On August 29, 2012, Samsung released the world's first WP8 mobile phone, Ativ S. With its launch, it also indicates that the Windows Phone platform has entered a new stage. As the first WP8 mobile phone, the Ativ S carries Samsung's hopes for this platform, but what's special about it? Let's test it together.

The I8750 engineering machine tested in this paper may differ from the officially launched version in performance.

Samsung Ativ S parameters:

Model: Samsung I8750

CPU: Qualcomm S4 MSM8260A dual core 1.5GHz

Operating system: Windows Phone 8.0

Screen: 4.8 inch 1280 * 720 resolution Super AMOLED HD

SIM card type: microSIM

Storage space: 16GB (supporting TF card expansion)

RAM：1GB

Connection: Bluetooth ®, Wi Fi ® IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n, Micro USB, 3.5mm audio interface

Camera: 8 megapixel backlit F/2.6 aperture, 1.9 million front.

Battery: 2300mAh removable

Others: NFC

Size: 137.2x70.5x8.7mm

Weight: 135g

appearance

From the front, the Ativ S looks very similar to the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II, both of which are "cobblestones", with high recognition. At first glance, it seems that it is from Samsung ▼

Handset design is the same as Galaxy Note II ▼

The bottom key is similar to the Galaxy S III, but the entity home key is engraved with a Windows Phone logo, which is very shiny. The return key is set to the left and the search key is set to the right due to WP8's hard regulations. In particular, through the entity home key, you can wake up the phone ▼

The back design is very distinctive. If it looks like this, it is easy to mistake it for a metal wire drawing process. The rear camera is also very Samsung style ▼

Camera close-up, rear 8 megapixel back lit camera, aperture F2.6, with LED fill light ▼

In fact, only the leftmost part of the horn hole at the bottom works, and this design is one of Samsung's rare differentiated designs recently ▼

When you take apart the back cover, you can see that it is also made of plastic. Samsung has always been committed to designing plastic into metal texture ▼

The battery is a detachable 2300mAh milliampere, which is a good capacity for a 4.8 inch mobile phone. This is also one of the few WP8 mobile phones with removable batteries ▼

Close up of card slot, supporting microSD card expansion ▼

Speaker close-up ▼

The top is 3.5mm interface and noise reducing microphone ▼

At the bottom are micro USB and microphone ▼

The body is only 8.7mm thick. This thickness control is excellent for a mobile phone with replaceable batteries. On the right side of the fuselage are the On key and the Photo key. The key switch is placed at a higher position than the Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note II and other mobile phones, so it can prevent misoperation to some extent ▼

Close up of key opening, there is also a slot on the side for opening the rear cover ▼

On the left side of the fuselage is the volume key ▼

By comparing Ativ S with Galaxy Note II, we can see that their "design languages" are very similar ▼

The structure of the rear cover is also similar, of course, there are differences between the two materials ▼

Same as WP8 mobile phone, The style is different from Ativ S ▼

UI

Of course, the interface of Ativ S is still the WP8 standard Metro interface, and the size of tiles can be divided into three ▼

The lock screen interface is also consistent with the style of the previous WP system, in which the reminder ▼ of third-party applications can be added at the bottom

The system settings are not different from other WP8, and the options set are less ▼ than the Lumia 920 of WP8

System information, model: GT-I8750, system: Windows Phone 8, screen resolution: 1280 * 720, OS version: 8.0.10211.204 ▼

Screenshot of app store with "Samsung Zone", where you can find some exclusive apps ▼

Samsung's Chat On ▼

WP8's contacts are a unique place. It can synchronize the contact information of multiple accounts, such as common Microsoft accounts, Sina Weibo, Google accounts, etc. ▼

The author synced Sina Weibo here and can directly see the contact's Weibo update ▼ here

There is a small defect in publishing Weibo updates, which only supports the publishing of text messages ▼

application compatibility

As the screen resolution ratio of Ativ S is 16:9 (1280 * 720), which is different from that of previous WP system phones, compatibility problems may occur in some applications. As the ratio of Lumia 920 is the same as that of WVGA in the WP7 era, it will not show black edges in software. The following is the test results of some common applications.

The left side is the general QQ of the WP system, while the right side is the special QQ ▼ of WP8

The Taobao client of Windows Phone also has a black edge ▼

UC browser, full screen ▼

WeChat, full screen, there are still some differences between the interface and iOS, Android ▼

Tencent video has a black edge and cannot be played in full screen. This is a ▼ that affects the user experience

photograph

The photographing interface is the same as other WP phones ▼

You can also add a "filter" ▼ through third-party applications to take your own photos

The parameters of the Ativ S camera are completely the same as those of Galaxy S III, Galaxy Note II, etc., so the re imaging quality is also very similar. The following is a sample photo (click to view the large picture) ▼

performance

Since WP8's flagship mobile phones all use the same SoC and Ram capacity, and because the systems are highly consistent, their performance is very similar. Here is a simple test.

In the evaluation of Anthare, the score is higher than that of Lumia 920. Of course, this is also because there is something wrong with the score of Lumia 920. The 2D graphics performance test cannot be performed (Ativ S on the left, Lumia 920 on the right)

The web page Javascript performance test Sunspider has a very good test result, which is the highest level in mobile phones. Of course, it has a lot to do with the optimization of IE browser

Microsoft FishIE Tank test, a web page frame test produced by Microsoft to test HTML5, has been widely spread on microblogs recently because Qualcomm uses it as a basis for performance comparison. Here we also use Ativ S to test. Two details should be paid special attention here. One is the number of fish, and the other is the resolution of the test. The first picture is 663 * 1079, and the number of frames is 44 for 20 fish

The second is the horizontal screen. The resolution is 1025 * 490, still 20 fish, and the number of frames reaches 55. It can be seen that this test is very affected by the resolution

This test will have certain requirements on the HTML5 performance of the browser itself. Therefore, to use this test as a benchmark for performance comparison, comparability can only be achieved with the same browser, the same resolution, and the same number of fish.

In the game test, the Wild Racing 7 for WP8 system is used for the test. The overall smoothness is very high, but the image quality is better than the lowest image quality of Android

Assassin's creed, due to compatibility problems, has black edges, but the smoothness is satisfactory

Fruit ninjas also have black edges, and their fluency is not high

Since the hardware performance of WP8 is limited by Microsoft's hard regulations on the hardware platform, the hardware configuration and actual performance of Ativ S, Lumia 920, and Windows Phone 8X are very similar. This configuration is enough to meet daily needs, so don't worry too much in this regard.

Operation demonstration video:

fever

Thanks to the 28nm process Qualcomm S4 dual core processor, the Ativ S's heat control is very good. After 20 minutes of Internet access, 10 minutes of video playback and 15 minutes of games, the temperature is only 35 degrees, and the temperature control is very good ▼

summary

Due to the high unity of WP8 mobile phone configuration and UI, there are not many essential differences in user experience from Ativ S, Lumia 920 and Windows Phone 8X. The difference in hardware is more in product appearance, camera and screen, while the difference in software is some proprietary software. For example, Lumia 920 will have some supporting applications from Nokia, and Ativ S will have some proprietary applications from Samsung, such as ChatON, Live Wallpaper and MiniDiary. In addition, in the application market, each brand will have some applications recommended for download. For the WP8 system, the most important thing to solve is the quantity and quality of applications. On the Ativ S, which has a resolution of 1280 * 720, there will be compatibility problems, which is undoubtedly worse. Although the Lumia 920 is slightly "wonderful" in terms of resolution, its resolution selection is very pleasing in terms of compatibility. Back to the Ativ S itself, it has many competitive advantages, such as the 4.8 inch large screen, removable large capacity batteries, and pluggable tf card expansion. Of course, for Samsung's Super AMOLED HD screen, the screen's gorgeous colors, color cast and Pentile arrangement also need special consideration.

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