Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate review: Exciting start

There is a document editor at your service

The Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate comes with the Quickoffice preinstalled. It's one of the most feature-rich mobile editors around. You can view, edit and create Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents (Office 2003 and Office 2007 are supported) and there's a PDF viewer as well. The app enables searching your office files just like in a file explorer.

Quickoffice

Organizer with a ton of options

The calendar has five different types of view: list, daily, weekly, monthly and annually. Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder.

The calendar

The list view (often referred to as Agenda view) shows a list of all the calendar entries from the recent past to the near future. It's a very handy tool when you need to check your appointments for the next few days.

There is also a calculator aboard. It is nicely touch optimized - the buttons are big enough and easy to hit. Turning the phone landscape reveals more advanced calculator functions.

The calculator • Advanced view

The Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate features a decent alarm clock application with a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own start time and repeat pattern.

The Clock app and the alarm options

The Memo and Mini Diary are self-explanatory. The first app works with text only, while the Diary lets you also attach pictures.

You also get a To-Do app called Task and a Voice recorder to round off the organizer functionality.

The Memo and Mini Diary • Task handles your To-Do list • The Voice recorder

Google Maps

Google Maps is a standard part of the Android package and we've covered it many times before. It offers voice-guided navigation in certain countries and falls back to a list of instructions elsewhere. You can plan routes, search for nearby POI and go into the always cool Street View.

Google Maps

The app now uses vector maps, which are very data efficient and easy to cache. It will reroute you if you get off course, even without a data connection.

The latest version also supports indoor navigation for popular shopping destinations and airports across America. It is still in Beta though.

Google Play Store

The Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate has the latest version of Google Play. Upon launch of the Market app you're greeted with the tiled interface of the Featured window. A swipe to the right takes you to the Categories view.

Swiping to the left takes you through Top Paid, Top Free, Top Grossing, Top New Paid, Top New Free and Trending (the ones with growing popularity). New sections are available such as Staff Picks, Editor's Choice and more.

Google Play

Downloads are easy and won't take more than a couple of seconds. Before you agree to download an app, the Market will show you what features the app requires access to (e.g. Internet connectivity, access to the file system, etc.).

Downloading an app