As you may have heard G Style is celebrating our 7th Birthday and the good people over at Virgin Mobile wanted to help us celebrate by giving one of our lucky readers a Samsung Galaxy Reverb ($249.99 value). The Samsung Galaxy Reverb is the first phone from the Samsung Galaxy family being offered from Virgin Mobile. They even went one step further and sent us a Review unit to let you know how it holds up compared to the more pricey Android phones on the market.
Features
The Reverb features Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), 5MP LED Flash camera with 1.3MP front-facing camera, Google Play, 4″ touchscreen, memory expandable up to 64GB, and Virgin Mobile Packs – pre-packaged with apps, wallpaper and more to help you customize.
Dealmakers or Dealbreakers
It is 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth compatible, and some may see the lack of 4G compatibility as a downside. To be completely honest I saw no real distinguishable differences in performance. I used this phone for a few weeks about as much as I did my Samsung Galaxy S III. In this time I didn’t feel like the Reverb lagged or was any slower surfing the web. Webpages took the same time to load, but there was a slight delay of about 15 seconds in loading a YouTube video on the Reverb. The biggest difference IMO between the two phones is size and camera/camcorder quality. The Reverb has a very respectable 5 MP camera and 1.3 front facing camera is a tad chunkier at approximately .45″ deep and weighs 4.5 ounces which is actually a smidgen lighter than the S III which is 4.7 ounces. The Reverb is 4.8″ in height, 2.52″ wide and about .44″ in-depth. Another difference is the back of the Reverb is slightly textured and feels solid in your hand unlike the slight plasticky feel of the S III. Pretty much the S III made me feel like I needed to run out and find a case immediately while the Reverb makes me feel like it will survive without one. After 12 hours of moderate to heavy use I still had 48% battery left – which is more than I had left on both my S3 an my iPhone which I barely used within the same time frame.
Final Thoughts
Is it worth the $250? I say definitely and the added bonus is not being locked in to a 2 year contract and for an additional $15 a month you can also use it as a hotspot. All Virgin Mobile plans come with unlimited data and messaging with plans as low as $35. Virgin Mobile is definitely stepping up their mobile selections these days. For the price a higher end Android will cost you if you lock yourself into another 2 year contract – you can own this phone commitment free. OR you can be one of our lucky winners this week and get one for FREE* by going to this thread and leaving us a comment.
(Winner will be selected Wednesday 10/17/12*)
