Samsung's answer to the iPod touch came in three sizes, and the largest was a behemoth of a product. The design of the device is what give it an immediate draw: it is like a giant, antenna less HTC one made out of the Galaxy's white plastic, where the back is only marred by the Samsung logo, its name, and a giant, average camera. It has three soft keys, no hard home button, but notably, I press these buttons on accident far less frequently than on my S3.
This all makes what is really a nice looking device.
The display of the Galaxy Player should be its defining role: it is a five-inch version of the iPod touch, damn it, I want glorious HD video games and Netflix action. Instead we get a pretty below average 800 x 480 screen. In fact, nothing on the screen looks good. What makes up for everything, is its size. You can touch the display, you always know what buttons you are pressing, even if the buttons look like pixelated detritus.
It is below the screen that the 5 starts to get interesting again: it has a stand-alone GPS and a radio antenna and a larger battery relative to it phone-brothers. At 2,500 mAh, it is bigger than the S3. Whatsmore, because you're probably not going to be running the GPS or the radio antenna, and there is no cellular antenna, the battery lasts what seems like forever. It can go three days without a charge, and it can go a from morning to night with heavy use of Youtube and reddit.
Well, if you don't want to look at anything for three days, if you want to listen to something, you're in luck: the 5's speakers are amazing. They play music clearly and loudly... but they won't work if you try to use the radio, only the native Touch Wiz music player and apps will work with the speaker. The radio requires headphones.
To sum: it is confusing to figure out what Samsung was doing with the Galaxy Player 5. We know they were making an iPod competitor, but did it have to suck so much? If it was part of their strategy to throw everything at the wall until it stuck, which part of the wall were they aiming at? The addition of the GPS, the radio, and the intense battery life, as well as the low performance, makes me think this is a hiking device- throw it in your backpack, put on some earphones, and attack the wilderness, but any wilderness app you could use won't run. It isn't a media player either: video apps come off horribly, video games don't play, and the Touch Wiz music app has sucked and always will. Its radio, stuck in marriage with the headphones, is rendered useless.
It is a phone without an antenna.
The Breakdown
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Design
8
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Display
5
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Software
5
-
Speakers
7
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Performance
5
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Battery life
8
