REVIEW / Samsung Galaxy Core 4G, 4.5" Screen and Fast Downloads for a Small Price

SPECIFICATIONS

• Operating system (OS) Android
• OS version tested
• Screen size 4.5 inches
• Screen resolution 960 x 540
• Weight 137 g
• Dimensions 132.9 x 66.3 x 9.8 mm

OVERVIEW

Successor to the 2013 Galaxy Core, the Galaxy Core 4G has a bigger screen (4.5" instead of 4.3") and, as its name suggests, 4G connectivity. Samsung is offering this phone at a very attractive price, which logically means a pretty modest spec sheet (low screen resolution, 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, 5 Mpx main camera, VGA front camera, Android Jelly Bean). Having said that, experience has taught us that entry/mid-range handsets have the potential to surprise, and even if they can't boast excellent performance across the board, they can at least offer great value for money.
 

Will this be the case with the Galaxy Core 4G, a phone endowed with 8 GB of internal storage and the option to add a further 64 GB? Will it be a good option for those wanting a phone with a very-fast download speed without breaking the bank? Let's find out.
 

The Galaxy Core 4G currently isn't available in the UK, but it can be found online for around the £180 mark.

DESIGN & HANDLING

Looking for a phone with an original and carefully-crafted look? Yes? You can stop reading now; this is a very ordinary looking device. The Galaxy Core has adopted a classic design with a plastic body (of acceptable quality). With its removable back, the chassis of this phone has been seen many times before. No great originality, then, and nor is any to be found regarding its thickness (9.8 mm) or weight. Its 137 g don't make it the featherweight you can easily pocket and forget about. The weight also isn't evenly distributed across the phone.
 

It fits pretty well in the hand thanks to its reasonable dimensions. Of course, this could've been improved further had Samsung trimmed the borders around the screen...

Lastly, while the finish and build-quality are decent on the whole, we noticed that the screen marks very easily. The screen really shows fingerprints, so much so that it's actually a bit of a challenge to wipe them off.

DISPLAY

The Galaxy Core 4G has seen its screen size revised up compared with its predecessor; it's jumped from 4.3" to 4.5". The resolution hasn't seen such a noticeable increase, going from 854 x 480 to 960 x 540 pixels. While the display doesn't stand out, most of the time, it does a perfectly acceptable job. On that note, we'd say that if you spend a lot of time browsing web pages, for example, you'll inevitably wish you had a slightly better resolution.

So clearly, there's no HD, and nor is there OLED; Samsung reserves this for its premium range. What we've got here is a PLS LCD display, which is Samsung's equivalent of the IPS panels produced by LG or Sharp, and it's easily recognised by its subpixels:

The contrast ratio we measured wasn't great. Far from it. It registered 540:1 in our tests. We also noticed that the blacks lacked depth, which has a knock-on effect on all the colours, making them duller compared with other devices. While we're on the topic of colours, we measured Delta E at 4.9, which is average. So it can't be said that the screen shows accurate colours, but you won't notice a great difference. We measured max brightness at 370 cd/m².

The G2 Mini (4.7" screen with similar resolution, around £180) had a better average picture quality, and achieved better touch response times, too. The LG handset took just 57 ms to respond to a touch gesture, while the Galaxy Core 4G logged 120 ms. This lag time does cause some loss of fluidity. Especially when added to the obvious system lags (read on...).

Viewing angles are pretty wide, which gives good readability; a readability that is spoilt by the smears of fingerprints that you can't easily wipe off.

On the whole, while the screen we tested was completely usable and didn't show any serious problems—it was actually pretty similar to the Xperia M2—we've seen better on slightly bigger and, certainly, more expensive phones (Huawei Ascend G740, Archos 50 Helium...).

INTERFACE & NAVIGATION

The handset is powered by Android, and it's not the most recent iteration: Jelly Bean. As for the UI, there are no great surprises. It's the Samsung-made TouchWiz overlay, which is pretty nice for day-to-day use. It's just a shame that the device suffered some lags (when scrolling through web pages or navigating menus) and didn't really offer reliable smoothness and responsiveness.
 

The dual-core processor, clocked at 1.2 GHz, didn't perform any miracles, and if you're used to a responsive phone, you might be disappointed with the Galaxy Core 4G. Don't expect, for example, to be able to play all types of games, or to be able to download an app or content-heavy webpage in the blink of an eye. The least demanding of users, who don't look at their phone hundreds of times a day, probably won't find anything to complain about, as the Galaxy Core 4G copes well with essential tasks.

MULTIMEDIA

The Galaxy Core's headphone jack socket provides average power and can support the majority of headphones without producing the slightest bit of distortion. Our only gripe was with the dynamic range (difference between the highest and lowest volume), which was really poor (40 dB compared with the 80-90 dB average). As for the speaker, it wasn't amazing. At max volume, the output quickly became saturated and shrill.

The media player supports the most common video formats and codecs. It would, however, be better to download an alternative media player from the Play Store—something like MX player—if you want to be sure of playing pretty much any file type. You'll also get better sub-title options. This handset is fine for watching films and series.
 

CAMERA

With its 5 Mpx camera, the Galaxy Core 4G can, from time to time, do a decent job as a back-up camera, but it's certainly not one to use in any situation. Best to forget about the flash, which leaves subjects completely blown out. Photos in low light gave cold colours, but the picture quality was certainly acceptable. On the whole, pictures lacked detail and suffered quite a lot from noise, but sharpness was perfectly reasonable.
 

Check out the Galaxy Core 4G in our Face-Off.

A bit of good news: the focusing and the image capture/saving are pretty fast.

BATTERY LIFE

Does the Galaxy Core 4G's 2100 mAh battery have a long life? Going purely on our Battery Benchmark test, we'd have to conclude that it doesn't. It didn't give more than twelve hours battery life. In practice, you'll get a good day's use out of it. You'll have to make sure you charge it up every night, though.