Samsung Ativ S review

Samsung’s 4.8-inch Super AMOLED display on the Ativ S really stands out. This is the most important aspect to any smartphone and Samsung's offering is the best the company has right now. Instead of a Super AMOLED Plus panel, Samsung has opted for a 1280 x 720 PenTile AMOLED display. Samsung hasn't managed to produce a phone with an AMOLED Plus display at 720p and it's a little disappointing this hasn't changed for the Ativ S. Despite this, the viewing angles are decent here, but they’re inferior to the Lumia 920 and HTC 8X LCD 2 displays.

Samsung's Ativ S AMOLED PenTile display has the usual blue tint when you view the screen at certain angles, which isn't a major problem in daily use but it's noticeable on occasions. On a sunny day I found the display was reasonable enough, providing you're using the automatic brightness setting or it's set to high. Overall, the colors from Windows Phone 8's UI pop on the AMOLED display and blacks look great. At 306ppi it's not quite as dense as the 8X and 920 (which are smaller but have the same resolution), but I barely noticed any fuzziness. The size of the display means you will need to readjust your grip occasionally to hit fiddly parts of the Windows Phone 8 UI like the vibrate / ringer toggle, but overall I didn't find the interface that cumbersome on the 4.8-inch display thanks to the large Live Tiles in Windows Phone, which make hit targets particularly easy on a big screen.

Samsung basically just lifted both of the cameras from its Galaxy S III, and placed them in the Ativ S. At the front there's a 1.9-megapixel shooter that provides perfectly adequate images. It's not quite as good as HTC's 8X forward-facing camera, but if you're out and want to capture a moment without the assistance of a passer-by then you'll be pleased with the results.

At the rear there's an 8-megapixel camera. As you'd expect, you can produce some excellent daytime images with the Ativ S. Photos are sharp and detailed with no signs of blurriness. Like Vlad noted in our S III review, there's limited dynamic range with these optics; the Ativ S suffers the same issues as the S III, but in most shooting conditions the image will be exactly what you want from your smartphone. There are settings to alter ISO, white balance, and exposure, but Windows Phone doesn't make it particularly easy — forcing you to swap in and out of menus each time.

These settings are where Samsung's camera support ends for Windows Phone. Disappointingly, the company hasn't included any additional modes like burst or panorama and there are no Samsung-made Lenses, a new feature in Windows Phone 8. It's an easy way for OEMs and third-party developers to extend the functionality of the camera, but Samsung has simply overlooked this. The usual tap-to-focus support is present, and a two-stage camera button, but overall it feels like Samsung should have made more effort to extend the camera functionality.

On the video side of things Samsung has made a wise choice, offering 1080p recording by default. I've reviewed a number of Windows Phones and far too often the HD modes simply aren't set as default. This might be healthy for device storage, but it's not great if the average consumer never changes the setting and records in non-HD for the entire life of the device. It's refreshing to see Samsung make this minor, but important, change.

In my day-to-day usage with the Ativ S I had no complaints about call quality or reception. The only time I experienced dropped calls were when I entered a typical black spot near my home on Vodafone’s UK network. Friends and family never complained they couldn’t hear me, so it’s safe to say the microphone placement is solid on the Ativ S. Data was surprisingly fast for me on several occasions using HSDPA+, and it held up despite being on a train journey. I was unable to test LTE coverage and performance here in the UK as most major carriers do not support it yet.

General phone performance is identical to that of similar high-end Windows Phone 8 devices. I played several popular Windows Phone games and never noticed any performance issues with apps or games. One issue I did notice is that the screen touch sensitivity seems to take an extra second to kick in after it wakes up from sleep. If you’re quick at pressing the power button and swiping up straight afterwards, then you might find you’re stopped in your tracks until touch kicks in. The Ativ S uses the same dual-core 1.5GHz S4 processor as the Lumia 920 and HTC 8X. It’s equipped with 1GB of RAM, and I didn’t need any additional speed or memory here as Windows Phone 8 doesn’t demand too much from the hardware it runs on. Windows Phone handles multitasking well in for memory management, although I’d like to see improvements in games and apps to take advantage of the new fast resume capabilities.

Battery life is fairly standard here for a modern smartphone. Samsung has packed in a 2300 mAh battery, but I found it lasted around the same time as my Lumia 920 — around a full day's use. Although the capacity is higher than Nokia’s flagship, the 4.8-inch display likely sucks more power from the device during day-to-day use.