual-core processor. But regrettably, the phone is riddled with carrier and manufacturer bloatware that you can't easily remove.




Design and Display
The Blaze has a fairly basic, Samsung-esque design with a glossy black face and rounded corners. The soft-touch, textured back gets fingerprint-greasy fast and seems to be a magnet for dust, crumbs, lint, and whatever else is in your pocket or bag. It's easy enough to clean, though. The Blaze looks a bit chunky, measuring 4.8 by 2.48 by 0.46 inches thick. It weighs a satisfactory 4.51 ounces.

The Blaze's 3.97-inch 480-by-800-pixel display is roomy enough for watching videos and playing games. Viewing angles are excellent on the Blaze's display, which uses Super AMOLED technology. Unfortunately, like other Super AMOLED displays we've encountered on Samsung phones, the Blaze's looked oversaturated in our color-bar and grayscale tests. In our color-bar test, the colors bled into each other; in the grayscale test, we had trouble differentiating the light-to-dark shades from one another. Still, oversaturation isn't always a bad thing: Colors looked rich and bright, and blacks were deep.


Software and Extras
Instead of the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, the Blaze runs Android 2.3.6, (Gingerbread). Like other Samsung Galaxy phones (but not the Galaxy Nexus), it runs Samsung's TouchWiz user interface over Android.

Consumers (and reviewers) have a love/hate relationship with TouchWiz. On the one hand, it's relatively light and fast, and it adds some needed color to Android Gingerbread. On the other hand, the borderline cheesy, cartoony look of the user interface is a bit of a turn-off.

This phone comes with a ridiculous amount of carrier-and manufacturer-added software. From T-Mobile, you get 411, Game Base, More for Me, Netflix, Lookout T-Mobile TV, T-Mobile Name ID, T-Mobile Video Chat...and the list goes on. Sure, you might want some of these apps, like Netflix and Lookout, but the collection as a whole is unreasonably large. Some of the "apps" aren't even real; they're just links to app stores or trial versions of services. Samsung adds a few apps of its own; and again some--like Kies Air and AllShare--are useful, but others are merely pseudo-apps that require a separate download to get up and running. When you open the Samsung MediaHub, for example, a message informs you that you must install a separate app and create an account before you can run the app. Really?

One lovely thing about Android is the customization features and the bevy of apps available to you in Google Play. When carriers and manufacturers add all this junk to phones, they take some ownership away from the consumer. The phone you just bought with your hard-earned money doesn't feel like your phone--and that's unfair. Even worse, you can't remove many of these extra apps. On some Android phones, you can go into your settings and manually remove unwanted apps. But on the Galaxy S Blaze 4G, as far as I could tell, there is no such option for any of the added apps. Unless you root your phone, you're stuck with the bloatware.

Performance
The Galaxy S Blaze 4G is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 1GB of RAM. We ran both Qualcomm's Vellamo benchmarking app as well as a third-party app, Quadrant. On Vellamo, the Galaxy S Blaze achieved an admirable score of 1071, putting it just below the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

We take these scores with a grain of salt, as the Blaze has a Qualcomm processor and Vellamo is developed by Qualcomm. Oddly, on Quadrant, the Blaze scored better than the Galaxy Nexus. The true test of a phone's performance, in my opinion, is how well it handles the most heavy-duty apps and high-resolution video. I tested a handful of graphics-heavy games on the Blaze including Anomaly HD and Osmos HD. Both games ran flawlessly with the Super AMOLED display beautifully showcasing the 3D graphics.

The Galaxy S Blaze supports T-Mobile's faster HSPA+ network, which has theoretical speeds of up to 42 mbps. I tested the Galaxy S Blaze in various parts of San Francisco, using the FCC-approved Ookla Speedtest.net app, and achieved average download speeds of 6.77 mbps and upload speeds of 1.45 mbps. Signal strength varied around the city: Some areas produced speeds on par with Verizon's 4G LTE while other areas had more 3G-like speeds.

Call quality over T-Mobile was good, with ample volume and praiseworthy clarity on both my end and my contacts'. We haven't yet run battery testing for this model, but Samsung claims that the battery delivers 7 hours of talk time and 9 hours of standby. The Blaze 4G lasted for a full day (about 8 hours) of regular use before I needed to plug in again.

Camera
The Blaze's 5-megapixel camera took good pictures indoors and out. My outdoor pictures had bright, natural colors, though details were slightly fuzzy and I detected a bit of graininess (see the blue sky in the photo of the San Francisco Bay Bridge). My indoor photos had a little more graininess, but good colors. Details, such as the Furbies' fur, were lost, however. Still, for a 5-megapixel camera, it produced very satisfactory pictures. The TouchWiz camera interface is clean and easy to use, and it offers a few advanced controls such as white balance and exposure value, as well as some shooting effects (sepia, black-and-white, and others).

Bottom Line
The Galaxy S Blaze 4G has the performance and the specs of its Galaxy S II siblings but at a smaller size and a more affordable price. The bloatware is the phone's only real weakness, but the fact that users can't easily remove these carrier/manufacturer-added apps makes me hesitant to recommend the Blaze 4G enthusiastically.

If you're a fan of Samsung's Galaxy series and want the latest and greatest smartphone, you might want to hold out for a few months as the Samsung Galaxy S III is rumored to be launching soon. Another phone that might be worth waiting for is the HTC One S, which is headed to T-Mobile in the next month or two and has a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display, and 16GB of internal memory. It's unclear whether it will be plagued with the same bloatware issue, however.

LG Connect 4G - The impressive-looking phone

For too long, prepaid phone users have been treated like second-class citizens when it came to smartphones. Aside from the occasional gem, most prepaid smartphones were hardly worth your time or money--and even the most expensive prepaid phones had only middling specs. All of that is about to change. The LG Connect 4G ($320 on MetroPCS as of 3/7/2012) is the first prepaid phone that we've seen to have specs equal to or better than those of similarly priced smartphones on contract carriers. With an impressive processor and price, the Connect is an enticing option if you're thinking of making the jump to a contract-free carrier.

Design
The LG Connect is one impressive-looking phone. With its piano-black finish, the Connect doesn't look out of place next to other high-end models like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The overall design is simple: The volume rocker and the microUSB port are on the left spine, while the power button and the 3.5mm headphone jack sit comfortably on the top. Like most modern smartphones, the Connect has two cameras, but we'll get to those a bit later.

In size, the Connect isn't much larger than the original HTC Droid Incredible or the iPhone 4S. The phone has a 4-inch display, but it's nice and compact, and it should fit comfortably in most bags or pant pockets. At only 4.83 ounces, it should be light enough to hold comfortably for long periods of time.

While the Connect felt well designed on the whole, the plastic battery cover really detracted from the experience. The material feels drastically different from what LG used on the phone's front face, and it does cheapen the Connect's feel. It might not be a big deal for most people, but I was not a fan.

Specs and Performance
With a beefy 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor and 1GB of RAM, the Connect easily handled all of the games I threw at it. Even more-demanding games like Dead Space were no match for the Connect's graphical prowess.

The touchscreen, on the other hand, was flaky at times. More often than not, I would have to swipe or tap the screen repeatedly before it would register the input. This occasionally happened when I tapped out a text message and or typed a webpage address into the browser. The problem seemed to be limited to preinstalled apps--the aforementioned Dead Space registered my swipes and taps without issue. So this may just be a software issue that can be fixed with an update in the future.

The Connect's call quality was considerably better than that of another MetroPCS phone I recently reviewed, the Samsung Galaxy Attain. Here in San Francisco, voices came through clear, if a little on the quiet side. Call quality will vary depending on your location, so check coverage maps to make sure you have good service in your area.

That 4G at the end of its name isn't just for show, as the Connect can connect to MetroPCS' LTE network. In my tests, though, the Connect achieved average download speeds of only 2 megabits per second (mbps) and upload speeds of about 2.5 mbps. These speeds are slow when compared to other LTE networks from AT&T or Verizon (which can achieve speeds of around 25 mbps), and fall more in line with what you get using Sprint's WiMax 4G network. My results were in an area with good LTE coverage so you'll probably see slower speeds in areas with poor reception.

One downside to having LTE is that it eats away at your battery life. With its 1540 mAh battery, I made it through about half a day of moderate usage before I needed to plug the phone into a power source. This usage included browsing the Web over LTE, downloading apps, and playing games on my hour-long commute. Your mileage will vary depending on how much you use your phone and which apps you have installed, but if you're a power user, you will definitely want to have a charger with you on longer excursions.

Software
One of my biggest problems with the Attain was the number of extra apps that came preloaded on the phone. Before I could even sign into my Google account, I saw several screens in the app drawer already populated with apps I knew I would never touch. Unfortunately, the same can be said about the LG Connect. Some of the preinstalled apps merely take you to the Android Market where you can download the app to your device (that's right; apps that ask you to install apps), while others are simply bookmarks that open a page in the browser. You can't remove either of these types of apps, so they'll always take up space in the app drawer. Of course, not all of the preinstalled apps are like this; some, like Rhapsody Music, can actually be useful.

The MyExtras app (of which I am not a fan) is back, along with a shortcut to a MetroPCS-branded app store. The selection in the MetroPCS app store is pretty limited, though I did see both Fruit Ninja and Tweetcaster available. Downloading an app from the MetroPCS app store requires you to manually install the app yourself once it has been downloaded. As such, the phone ships with the ability to install apps from other sources by default. This can be a bit of a security risk--most Android phones come with this option off--so you may want to uncheck it in the settings once you have set up the phone.

The Connect ships with Android 2.3 (aka Gingerbread), with, currently, no word on an update to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) any time soon. The Connect does have a custom interface overlay, similar to what we have seen on other LG phones. While it dramatically changes the way Android looks, I actually enjoyed the extra features that this overlay added to the Connect. You have quick access to the settings via the notification bar, and all of your notifications appear in a notification center titled "What's New." Both are useful features you won't find in the standard version of Android.

Entertainment
Thanks to its dual-core processor, the Connect should be able to run most of the apps in the Google Play Store (née Android Market). I tried out only a small handful of games, but in my time with the phone, I never ran across an app I couldn't run. Movies streamed fine over a 4G LTE connection, but I did notice that the screen would occasionally flicker while playing movies or other media--it's subtle, but it's definitely something to be aware of. The Connect makes use of Dolby technology in playing back music, but I didn't notice much difference between audio playback on the Connect and my Galaxy Nexus. The Connect ships with 2GB of internalstorage and a 2GB microSD card, but you can upgrade to a larger one should you need the extra space.

Camera

Photos taken with the Connect's 5-megapixel camera were dark and not especially sharp. Indoor shots, especially, didn't look that much better than a photo you would get from an old flip phone; in one indoor shot, we noticed what appeared to be dithering in a solid-color backdrop. The Connect is capable of recording video at 720p resolution--though videos were blurry and the lens would take too long to focus on a subject. The Connect has a front-facing VGA camera that you can use for video calls, but the quality is subpar compared with front-facing cameras on other phones. In short, the Connect won't replace your stand-alone point-and-shoot camera anytime soon.

Bottom Line
Even with its weak camera, the Connect is still the phone to get if you're looking for a contract-free smartphone. With specs better than those of most contract-bound devices, the Connect really raises the bar for what to expect from prepaid phones in the future. I hope LG remembers to update the Connect to Ice Cream Sandwich later on, but as it stands, the Connect is an excellent phone for an excellent price.