Samsung Infuse 4G on AT&T just sounded too big. Ridiculously big. Some 4.5 inches big. If you don’t count the Dell Streak as a smartphone (and we don’t, really), it’s the biggest damn Android device that’s intended to be occasionally used upside your head to make phone calls.
But we’ll clue you in on a little secret: It’s not too big. No, really. We’ve spent the last week or so with the Infuse and have found ourselves thoroughly surprised by just how usable a 4-and-a-half-inch phone can be.
That’s not to say the Infuse is without its quirks. But we put it through its paces the best way we know how — in the field, on the road, and in our hands at the Google IO developer conference.
So how’d it hold up? Read on for our complete review.
There’s no denying it, the Infuse 4G is big. But it’s also thin. And that makes all the difference here. Put it next to, say, the 4.3-inch HTC ThunderBolt, and the differences are pretty apparent. The Infuse is a tall 5.2 inches, and it’s wide at 2.8 inches, but it’s a mere 0.35 inches thick. And that’s the ball game, folks. That and it weighs 4.9 ounces. It’s tall, but it’s thin and light. It’s wiry.
The front of the phone is dominated by the display, of course. It’s at the usual 480×800 resolution. But before you spec nerds go crying for a qHD screen, remember that this is Super AMOLED Plus, and that means 12 subpixels for every one pixel, instead of the standard eight subpixels. In layman’s terms, it’s big, it’s bright, and it’s colorful. (The banding you see in the pictures above and below is the result of the still camera, not the screen.) Above the display is the 1.3MP front-facing camera. One thing you won’t find up here is a notification light, and that’s just criminal.
What’s under the hood
The Infuse doesn’t have one of those newfangled dual-core processors, which is a bit of a shame. But Samsung has ramped up its single-core workhorse to 1.2GHz. And through our use, it’s been plenty fast for daily use.
We’re seeing 428MB of useable RAM. And there’s no lack of storage on this thing. You’ve got 1.59GB of “internal phone storage,” plus another 13GB on an “internal” SD card, and then whatever size microSD card you pop in there. (Our review unit came with a meager 2GB card.)
So it’s not dual-core. Oh well. While we’d love whatever battery savings that could bring, the Infuse isn’t lacking in speed, and it’s got lots of storage space.
Hold the phone, folks. We weren’t really expecting great results from the Infuse 4G when it comes to battery life. First there’s the massive screen — and we don’t care what kind of newfangled battery-saving technology it uses, 4.5-inches is a lot of real estate to light up. And then there’s the fact that a “4G” phone usually suckage when it comes to battery life. But seeing as how AT&T’s “4G” is vastly different (hint: slower/faux/whatever) than LTE, we’re seeing a vastly different experience.
Put it this way: We crank through e-mail like nobody’s business during a show — and especially during Google IO. And on top of that, we were taking pictures left and right with the Infuse’s camera (again, more on that sweet piece of sweetness in a minute), and shooting video, too. So when we hit 4 p.m. and still have 55 percent left? It’s a Christmas miracle, folks.
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