Review: Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G Surpasses Expectactions

The Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G (clearly another victim of the Android Phone Name Generator) is billed as a mid-range alternative to the Galaxy S II. Normally, I’m not a huge fan of mid-range phones, because they tend to be sad, underpowered compromises that trade performance in favor of a cheaper handset price. That’s why the Blaze is such a breath of fresh air for this category, as it subverts that usual makeup.

A relatively small device, the Blaze sports a 4-inch Super AMOLED display (remember two years ago, when the HTC Evo 4G with a “huge” 4.3-inch screen came out?). A bit thicker than many high-end phones, Blaze feels smaller than anything else I’ve used lately (I think that the Galaxy Note skewed my sense of proportion). The handset has a plastic case, but mostly feels solid. An exception is the metallic-looking rim, which feels like a cheaper plastic than the rest of the device, but looks extremely nice. I especially appreciate the more stylized volume rocker on the Blaze, which looks nicer than the usual symmetrical bar. The device is slightly curved around the edges and has a flat back that rests solidly on the table, compared to many Samsung phones I’ve seen recently.

Compared to most mid-range phones, the Blaze shines when it comes to specs. The 1.5 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 processor, 1 GB of RAM, and the surprising presence of NFC make me wonder how this phone is classified as mid-range. Blaze is little different from what we saw in the U.S. models of the Galaxy S II (Samsung’s flagship when the Blaze launched). T-Mobile’s HSPA+ data speeds surprise me, keeping pace with Verizon and AT&T LTE devices I’ve used recently. I know people often refer to HSPA+ as “fake 4G”, and that may prove true in the long run, but as it stands now, T-Mobile is doing a good job at keeping its customers well supplied with data.

The screen isn’t quite up to par at 480 x 800-pixel resolution, but that’s only in comparison to the amazing resolutions that have been packed into larger screens in the last year. By any other standard, Blaze’s screen looks beautiful, and it has the amazing color saturation of Super AMOLED. The camera is decent, but not stellar at 5 megapixels and handles only 720p HD video recording instead of 1080p. Internal storage and the included microSD card are both only 4 GB. This is what mid-range devices should be like. Some small sacrifices like size and image quality, in exchange for a cheaper price tag and equally great performance.

Battery life was about average on the Blaze. Enough to get me through a day if I’m careful, not enough for the heavy use that lets me run through two batteries in a day on my Galaxy Nexus (as far as I know, nothing but the RAZR Maxx can handle that on one battery). I keep hearing what a battery hog LTE is, so I was hoping to see better out of “fake 4g”. Apparently, it’s the speed, not the acronym, that’s the real problem when it comes to battery life.

Like the Galaxy Note, TouchWiz on the Blaze provides nice features, while adding fewer annoyances than most past versions. Unfortunately, T-Mobile has loaded on what may well be the most bloatware I’ve ever seen on a phone. Devices with this little internal storage need all the space they can get, and T-Mobile takes up far too much with its own apps and bundled third-party apps like Yelp and Zinio. Hopefully, these apps are a big part of why the Blaze is so cheap for such a great phone, because otherwise, I can’t see a good reason for doing this.

The Blaze runs on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), which is a little disappointing this late in the year. This is completely unsurprising, however, given how few devices have moved on to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). The high-end Galaxy S II line only started getting the upgrade last month, and mid-range devices are often even farther behind for upgrades. The Blaze will likely get ICS in the coming months (making that NFC chip far more useful with Android Beam), but I wouldn’t expect to see it ever see the newly released Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean).

If you’re the type to hack your phone to get ahead of that upgrade cycle, I’m sad to say you’ll need to look elsewhere. Though there are custom ROMs for the Blaze, it looks like they’re all based on the stock Gingerbread/TouchWiz combination. CyanogenMod lists the Blaze as “incompatible” with its current development. As the most popular custom ROM, the fact that CyanogenMod won’t touch it means there probably aren’t many developers working on it at all.

That, however, is a minor concern for most users. If you’re looking for something reliable and cheap, the Blaze’s $149 price tag (now reduced to $99) is going to get you a fast phone. You won’t have the most cutting edge software, but you will have a phone that gets the job done and isn’t the size of a dinner plate, which is nothing to sneeze at these days.