Recently announced last January 2012, the Galaxy S Advance I9070
is one of Samsung’s latest addition to the Galaxy S lineup. It’s been
quite a while since the release of the Galaxy S Plus and now the Galaxy S
Advance comes to join the ranks.
Now, you might be expecting that this will be a souped up single-core
phone but what we are looking at here is a ticking 1GHz dual core
chipset. Having been a former owner of a Galaxy S, I have my
expectations set for this smartphone as I try to play along with it.
Design
The overall design has deviated from the original Galaxy S look and
has come to almost mimic the Galaxy Nexus look and feel. The phone is
really light and doesn’t feel all too solid since it’s mostly made of
plastic but it still fits well on the hand.
At the front we’ll find the 1.3mp secondary camera for video calls
and camwhoring. The usual Android menu and Back capacitive buttons can
be located below the screen surrounding the physical home button at the
middle. The screen sports a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, that is made of
Gorilla glass with a WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels).
At the back you’ll find the 5MP snapper with LED flash and the speaker right next to it.
At the left side, you’ll find the volume rocker while on the right side is where the power button is located.
There’s nothing to see on top, the usual 3.5mm headphone jack is now
located below the phone with the micro-USB port. I find it convenient to
have the ports located below since the wires will only be from one
place instead of having your phone wired from the top and bottom.
Features and Performance
As previously mentioned, the Galaxy S Advance sports a 1GHz dual core
processor. It has 768 megabytes of RAM and runs on an Android 2.3.6
Gingerbread with the same TouchWiz 4.0 UI we saw on the Galaxy SII.
The UI is very smooth and responsive albeit the occasional lags but it’s a great experience nonetheless.
Here is its impressive quadrant score (2159) below.
There are no updates yet from Samsung as to when or if they’ll even
upgrade the Galaxy S Advance to Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), but
I’m pretty sure they’ll have to considering most of the phones right now
are gearing towards Android ICS.
Browsing
Browsing with the Galaxy S Advance, as expected, is top notch with
smooth transitions when zooming in and out or panning along the page.
Top it off with support for Flash and you have yourself a great device
for mobile browsing.
Multimedia
The multimedia experience is fantastic as well. The Super AMOLED
screen displays rich colors for image viewing, watching movies and of
course playing games. I played Gun Bros which I find to be a system hog
since it tends to be really slow when mobbed with enemies and bullets
flying around the screen. With the Galaxy S Advance, I didn’t encounter
any lag all throughout the gameplay which makes this phone a great
device for gamers.
Although pressing the home button and going back to the game after a
while, tends to halt the game for a few seconds before you could
continue to play. This is a common case for Android phones though and I
hope the performance would be significantly better if ever the Android
ICS gets released.
Camera
The 5MP auto-focus camera is a decent shooter with good color
contrasts during daylight although it tends to get really grainy when
shot during the night or under low-light conditions which is expected
actually. Pics taken indoors were acceptable enough especially when
you’re the type who takes pics of food in restaurants.
Here are a few sample photos taken with the Samsung Galaxy S Advance:
This phone can do 720p HD recording as opposed to the Full HD recording capability of Samsung Galaxy S2.
Battery
I may not be able to give out an exact time on the battery life but
the phone lasted me for almost two days of constant phone calls, texts,
WiFi, with some occasional browsing and games. I say the battery life is
pretty much the same as the other Android phones Samsung has to offer.
Verdict
After a brief exposure to the Galaxy S Advance, I’d have to say it’s
going to please a lot of Android users out there. It seems to be a
standard nowadays that smartphones are equipped with dual core chipsets
and the Galaxy S Advance made sure it doesn’t get left behind.
With that amount of power, great Super AMOLED display and good looks,
you might think this will burn a hole in your pocket. On the contrary,
the Galaxy S Advance sells for Php 22,990! Samsung has
once again set the standard for a great smartphone performance with an
affordable price tag. For those who thinks that the Galaxy SII is out of
their budget then this Samsung Galaxy S Advance is a very good
alternative for you.
| Samsung Galaxy S Advance I9070 Specs: |
|---|
| Dual-core 1GHz Cortex-A9 MPCore |
| Android OS, v2.3.5 (Gingerbread) |
| 4.0” Super AMOLED (480 x 800) Gorilla Glass display |
| 16GB storage, 768 MB RAM, 2 GB ROM, microSD up to 32GB |
| 5 megapixel camera, LED flash |
| 1.3 megapixel front camera |
| 720p @ 30fps HD video recording |
| HSDPA 14.4 Mbps, HSUPA 5.76 Mbps |
| Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot, WiFi Direct |
| Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP |
| Li-Ion 1500 mAh battery |
| 123.2 x 63 x 9.7 mm |
| 120 g |
| SRP: Php22,990 |
