Samsung Galaxy Portal Review

Samsung, the omnipresent Korean company that has a hand in almost every kind of electronic gadget you can think of made an attempt at introducing an Android phone with the Samsung Galaxy. Although it was a good phone, the Galaxy lacked a few features that its competitors were able to pull off. Now they’ve come out with the Samsung Galaxy Portal, which is a slimmer version of its predecessor, available at a cheaper price too. Samsung wants to take another stab at mastering the art of making that perfect Android phone.

Your first impression of the Galay Portal is favorable. It feels solid in your hands and the rubberized back cover minimizes the occurrences of slips and falls. The OLED of the Galaxy has been replaced in favor of the LCD screen in the Galaxy Portal, and at 3.2 inches, it is big and bright enough for a smartphone.

Portal’s internal memory has been reduced to only 180MB which is visibly less than the 8GB internal memory that Galaxy offered. Even if you can increase the memory with the help of a MicroSD card, this is one kind of streamlining that doesn’t go down very well with us.

However, we are visibly heartened by the speed of the Portal. It has a processor that runs at 800MHz as compared to the 528MHz processor of the Galaxy. This means applications run faster and you don’t have to worry about the phone freezing up on you if you run too many applications at the same time.

The phone comes with a 3.2-megapixel camera that takes average quality photographs. We confess to be a little surprised since Samsung has always provided above decent camera technology in all its phones. Photos taken on the Portal appear to be a little grainy and less vibrant than other phones in its league.

Finally, if the camera disappoints you a bit, you will be a little perked up with the Portal’s battery life. It has to be the best among all Android devices. The standby and talktime are much better than its predecessor. When in use, the Portal’s battery lasted more than 24 hours, after having made a couple of calls, listening to music, surfing the web, and using it as you normally would. On standby the device lasted for more than two days, that too at full display.

So, what’s the verdict on the Portal? Even though there is nothing drastically wrong with the phone, there is very little in it to excite us. It is functional, tough, and affordable – everything a phone in its segment is supposed to be. But, there is very little oomph in it!

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