Review: Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate for AT&T
The Exhilarate comes with the latest version of Samsung's TouchWiz installed on Android 2.3.6 “Gingerbread”. (Yes, really, no Ice Cream Sandwich yet.) In daily use, it feels and functions exactly as other Samsung handsets with this combo, though I think it is inexcusable for new phones to ship without Android 4.0 at this point.
There are seven home screens on the Exhilarate. One of the features of Samsung phones that I like is that when you get to the home screen panel furthest to the left or right, you're not stuck cycling back in the direction you came. You can just keep circling through all seven panels without stopping. Wheee!
The main app folder is laid out in an alphabetical grid by default. The grids each hold up to 16 apps and are accessed by sliding the screen left or right. You can choose to rearrange the grid however you like, as well as view the apps in a single, alphabetical list.
There are a significant number of widgets available that can be used to litter the home screen. There aren't any cool lock-screen shortcuts, but at least the notification shade includes access to switch on/off the device's various radios.
On the performance side of the coin, the Exhilarate's Snapdragon S3 processor - a dual-core job at 1.2GHz per core - ran just fine. It was speedy throughout the user interface and applications. I didn't see any part of the phone's software suffer from jitters or lagging.
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Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate
