Samsung Conquer 4G

When HTC EVO 4G came out, everyone was in awe as it not only it came with 4G it came with a whole host of power packed specs. Nevertheless, people decided to wait for its price to drop so they could also get hold of that beast. However, with time things change. Samsung has now released the Samsung Conquer 4G which is dubbed to the first budget 4G device.

Design
While it is true that being a budget means it comes with some of its specs stripped down a little for instance the 3.2MP camera, the same cannot be said about its build quality. Samsung has given great attention to detail with the Samsung Conquer 4G. The shiny metal frame gives a good color contrast to the black housing. Adding to that, the side buttons and ports don’t jump out but blend in well. Below the display you will find four hardware buttons which flare downward to give a nice feeling when your thumb is on it. Measuring 4.57 x 2.38 x 0.46 inches, it fits well into your pockets. As mentioned earlier, there are some specs that have to make way for the Samsung Conquer 4G to be a budget 4G phone. One of them is the display. This phone has a 3.5 inch TFT display that comes with support for 16M colors. However, its resolution is only 320×480 which is not up to usual Samsung AMOLED standards. Something’s got to give for this phone to be on the budget end, so this was a decent move. On the back is the second budget feature, the 3.2MP main camera that comes with LED flash. Its true phones these days come with 5MP cameras, but it has been proven time and time again, the numbers don’t mean too much if it’s badly set up. The battery door is covered in tiny nibs and soft touch that gives it an excellent tactile feel. The phone’s got a sophisticated look thanks to the black brushed aluminum, which by the way goes well with the camera housing.

Features
Samsung didn’t give in to the budget phone tagline when it came to raw processing speeds. The Samsung Conquer 4G is powered by a second generation Snapdragon processor that clocks in at 1GHz. Adding on to this, the 1GB RAM gives you a smooth ride while using the apps on the phone. You can even have many apps and still run them smoothly thanks to all the juice the processor is giving.

Much to our delight, the Samsung Conquer 4G runs on the Android v.2.3.4 Gingerbread. However, it gives you mostly stock Android experience which is not necessarily a bad thing.  There are some preloaded softwares, but what some people may not like is the fact that these softwares can’t be uninstalled. Some of the softwares provided are, ThinkFree Office, Adobe Flash and Qik. Nevertheless, since Samsung has been generous enough to leave behind half a gig of free memory on the phone, this means you still have ample of space of other apps. The phone also comes with Swype for your typing pleasure. The Samsung Conquer 4G as we mentioned earlier relies on stock Android stuff, which means the same goes for its music and video players. Say you have a Music Beta account, then you could be streaming music via the cloud or use the 32GB memory card in which you could store all your songs.  Playing videos in Xvid, H.264 or MPEG-4 format was not a problem, but the same cannot be said for DivX videos.

Back to where we left off with the screen on the Samsung Conquer 4G, it is a 3.5 inch TFT display with 16M colors, which means it’s not your usual 4 inch screen that we see these days. With a resolution of only 320 x 480, it’s really a downer given the fact that Samsung is known for its AMOLED screens. However, using a phone with a smaller screen was a not so bad after all. It allowed us to use the phone comfortably with just one hand as the smaller screen means we could reach across the phone with our thumb.
Samsung Conquer 4G’s main camera is a 3.2MP one that has LED flash.  You might have heard this a million times, but just in case you haven’t, those pixels numbers don’t mean too much if the camera doesn’t perform well when taking shots. With this camera, albeit being just 3.2MP, images were great when the lighting was good. However, in shots where there is not so much light pictures started to grain a little. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty decent camera for a budget 4G phone. The front camera is great for video chat, but for some odd reason, Google Talk does not support the Samsung Conquer 4G although it’s running on Android v.2.3.4. Even though video only records at VGA resolution, we were pleasantly surprised with the output.

Being a 4G phone means data and connectivity on this phone is going to come under some scrutiny. So from what we observed, the 4G speeds on the Samsung Conquer 4G was in par with the HTC EVO 3D and the MOTOROLA Photon 4G. It also obviously comes with 3G support as well as Wi-Fi b/g/n support. The stock Android browser did a good job too. Given the processing speeds this phone has got, the double tap to zoom and pinch to zoom both worked flawlessly. Even flash content loaded without a problem.

Moving on to phone performance, the Samsung Conquer 4G has to be one of the best phones in terms of call quality. People on the other end were impressed at how clear our voices were and at the same we could hear them well too. The battery on the other hand gives you about 6 hours of talk time. However, you can go a few days without needing a recharge with light usage.

Pros and Cons
The Samsung Conquer 4G was super fast given the beast that powers it. Amazing call quality was also a plus.

Display could have had better resolution especially since the screen was already a bit small to begin with. The camera didn’t do too good under low light conditions.

Conclusion
Drawing similarities to the LG Optimus One due to the fact that it does what it’s supposed to do at a reasonable price, the Samsung Conquer 4G gets its job done fast and with a hint of style too.