Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 review: Gone fishing

Gone fishing

GSMArena team, 23 February 2013.

Synthetic benchmarks

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 packs roughly double the processing power of its predecessor with a dual-core 1GHz processor (Cortex-A9 cores), 1GB of RAM and Mali-400MP GPU. It also enjoys the benefits of running Jelly Bean with Google's optimizations to the graphical stack.

We already know that Cortex-A9 isn't the speediest processor core, especially at just 1GHz. It's no match for Krait-based designs, but it can still effectively compete against phones in its price bracket.

Compound benchmarks like AnTuTu and Quadrant put it in the lower mid-range, which is what we expected.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

  • Sony Xperia V
    279
  • Samsung Galaxy Express
    346
  • Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
    409
  • Samsung Galaxy S III mini
    499
  • Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
    552
  • HTC Desire X
    639

AnTuTu

Higher is better

  • HTC One
    22678
  • Sony Xperia Z
    20794
  • Samsung Galaxy S III
    15547
  • Oppo Find 5
    15167
  • HTC Butterfly
    12631
  • Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
    6650

Quadrant

Higher is better

  • Sony Xperia V
    5816
  • Samsung Galaxy Express
    4998
  • Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
    3542
  • Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
    3045
  • Samsung Galaxy Nexus
    2316

Mali-400MP is usually good enough for WVGA resolutions and both NenaMark 2 and Epic Citadel show framerates of over 30fps (both render at screen resolution). Epic Citadel in particular is based on the Unreal Engine 3 (Unreal engines are fairly popular among phone game devs) and it shows the real-world performance to be expected of the Galaxy Xcover 2.

GLBenchmark 2.1 and 2.5 run the tests off-screen (at 720p and 1080p resolutions respectively) so the physical screen resolution doesn't matter and we can compare raw GPU power. The Xcover 2 doesn't do too well here, but with a WVGA screen it won't have any problems (unless someone makes a game that's more resource-heavy than Epic Citadel, but we think that's unlikely in the near future).

NenaMark 2

Higher is better

  • Samsung Galaxy Premier
    55.3
  • Samsung Galaxy S III mini
    38.9
  • Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
    38.7
  • HTC Desire X
    35.4
  • Samsung Galaxy Nexus
    28.7

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

  • Sony Xperia Z
    55.6
  • Nexus 4
    53.9
  • LG Optimus G
    52.6
  • Samsung Galaxy S III
    41.3
  • Oppo Find 5
    38.6
  • Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
    36.4

GLBenchmark 2.1 Egypt (720p offscreen)

Higher is better

  • LG Optimus G
    113
  • Sony Xperia U
    19.6
  • Samsung Galaxy Ace 2
    16.3
  • Samsung Galaxy S III mini
    16
  • Samsung Galaxy S III mini
    16

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

  • Apple iPhone 5
    27
  • Nexus 4
    26
  • Samsung Galaxy S II
    13
  • Samsung Galaxy Express
    12
  • Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
    11
  • HTC One X
    9
  • Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
    6.2

The Galaxy Xcover 2 is close to a Chrome-running Galaxy Nexus in terms of JavaScript performance and close to a Galaxy S II Plus in HTML5 performance. Overall, the Xcover 2 will handle web pages comfortably for some time to come.

SunSpider

Lower is better

  • Sony Xperia V
    1189
  • Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
    1460
  • Samsung Galaxy Express
    1654
  • Samsung Galaxy Nexus
    1863
  • Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
    1901
  • HTC Desire X
    2259

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

  • Sony Xperia V
    1957
  • Samsung Galaxy Express
    1154
  • Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
    1079
  • Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
    1036
  • Samsung Galaxy S III mini
    714

Reader comments

  • Riaan
  • 02 Jun 2017
  • fXi

The phone is almost useless due to one BIG shortcoming. Memory. It has almost nothing and you can't load a single app on the SD disk. You can't even update all the pre existing apps on the phone. It was a pain to work with and switched me off from Sa...

  • Anonymous
  • 12 Feb 2016
  • CAX

Why can't I move apps to my sd card. I mean those already installed. Thanks .. email: kelvistem@gmail.com

  • Anonymous
  • 20 Jun 2015
  • fmg

Please I need the price of X cover2