Samsung Illusion Review

Introduction and Design:

Even though it has been several months since Verizon introduced its first 4G LTE smartphone, the HTC ThunderBolt, not everyone lives in a 4G area or wants to drop a few hundred on a new smartphone. Enter the Samsung Illusion, as it is under $80 with contract, yet has a modest set of features for the budget conscious consumer.

The Samsung Illusion is compact and fits comfortably in the hand, thanks to it only being 0.47” thick and weighing 4.02 oz. It has a minimalistic appearance with black plastic used throughout and a nice grip texture on the back, and also feels well-made and should withstand day-to-day use.



You can compare the Samsung Illusion with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

On the front of the Illusion is a 3.5” TFT display that has an HVGA resolution (320x480 pixels). Even though we usually prefer a larger display, the one on the Illusion allows the phone to be more compact, yet the screen still produces nice looking images and sharp text. The only caveat being it is difficult to view in bright sun light.


Below the display are the four capacitive buttons for accessing the menus, home, back, and search. We find it interesting that the backlight on these can be set for 1.5 seconds, 6 seconds, always on or off – instead of being synced to the display’s backlight timer. On the left side of the device is the volume rocker and microSD memory card slot that comes with a 2GB card pre-installed. Up on top is the 3.5mm headset jack, on the right side is the power/lock key, and on the bottom is the microUSB port. Both the 3MP camera and external speaker are on the back.

Interface:

Running on the Samsung Illusion is Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread, and also features Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface, which places four colorful icons on the bottom of the 5 homescreen for accessing the phone, contacts, messaging and applications. The App Drawer is nothing out of the ordinary, as you move though it side-to-side, or you can change it to a single scrolling view. There is also the standard assortment of Widgets; thought Samsung does add a few of its own for different clocks and a program monitor.


The 1GHz Hummingbird processor with the PowerVR SGX 540 GPU does a nice job with loading apps and making the phone feel quick and responsive, but we do wish there was more than 512MB of RAM. When running the Quadrant Benchmark app, we got a score of 2022, and the AnTuTu Benchmark app was 3262, both of which are middle-of-the-road for budgets smartphones.


Internet:

The WebKit based browser is fairly common and works well on the Illusion. Web sites are properly displayed, scrolling through them is fluid, and Adobe Flash is also supported. Since the device uses Verizon’s 3G EVDO Rev A data network, it took about 50 seconds to fully load the PhoneArena.com web site, compared to 35 seconds on the Samsung Stratosphere that uses Verizon’s 4G LTE network. When using the SpeedTest.net app on the Illusion, we were able to get download speeds of 0.79 Mbps and uploads of 0.72 Mbps. Meanwhile, the Stratosphere using 4G LTE was able to achieve much higher download speeds of 8 Mbps and uploads of 4 Mbps.



Camera:

The camera software is easy to use and offers setting for different shooting modes, scenes, resolutions, white balance, and color effects. When pressing on the camera shutter icon, it takes about 2 seconds for it to capture the image. Pictures that we took outside are average for a 3MP shooter, as detail is OK and colors look more neutral than over-saturated, though bright areas have a tendency to be over-exposed. Since the camera lacks auto-focus, images where the subject is closer than 3-4 feet will be blurry, so keep that in mind. Pictures that we took inside are also passable, but there is plenty of grain in the image as light levels decrease.

Videos can be recorded at 720x480 resolution. The quality isn’t too bad, considering it isn’t HD, as colors again look neutral, detail is good, and plays smooth at 30 frames-per-second.

Samsung Illusion Sample Video:

Performance:

We were pleased with the call quality on the Samsung Illusion, as voices sounded clear and natural on both ends, and there wasn’t any background noise or static. The 1500mAh battery is rated to provide up to 6 hours of talk time or 10 days of standby time. In our testing we were able to get up to 7 hours of continuous talk time on a full charge, or about 11-12 hours of mixed usage, which includes some talk, email, web, app use, and standby.

Conclusion:

Overall, the Samsung Illusion is a compact and capable smartphone that has a budget-friendly price of $79. The 3.5” display is on the small-side, but still works well, and we appreciate the 1GHz processor that makes the device feel snappy. Still, for $20 more, there is the Samsung Stratosphere. Not only is it 4G LTE, but has a 4” Super AMOLED Plus WVGA display, a 5MP auto-focus camera with flash, and a sliding QWERTY keyboard.

Software on tested device:
Android 2.3.5
Kernel: 2.6.35.7-EJ2-CL670540
Build: SCH-I100.EJ2

Samsung Illusion Video Review: