T-Mobile Galaxy S Blaze 4G Hands-on Review

Yet another Samsung Android smartphone showcased at MWC 2012, the T-Mobile Galaxy S Blaze 4G is, obviously, destined to join the ranks of T-Mobile's portfolio of products in the US. So, what can it do to win over some attention from the geeky crowd in the States? Well, basically, the Blaze 4G looks like a well-balanced offering, being packed with some decent hardware, but keeping things firmly placed on the ground, without getting too ambitious.

Right off the bat, we noticed that, typically for a Samsung handset, the Blaze 4G is mostly made of plastic, and having in mind its generic shape,  we don't really think that it will manage to stand out from the rest of the Android gang that's already available. Hardware-wise, there's the Snapdragon S3 processor inside, clocked at 1.5GHz, so we expect plenty of speed with this handset. Indeed, while we were trying it out here, we did notice the fluid nature of the UI.

The 4” Super AMOLED screen on the front of the device doesn't really make a statement either, having the good-old WVGA resolution. Of course, the Super AMOLED technology does its job to cover the imperfections of the relatively lower res.

Other features that you'll find with this new mainstream player include a 5MP camera with autofocus, capable of 720p video recording. Even though you won't be able to record 1080p video though, you'll still be capable of playing it on the device, which is still appreciated.

Currently, the Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G for T-Mobile is running Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but we really hope that the manufacturer is to update it to Ice Cream Sandwich... at some point. But you didn't think you'll get away without TouchWiz, right? Well, of course Samsung has also pre-installed its trusty TouchWiz user interface. So, overall, the situation on the software front is that we'll be pretty much waiting for Samsung to release ICS for this device, until we can start referring to it as a serious contender in the mainstream Android space.

Right now, the Blaze 4G is expected to hit the shelves sometime in late March, at a price of about $149 with a two-year contract. Anyone planning to get this handset?