Samsung Galaxy S Advance mid-range Android
HTC thrasher?
Review Things sometimes change fast. Take the HMS Lord Nelson, a fine battleship when laid down in 1905 but almost instantly rendered obsolete by HMS Dreadnought, laid down just a few months later.
Or take HTC’s One V. A 3.7in single-core LCD Android phone now up against a dual-core 4in OLED-screen device for the same contract price of £23 per month.
The S Advance's screen isn't 'retina' but its wonderfully colourful, even outdoors
The Advance looks like it should cost more thanks to its Galaxy Nexus-like asymmetrically curved glass screen. For a four-incher it’s slender and light, measuring only 9.7mm front-to-back and weighing 120g.
Unlike the HTC One series, members of which are hewn from polycarbonate or aluminium, the Advance is a wholly plastic affair. Don’t hold that against it - it’s good quality plastic which, thanks to the gun-metal colouring, looks like metal.
Curiously curvy
These days, a 4in, 480 x 800 screen is not that uncommon in a mid-price handset, but an OLED panel is. Like all of Samsung's S-AMOLED screens it’s wonderfully - if somewhat unnaturally - colourful and works well in bright daylight.
Some folk harp on about Samsung’s pentile matrix screens showing more pixelation than is ideal, but I can’t say it’s something I’ve ever noticed, at least not beyond what I’d expect of any screen with a 233dpi pixel density.
The back cover hides a removable battery and Micro SD slot
Prise off the back and you’ll find a removable 1500mAh battery which proved capable of giving me around 48 hours of use. You'll also find hot-swappable slots for standard-sized Sim and Micro SD cards.
Next page: Giving punters what they want
COMMENTS
This is what counts as a midrange phone these days? Holy crap, I need to try and keep up...
Re: You'd think
I think the candidate reasons are:
a) Samsung prioritised the SIII first and the ICS based version of their phone will deploy to other devices over time.
b) It's a cynical attempt to put some differentiation between this phone and the SIII and to get people to buy up.
Probably it's a bit of both.
No ICS?
Really Samsung? That's just pure laziness. All of HTC's new phone including the dinky low end Desire C have Android 4.0 and Sense 4, there's absolutely no excuse to shove out outdated software.
Re: You'd think
"Or is it just addresing two disparate markets?"
The shaving device belonging to Mr. Occam just called. It said that laziness is the more probable answer.
My Galaxy Note is a fine device, but Apple do not compromise on regular updates for their devices.
