Samsung ATIV S Neo Review

Introduction

Not content to dominate the Android market only, Samsung has ported over the basic of their winning formula to the Windows Phone platform in the form of the ATIV S Neo. The ATIV S Neo, now available on Sprint, borrows heavily from the Galaxy design with a large HD display, physical Home key and the overall aesthetics. With Windows Phone software not offering much in the way of manufacturer customization, can Samsung’s relatively muted design stand out in the brightly colored world of Nokia and HTC? Read on to find out!

Design

At a passing glance one can be forgiven for confusing the ATIV S Neo for the Galaxy S III. The two share similar colors, design principles and materials. That means the ATIV S Neo uses the same plastic components that the Galaxy S series has been knocked for in the past. It feels very similar in the hands, if not a bit heftier due to the increased thickness and weight. The plastic bits are indeed not up to snuff with high end devices from competitors, but it is no surprise as this is clearly a design decision Samsung is committed to.



The overall feel isn’t bad though, and the phone is put together well without any gaps or creaks. The usual buttons are around the sides, and like all Windows Phone devices the ATIV S Neo has a physical camera key. Like recent Samsung devices the power key is on the right side, although it is placed further down, closer to the middle which takes a bit to get used to. Around back the 8MP camera is flanked by an LED flash and a small speaker.

Display

Once again, Samsung is trying to differentiate itself with their display. At 4.8”, it is the largest Windows Phone display available, slightly edging out the Nokia 625’s 4.7” panel (the international ATIV S is also 4.8”.) While the 0.1” realistically makes no difference, the Nokia only has a meager 480x800 resolution whereas the ATIV S Neo features a 720x1280 pixel display, resulting in pixel density of 306ppi.

Samsung has changed from the AMOLED display on the ATIV S to a TFT LCD panel for the ATIV S Neo. The display is very good, with excellent colors, brightness and viewing angles. We didn’t have any trouble reading it even in direct sunlight.

Interface and Software

Running Windows Phone 8, there isn’t anything new with Samsung’s ATIV S Neo. Microsoft’s Live Tiles are in full effect, and can be added, deleted, rearranged and resized as the user sees fit. The ATIV S Neo has a number of included apps, including Sprint’s Multimedia suite as well as others like Telenav’s Scout and Local Scout and Samsung’s Now. They are all handy in their own way, with Now offering you a quick snapshot at weather, news and stocks and Telenav’s products incorporating navigation and a local recommendation engine, similar to Google Maps.

In general the phone runs smoothly, but it was not uncommon to experience some lag or slight delays when trying to open apps or perform certain function. This is present to some degree with all Windows Phone devices we’ve used, but has been more noticeable on the ATIV S Neo.

Processor and Memory

The Samsung ATIV S Neo is powered by a dual core Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.4GHz, paired with 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory. These are very similar to the HTC 8XT we recently reviewed, but in real world performance the Samsung lagged behind despite having double the internal memory. The ATIV S Neo features a microSD expansion slot, allowing for up to another 64GB of storage, and Microsoft includes 7GB of free SkyDrive storage with all Windows accounts.

Internet and Connectivity

The ATIV S Neo comes loaded with Internet Explorer 10, a good mobile browser that we’ve seen with all other Windows Phone devices. Overall performance is snappy, with smooth pinch or double tap to zoom gestures and good page rendering. One thing we have noticed is that the status bar shows pages are not fully loaded, even though the page seems to be fully functional with nothing missing. Our homepage, for example, still showed only about 85% loaded via the status bar a solid 2 minutes after opening it, but we were able to navigate the entire page without any issue and did not notice any content absent.


The ATIV S Neo supports Sprint’s 1900Mhz LTE band, as well as tri-band CDMA and quad-band GSM for global roaming capabilities. Other connectivity options are as you would expect: Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS as well as DLNA. Samsung’s ATIV Beam app is a user-friendly front end for sending files between devices using either NFC or Bluetooth.

Camera

Samsung has included a run-of-the-mill 8 megapixel camera on the ATIV S Neo. It performed acceptably, but was not a standout. Outdoor images were the best; the ATIV S Neo had good color reproduction and photos looked natural viewed at web-friendly sizes. Blown up to full resolution details were not as crisp as we’d like, and there was definite noise. Indoors produced the same good color reproduction, but noise was significantly increased even without artificial lighting. Even in strong outdoor lighting the ATIV S Neo had some troubled with shadows causing darker than expected images or focus issues, as seen in the pink wall sample.


The Windows Phone camera interface is nice and clean, and one of the nice features of Windows Phone is that you can wake the phone directly to the camera by holding the shutter key. Still, even with that shortcut it took about 6 seconds to snap a photo from sleep. For comparison, we were able to wake our Nexus 4, slide over a screen, open our camera app (which is within a folder) and snap a picture in about the same amount of time. Taking a second picture with the ATIV S Neo took another 2 seconds, as the camera had to refocus even though we were shooting the same object and nothing had moved. Though the software is well designed, it has little in the way of extra features and is much slower than it should be. The MangaCamera app is preloaded, which adds frame and stylization options to your shots.


The ATIV S Neo records video at 1080p and allows you to snap pictures while recording. Video quality was quite acceptable for a smartphone, but videos turned out darker and shakier than we'd like. It did transition well between dark and light areas, and for the most part motion was captured smoothly. The mic was also a bit sensitive, as you can hear the wind noise prominently in our demo video even though it was not a windy day.

Multimedia

The ATIV S Neo does not have any standout multimedia features like the BoomSound speakers found on HTC’s 8XT, but the 720p screen made the ATIV S Neo much more amenable to watching video. It did not have any issues playing our test files, although like other Windows Phone devices it was unable to display all of our album art. The Samsung Link app is the front end for DLNA connection to stream media to other connected devices.

Call Quality

Callers were not impressed with the ATIV S Neo, saying that call quality was acceptable but not great. They described us as nasally, hollow and with somewhat of an echo. They rated us a 7/10 and said it was in the lower echelon of devices we’ve tested. The news was a bit better on our end, with natural voice reproduction and good volume.

Battery

The ATIV S Neo employs a 2000mAh battery, which Samsung claims delivers 15 hours of talk time and nearly 11 days of standby. Off course screen-on time pays a large role in this, so if you are watching a lot of videos or browsing the web for hours at a time that number will go down significantly. Still, these are very good numbers for a smartphone and will get most all users through the day without any need to top off.

Conclusion

With all Windows Phones running nearly identical software and Microsoft employing strict hardware minimums it can be challenging for manufacturers to differentiate their products. Nokia has already chosen to focus on the camera, and HTC is producing their typical top-notch hardware. Samsung’s Android approach has been to include an excess of niche software customizations, but with the less open Windows Phone platform they are not able to do this. They seem to be struggling to find their niche, and instead are just trying to impart the Galaxy S design and hope familiarity will lure customers. Unfortunately, the phone’s good but not great performance makes it poor choice for Windows Phone customers, and makes it especially hard to justify the switch from another smartphone ecosystem.

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