Samsung Galaxy Victory 4G LTE (Sprint)

Sprint's 4G LTE coverage may still be scarce, but if you're buying a new smartphone?you plan to use for the next two years, you should probably get a model that supports it. That seems to be what Samsung is counting on with the $99.99 Samsung Galaxy Victory 4G LTE. Right now, it's Sprint's only 4G LTE phone running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) that costs less than $100, which will definitely help to move some units. But other than that, everything about this phone is just okay, from the call quality to the camera, to the processor and the display. It may be called the Victory, but it's too average to be a winner.

Design and Call Quality
Measuring 4.8 by 2.5 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighing 4.9 ounces, the Victory is bulky for a phone with a 4-inch screen and no keyboard. It's made entirely of slippery, shiny gray plastic that looks and feels a little cheap. Really, everything about this phone suggests that it should be free.

The 4-inch, 800-by-480-pixel display looks perfectly adequate; there's just no wow factor. There are three capacitive touch keys that have been embossed onto the plastic chin beneath the display. I don't care for the look, and they don't work as reliably as on-display keys either. There is often a pronounced delay between pressing a key and the corresponding action taking place; I tapped twice on more than one occasion, though I'm not sure if I had to do that because of lag or because of my first tap didn't register. The onscreen keyboard is a little cramped for typing, but you get used to it.

The Victory supports Sprint's brand new 4G LTE network as well as its much slower 3G network. In this year's?Fastest Mobile Networks?tests we found Sprint's 3G network to be the slowest of the nationwide networks. We also got a chance to?test Sprint's 4G LTE network?and found it to be a vast improvement. Unfortunately, it's only available in a limited number of cities right now, so chances are you'll be stuck with significantly slower speeds until it comes to your town. Sprint LTE is not yet available in New York City, where we tested the Victory, so all of our tests were conducted over 3G.

Reception and call quality are average. Voices sound loud but fuzzy in the phone's earpiece. Transmissions through the mic are a bit muffled, and noise cancellation is average. I had no trouble pairing the phone with my?Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset, and Samsung's Siri-like S Voice assistant worked well. The speakerphone sounds fine and is loud enough to use outdoors. Talk time over 3G was very good at 9 hours and 53 minutes.

Hardware, OS, and Apps
Powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8960 Lite processor, the Victory's benchmark scores were good, but not great. The phone performs much stronger than Sprint's lower-end smartphones, but not quite near top-tier levels. It's still fine for gaming and running most of the 500,000+ apps or games available in the Google Play store, but you're not going to see the same performance as you would on the Galaxy S III; this phone actually has more in common with the Galaxy S II.

The Victory runs Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and there's no word yet on an update to Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). Samsung has left its mark on the OS, but less so here than on its other new devices. You get five home screens to swipe between that come prepopulated with apps and widgets. Samsung has also added a tiny strip at the bottom of the home and app screens that allows you to slide through pages just by dragging a finger over it.

There's some undeletable bloatware, though mercifully less than we've seen on other new handsets recently. Some apps are worth a look, like Kies Air, which lets you view your phone's contacts, messages, and media through a PC's Web browser.?

You also get NFC support and Google Wallet comes preinstalled. And you can use Samsung's S Beam, which allows you to transfer files by tapping two phones together using a combination of NFC and Wi-Fi Direct.

Multimedia and Conclusions
There's an empty, side-mounted microSD card slot on the left edge of the phone. My 32 and 64GB SanDisk cards worked fine in it. You also get 1.75GB of free internal storage.

All of our music test files played back except for FLAC, and sound quality was fine over Altec Lansing BackBeat?Bluetooth headphones, though there was some audible background noise over 3.5mm wired headphones. All test videos played back too, at resolutions up to 1080p, but audio stuttered on DivX files.

The 5-megapixel camera features autofocus and an LED flash. In keeping with the theme, performance is average. Shutter delay is pronounced, at 1.2 seconds. Photos look passable, but colors and details can both be sharper. The camera also records 720p video at 30 frames per second indoors and out, but it looks somewhat blurred. There's a 1.3 megapixel camera on the front of the phone for video chat.

The Samsung Galaxy Victory 4G LTE should be free; if it was, this would be a much different review. But at $100, it's just so overwhelmingly average that I'd recommend you double your investment for a phone with a lot more wow factor. Samsung's own Galaxy S III, or the HTC EVO 4G LTE ?both fit the bill. They have bigger, beautiful displays, faster processors, better cameras, and better call quality. You'll be happy with either one. The LG Viper?is Sprint's other sub-$100 LTE phone, but while it has a better camera and an eco-friendly build, it's still running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), so whether or not that tradeoff is worth it is up to you.?

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