Design The Samsung Continuum is a slimmer, more compact device than the rest of the Galaxy S family. It measures 4.9 inches tall by 2.3 inches wide by 0.5 inch thick, weighs 4.4 ounces, and has rounded edges for a nice fit in the hand and pants pocket. It has an all-black, lacquered finish, which is very sleek-looking but makes the plastic battery door a little slick and prone to smudges and fingerprints.The Continuum instead has two Super AMOLED displays the main one is 3.4" with a resolution of 480x800, and the second "ticker" display is 1.8" with a 480x96 pixel resolution.
Because of the difference in the main screen size (4" to 3.4"), but having the same WVGA resolution, we found that text and images on the Continuum look sharper and clearer.Ticker displaySo what's the ticker display all about? Well, it's a small, customizable window that streams real-time information from your social networks and your news, sports, entertainment, and weather feeds and acts as a notification area, with the idea being that you can simply look at the ticker display for quick updates rather than having to wake up your phone from its standby state.
To help in this, the Continuum features grip sensor technology that will automatically activate the ticker screen when you touch the bottom sides of the phone with your hand. From there, you can swipe from left to right and vice versa to see your various updates.FeaturesTicker display aside, the Samsung Continuum has a feature set very similar to that of the Samsung Fascinate and other Galaxy S series models. The smartphone ships running Android 2.1, which is disappointing, since Android 2.3 is expected to be released soon.The Continuum supports a number of Google services, including Gmail, Google Talk, and YouTube, but like the Fascinate, its default search engine is set to Bing, not Google.
Internet and ConnectivityThe Samsung Continuum i400 is a dual-band CDMA (800/1900 MHz) handset with high speed data connectivity available through 3G EVDO Rev A or Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n.The standard WebKit-based Android browser is on board to serve your browsing needs, and it does provide for a great overall experience. Pages load very fast and scrolling is smooth, while zooming can be accomplished by double-tap or multi-touch. SoftwareThe Samsung Continuum is a Verizon device, where would it be without included the apps for VCast Music, Tones, and Videos, as well as VZ Navigator for GPS guided driving directions (Google Maps with Navigation can be download from the Market).As an Android handset, the Samsung Continuum has access to over 70K applications via the Android Market, so the variety is great.
There are a few preloaded apps, such as 3G Mobile Hotspot for connecting up to 5 devices wirelessly, Blockbuster movie service, City ID, Kindle, Skype, Twidroyd, Scrabble and Tetris. Samsung has included a file manager, memo pad and Think Free, which is a full Microsoft Office compatible suite that offers local and online document storage, and allows for creation and editing of Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, as well as viewing PDF files.PerformanceThe included Cortex A8 Hummingbird processor is fast, humming along at 1GHz speed.
There was no delay when moving between the 7 home screens, as well as opening apps and switching between them. There is also 2GB of memory on-board, which is used for saving your apps, and also has 512MB of ROM and 384MB of RAM. We are glad to see a preinstalled 8GB microSDHC memory card to provide plenty of room to store your pictures, music, and videos. We preformed the Quadrant Benchmark on the Continuum, which tests the CPU, memory, I/O, 2D and 3D graphics, and got a score of 850, while the Fascinate got 892, and the Motorola DROID X with Android 2.2 got 1410.Call quality.
The speakerphone on the Continuum was noticeably louder due to the two rear speakers, but it experienced some distortion at its highest level, so we had to turn it down a bit for it to sound clearer. Reception on the Continuum was also quite good, with 3-4 bars showing and with a signal of -89 dBm, while the Fascinate wasn't as good with -96dBm, though the Motorola DROID X was in the middle with a signal of -94 dBm. But regardless, we didn't drop any calls while using these phones.BatteryThe Continuum included 1500mAh battery is rated to provide up to 7 hours of talk time or 13 days of standby time on a full charge.
During our testing, we were able to achieve the 7 hours of continuous talk time (same as on the Fascinate), though the Motorola DROID X is still king here with 9.5 hours of talk time. For mixed usage, which includes some talk, text, email, web, app use, and standby, we were able to get about a full 24 hours of use on the Continuum and Fascinate, while the DROID X got up to 32 hours.
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