Samsung Galaxy xCover (Extreme) Review

1. Introduction2. Hardware Tour - Front3. Hardware Tour - Back4. Hardware Tour - Top/Bottom5. Hardware Tour - Sides6. Rugged Design, Waterproof Ability7. The Android 2.3 Experience8. Texting, Keyboard, Calling9. Web Browser, Other Applications10. The Camera and its Quality11. Hardware Benchmarks12. Browser Benchmarks13. Battery Life14. Closing Thoughts15. View All Pages

Samsung has been the leader of the Android smartphone world for over a year now with their market-leading smartphones such as the Galaxy S and its consequent successor, the Galaxy S II. However their lower end phones have never overly impressed me; so can the Samsung Galaxy xCover (also known as the Extreme in some markets) turn this around?

The Samsung Galaxy xCover comes complete with IP67 certification, meaning it is waterproof in up to 1 metre of water for 30 minutes and is dustproof as well. Backing this up is a previously unseen ARM Marvell chipset with a single core CPU clocked at 800 MHz and 512 MB of RAM.

The most recent of the three tough Androids, with the others being the Motorola Defy series and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active, the xCover comes complete with Android 2.3 Gingerbread and Samsung’s TouchWiz UX skin. But how does it stand up in the real world?

Key Specifications:

• 3.65 inch TN LCD capacitive touch screen with a resolution of 480×320.
• Gorilla Glass strengthened and scratch resistant display.
• Water and dust resistant (IP67 Certification).
• Marvell PXA968 chipset.
• 800 MHz single-core CPU with the Marvell GC800 GPU.
• 512 MB RAM.
• 158 MB of internal storage with available MicroSD slot.
• Android Gingerbread (2.3.6).
• TouchWiz UX.
• 3.2 MP camera with LED flash.
• VGA video recording.
• 1500 mAh, 5.55 Wh battery.
• Weighs 100 grams and is 12mm thick.

For a rugged Android phone the Galaxy xCover has quite a nice feeling in hand, after all it is just 100 grams and 12.1mm thick. This makes it the thinnest and lightest of the three main rugged Androids, the others being the Motorola Defy+ and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active.

Like any other smartphone worthy of your hard earned cash, the front is dominated by the screen. Seen here is a 3.65 inch capacitive touch-screen TN display, which as you might be thinking already, is not all that pretty. Whites and even dark greys take on a blue-hue and colours aren’t all that vibrant. The panel is nowhere near even a basic Super LCD display found on many of HTC’s phones, let alone Samsung’s usual Super AMOLED displays.

I am not sure if it was just my review unit but viewing angles were fairly decent except when viewing the display at a horizontal angle where the back key is closer to you than the menu key. At this angle there is a dead spot in the display where colours become inverted and completely washed out. Whereas if you flipped the phone around, looking at it with the menu key closer to you colours would be viewed as normal. This also caused a woeful 3D layering effect that was disorienting at times.

Discussing the screen some more, it has a measly 320×480 (HVGA) resolution that has been previously found on early editions of the iPhone and smaller phones like the LG P500 and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active. Thanks to this there is some obvious pixelation occurring; to the extent where the display struggles to differentiate the signal bars of the Wi-Fi indicator in the status bar.

The Motorola Defy which is virtually the same price has a screen that is ever so slightly bigger and a much more eye-friendly resolution of 480×854.

Looking into the PPI counts of competing phones, the xCover being used as a benchmark has a PPI count of 158. Even the HTC Sensation XL, which is often bashed for its silly resolution on a big screen has a comparatively impressive PPI count of 199. “Retina” displays are generally considered to have PPI counts of over 310. This includes recent iPhones and the recently launched HTC One X.

To add to the pain there is no auto-brightness setting, nor is it enabled into the software by default. Requiring a painful trek to the display settings when going from a dark theatre to a day full of sunshine.

It should be said that there is a massive amount of bezel area surrounding the display. The front of the phone itself is as large as the HTC Incredible S while having a screen that is noticeable smaller (the Incredible S’ screen is 4 inches across.)

Moving away from the disappointment of the display, above the screen it is some Samsung branding and a rather small speaker grille. There is no notification LED found here, something I dearly missed coming from an HTC phone.

Below the screen there are three Android buttons, menu, home and back. These buttons are in fact actual physical buttons and are not capacitive buttons like those found on most Android smartphones. There is no search button but it was never truly missed. However a long hold of the menu key does this job for you if you find yourself in need of it.

These physical buttons were surprisingly pleasant to use but because they are not backlit it does make the operating system slightly harder to navigate in the dark. But because they have a raised profile and a faux-metallic rim you should get used to where the home button is pretty quickly. I still never mastered using the buttons in the dark it should be said.

Outside the screen and the surrounding bezel area is the colourful portion of the phone, in my case a nice bronze colour. It is also available in silver. This plastic rim is where the main microphone is located.The back of the Galaxy xCover is where you get your first opportunity to realise this phone is of the rugged and waterproof breed. There is a lock that secures the back cover in place which while useful if you drop your phone, also helps create a waterproof seal between the back cover and the main body.

Strangely Samsung includes a sticker telling you to not turn this lock with your fingernails, instead recommending the use of a coin.

Near the top there is a single LED flash, the 3.2 MP camera and the speaker, all in a neat row.

The speaker was actually quite vibrant, naturally bass was lacking on a speaker of its size but mids and highs sounded good. It was also satisfyingly loud.

At each corner on the back of the phone there is a raised edge which raises the phone off a flat surface. This decreases the risk of the camera lens and the LED flash getting scratched or damaged in other ways.

If you open up the back of the phone you will see how the phone is waterproofed, the battery and other electrical components are enclosed within an inner shell. This shell is enclosed by a plastic rim on the inside of the back cover which creates a seal with a moat around the battery compartment.

Already I get the feeling this phone will not be as waterproof as the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active which not only had a cover to make the phone pretty but also a tough plastic piece rimmed with rubber to ensure no moisture gets in – or out.

Removing the 1500 mAh battery from within its waterproof compartment will reveal the SIM card and MicroSD slots.

The top of the Samsung Galaxy xCover includes a single 3.5mm headphone jack complete with a cover to keep dust and water out, which is all a part of its IP67 certification.

It is tied to the phone through a plastic thread and held in place by a plastic tab. Both of which I could see being a problem over time. I only had the xCover for just under a fortnight and after that time closing this port didn’t give the satisfying click it did on day one.

The bottom of the phone holds a standard Micro-USB port used for charging and data transfer. The port itself is behind a cover which has a plastic/rubber seal to ensure water does not seep in; something the headphone port does not have.

The port itself is recessed into the phone by about 5mm which does cause problems with many cables. I had to rely on just one of my five Micro-USB cables to ensure USB connectivity. This also explains why the tip of the cable I got from Samsung is 5mm thick at its plastic shielding compared to 8mm of the other four cables I have. While all of them could charge the xCover just fine, don’t be too confident when it comes to file transfers.

From a design point of view I really quite like the covered ports; waterproof phone or not. It adds a lot of uniformity to the phone with no exposed ports taking away from the design. From a functionality point of view however they’re not as wonderful for the reasons I have already gone into.

Both sides of the Samsung Galaxy xCover are identical except for the volume rocker and power button. Roughly two thirds of each side is covered by a recessed texture to allow a better grip when the phone is wet; or when it’s a hot, summer day and your hands are sweaty.

On the left side above the aforementioned textured grip is the two-stage volume rocker, of which is one of the most pleasant ones I have used in recent times. Slightly above the rocker is a torch icon; the LED on the back can be activated by holding down volume up for a second. This only works when the screen is off however.

Flipping the phone over onto its other side you will find the singular power button in the typical Samsung position about two thirds of the way up the edge of the phone.

The Samsung Galaxy xCover is tough by name, but is it really? Sure it has IP67 certification that means it is water resistant in waist deep water for 30 minutes plus being dust and dirt proof but the phone in hand doesn’t feel overly rugged if I have to be honest.

The plastics used on the phone gives off a strong cheap sense. But while the build materials are rather cheap, build quality is up there. As light as the plastics may be, because of the rather simple design of the phone itself, they don’t feel as if they’re going to be the first component to fail on this device.

The Galaxy xCover gives off more of a “oh whoops I dropped my phone in water” vibe rather than creating a “take the phone and the dog to the park and play fetch” reaction. The latter is the reaction I got from my time with the Xperia Active I have already mentioned several times.

Where the Active felt as if it could be used as a (rather poor) skimming stone the xCover feels about as good for a source of music in the shower. Where the Active would alert me that the external ports are open, the competitor from Samsung does not. Where the Active has wet finger tracking technology as part of its display, once again the xCover is left lacking.

I’m not saying it isn’t tough though. It will obviously survive more than most smartphones, the xCover is akin to the old Nokia candybars everyone used to have in terms of durability.

The review wouldn’t be complete with a quick water dip either so I took it with me on a walk lasting some 30 minutes in a steady downpour; with no umbrella. It then happily sat in a rather soaked pair of shorts for half a morning. Only to later take a dip under a heavy waterfall (faucet) and sit in a lake (sink) for a few minutes. I have read elsewhere that some reviewers found that water had leaked into the battery compartment, I can say with confidence that this didn’t happen to my unit.

Point being, if you are looking for a truly rugged phone, you honestly cannot go past the Xperia Active. If you are looking for something waterproof and somewhat rugged, then you get to choose from the xCover, Active or Motorola’s Defy.

Software Overview

The Samsung Galaxy xCover comes running on Android 2.3.6 with Samsung’s TouchWiz UX layered over the top. For those not in the know Google offers a stock Android experience that can be modified through custom skins and launchers, in the xCover this is the function of TouchWiz. HTC’s skin is called Sense, while Motorola’s skin is widely accepted as MotoBlur.

Also I am told the xCover will never get an update to the latest version of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich “as the hardware will not support ICS”. Needless to say the single core Marvell chipset and its associated GC800 GPU, unseen on any other phone, will require more resources than Samsung wishes to commit to get Android 4.0 running on an mid-range, niche market smartphone. So if you do decide to buy the xCover don’t go in expecting any major updates.

Samsung’s TouchWiz UX software skin offers up some interesting differences to HTC’s Sense and the stock experience found on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. To me at least a lot of things appear to be a whole lot less functional and presents the end user a more iOS-like experience.

Lockscreen

Starting with the lockscreen it is about as basic as you can get, showing just a digital clock and today’s date. Not even music controls or weather information can be displayed. Although you do get a little tab to swipe from right to left if you have a new text message.

Slide to unlock is here by default and was pretty horrible to use. You have to swipe the whole image off the display rather than just flick a little circle around. Due to Samsung’s back end it required a pretty decent slide of one’s fingers rather than a quick flick, something that frustrated me on numerous occasions.

One thing TouchWiz UX steals from the tablet optimised Android 3.X Honeycomb is the ability to enter your pattern code, PIN or password straight from the lockscreen with no need for a preliminary slide-to-unlock.

Homescreens

Once you’ve discovered how annoying unlocking the phone is say hello to your Android homescreen. Like I noticed, you will likely experience a sluggishness in the interface for a few seconds after the phone has been asleep for a while as the CPU recovers from a deep sleep.

Whether you’re on the homescreens or in the application drawer you will have a set of buttons at the bottom of your screen; shortcuts to the phone, contacts, messaging and application drawer/homescreens. These can not be changed at all, for example changing out the messaging shortcut for Gmail if you never text people is not something you are able to do.

It would definitely be wise to check out the Google Play store for some decent widgets as the ones included don’t add much to the Android experience. The included widgets are few in number, meaning you are limited to some basic clock modules, including the TouchWiz skin one shown in the screenshot up a bit, a task manager and an AccuWeather.com widget.

All the clock widgets do absolutely nothing. Want quick access to your alarms or calendars? Honestly, just don’t even bother with the included clock widgets. Although they do cause the phone to vibrate so there’s a missing link here. Bug counter: One.

Annoyingly the ability to quickly switch from silent, vibrate and call modes is not present. I love the ability to easily switch between them using the volume rocker. Holding down the volume down button will result in vibrate mode being activated but silent mode is not enabled with an extra click. To switch between them you must go into sound settings. This could just be me but it is sort of a big deal.

As with any Android phone going back as far as time itself can remember dragging down on the status bar will reveal the notification overlay. This is where all your notifications like new emails and missed calls will be found. It also allows you to quickly change popular settings such as Wi-Fi and GPS and also clear all your current notifications.

You can also access a basic multitasking overlay by holding down the home button.

Application Drawer

Tapping the permanently placed application drawer button in the bottom right of the homescreen will take you straight to the application drawer. Imagine Apple’s iOS before folders were included and you have the xCover’s application drawer summed up pretty well.

The 4×4 grid of applications can be organised in anyway you please, you’ll just have to do it manually and be left with carpal tunnel by the time you’re done. If you didn’t pick it up; there is absolutely no option to quickly sort applications by date downloaded, alphabetical etc.

This is a complete pain for me, once you have a complete and rather standard set of 50 applications on there it is near impossible to quickly find an application without any thoughtful organisation or search aids.

Although if you have a keen eye for icons on a low resolution screen you can pinch-zoom outwards and be presented with an overview of all application pages. Tap the page of your choice and you’ll be taken to the standard view of it.

Text Messaging

As with any device I get for review it is used as my main phone for a few days before I get into the nitty gritty of a review. However, as I am probably among the youngest 10% of Kitguru’s readership I am not sure how many of you are interested in texting these days.

Upon opening the messaging application, from either the homescreen or the application drawer you’re presented with the option to compose a new message or browse through existing threads.

Composing a text was a straight forward and easy; ignoring the fact that sending texts are generally easy to send. Just start typing in a name or number and you’ll be shown a list of possible contacts.

Going into a conversation you will find the standard threaded view, which alone is worth buying a smartphone over a featurephone these days. You’ll find your own sent messages in a pale blue and any you recieve in a yellow.

Up the top of the screen there is nothing, save for the name of the other person and their number. If you wish to view their contact card, insert a smiley or add a subject it will require you to bring up the menu bar.

Keyboard

There are two keyboards installed by default on the xCover, the standard Samsung one and Swype. I didn’t find myself as a big fan of Swype so I used Samsung’s QWERTY keypad the majority of the time I had my unit. There is also handwriting recognition support which is just plain horrible.

Straight off the bat many people will notice the lack of readily accessible smilies. You will either have to long press ‘.’ which gives a small option of smilies and some commonly used punctuation or go to the alternate keyboard and flip through to the third page.

Typing on the 3.65 inch screen was easy enough, both in portrait and landscape modes. Input lag was not noticeable at all except when entering forms on script heavy websites.

Samsung’s predictive system works well; if a little aggressive through transforming words automatically as you type. Entering caps lock required a long press of shift rather than a quick double tap.

Call Quality

I admit I am not a big user of phones for what they were originally designed for but the calls that I did make the sound quality was good and the speaker was satisfying loud, loud enough for a quick call in a shopping mall.

Whoever was on the other end of the line never had any problems understanding me, an impressive feat considering I live in somewhat of a dead zone for mobile coverage on my particular carrier.

Web Browser

For a phone with rather low-end hardware the browser experience is rather amazing. Maybe it’s because the single core Marvell processor has less pixels to compute but performance is smooth.

Scrolling performance is surprisingly quite close to an iOS, Windows Phone 7 or more expensive Android smartphone and can handle large desktop sites with a surprising degree of ease.

The poor resolution screen means that anything but the main banner and large header text is pixelated or completly unreadable. However this is where the browser’s text flow ability comes into effect. It makes any website or article easily readable.

As is commonplace on a smartphone there is tab or “windows” support, although in the case of the xCover it only supports up to four windows at any one time.

Samsung’s browser adds in a useful ability if the website you are browsing has a RSS feed. Clicking the RSS feed icon in the URL bar will allow you to add the feed to your Google Reader account.

Another useful feature is being able to add a bookmark shortcut to your homescreens. This can effectively replace many applications that are effectively a mobile site in an application. Replacing applications with shortcuts will no doubt help out with the limited memory problem the xCover suffers from.

Adobe Flash Player is not installed from the get go but performance is rather sluggish and you’re better off using the official Youtube application or the closest PC for Flash-heavy websites.

Page Loading

Doing some rather unscientific tests it took the xCover just over thirty seconds to load and render the Kitguru homepage, 3 seconds to load up Google’s mobile search page and 8 seconds to load BBC’s mobile site. This was over Wi-Fi on a 10 Mb/s connection.

Page loading is nowhere near top of the line thanks to the xCovers rather meagre single core Marvell chipset. The low resolution display is going to sit you down in front of a PC sooner than the slower page loading, however.

On a whole page loading was livable but rather poor. I also ran a few tests using Opera Mobile but the different browser made no significant difference to load times.

Other Included Applications

Samsung also includes a Social Hub application which can be summed up in one word: useless. It looks like something even I could code in roughly 20 minutes.

The screenshot explains most of it, but what it doesn’t show is that it doesn’t even load the official Twitter and Facebook applications. Instead the code running (hopefully away) thinks it is smarter to load mobile versions of the sites in the browser.

Bloatware was few and far between with the only third party applications being a download link to Polaris Office in the Samsung app store and a trial version of Cardio Trainer.Although it would be safe to assume there will be some bloatware on your xCover if you source it from a carrier.

Camera Application Overview

The Samsung Galaxy xCover has a 3.2 MP camera that is also capable of VGA video recording at 25 FPS. Pictures are compressed as JPEGs and videos as MP4. We’ll get to some samples in a little bit, but first a quick tour of the default camera/camcorder application.

Upon opening the camera you will be faced with a overlay that includes shooting and scene modes, settings, a link to switch between camera and video modes and a link to the media gallery.

Shooting modes include single (standard) shot, smile shot and panorama. After several attempts of getting the smile shooting mode to work I gave up and tried out panroma; it worked wonderfully, even if the quality did not quite match it.

It is easily the most user friendly built-in panoroma shooting mode I have encountered on any phone. Instead of having to gently survey your surroundings, the xCover will give you a green outline as to what area will be included in the next section. Just line this border up to the perimeter of the viewfinder and that section of the panorama is done and dusted with.

Horizontal panoromas were roughly 2700×400 pixels while vertical shots were 544×2048 pixels in size. Standard 3.2 MP photos are 2048×1536 pixels.

Other options include scene modes that include portrait, sunset and text as well as settings for the LED flash. You are also able to easily change exposure, focus, white balance and image quality settings.

Tapping the display where the overlay is not present will remove everything from your shot except the snapshot button and a grid reference, allowing a better look of your object of interest.

Unfortunately there is no touch to focus ability in Samsung’s camera application. To give you an idea of how useful it is, the vast majority of the pictures back in the hardware tour sections were taken with a smartphone with the assistance of touch to focus.

You are also able to enable a setting where the menu button acts as a camera button, just in a more awkward position. Honestly, it’s easier to just tap the screen.

The camcorder side of the application is near identical in look, it just offers video based options instead. A neat feature Samsung has incorporated into TouchWiz and the xCover is the ability to pause and resume a video recording.

Camera Samples

A 3.2 MP camera sensor is one thing you should never expect amazing pictures from and in the case of the xCover it remains no different. To prove my point, be sure to open up the images in a new tab to see how they really look.

Image quality is alright at best, although it could be considered good for a 3.2 MP snapper. Colours are often faded and washed out while not being as saturated as they could be. There is also a noticeable amount of noise when images are viewed full-size.

To top this off it was fairly slow to auto focus, taking a good second and a half to focus automatically and then take a picture. You can always hold the snapper button down to force a pre-focus and then release to snap a photo which did increase end shutter speed noticeably.

For the first time ever I just cannot recommend the Galaxy xCover as a cheap or old digital camera replacement, however it is best suited for quick pictures when they’re required. If you want a rugged smartphone and decent camera combination look at the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active, which I have previously reviewed.

Note: Sorry for not having a video sample, in reality they are surprising hard to get a decent one. I personally assure you that the video quality isn't an improvement on my opinion of the camera.

The Samsung Galaxy xCover uses a Marvell PXA968 chipset that comes with a single core CPU clocked at 800 MHz and a Marvell GC800 GPU. Backing this up is 512 MB of RAM. This is the first known phone to run this specific Marvell chipset. It is also the first recognisable Android phone from the big players to not run a Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Nvidia or Samsung chipset.

If you are also an Android or mobile enthusiast and have any suggestions as to how to improve my benchmark methodology feel free to email me at [email protected].

From testing CPU performance seems to be a tad stronger than the older generation Qualcomm Snapdragon S1 era chipset that is found in the HTC Wildfire S. In Linpack and Antutu the Xperia Active with its stronger Snapdragon S2 chipset comfortably beats the xCover by just shy of 300% and 50% respectively.

GPU performance seems to be somewhere on the upper end in the gap between the Adreno 200 and Adreno 205 mobile GPUs. The Marvell GC800 GPU in the xCover was able to grab a win in Nenamark2 but was comfortably beaten in GL Benchmark 2.1 by the Xperia Active.

The xCover’s hardware performance is neither poor but also not overly great. I could also say with confidence that it has the weakest hardware of the IP67 certified Androids.

As browser benchmarks are not nearly as influenced by different screen resolutions here we sets of data that is much easier to compare (woohoo!) Here with have the Samsung Galaxy xCover compared against the HTC Incredible S, Huawei MediaPad, HTC 7 Trophy and the HTC Wildfire S. Also included are guest appearances from the xCover’s rivals; the Motorola Defy+ and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active.

The xCover nearest comparison comes in the form of the HTC 7 Trophy running on Windows Phone 7 Mango. They essentially tied Peacekeeper with the xCover taking small wins in Browsermark and Sunspider.

The more powerful dual-core Motorola Atrix 2 and the Huawei MediaPad tablet stamped their authority in the tests they participated in.

Comparing the xCover to the other tough, IP67 certified phones the xCover again comes in third place. In every test where the xCover faced competition from its rivals it came in last. Reaffirming my belief that the xCover has the weakest hardware out of the IP67 certified Androids; something I already mentioned on the previous page.

For those who have the lasting impression that Android’s battery life is poor has not experienced Google’s platform within the last year or so. From my past experiences with Windows Phone 7, Android takes a win. I should point out that I haven’t truly experienced an iPhone’s battery life though, so I cannot make a firm comparison.

Moving onto the xCover specifically, most users can expect about a day and a half of heavy usage, up to two days with moderate usage. Samsung has included in the xCover a removable 1500 mAh Li-ion battery. With constant screentime you would be looking at about 4 to 5 hours of battery life.

Strangely, for the first two days I had my review unit idle battery life was purely amazing. But on the third day I put in a MicroSD card (I had trouble finding a spare one at first) and all of a sudden battery life when idle seemed to take a turn for the worse. I cannot confirm, nor deny you will experience this personally if you happen to purchase an xCover.

As a point of reference my average day of usage would be 40 texts, auto-syncing of email, twitter and RSS feeds and roughly 2 hours of screen time. On the xCover this usage would result in roughly just shy of two days of battery life.

Another fortnight, another farewell to another phone. Sometimes I wish the phone in my possession would somehow be forgotten by the respective PR firm but this was not really a vibe I got from the Samsung Galaxy xCover. I’m not saying it’s a bad phone, it’s just not an amazing phone that I would want as my daily driver.

To give you an idea, the devices I have reviewed previously and also loved for various reasons include; the HTC ChaCha, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Active, the Huawei MediaPad, the Motorola Atrix 2 as well as my personal daily driver HTC Incredible S. The xCover kills this streak of fortune sadly.

Sure the xCover has IP67 certification and can survive a good dunking under a tap but while it is percieved as a rugged phone it just doesn’t feel like something I would willingly throw across a field or into a pond. To me this is the pinnacle of a rugged smartphone.

Instead it is more suited for those who want a low to middle of the range Android smartphone that can stand up to water and clumsy drops better than the average smartphone.

The xCover’s plastic build materials and likely other design perks did mean that celluar coverage was more extensive than any other phone I had on hand. However, the plastics do add an overall cheaper feel to the phone.

Browser performance was surprisingly good, probably thanks to some hardware optimisations in the Marvell PXA968 chipset. While the browser benchmarks I conducted don’t reflect this scrolling and text re-flow performance in a real-usage scenario was impressive to say the least. But alas, the display…

The display is beyond poor; colours are washed out from the start and the 480×320 resolution on the 3.65 inch TN display is horrible. Hardware performance, both on paper and in benchmarks fails to impress but as a result battery life was perhaps better than the average smartphone; easily lasting a day and a half with somewhat usage.

The 3.2 MP camera was nothing worth writing home about, or more than this line for that matter.

For the large part the software combination of Android 2.3 Gingerbread and Samsung’s TouchWiz UX interface is bug free; I only encountered two minor bugs in two weeks of usage. However, through getting a relatively bug free experience you get a oversimplified and under-featured interface. You want to sort the applications by alphabetical order? Want to access your alarms or calendar by tapping a clock widget? It’s not going to happen.

Of course this is based purely on stock applications, obviously it is possible but I prefer to keep things as close to stock as possible when reviewing a phone. After all this is how over two thirds (a made-up but realistic figure) of people will see and use the phone for the entirety of its lifespan.

Where To Buy?

The Samsung Galaxy xCover is available for £198 inc vat from Clove.

Other Phones to Consider

The Motorola Defy Plus has stronger hardware, a better display and better official and unofficial (custom ROM) support over the xCover for just an extra 23 quid.

You could also grab the Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo V for just £215 which is better in just about every way, except it doesn't come with the IP67 certification.

Software Information

My unit was running Android Gingerbread 2.3.6 with build number GINGERBREAD.XXKL3

Pros

• Has IP67 certification; so it is water and dust-proof.
• Satisfactory hardware performance.
• Above average radio coverage.

Cons

• Needs a price drop, superior phones available for a similar price.
• Will never get an Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update.
• The display is just downright bad.
• Camera won’t replace a 5 year old digital camera.

Kitguru says: The Samsung Galaxy xCover is a pretty nice phone, I'm going to give Samsung that, but in answer to my original question in the introduction header: No, the xCover does not sway my evaluation that anything that isn't flagship from Samsung is pretty average. Where it does well in real life browser performance and durability, it severely lacks any punch in the display or price categories.

Better luck next time eh Samsung?

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