Samsung Galaxy Core LTE review: Fast at the core

Phonebook

The full-featured phonebook is divided into sections that are straightforward and easy to navigate. A call or a message to someone can be initiated directly from the contact list with a right and left swipe respectively, which is really handy on the go and is currently a proprietary Samsung feature.

The phonebook has swipe options for quick dialing/texting

If the phone book finds duplicate contact entries, it'll prompt you to join them. Furthermore, you can view the call history, as well as join, unjoin and share contacts.

There's plenty of contact information you can assign to each contact and it still remains neatly organized.

Editing a contact • Assign custom vibration

You can choose a specific vibration pattern as an incoming call alert for each of your contacts, just like you would a ringtone. A set of predefined patterns is offered, but you can make your own too.

Telephony with native video calling

The Galaxy Core LTE has great earpiece volume and Samsung has even gone as far as adding an in-call equalizer, which does wonders if you want an even louder experience. Native video calls are available right in the phone app, and Smart Dial works like a charm.

Direct Call is available too and lets you dial a number by lifting the phone up to your ear while browsing contacts or reading/composing a message.

The dialer

The Samsung Galaxy Core LTE's loudspeaker earned a Good score in our dedicated loudspeaker test, which means that you shouldn't have a hard time hearing notifications in all but the loudest of environments. You can find more about the testing process here.

Great messaging capabilities

Thanks to its organized threaded view, the messaging department is quite straightforward. It features the same quick swipe gestures found in the phonebook, although they likely won't be used as much here.

Swiping gestures

Thanks to the larger screen, typing is easier than on smaller droids, Samsung or otherwise. Swype-inspired finger tracking is also present, but has limited language support.

Additional input methods include a regular handwriting and Google's voice input, which can work even offline if you've downloaded the required language files.

The Core LTE supports numerous input methods

Adding any multimedia content to the message, like photos or video, automatically turns it into an MMS.

You can customize your speech bubble patterns and background, and use the volume keys to increase or decrease the font in conversations.

Customization options • Upsizing the text with the volume rocker

The Gmail app includes the four inbox options (Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates) that Google recently introduced in their online interface. Samsung's own Email app is similar to Google's, except that it can handle multiple POP or IMAP inboxes, which is useful for when you want to keep track of multiple accounts from one place.

The Gmail and Email apps offer different benefits

The Hangouts app is Google's attempt at creating a one-stop shop for all of your IM needs. The app offers group video chats, emojis, photo exchange, history sync across multiple devices, and can even be integrated to handle your SMS conversations as well.

Hangouts