| Review of the Samsung Galaxy Gio |
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The Samsung Galaxy Gio has been around for a while, but it’s still sold by Bell Mobility for $0 on a 3-year contract. In a way, the Gio is really a poor-man’s Galaxy S, but it has charms of its own that make it worth considering. Last Updated: 29-Feb-2012 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
I didn’t want to compare the
phone to my current day-to-day Android (which happens to be a
Galaxy S II LTE), simply
because the Gio couldn’t possibly hold a candle to that phone. Instead I opted
to compare it to my old Galaxy S Captivate, because the specs on the two phones
are very similar. Both have single-core processors, though the Gio is slightly
slower than the Captivate (800 MHz vs 1 GHz). Both support HSPA to 7.2 Mbps and
they both have a similar amount of RAM (in terms of free RAM once the O/S is
up-and-running, they almost identical). They Captivate has a lot more built-in
Flash memory, but both support MicroSD cards of up to 32 GB. There are other
differences, which I’ll cover later in the review.
RF Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
To test the RF sensitivity of the phone I headed off to Square One to compare
the performance to the Captivate in the Hall of Shame 2 (which is a passageway
that connects between the lower level main hall and the section of the mall
under the parking lot between Sears and Zellers). I tested both phones on
Bell/Telus HSPA, which is a network that can’t survive dragging a call through
that hallway (on any phone I’ve thus far tested). However, it does provide a
predictable signal fade that allows me to determine which of two phones can hang
on to a signal the longest.
I’ve tested many different phones in this way over the years, but never have I
found two phones that were so equal. There was no discernable different in the
way each of the 2 phones faded out, where they eventually lost the signal, nor
how they broke up in the process. It is therefore pretty clear that the Gio and
the Captivate are on par with one another when it comes to pulling in a weak
signal. However, the Captivate isn’t exactly a champ at this, and so neither is
the Gio. I’d therefore have to rate the Gio’s RF performance as
fair-to-middling.
Audio Performance
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, an how to interpret it.
Incoming
Audio: I was rather surprised to find that the Gio doesn’t possess the
same great tonal quality as the other Samsung smartphones I’d either owned or
reviewed over the last year or so. It sounds decided tinny and shallow, though
not horribly so. It suffers from a noticeable amount of background hiss, which
most other Samsungs I’ve tested recently do not (with the exception of the
Galaxy Nexus). The hiss isn’t objectionably loud, but compared to the total
absence of background noise on the Captivate, it also came as a surprise.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the model I tested however was a sympathetic
vibration in the earpiece when the volume is turned up. Even though the Gio can
produce an earpiece volume on par with the Captivate, you can’t really turn it
all the way up or you’ll get the aggravating vibration that sullies the audio.
If the vibration bothers you, the maximum volume of the Gio is effectively much
lower than that of the Captivate. Now it is possible that the vibration isn’t
typical and may be specific to the model I tested, but I have no way of
confirming that.
The above concerns notwithstanding, the incoming audio is acceptably good and
you shouldn’t have too much trouble understanding your callers.
Outgoing Audio: I was definitely disappointed in
the outgoing audio however, because it was relatively faint, somewhat
flat-sounding, and not particularly clear. Compared to the Captivate it was
rather cheap-sounding, though it didn’t suffer the nasal effects that the
noise-cancellation feature of the S II LTE produces.
Loudspeaker: The quality of the speaker on the
other hand was actually very good, though it isn’t particularly loud. In many
ways it’s very similar to the one on the Captivate, in terms of both maximum
volume and overall tonal quality. It works well enough in a phone call, though
you’ll need to be a reasonably quiet environment to use it. For multimedia
purposes it is quite adequate, but it could do with being a bit louder.
As always these days, the quality of the loudspeaker also dictates the volume
and quality of the ringtones. Once again the Gio is approximately on-par with
the Captivate in this respect. Ringtones sound good, but they could do with
being a tad louder.
Hardware
Display: The display on the Gio is certainly not
one of the phone’s superior aspects (which it is on most other Samsung
smartphones). For starters it’s only an LCD, whereas virtually all other Samsung
phones these days use the Super AMOLED displays. Secondly, its only 3.2 inches
in size and it sports only 320 x 480 resolution (vs 4 inches or larger and 480 x
800 or even 720 x 1280) on other Samsung models. As I found with high-end
Motorola Atrix, the biggest drawback to the
type of LCD screen used is how it looks when stuff is smooth-scrolled. The
screen almost distorts as the material is moving, but returns to normal when
things stop.
I thought that the small screen size would compensate for the lower number of
pixels, but in reality it doesn’t work that way. Individual pixels are quite
obvious on the screen and ramping is (pun intended) rampant. One place where the
ramping is painfully obvious is in Google Streetview, especially as you slowly
pan the picture. It’s almost as if they phone doesn’t bother to anti-alias the
resized picture. This theory is supported by the fact that once you zoom in
fully on Streetview that ramping disappears (because now you are viewing the
anti-aliased full-size images sent from Google).
The low resolution is also quite obvious in text, especially when the text gets
small. However, I didn’t find that it hampered day-to-day usability of the phone
and it should only be an issue if you are sensitive to it.
The screen does offer capacitive touch, but it seems to be far less sensitive
than other Samsungs I’ve owned or tried, and it doesn’t seem to be particularly
accurate. While the screen small size and my large fingers were no doubt the
cause of that problem to some extent, I found that touching the screen in
exactly the right location (especially when typing) was far more trouble than
I’d expected. Touching buttons resulted in nothing happening a surprisingly
large percentage of the time. It might not be as problematic for people with
small fingers.
Also absent from the Gio is an ambient light sensor. That means the Gio does not
support auto screen brightness. You must manually set the brightness you want,
and then live with it. If you aren’t a big fan of auto screen brightness
however, this isn’t a huge loss.
Data Performance: Despite having similar specs as
the Captivate, the Gio wasn’t quite as capable at keeping up with faster data
(particularly from a quick WiFi connection). My home internet is frequently
capable of producing upwards of 20 Mbps down and the S II LTE can easily keep up
(which isn’t surprising since it can keep up with LTE connections of upwards of
70 Mbps). On the same 20-Mbps WiFi connection the Captivate is capable of speeds
up to 12 Mbps, but the Gio can only sustain speeds of up to 6 or 8 Mbps.
However, the real shocker is its ping times. When I ping primus.ca
from my home WiFi I can easily get latency of 10 milliseconds or less when I
test it on my computer and approximately 19 to 20 milliseconds when tested on
the S II LTE or the Captivate. However, on the Gio the best ping times I can get
are a really lackluster 40 to 50 milliseconds. I’m not sure how the Captivate
manages to equal the S II LTE while the Gio can barely cope.
Just for fun I ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark on the Gio and I
got a rather disappointing result of 10,000. This compares to 6,100 on the
Captivate and 2,600 on the S II LTE. In the SunSpider test, a lower
number is better. I really only expected the Gio to be 20% worse than the
Captivate based on difference in processor speed, but as you can see the
difference is closer to 40 to 45 percent.
Camera: The rear-facing camera sports only 3.2
megapixels and has no flash. Despite the low-res of the device however, it does
take decent photographs. On the other hand, the video capability of the camera
is pathetic. It can only shoot videos to a maximum resolution of 320 x 240 at 15
frames per second. This is a throwback to almost 10 years ago. So the video
recorder is fine for taking stuff to include in MMS, but otherwise it’s only a
toy.
Memory: The phone has virtually NO internal memory.
The Gio comes with a 2 GB MicroSD card to provide a modicum of storage. The
partition for storing apps is only 181 MB, but fortunately you can move some
apps to the SD card to conserve the precious app memory. The SD card is
easily-accessible (without removing the battery cover) and is capable of
accommodating 32 GB chips. However, you should replace the MicroSD with care,
since most of your phone’s data will be stored on it and replacing the card will
probably end up crashing something.
Available RAM is in the neighborhood of 180 to 200 MB, which is approximately
the same as the Captivate. This is certainly acceptable, but it represents
virtually the minimum you can get by on without the phone become increasingly
sluggish as apps are swapped out of RAM to make room.
Clearly the Gio is not meant for app enthusiasts, though with a little careful
planning you can probably manage to store quite a few.
External Audio: When connected to an external
amplifier or headset for the purpose of listening to music or video soundtracks,
the phone performs quite well. I installed my favorite graphic equalizer (AudioFX)
and I compared the sound quality of the same MP3 files on the Gio and the
Captivate. The Gio isn’t quite as good, but it sounds close enough that music
lovers should be happy with this phone.
GPS: I compared the GPS sensitivity to that of the
Captivate and my S II LTE by locking into satellites from inside of my house.
Sadly the Gio comes away looking very poor. While the S II LTE (and to a
slightly lesser extent the Captivate) have no trouble locking onto enough
satellites to provide sub-10-meter accuracy in just a matter of seconds, the Gio
had considerable trouble locking onto just 3 or 4 satellites and the accuracy
inside my house was around 50 to 100 meters. It could take up to 1 to 2 minutes
to lock when I was indoors and up to 30 seconds outdoors.
Adobe Flash: The Gio DOES NOT support
Adobe Flash. Well, not without rooting it and following some potentially
dangerous instructions you can find out on the web. If you search for the flash
player in the Android Market using the Gio, you’ll not find it. I don’t know why
Samsung (or Bell Mobility) doesn’t allow Flash, though it might be related to
the GPU in the Gio, which might not be powerful enough to support it. However,
it can natively play some video formats, and while you can’t watch videos
directly on a web page, you can play them in a stand-alone player at least.
Oddly, the Bell Mobility web page lists Adobe Flash as a browser feature of the
Gio. Clearly they got this wrong, or their definition of Flash support is
seriously different from mine.
Battery Life: I had a hard time gauging battery
life because the batter meter was perplexingly erratic. For example, the batter
charge would stay at certain percentage for a surprisingly long period of time,
and then drop by 7 or 8 percent all at once. Had that been the result of low
granularity in the battery readings (as is in the case in the Motorola Atrix) it
should have at least been consistent. I would sometimes see the battery percents
go up slightly without charging. However, I got the feeling that you could
expect 1 to 2 days of standby if you don’t run too many background processes.
Lanyard:
A big complaint that I have about many of the Samsung models (and smartphones in
general) is that they don't come with a lanyard post. A lanyard (for those who
haven't heard the word) is the correct way to say wrist strap. The Gio
comes with just such a post, allowing users to connect a wrist strap if they so
desire. This feature should be standard on all smartphones, regardless of
size.
Conclusions
While the Gio is inexpensive (it’s free on a 3-year contract and only $200 to
buy outright) I can only see this phone appealing to extremely light users who
have only recently switched from using dumb phones. If you want a small screen,
there are plenty of other Android models out there that are physically small,
but are markedly more powerful than the Gio.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with the phone, but compared to its slightly
larger brothers, and to other small phones from other manufacturers
(Sony-Ericsson comes to mind), the Gio just doesn’t stand out.
