Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 review: Gone fishing
Gone fishing
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