Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate review: Exciting start

User interface: Android Gingerbread and TouchWiz 4.0

The Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate runs Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread with Samsung's TouchWiz launcher out of the box. The user experience is the same as with many other recent Samsung devices, which we've encountered in the past. Check it out on video below.

The lockscreen holds no surprises. It can be swiped away in any direction. The cool feature where missed events (messages, calls etc.) get their own unlock patterns is here too.

The lockscreen is business as usual

The homescreen accommodates tons of widgets with lots of functionality. You can have up to 7 homescreens. A pinch zoom brings you to an aggregate view of all homescreen panes, which can be edited: rearranged, deleted or added.

Widgets, shortcuts or folders are pulled onto the homescreen from a drawer that appears at the bottom of the screen once you enter edit mode (press and hold on an empty spot or do Menu > Add).

The Galaxy Exhilarate homescreen • Editing the homescreen

The numbered dots that identify the homescreen panels serve as a scroll bar too. A press and hold on the dots lets you scroll sideways through the resized images of the available homescreen panes in one short go rather than with several swipes.

Scrolling between homescreens

The app launcher is very similar to the homescreen - you can create folders to go with your shortcuts and you can add, remove and rearrange pages just like you would homescreens.

You can choose List view instead of the regular grid view if you prefer.

The app launcher • Rearranging pages in the app launcher • List view

In typical TouchWiz fashion, there are four shortcuts docked at the bottom of the screen that are visible both on the homescreen and in the app launcher. You can swap the first three with different ones (by default the shortcuts are Phone, Contacts, Messaging), the fourth one being locked. It's the app drawer/home shortcut so it makes sense to always keep it in the same place.

The notification area has been slightly remodeled in TouchWiz 4.0, but there aren't any major changes to the functionality there.

The notification area

The custom task manager, which Samsung have preinstalled, offers a lot of functionality. It also comes with a handy widget which shows you the number of active applications right on your homescreen.

The task manager

The Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate comes with a modest amount of preinstalled AT&T apps. Thankfully, most of them can be removed out of the box.

Synthetic benchmarks

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  408
• Samsung Galaxy S II (ICS)
  452
• Samsung Galaxy S Advance
  530
• Sony Xperia S
  536
• Sony Xperia P
  539
• Sony Xperia ion
  618
• Samsung Exhilarate i577
  657

Linpack

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia ion
  89.8
• Sony Xperia S
  86.4
• Samsung Galaxy S II (ICS)
  77.6
• Samsung Exhilarate i577
  77.1
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  72
• Samsung Galaxy S Advance
  64.74
• Sony Xperia P
  66.9

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  1863
• Apple iPhone 4S (iOS 5.1)
  2217
• Sony Xperia S
  2587
• Sony Xperia ion
  2636
• Samsung Galaxy S Advance
  2663
• Sony Xperia P
  2784
• Samsung Exhilarate i577
  3263

BrowserMark

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S II (ICS)
  111853
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  103591
• Samsung Galaxy S Advance
  81557
• Sony Xperia S
  74708
• Sony Xperia ion
  74990
• Sony Xperia P
  72237
• Samsung Exhilarate i577
  56059

NenaMark 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Exhilarate i577
  53.2
• Samsung Galaxy S II (ICS)
  51.6
• Sony Xperia S
  37.5
• Sony Xperia ion
  37.3
• Samsung Galaxy Nexus
  24
• Sony Xperia P
  29.9