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"Almost Perfect!"
on by Carlton-NorthPros Camera flash/video light
Android 2.3
Adjustable camera settings
Good display
No need to remove battery to access MicroSD and SIM card
4G support
Competent Web browsing
Good call clarity
Good battery life
Front-facing camera
1 Ghz processorCons No digital zoom
No AMOLED display
No physical shutter button
Web browsing could be betterSummary This is my 3rd Samsung handset and like the others it is high-quality and loaded with features. It's compact for a smartphone just 4.6 in. tall, 2.2 in. wide, and .5 in. thick, and lightweight at 125 grams. It's made almost entirely of plastic, but that's not all bad because it has great heft, and is easy, and is wel to hold thanks to a soft-touch coating on the battery cover and part of the front and sides.
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Hardware-wise the Exhibit packs some features found on high-end devices. The 3.5 inch, 16 million color support 480x800 LCD capacitive touchscreen looks great and has very high pixel density. The resolution and color reproduction and saturation is very good for an LCD unit, I'd say on-par with the HTC Sensation's S-LCD display. Pictures, graphics, and videos look great. Granted, it can't go blow-for-blow with the Super AMOLED displays, but for the price you'd be hard-pressed to find a better one. It is also very sensitive and responsive to inputs.
The Exhibit has a 1 GHz ARM-A8 Cortex Hummingbird processor, 512mb of RAM, and 1 GB internal storage, expandable to 32GB by a MicroSD card. There's also b/g/n WiFi, multi-touch input, an accelerometer for UI autorotate, proximity sensor to lock the display, and an ambient-light sensor to adjust display brightness.
There are only three physical hardware buttons and they are responsive and sturdy. The up-down volume rocker on the left side, a power/lock/unlock button on the right, and a large home button on the front. Interestingly, unlike other Android phones there are just three capacitive Android keys for menu, back, and search under the screen. Another plus is that the memory and SIM card are both accessible through a spring-loaded slots. The SD card on the left side, and the SIM is just under the battery cover, so you don't need to remove the battery to access them. Way to go Samsung!
The The software feature set is also impressive for a sub-$100 smartphone. Thankfully, the Exhibit isn't loaded down with bloatware like some other handsets. You do get exclusive T-Mobile software like AppPack, T-Mobile Mall (to browse and buy T-Mobile apps), Highlight, Name ID (costs $3.99 a month), T-Mobile TV (to watch popular TV shows), and Quix Video Chat. You also get the preloaded Google Apps like Maps with Navigation, Places, Search, and other Apps like Slacker Radio, TeleNav GPS, navigation,The Exhibit is feature packed, almost bursting at the seams when it comes to software.
It runs "Gingerbread" Android 2.3.3 with Samsung's Touchwhiz interface, which is a good one. It's easy to use and I got the hang of it pretty quickly. It's well-laid out and arranged so all the functions, menus, and "Widgets" are easy to find and use. Thankfully Samsung didn't choke out and destroy the stock Android OS, so it's customizable as well.
The small-for-a-smartphone screen does make typing on the portrait keyboard a little difficult. I have ham hands and it took me a while to get used to it. the landscape keyboard is a different story though with large keys. You do get Swype input functionality though, which is useful. There is also voice text input which works pretty good!
I really like the organizer, plus you can sync your calendar and event notifications to other Android-powered phones and Gmail accounts as well as share media and files (you can't share ones you had to buy) through the AllShare app. As a plus, T-Mobile lets you allow the installation of virtually every 3rd party App on the Market.
You don't get a 5 or 8 MP camera, and you can't shoot 720P or 1080 HD video from the Exhibit. You're stuck with a 3.2 MP (2040x1536) camera and D1 (720x480) video recording, which isn't too bad. Pictures in daylight come out good. Colors are a bit soft and you don't get nearly as many details as with a 5+ MP unit, but they are good enough to print. Low light photos suffer from lots noise which destroys pretty much all fine detail, but thankfully the LED flash is very powerful, illuminating out to 10 feet, so you can take some servicable images. Thre's a front-facing camera for video calling or photos as well.
The flash is also a video light, so videos are also servicable, but only out to about 5 feet. Like all of the Samsung devices I've used, you get a good camera interface with 13 scene modes(candle light, WDR backlight, firework, text, sports, etc.), 3 shooting modes (single, panorama, burst), exposure metering, negative, monocolor, and sepia mode, image quality, adjustable color balance and saturation, exposure value, contrast, and sharpness. Most all of those are also found in the camcorder interface as well.
There's no physical camera shutter button (like most Android phones, touch to focus and shoot), digital zoom, and the shooting performance really needs improvement. It takes about 3-4 seconds to acquire focus and shap the picture, and I've noticed that shot-to-shot times are a bit slow, so don't count on it to get fast follow-up shots. If you want a phone with one of the best cameras I've ever used, get a Samsung Pixon. Probably the most well-rounded camera phone ever (even now in my opinion. I was sad to see mine go). Maybe I'm being picky, but I was spoiled by great cameras! But hey, remember this cost $80 (versus $200), so you really get a lot!
The Touchwiz media player is good and easy to use. There are 9 settings (one customizable) for equalizer, visualization, effects, and file management. Sound quality with media and calling were pretty good. It does what a phone is supposed to do and does it well with good voice quality and clarity. The earpiece and speakerphone could be more powerful though. I have to turn the volumw up high to hear callers over the speaker even indoors. Although it's adequate, the media volume could also use some improvement as I had to turn up the volume when listening to a video or song. Plug in the headphones and it's a different story. I enjoyed the sound quality and loudness.
Web browsing is very good. The Exhibit supports both 3G and HSPA+ 4G connectivity which is a theoretical 21 mbps, but I only saw 6 down and 2 up using Speed Test app running on the network with good signal strength, and about the same on WiFi. It has full Flash support as well, but sometimes pages with lots of Flash content load slow and even stall. To avoid this, you can set the Flash setting to on demand.
Battery life is great. You get a 1500 mah. Li-ion battery that gave me about 3 days with moderate use before it beeped at me. Heavy calling, camera/camcorder flash use, Web browsing, and media player useage will quickly drain the battery, but you'll still get a day and a half out of it which is impressive.
Last one, If you will buy this smartphone I suggest at: www.amazon.com/exec/******/****/B0057JBLAC/***************
Updated on Oct 26, 2011
If you will buy this smartphone I suggest at: www.amazon .com/exec/******/****/B0057JBLAC/*************** -
"The Violet Samsung Exhibit 4g is defective!"
on by DaggerlilyPros None! HOW CAN CNET GIVE THIS PHONE A GOOD REVIEW?
Cons I think three exchanges of this device in less than two months and T-Mobile's refusal to let us choose different phones is Con enough. Locked into a two-year contract with a phone that does not work, and as a counselor this puts my clients and my job in d
Summary Stay away from the Samsung Exhibit, Samsung, and T-Mobile all together! My worst nightmare and I am SHOCKED THAT CNET IS GIVING IT A GOOD REVIEW??? YOU'RE KIDDING RIGHT?????????
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"Worst phone ever!"
on by dan_c_76Pros My contract is up in 3 months, I can get a new phone that hopefully does have some pros to write about
Cons Freezes up several times a day, apps suddenly close for no reason, calls disconnect for no reason, and the not so "friendly" t-mobile support is a joke.
Summary I've been with T-mobile for many years and as soon as this contract is up I will not be with them anymore. Whoever gave this phone a good review was either on drugs or was paid to do so. Sure, the phone worked awesome for the first week or so, then everything went to crap. Sending smoke signals would be more reliable than the exhibit 4g... If it would work as it is supposed to work, it would be a good phone. I wish I still had my first generation razor, at least that worked as advertised!
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"Quirky bugs make me long for my old Blackberry"
on by SlydoPros Fast internet.
Cons Email accounts disappear, locks up, contacts linked erratically, returns to home screen in middle of entering phone numbers, display is difficult to read in moderate daylight.
Summary Enjoyed the phone for about a week - internet a pleasure, plenty of apps - but then the nightmare began. When Facebook app was added, contacts became a mess. Contacts were linked because they had the same first name, so Tom Smith and Tom Doe became one and the same. Other links made no sense (my daughter's friend was linked with our VP of marketing, who shares nothing but a first initial). Trying to determine which of my 700+ contacts are incorrectly linked is bad enough, but trying to unlink them appears impossible.
As if jumbled contacts weren't bad enough (imagine trying to call your daughter back on her friend's phone and getting your VP), the phone will often return to the home screen halfway through entering a phone number or while trying to send a text, forcing the user to start over.
And then there are the disappearing email accounts. Email is no picnic as it is - I knew there's be no push like Blackberry, but it sometimes takes multiple tries to download email, if it downloads at all. But worse, email accounts get deleted from the phone at least once a week, requiring resetting them from scratch and re-downloading all messages (which as stated above is a nightmare in its own right).
Other drawbacks:
1) The phone locks up unexpectedly, requiring removal of the battery to get it going again.
2) The volume button on the side allows the ringtone volume to be set to silent while on a call without the user knowing it. Next thing you know, you've missed half a dozen calls.
3) The camera takes jpg photos that for some reason cannot be opened anywhere but on the phone - not on other phones, not on a computer.
4) Shutter lag is looong.
5) There is no digital zoom.
There's more, but why go into it. At this point, I'm willing to pay the price to get out of this phone after just three months. -
"IF this phone worked as it should, it would be great."
on by murphypoohPros It's cheap, it looks nice, screen is very clear, slim design.
Cons Freezes, battery heats up, needs to be shut off several times a day.
Summary I purchased this phone almost nine months ago. It would freeze up quite a bit particularly when using it for games. I was having to shut it off several times a day. I put up with it until the battery started heating up for seemingly no reason (it could be sitting on the table and would just randomly get hot while not in use) and not because of charging it. I took it into T-mobile and because I have insurance on it, they sent me a "new one" - now, of course, new means "refurbished". I started having problems with the replacement within about two months. I had to power down the phone 4-5 times a day. So...I took it back again. Second refurbished phone had the same issues - freezing up all the time particularly when gaming. I am now on my FOURTH version of this crappy, little phone. I can only assume the good reviews of this phone are from people who had good luck the first time around. Oh, and on this fourth version - the main "home" button squeaks.
Samsung Exhibit 4G user reviews (black, T-Mobile)
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Quick Specifications
- Release date06/22/11
- Service provider T-Mobile
- Talk time Up to 390 min
- Combined with With digital camera / digital player
- Weight 0.3 lbs
- Diagonal screen size 3.5 in
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