Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G review: The middle man
The middle man
There is a document editor at your service
The Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G comes with Polaris Office 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.
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 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 Samsung Galaxy S 4G 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 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.
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.
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
Google recently changed the name of the Android Market in the United States to Google Play Store. The idea behind the move was to put all content, available for your Android device under the same roof.
Quite frankly, the new name and launch icon aside, you will be hard pressed to find any major differences between the old and new setup. See for yourself below.
Reader comments
- AnonD-131986
- 18 May 2014
- t7X
This thing looks pretty much like a mush up of the original i9000 and the BlackBerry 9860.
- AnonD-109677
- 05 Feb 2013
- 4$}
Did you in your review reveal which audio and video formats this phone supports?
- gil
- 04 Feb 2013
- 8cF
Great phone for streaming internet content