The boys and girls over at iFixit are at it again, tearing apart the latest gadgets to hit the market in order to find out what makes them tick. The latest patient to visit their operating table is the Samsung Galaxy S 4G. Like Samsung’s hugely popular 10+ million unit selling Galaxy S, the 4G model is an exact replica except it offers a new cellular modem by ST-Ericsson, the Thor M5730 to be exact; it’s capable of 21 Mbps HSPA+. T-Mobile, until the Galaxy S 4G, didn’t offer any devices, be it smartphones or laptop modems, that took full advantage of their network. That’s due to change over the course of this year and initial tests performed by Phone Scoop show the Galaxy S 4G hitting real world download speeds of 7.1 Mbps, with an average download speed of 5.5 Mbps. That’s remarkable when you take into account that this thing is supposed to fit inside your pocket and that my first wired broadband connection barely broke 3 Mbps on a good day.
Other things of note are that some of the components that were once made in aluminium have now been replaced by magnesium. It makes the device lighter and stronger. The Atmel mXT 224 touchscreen controller, which gives this Android device the multitouch capabilities we all love to use, is the same one found inside the Motorola Atrix. The battery holds an incredible 1650 mAh of power, larger than most smartphones on the market today, which makes sense when you think about that 4 inch screen and how much more data that modem can churn through compared to previous models.
So now you’re wondering, should you pick this thing up? We say sure, why not? T-Mobile has some of the nicest pricing plans on the market and the Galaxy S 4G downloads web pages way faster than anything else currently available.