The Focus S is Samsung’s latest Windows Phone handset. It replaces the year-old Samsung Focus and joins the recently launched HTC Titan in AT&T’s lineup of Windows Phone 7.5 handsets. The Focus S is a Sammy handset and features a beautiful Super AMOLED Plus display. It’s a flagship handset that’ll set the standard for the next crop of WP7.5 handsets. Read on to find out how the Focus S lives up to its reputation.
Samsung Focus S Review: a new and improved Windows Phone
The Good
The Bad
Hardware
The Focus S hardware is top notch with a dual-core 1.4 gHz processor, an 8-megapixel camera on the back, a 1.3-megapixel on the front, a gorgeous 4.3-inch (480x800) display, 16 GB onboard storage, Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi and AT&T's flavor of HSDPA+. It has an eye-pleasing Super AMOLED Plus display that makes the retina display look like last year's technology.
Design
The Samsung Focus S looks sharp. The first thing you notice is its large display and thin profile. The phone fits nicely in your hand and is lightweight. The Focus S has a micro-usb port at the bottom, a headphone jack at the top, and several external buttons which makes it easy to turn the phone on/off, adjust the volume or take a photo. Everyrthing is arrangeed nicely except the camera button, which is located at the bottom right. It sticks out a bit and is overly sensitive. At least on my phone, the camera button snaps a picture at the slightest touch. I think I took more pictures of my feet and pants leg, than I did of my family and surroundings.
Build Quality
With its AMOLED display, the Samsung Focus S looks better than it feels. The phone is as light as a feather and has a very plasticky feel. It's not as bad as a feature phone, but you know it will likely scratch or crack when it slips from your hands. The Focus S not as fragile as the glass-encased iPhone, but it's definitely a step down from handsets made with plastic and titanium in their casing. If the Focus S will be your daily driver, I would buy a very good case for it. The one area that Samsung didn't skimp on was the display. The Super AMOLED screen is eye-catching which makes it easy to overlook the handset's other flaws.
Guts And Glory
You won't be disappointed with the performance of the Focus S. It's rock solid, didn't crash and was extremely responsive. It's snappy in all the little things like swiping from image to image in the photo gallery and from message to message in email. Even my husband, who's an iOS user, noticed right away how fast Windows Phone 7.5 performs on the Focus S hardware.
Software
Mango, Mango, Mango. The Focus S is one of a few handsets to ship with Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. Mango looks the same on the surface as its predecessor, but you will see big changes once you start to use the phone.
I won't cover all the changes in Mango, but I will point out a few features that I really liked. Mango includes a revised messaging center that incorporates Facebook chat messages and conversations from Windows Live. It's really nice to have all your messages organized into one hub and not spread out across multiple apps.
Windows Phone 7.5 also opens up its live tiles to third-party software and it's great! I fell in love with Accuweather which displayed my current weather information front and center on my homescreen.
There's also a voice-to-text feature powered by TellMe that'll let you send text messages and search the web using only your voice. It's on par with Siri on the iPhone and Google Voice search on Android. The Focus S ia an AT&T phone and it ships with a variety of AT&T specific apps including AT&T Navigator and AT&T Uverse mobile.
Web Browser, Multimedia And Camera
Web Browser
The handset includes Internet Explorer 9 and its performance is excellent. Pages rendered quickly thanks to the new JavaScript engine and hardware accelerated graphics of WP7.5. I had no problems browsing the web using the Focus S. Links were easy to select and having multiple web pages open didn't affect performance. Pinch to zoom worked great and I really like the search bar at the bottom of the screen. The mobile OS doesn't support Flash, but that's not a big deal now that Adobe has killed Flash for mobile devices.
Camera
The camera on the Focus S was top-notch. It consistently produced high quality images with minimal effort. The automatic white balance picked up the right exposure settings and the phone used the flash appropriately. The flash sometimes over-exposed the image, but that's a problem I've encountered with almost all camera phones.
The camera launches quickly and the time between shots is acceptable. You can zoom and then focus on an object by touching the screen. This is both a blessing and a curse. Often, I would accidentally touch the screen and take a photo before I was ready. I took several pictures of the floor, wall or sky instead of my target.
The Focus S takes great pictures, and it handles video pretty well, too. You can record video at VGA (640x480) and 720P resolution. Similar to photos, the video was bright and crisp and also captured action with ease. Though the camera quality is good, the lack of options left me wanting more. You can set all the standards like white balance and image quality, but there's no panorama mode and no pre-sets for taking night shots, action shot, or a portrait.
Outdoor image with daylight settings.
Outdoor image with daylight settings.
hjhkj
Indoor image with automatic white balance.
kjkkl;;
Indoor image with automatic white balance, macro setting
The Final Take
When all is said and done, I really like the Samsung Focus S. I can forgive it's plastic case, because I can hide that aspect inside a case. What's impressive about the Focus S is Windows Phone 7.5. Mango is a slick operating system and it performs very well on the Focus' hardware. If I lived in an area with strong AT&T coverage (I'm on the fringe), I would buy the Focus S. It would be hard to wean me off the iPhone 4S, but the Focus is a handset that's good enough to tempt me to put the iPhone away for a while.
