Samsung Galaxy Reverb (Virgin Mobile)

The $249.99 Samsung Galaxy Reverb is a solid midrange Android smartphone?for Virgin Mobile. It isn't terribly exciting, but it's a good deal better than many other phones in the carrier's lineup. It gets you Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), along with good battery life and call quality, as well as a comfortable design with a good-looking display. But it lacks 4G WiMAX support, the single-core 1.4GHz processor is only average, and it costs $50 more than the comparable HTC One V?. Not only that, but if you spend an extra $50, you can get the dual-core, 4G HTC EVO V. The Samsung Galaxy Reverb is a good smartphone?it's just a little overpriced.

Design and Call Quality
With a pretty basic look, the Galaxy Reverb is made entirely of black plastic, with a lightly textured back panel. It feels flimsy compared with the metal HTC One V, but at least at 4.80 by 2.52 by 0.44 inches (HWD) and 4.55 ounces, it's comfortable to hold and relatively light. The most distinctive feature is the phone's angular chin, ? la Samsung Droid Charge, which juts out a little at the bottom. It's not my cup of tea. Still, it's less extreme than the curved mega-chin on the One V.

The 4-inch, 800-by-480-pixel Super AMOLED display looks bright and crisp, though its PenTile pixel layout makes text and images appear fuzzy if you look closely. The 3.7-inch display on the HTC One V has the same resolution, but it isn't PenTile and the screen is smaller, so it looks sharper. The 4.3-inch screen on the HTC EVO V is also sharper and can display glasses-free 3D images and video. Still, the display on the Galaxy Reverb should make most people happy. There are three capacitive function keys right below it, and typing feels fine on the phone's onscreen keyboard.

The Galaxy Reverb is a dual-band EV-DO Rev. A (800/1900 MHz) handset with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi that works on the standard 2.4GHz band. Call quality was good in my tests. Voices sounded clear in the earpiece, with just a touch of echo. Calls made with the phone were also clear and easy to understand, with average noise cancellation. Calls sounded fine through a?Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset and voice dialing worked over Bluetooth. The speakerphone also sounded fine and is just loud enough to use outdoors. Battery life was good at 8 hours and 42 minutes of talk time.

Data Speeds and Plans
As we discovered in our testing for the?Fastest Mobile Networks, Sprint has the slowest 3G speeds of all the carriers we tested. That means that all 3G-only Sprint, Virgin, and Boost phones, including the Galaxy Reverb, are running at some very slow data speeds. If you live in the coverage area,?4G WiMAX support offers a major boost to the EVO V (Virgin's only 4G phone at the moment), so make sure to take that into account when making your decision.

The best reason to get a phone on Virgin is to tap into the carrier's inexpensive pricing plans. You can get "unlimited" texts and data for just $35 per month with 300 voice minutes. The 1,200 minute plan costs $45, and unlimited voice calling brings the price to $55 per month. If you don't do much talking, that $35 plan is hard to beat?especially considering that a data plan alone will cost you $30 on a carrier like Verizon Wireless, and for that price you're limited to 2GB of data per month. There is a downside for heavy data users: After 2.5GB of full-speed data usage per month, your speeds will be throttled significantly until the end of your billing cycle.

For an additional $15 per month, you can use the Galaxy Reverb as a mobile hotspot. This also gets you an additional 1GB of full-speed data added to your plan.

Processor and OS
The Galaxy Reverb is powered by a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 MSM8655 processor. It turned in solid benchmarks scores for its single-core category, but with the rise of quad-core processors, chipsets like this are really starting to look long in the tooth, especially for high-end gaming. Still, behind the EVO V, this is Virgin's most powerful phone and you should be able to run most of the 600,000+ apps and games available in the Google Play store without a problem.

Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is the version of the OS on board here. For a contract-free phone, that isn't bad. It brings with it a host of improvements that many of Virgin's other phones, stuck on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), won't see. There's no word about an update to Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), and it isn?t something you should count on.

You get five customizable home screens that come preloaded with various apps and widgets. Virgin has added MobileID, which allows you to install different "ID packs" on your phone that include applications, ringtones, wallpapers, and widgets. There's also some bloatware like a Samsung app store, as well as the overpriced Samsung Media Hub, neither of which can be deleted. Still, you get plenty of standard Android benefits, like a fast Web browser and free voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS directions.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
The Galaxy Reverb comes with 1.95GB of free internal storage, along with an empty microSD card slot on the left side of the phone. My 32 and 64GB SanDisk cards worked fine, and the phone is compatible with a large mix of multimedia file formats.

I was able to play all of our music test files, including AAC, FLAC, OGG, WAV, and WMA. Music sounded good through?Altec Lansing Backbeat?Bluetooth headphones as well as wired earphones. The phone was also able to play back all video files, except for DivX, at resolutions up to 720p.

The 5-megapixel auto-focus camera is average. Shutter delay is a little long, at an average of 1.2 seconds. With adequate lighting, photos look good, with reasonable levels of color and detail, though they suffer considerably in lower lighting. Recorded 720p video plays back at a smooth 30 frames per second, though details aren't as sharp as I've seen from phones with comparable cameras. There's also a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat, which you don't get on the HTC One V.

The Samsung Galaxy Reverb is a good midrange Android phone. It just costs more than it should. You can get the HTC One V, which has a nicer display and a better rear camera, for $50 less, though it lacks a front-facing camera for video chat. Or, if you're looking for more power, $50 more gets you the Samsung EVO V 4G, which has a dual-core processor, 4G WiMAX support, and a glasses-free 3D display. Virgin also sells the Apple iPhone 4 and 4S?, which have gorgeous displays and incredible app catalogs, though they're very expensive, and are stuck on 3G speeds.?

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