Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G: Slick, Speedy Phone Suffers From Bloatware

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.

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Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G Review: Affordable LTE, but Bundled With Bloatware

The Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G, which debuted at CES 2012, is a contract-free smartphone that runs on MetroPCS's 4G LTE network. At $250 without a contract (as of January 30, 2012), the Attain is one of the most budget-friendly LTE phones currently available. However, though the phone's low price will certainly attract attention, the overabundance of adware on the phone might drive some shoppers away.

Design

The Attain has a 3.5-inch, 320-by-480-pixel QVGA display, a change of pace from most of the 4-inch and larger phones out there. In my tests the screen did a decent job of displaying colors, though some of the app icons and other graphics appeared blurry. Text is readable, but you probably won't want to pore over your Google Books novels on the Attain's diminutive display.

At 4.57 by 2.38 by 0.46 inches, the Attain is one of the smaller Android phones available. While it's shorter and narrower than most of Samsung's other Galaxy phones, the Attain is slightly thicker than the Galaxy Nexus (0.37 inches). The Attain's compact size makes it easier to hold, and the phone should fit easily into most people's pockets.

The Attain ships with two cameras: a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera and a 3-megapixel rear camera (more on those later). One interesting note: The Attain is one of the few Android smartphones to have a physical camera button--something that we normally see only on Windows Phone 7 handsets or camera-centric Android phones such as the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide.

Speaking of buttons, Samsung has opted to replace the standard soft-touch navigation buttons with physical ones. The buttons are curved, so they're easier to press, but I found them to be a little flimsy. The other buttons on the phone--the power button, the volume rocker, and the camera button--all felt sturdier, though the camera button was a bit spongy.

Performance

Running on a 1GHz single-core Samsung Hummingbird processor and 512MB of RAM, the Attain has similar specs to the Samsung Mesmerize on U.S. Cellular and the Vibrant on T-Mobile. Although that isn't necessarily a bad thing, it does make the Attain feel somewhat dated in comparison with all the dual-core phones that are being released these days. In my hands-on with the phone, I didn't notice much lag when swiping through home pages or jumping around apps. The one time I did notice a performance issue was when I tried opening the popular game Age of Zombies: The app would run, but only after the phone showed a black screen for about 2 minutes. More graphics-intensive games, such as EA's Dead Space, would occasionally stutter and slow down, but were nonetheless playable on the Attain's small screen. The compact display made texting while in portrait mode difficult--something to keep in mind if you have big fingers and are a heavy texter.

Surprisingly, playing Dead Space on the phone for 20 minutes did little to reduce the battery life: After 20 minutes of gameplay, the battery went from fully charged down to 80 percent charge remaining. In my tests, the Attain lasted an entire workday (about 9 hours) on a single charge; your mileage will vary depending on how you use your phone, and on the number of apps you have installed. We have yet to put the phone through our official PCWorld Labs battery test, so check back later for the results.

Call quality on the Attain varied depending on location, but was usable overall. Calls I made from our office in downtown San Francisco sounded a bit muffled, but were clear enough that I could easily make out what the other person was saying. I did find the default in-call volume to be on the quieter side, though the phone allows you to turn it up to a more comfortable level. MetroPCS coverage varies from region to region, so be sure to consult the carrier's coverage maps to make sure you are in a covered area.

The Attain is a 4G phone that is compatible with MetroPCS's LTE network. Over LTE I managed to download 178MB worth of files in less than 8 minutes. Using the FCC approved Ookla Speed Test app, I clocked download speeds at around 2.22 mbps with upload speeds topping out at 2.68 mbps. To compare, when we tested 4G networks last spring, both AT&T (on its HSPA+ network) and Sprint scored in the 1- to 2-megabit range in downloads and uploads. Unfortunately, MetroPCS doesn't come anywhere near Verizon and AT&T's LTE networks, both of which score in the double digits.

Software

This MyExtras ad showed up after I made a phone call.The Samsung Attain ships with Android 2.3 and comes with a considerable amount of extra software. In addition to Samsung's TouchWiz overlay, the phone has a few preinstalled apps such as QuickOffice and Loopt, though you can uninstall most of these apps in the settings. One of the apps that you can't uninstall, however, is MyExtras. When you first set up the phone, the app asks you to opt in to the MyExtras service and sells itself as a way to receive MetroPCS news and promotions. What the app doesn't tell you is that those promotions take the form of pop-up ads that appear on your home screen. You can disable the alerts from within the MyExtras app, but you cannot shut the app down completely. It continually runs in the background whenever the phone is turned on, too. If at all possible, avoid this app while you're setting up the Attain.

Entertainment

Thanks to its compact size and decent battery life, the Attain makes for a satisfactory portable media player. While I wouldn't recommend watching full-length high-def movies on the small screen, the Attain is well suited for music playback, and it even includes apps such as Rhapsody for easier access to large libraries of music. The Attain comes with only a 2GB MicroSD card, so if you are serious about using the phone as your primary music player, you'll most likely want to upgrade to a 16GB or 32GB card.

The HD video I streamed to the device loaded quickly over LTE and had no playback issues, but it was extremely fuzzy due to the Attain's low-resolution display. Unlike other carriers, MetroPCS offers unlimited data, so you don't have to worry about going over your limit while streaming media to the phone.

Camera

The Attain uses Samsung's custom camera interface, and has some interesting shooting features such as a panorama mode. Photos that I took with the Attain's 3-megapixel camera did not look very sharp, but they were clear enough for everyday purposes. It's a good camera for the occasional Facebook or Twitter photo, but it isn't something you would want to use for important events.

Although the Attain can shoot video in 480p, the quality of videos in my tests was below average. Videos seemed grainy, with heavy blurring whenever any movement was involved. The Attain did do well at picking up audio, but overall I suggest that you avoid using the phone to record anything other than YouTube videos.

Bottom Line

The Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G may not be the best LTE phone we've ever reviewed, but at $250 with no contract, this handset is definitely a good deal. It's a shame that the phone ships with so much bloatware, but overall the Attain is worth a look--especially if you're shopping for a 4G Android phone without the burden of a two-year commitment. So long as you don't mind a few ads here and there, the Attain is a solid choice.

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