Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G review: Thumbs wanted

Synthetic benchmarks

With a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chipset on board, we expected the Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G to be no slouch, and rightfully so. Thanks to the smaller amount of pixels its GPU had to deal with, the device posted impressive benchmark scores, which often bested the current crop of top shelf Android smartphones. Only the HTML based benchmarks proved to be more of a challenge for the smartphone. Here go the scores.

Quadrant

Higher is better

• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  5952
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  5365
• Motorola DROID RAZR M
  5126
• Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G
  5119
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  4814
• Sony Xperia T
  4774
• Motorola Atrix HD
  4178

BenchmarkPi

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G
  264
• Motorola DROID RAZR M
  264
• Sony Xperia T
  269
• Motorola Atrix HD
  294
• HTC One S
  306
• HTC One X
  330
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  344

Linpack

Higher is better

• HTC One S
  210.0
• Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G
  200.3
• Sony Xperia T
  198.9
• Motorola DROID RAZR M
  188.9
• Motorola Atrix HD
  186.4
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  177.1
• HTC One X
  160.9

GLBenchmark 2.1 Egypt (offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  103
• HTC One X (Tegra 3)
  64
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  61
• Sony Xperia T
  55
• Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G
  60

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1304
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1446
• HTC One X
  1468
• Sony Xperia T
  1608
• Motorola Atrix HD
  1647
• Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G
  1689
• HTC One S
  1708
• Motorola DROID RAZR M
  1861

BrowserMark

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S III
  169811
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  147582
• HTC One X
  140270
• Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G
  116786
• Motorola DROID RAZR M
  113620
• Sony Xperia T
  111265
• Motorola Atrix HD
  107535
• HTC One S
  98435

All-in-one phonebook

The phonebook packs an incredibly wide range of features and virtually unlimited storage capacity. The four tabs on top are still present, albeit slightly redesigned, and provide access to the Phone app, Groups, Contacts and Favorites.

As usual, there are various options to filter contacts by phone numbers, groups and multiple sorting. You can import/export contacts to/from the SIM card but you can't display them alongside the phone memory entries.

Samsung have kept the swipes in the phonebook, enabling quick dialing (right swipe) or sending a text message (left swipe).

The phonebook

The Quick contacts feature is there too, displaying, upon a tap on the contact picture, a pop up menu with shortcuts to call, text, email or Google Talk.

Quick contacts

Tapping on a contact reveals all the details available. In Ice Cream Sandwich fashion it shows only two tabs. The first one is the About tab, which shows the person's photo on top. If configured, the right tab displays their latest updates from social networks or Google Talk.

Information is perfectly organized into different sections for phone, email, etc. You can use the back button to go to the full contact list, or tap on the top left corner, just like in vanilla ICS. The top right corner has shortcuts to contact editing and favorites.

Detailed contact view

If the phone book finds duplicate contact entries, it'll prompt joining them. Furthermore, there're a plethora of options once you hit the Menu button. You can view the call history, as well as join, unjoin and share contacts.

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

Vibration patterns can be assigned to each contact

There's plenty of contact information you can assign to each contact and it still remains neatly organized. You have all the types listed (numbers, email addresses, etc.) and, just like the previous version of TouchWiz UI 4.0, there's a plus sign on the right - tapping it adds another item of that type. Pressing the minus sign under it deletes the unneeded field.

Editing contact details

Of course, the real flexibility of the phonebook becomes apparent when you sign into your social networks. After syncing, the phonebook will automatically merge contacts (you can do it manually too), so that the contact details are pulled from the social networks too.

Telephony is great

The dialer and call log have been slightly redesigned and can be accessed through the phonebook, each with a separate tab. Smart Dial is available and works as advertised - it searches names and numbers simultaneously. Only one contact is shown (with contact photo) and you can tap the down arrow to view the rest (the number above the arrow indicates how many contacts have matched your query).

Smart dial works like a charm

Voice dialing is available too and taken care of by the newly added S Voice, which activates on a double tap of the home button. All you need to say is "Hi Galaxy" and speak your command (e.g. "call Dexter"). Or "play" and off it goes. It takes a while to process voice commands but it has more uses than other voice-recognition apps for Android.

The dialer also offers quick shortcuts for making a video call or sending a message instead.

Thanks to the proximity sensor, your screen will automatically turn off during a call. The available options during a call include taking a note, using the keypad, muting, holding the call or adding another call to this conversation.

The call log is the tab next to the dial pad. It displays all the dialed, received and missed calls in one list sorting your call history by contacts.

Call history