Review: Samsung Galaxy S Advance (GT-I9070)

As we all know by now, the Samsung SII was a big hit in the market, offering a significant heavyweight competitior from the Android camp with an equally challenging price. Now, Samsung offers consumers the Galaxy S Advance – a more cost-effective solution with almost the same power as its big brother. So how does it shape out?

If we’re talking aesthetics, the S Advance looks stunning, adopting Samsung’s classic and elegant design. It will fit well in the palm of any professionl, and would make the average person look even more attractive. The S Advance has a slightly curved body, serving to make it both sexy and ergonomic. It measures 9.69mm thin and weighs a mere 123.2g, which are pretty common dimensions for your average portable smartphone.

[album: https://gadgetsmagazine.com.ph/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/[email protected]/S Advance controls/]

The physical controls and ports are at a bare minimum, making it look neat and sleek. On the left side you’ll find the volume rocker and on the right is where you’ll discover the hybrid Power/Sleep/Wake button. You connect the USB charger/cable on the bottom, where you’ll also find the 3.5mm jack.

Holding it in position for normal use, you’ll find the familiar physical home button on the lower center, flanked by backlit touch controls to access the Menu, as well as a Back/Return key. On the top left corner you’ll notice the subtle 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for vanity shots and video chat. The main 5-megapixel camera with AF and LED flash is located on the rear of the S Advance. If set on its maximum setting, resulting images from the main cam are at 2560 x 1920, with a file size of approximately 1MB. Additionally, it can also record and playback video of up to 720p@30fps. While the camera isn’t by far one of the best we’ve seen, it will the do the job and will do it well enough to quickly capture a memory.

The S Advance has a 4-inch WVGA sAMOLED screen with a resolution of 480×800, and you’ll notice how bright and vivid colors are as soon as you turn it on. Moreover, the display is quite easy to read even under direct sunlight, which a lot of people will appreciate. Viewing images and videos you’ve captured will look amazing, and the display will be even more stunning once you’re playing your favorite games on the S Advance. The touchscreen is ultra-responsive, and typing text messages and responding to emails was a breeze, even when using the QWERTY keyboard format in portrait mode, which is often difficult with other smartphones.

Running Android Gingerbread 2.3 along with Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, the S Advance is highly intuitive, letting you stay productive, connected and entertained. You get a total of 7 swipeable homescreens, where you can place shortcuts to all your favorite apps for quick access. Additionally, since its powered by a dual core 1.0GHz processor, you can lay back and fully enjoy whatever form of entertainment you dabble in without worrying about hiccups in performance. So whether its keeping up with your social networks, browsing the web, or playing games, the Galaxy S Advance performs well, as expected.

For the sake of technicality, we conducted benchmarks using Quadrant Standard and AnTuTu. The results can be seen below:

[album: https://gadgetsmagazine.com.ph/wp-content/plugins/dm-albums/dm-albums.php?currdir=/wp-content/uploads/dm-albums/[email protected]/S Advance benchmark images/]

With the charts and stats aside, if we’re talking everday use for the average person, the S Advance will satisfy the wants and needs of just about anybody. What impressed us the most is its quick connectivity – it’s able to detect and access any Wi-Fi hotspot instantly and effortlessly, granting you immediate access to the web. Battery life is not so bad either – with normal use, this smartphone lasted around a day before needing to be recharged.

Overall, the Galaxy S Advance is an excellent smartphone which offers your more than what you’re paying for. At a price tag of Php 22,990, it’s a great solution for those who want performance almost equal to the SII, but at a lighter price tag.

Buy Meter: 4.9/5