Samsung Conquer 4G (Sprint)

At $99.99 after a two-year service agreement and mail-in rebate, the Samsung Conquer 4G is Sprint's first 4G smartphone to launch at less than $100, although some older 4G phones now cost less than $100 up front. Luckily, the Samsung Conquer 4G is packing plenty of power, fast 4G speeds, and fantastic call quality. It's not designed to compete with Sprint's top-of-the-line Android phones, but it's an excellent bet for getting 4G on a budget.

Design, Call Quality, Performance and Apps
The Conquer 4G looks nice, if not particularly luxurious. It measures 4.6 by 2.4 by .5 inches (HWD) and weighs a refreshingly light 4.1 ounces. The back is made of textured black plastic, with a chrome band separating it from the matte black plastic on the front. The 3.5-inch capacitive LCD has 320-by-480 pixel resolution. Though it's bright, responsive, and standard for midrange Android devices, it pales in comparison to the higher-res screens on most of its 4G brethren. Typing on the on-screen QWERTY keyboard was fine, and the four physical buttons that sit below the display are large and easy to press.

The Conquer 4G connects to Sprint's 3G CDMA and 4G WiMAX networks, as well as to Wi-Fi. 3G and 4G speeds were right on par with the excellent Motorola Photon 4G ($199.99, 4.5 stars). Running Ookla's Speedtest.net app, I saw 4G download speeds up to 9Mbps down, which is pretty great. They averaged closer to 4Mbps, which is still good. Like all Sprint 4G devices, the Conquer is capped at 1.5 Mbps for 4G uploads. The Conquer can also be used as a mobile hotspot to provide network access to up to five devices with the proper plan.

Call quality was great. Voices sound full, rich, and natural in the earpiece, and volume goes incredibly loud. On the other end, calls made with the phone sound good, with decent noise cancellation, though voices could sound a touch muffled. The speakerphone is just loud enough to use outdoors, but voices are somewhat thin and scratchy compared to the earpiece. Calls sounded very clear through an Aliph Jawbone Icon Bluetooth headset ($99, 4 stars), though a bit lacking in depth. Voice dialing worked fine over Bluetooth without training. Battery life was excellent, at 7 hours 42 minutes of talk time.

The Conquer 4G runs the latest version of Android, 2.3.4 (Gingerbread), and Samsung has done very little to mess with it. You won't find Samsung's TouchWiz UI here, which makes this phone appealing to fans of stock Android. There's still some undeletable bloatware, as wells as preloaded Sprint ID packs, so it isn't for diehard Android purists, but zippy performance should make up for that. The phone is powered by a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 MSM8655 processor. Its benchmark scores can't touch those of the latest and greatest dual-core Android devices, but the Conquer ranks among the best of its single-core-class, turning in some excellent numbers. It also tested very well for browser performance, which felt speedy in regular use.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/yHTB87u5du0/0,2817,2391277,00.asp

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