Samsung Galaxy Premier review: A droid of stature

Introduction

Spreading the Galaxy S III magic to as many market segments as possible is what Samsung is actively trying to achieve these days. After the power users were treated to the Note II and those looking for a premium experience in a compact shell got the mini, it's now time for the mid-range market to get some attention.

Samsung Galaxy Premier official photos

The Samsung Galaxy Premier specs sheet is familiar with the 4.65-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen and the dual-core TI OMAP chipset immediately bringing the Galaxy Nexus to mind. However, calling the Premier a Nexus refresh is wildly inaccurate - the Nature UX adds so much character that you'll hardly be able to tell there's so much in common between the two smartphones.

Let's take a look at what the Galaxy Premier is all about.

Key features

• Quad-band GSM and quad-band 3G support
• 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support
• 4.65" 16M-color Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen of HD (720 x 1280 pixels) resolution; Corning Gorilla Glass 2
• Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean with TouchWiz launcher
• 1.5 GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU, PowerVR SGX544 GPU, TI OMAP 4470 chipset, 1GB of RAM
• 8 MP wide-angle lens autofocus camera with LED flash, face, smile and blink detection
• 1080p HD video recording at 30fps
• Dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 b, g, n
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity; GLONASS support, Digital compass
• 8/16GB internal storage, microSD slot
• Accelerometer, gyroscope and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• microUSB port with USB host and TV-out (1080p) support, MHL, charging
• Stereo Bluetooth v4.0
• FM radio with RDS
• 1.9MP secondary video-call camera
• NFC support
• Document editor
• File manager comes preinstalled
• Extremely rich video and audio codec support
• Relatively large 2100 mAh battery

Main disadvantages

• No dedicated camera key
• Dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU usually belongs to a lower market segment
• All plastic body
• PenTile matrix screen of relatively low brightness

Sure, the Samsung Galaxy Premier doesn't have the most exciting specs sheet around, but it takes a formula that was already proven to work and improves on it in a number of key areas. Building on the most popular Nexus smartphone so far, the Premier addresses just about every complaints users had about it.

The mediocre camera is replaced by a more capable 8MP shooter, the chipset got a speed update and a more powerful GPU, while the uninspiring styling got spiced up with a dash of Galaxy S III. There is also an ampler battery to take care of the relatively short endurance and a microSD card slot for cheap memory expansion.

Samsung Galaxy Premier at ours

And yes, the stock Android looks are gone, but they are replaced by the Nature UX, which is not only way more functional, but also the best looking TouchWiz version so far.

Let's see if all those tweaks actually look as promised - the hardware inspection starts right after the break.