Samsung Stratosphere review

Once upon a time, inside the not-so-distant past, Verizon was still in phase one in every of its LTE lineup , which consisted of nothing but 4.3-inch slate phones with questionable battery life and intensely little to stick out from the remainder of the contest. Now that we’re seeing the second one generation of devices getting into the 4G fold, Big Red seems to be pushing choice — not only in the case of size and feel, but price in addition. The Pantech Breakout was the primary to, well, break out of the mould, offering a smaller form factor for a far more reasonable cost. It was nothing to put in writing home about, however the proven fact that it existed gave us hope that we might see a slew of phones within the same finances, finally making high-speed connectivity a cheaper option.

Shortly afterward, the Samsung Stratosphere sneaked up and snatched the spotlight faraway from Pantech, offering the first actual QWERTY keyboard on an LTE-capable device for a price akin to that of the Breakout. But if we first saw the telephone, something felt eerily familiar: it looked almost exactly just like the Epic 4G , a Galaxy S -era device that was released on Sprint’s WiMAX lineup nearly a year and a half ago. Looks are some thing, but what concerning the internals? Does the new Stratosphere perform like an old phone, or does it give a very fresh perspective on a 2010 classic? Read on for the complete scoop.

Hardware

The Epic 4G got loads of praise when it first came out… in August 2010. Almost a year and a half later, it’s still a respectable phone, especially now that it’s finally been updated to Android 2.3. Still, its chassis isn’t exactly what we’d expect to determine in Verizon’s premier LTE lineup in late 2011. And yet, here comes the Samsung Stratosphere, a phone with eerily similar guts and appears to Sprint’s version of the Galaxy S (with the apparent exception of high-speed radios, after all ). The Stratosphere uses the identical display, 1GHz single-core Hummingbird Cortex A8 CPU with 512MB of RAM and five megapixel rear camera with LED flash and front-facing cam.

At 4.96 x 2.54 x 0.55 inches (126 x 65 x 14mm) and 5.8 ounces (164.4g), it is a tad longer, a hair thinner and about 0.3 ounces heavier than the Epic 4G. The in-hand experience is nearly the exact same, because the extra heft doesn’t make a considerable difference. All in all, we aren’t watching identical twins here, but it is easy to peer the family resemblance. Verizon and Samsung have made some tweaks to the keyboard and buttons, and it feels more solid and sturdy than the Epic — we aren’t sure even if that’s simply a perceived notion, however it helps put our mind comfortable.

At the front you can find an identical 4-inch WVGA Super AMOLED (read: PenTile) screen, a display technology that we highly praised last year owing to its beautiful color saturation and contrast, but is now well behind the 720p HD display found on high-end devices just like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus , 0 HTC Rezound 0 and 1 LG Nitro HD 1 . Granted, first-time smartphone buyers likely won’t care as much about lower pixel density due to the bright and saturated colors, however it was difficult for us to return to a low resolution after reviewing a string of newer devices. The truth that the Stratosphere is using a display that was considered top-of-the road a year and a half ago is a troublesome pill to swallow, considering that it is a state-of-the-art phone. Yes, it’s an LTE device, nevertheless it need to have made room for some fresher components besides.

The Super AMOLED screen we praised last year is now well behind the 720p HD displays found on higher-end devices.

Also at the front is similar set of 4 capacitive navigation buttons. Above the screen sits a 1.3MP front-facing cam, an honest improvement over the Epic’s VGA. Continuing our tour of the phone’s exterior, you will see tiny nuances in design when put next to the Epic 4G: the Stratosphere is totally missing a hardware shutter button, front speaker has moved down a number of millimeters, the screen lock / power button is longer, the four capacitive buttons at the moment are visible when not getting used (a welcome change), the quantity rocker has a marginally varied design and the micro-USB charging port is found on the bottom of the device in place of the pinnacle.

The battery cover of the Stratosphere has ridges on both ends of the device, which offers a touch extra grip if you find yourself using the slide-out keyboard. It is also lightly textured, which adds only a smidge more friction than the Epic 4G’s smooth plastic finish. Fortunately, very similar to its WiMAX counterpart, smudges and fingerprints aren’t easily noticeable.

The battery should get you thru an entire day on moderate use and also have numerous juice left over.

Pulling off the duvet reveals an LTE-capable microSIM card, a microSD slot with a 4GB card included (though you may fit as much as 32GB in the event you prefer) and a 1,800mAh battery, much great deal more substantial than the Epic 4G’s 1,500mAh juicepack. Overall, we were highly impressed with the Stratosphere’s battery life: it easily lasted a whole ten hours on our video rundown test and we found that the telephone could get through an entire day and a half on moderate usage (along with emailing, social networking, shooting and videos and the occasional call). Our tests were conducted using 3G, so battery life when using LTE will definitely be reduced. Still, unless you’re using the mobile hotspot, we’d expect you that allows you to get a very good full day of use with “4G” turned on.

Speaking of high-speed connectivity, the Stratosphere offers the native ability to show off LTE and rely solely on CDMA. Go into settings, choose Wireless & Networks, scroll the entire method to the base to discover Mobile networks and decide “system selection.” We feel this deserves mentioning since various LTE phones on Verizon and AT&T alike neglect this selection, giving third-party developers the necessity to give you a toggle switch in their own.

It’s tougher to slip open the Stratosphere’s keyboard, nevertheless it feels less prone to disintegrate than the quick-springing Epic slider; we aren’t sure if that’s a false sense of comfort or if that’s a more solid mechanism. After we first began using the telephone, it almost took a little bit too much effort to get the keyboard to open with two hands, and was a virtually impossible feat to achieve one-handed. Not surprisingly, the slider softened with enough use, but was still rather stiff.

The keyboard isn’t comfortable to apply for long periods of time.

The keyboard itself was less comfortable to apply for long periods of time. It utilizes a five-row pad with a dedicated row of numbers, which we feel is a must-have for long-term typing. In direct comparison, the Stratosphere’s keys were wider and shorter than the Epic 4G; subsequently, the major board was a tad wider. While the Epic’s keys were flat and offered just the correct quantity of bounce, the Stratosphere opted for rounded ones that supply an extra amount of give — this may ultimately be a question of private preference, after all, but our hands felt better using Sprint’s iteration.

The performance we got out of the Stratosphere was exactly what we’d expect from a tool with Galaxy S-class specs, because of its 1GHz single-core Hummingbird CPU. Before we venture into benchmark scores, the touchscreen was very responsive, and in real-life use we only experienced the occasional lag; even in those cases, however, it was minimal and didn’t add much frustration. Power users who absolutely need the speediest and strongest phones won’t would like to bother with the Stratosphere, after all , but everyone else might be plenty satisfied. So how does it measure up inside the cold hard numbers?

Mind-blowing? Under no circumstances. Bearable? For sure. Let’s put it this form: the Stratosphere performed better than its older LTE brother, the 2 Samsung Droid Charge 2 , in every benchmark we ran. It also fared very nearly almost like the Android 2.3-powered Epic 4G. Our only concern here was the truth that the Pantech Breakout, Verizon’s other budget-friendly LTE phone, did much better in about a tests (akin to SunSpider and Linpack) and worse in others (Nenamark and Quadrant, for example).

Taking calls — they’re still technically called “phones,” of course — wasn’t an issue, as we never needed to repeat ourselves to the folk at the other end of the road and did not have any trouble hearing them. The speaker will not be the loudest we’ve ever heard, nevertheless it was sufficient. An identical may be said concerning the loudspeakers for calling and being attentive to media.

As a few of you are able to recall, lackluster GPS performance was a large concern with a number of Galaxy S-class devices, so we needed to ascertain up at the Stratosphere’s signal to determine if shall we give it a clean bill of health. In nearly every circumstance, the telephone was capable of search out our location — accurate to 10 meters — within fifteen seconds. We even found success holding the device near a window in our basement without the help of WiFi.

We aren’t going to worry an excessive amount of about this camera. It is a 5MP offering from Samsung, which already has a name for using optics with better quality than most other OEMs. As such, we had high expectations for the Stratosphere’s camera and weren’t disappointed. It uses continual autofocus and takes benefit of touch-to-focus in order to hone in on something besides the heart of your image. The standard suite of Samsung settings are present here, along with macro and infinity focus, ISO (as much as 400), metering options, blink detection, panorama at the side of other shooting modes, and the power to regulate contrast, exposure, sharpness and saturation. There’s also an LED flash.

We came away impressed with the camera’s low-light performance.

Granted, it didn’t offer the ideal white balance in direct sunlight and we weren’t sold at the phone’s macro focus, but pictures looked good otherwise. Actually, we were pleasantly surprised by its low-light performance when it was set to “night mode.” On this mode the shutter stays open longer, allowing ample time to assemble as much light as possible. We came away impressed by how much backlight the camera was ready to pick up; keep in mind, after all , that cashing in on the open shutter will naturally require an amazingly steady hand to stop blurry images.

While we were satisfied with the still camera performance, we couldn’t help but feel just a little baffled by Sammy’s decision to restrict video resolution to 480p. We would’ve expected more from a mid-range LTE device launched in late 2011 — especially when the Epic 4G offered a max resolution of 720p. Perhaps the OEM took our words from that review to heart, by which we mentioned that its “HD” quality was an entire fallacy and will be capped at 480p. Kudos to Samsung for taking feedback if that is what really happened, but within the space of 15 months we were hoping to peer an improvement within the 720p quality as opposed to a demotion in specs altogether.

With that said, anyone who could care less about having HD video resolution is frequently blissful with the Stratosphere’s performance, because it delivered smooth and crisp clips when capturing a great deal of motion.

Wrap-up

There have been few surprises in our assessment of the Stratosphere, if any. It’s meant to be the cheap offering on Verizon’s LTE lineup, and definitely includes specs indicative of that fact. However, we still couldn’t shake the concept here’s little greater than an LTE-enhanced version of a tool from the Galaxy S era, with just some minor improvements in UI and function. It’s still an excellent phone, but it’s roughly a rehash of a handset that’s already 15 months old. That said, it remains the only LTE device on Big Red’s network that gives a physical QWERTY — as a minimum, until the 4 Motorola Droid 4 4 becomes official — or even when it gets some company, it’ll likely stay an honest choice for anyone who doesn’t want a phone with pizazz.

5 Samsung Stratosphere hands-on at CTIA E&A 2011 5

6 Motorola Droid 4 images leak out 6

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This post is tagged: battery life, capable device, QWERTY Keyboard, second generation, speed connectivity, stratosphere