Samsung Galaxy Victory 4G LTE Review

Introduction:

While marquee names like Galaxy S and EVO dominate the mobile headlines, most users are not necessarily looking for the absolute latest and greatest in a phone. Shelling out $200 or more is also more than many people want to do, so the mid-range phone is born. Often lacking the sleekness and cutting-edge features of their flagship brethren, mid-range devices often go for the value play by offering good overall performance without doing anything great. Samsung’s Galaxy lineup is headlined by the S III and Note II, but there are many other phones in the family, the newest of which is Sprint’s Galaxy Victory 4G LTE. While the Galaxy Victory may not offer the same specs as the Galaxy S III, it still features a solid spec sheet. Can the Galaxy Victory 4G LTE find a place in Sprint’s lineup, and more importantly your pocket? Read on to find out.

Design:

With its silvery-gray housing, the Galaxy Victory 4G LTE has a fairly non-descript design but offers a unique twist on the Android navigation keys below the screen. In a day when most devices extend the glass to the bottom of the phone and incorporate capacitive keys into it, the Galaxy Victory places its keys on the plastic housing. With a chrome finish that almost looks etched into the device, the capacitive keys may be mistaken as physical buttons when you first glance at the phone.



You can compare the Samsung Galaxy Victory 4G LTE with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Otherwise the Galaxy Victory offers a standard layout, with the 4” WVGA display up front and a 5 megapixel camera around back. The Galaxy Victory gives us both an exposed memory card slot (though that ships empty) and a physical camera key, two features we wish all phones had. The Galaxy Victory is not the smallest phone around, and is noticeably larger than the competition.

While it may not be the smallest phone you can buy, the Galaxy Victory 4G LTE still feels comfortable to use. It isn’t the prettiest phone out there, but it is solidly build and easy to use.

Display:

The LCD display isn’t up to par with the beautiful Super AMOLED found on the Galaxy S III, but at 233 ppi it is no slouch either. In general it is easy on the eyes, though it can wash out in bright lighting.

User Interface, Processor and Memory:


With an Android 4.0.4 underpinning, the Galaxy Victory 4G LTE runs the now-familiar new version of TouchWiz, dubbed Nature UX. Samsung has made many improvements over previous versions of TouchWiz, and the result is overall more cohesion throughout the UI. The Galaxy Victory doesn’t offer all of the bells and whistles of the Galaxy S III, for instance Smart Stay eye-tracking has been stripped out, but the more prominent ones like S Beam and S Voice carry over to this mid-range Galaxy entry.



There are many included apps with the Galaxy Victory, most of which are part of Samsung’s app suite like Media Hub, Samsung Apps and S Suggest (which simply suggests apps from the Play Store.) Samsung has also reworked their keyboard to offer tracing functionality, similar to Swype. For their part, Sprint has kept the bloatware down and only included Sprint Zone Hotspot, Voicemail and ID, at least half of which are functional apps.

Speaking of Sprint ID, while the default pack is the Nature UX and most other packs don’t offer much in the way of content, it is notable that you can install the My ID pack we saw on the Kyocera Rise. That means that users basically have the option of ditching the TouchWiz launcher for vanilla Android 4.0, though the lock screen and apps keep their Samsung redesign. This is at least a step forward, and in a perfect world manufacturers would offer a dual-boot option where you could choose their skin or stock Android.

Processor:

Powered by a 1.2GHz dual core Qualcomm S4 Lite (MSM8960) processor paired with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage, the Galaxy Victory has plenty of power to run Samsung’s Nature UX. The overall experience is smooth, though it did exhibit some lag when moving in and out of apps or the app drawer. The Galaxy Victory performed admirably in our benchmark testing, finishing all of our tests below but within range of the Galaxy S III.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu	NenaMark 2
Samsung Galaxy Victory 4G LTE	4129	5453	58,8
LG Viper 4G LTE	3002	5528	55,9
HTC One S	4867	7012	60,7
Motorola PHOTON Q 4G LTE	4746	6508	56,7

Connectivity and Internet:

With the inclusion of LTE, NFC Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, the Samsung Galaxy Victory offers all of the latest connection standards. The Galaxy Victory has the ability to send files to other devices many ways; via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi direct or with NFC using either S Beam or Android Beam.

While we usually suggest downloading Chrome on Ice Cream Sandwich devices, we found the stock browser to be surprisingly smoother with double tap and pinch to zoom.

Camera:

The Galaxy Victory’s 5MP camera performed quite well, especially in strong, natural light. Macro images showed great detail, and even background detail in portrait images were pretty good. The color reproduction was a bit off, and indoors the images got progressively grainer as the light dimmed, though the single LED flash did a good job lighting up a dark room. Background noise was an issue with the 720p video camera, but overall videos were smooth and clear. While it’s not top-tier quality, all in all the Galaxy Victory is one of the better mid-range cameras we’ve tested.




Samsung Galaxy Victory 4G LTE Sample Video:



Multimedia:

While Google Play Music is pre-loaded, Samsung still includes their own media player as well. The interface is user friendly and pretty enough, but without cloud music support it seems a bit antiquated.

Call quality and Battery:

Callers were impressed with the Galaxy Victory, saying we were clear and without any echo, though they complained we sounded a bit nasally. Still, they said its one of the better phones we’ve tested and gave us an 8.5/10. In general callers sounded good to us as well, though the earpiece was almost too loud, causing some distortion even when set to lower volumes. The speakerphone was plenty loud, but suffered from the same distortion to a lesser degree. We didn’t have any problems understanding callers. The hefty 2100mAh battery is rated for just 7 hours of talk time, but should be enough to get most users through a full day of usage.


Conclusion:

The Samsung Galaxy Victory 4G LTE does a good job of bringing a lot of the functionality and features of the Galaxy S III while remaining more affordable. With a good camera, a nice display and speedy performance the Galaxy Victory offers a lot of value. It may not be as sexy as its big brother, but for $100 on contract you could do a lot worse.

Android 4.0.4
Build IMM76D.L300VPALH1

Samsung Galaxy Victory 4G LTE Review: