The little phone that could!
This little beasty has nothing on it's more advanced siblings the Samsung Galaxy S & Galaxy S II, but bang for buck it isn't bad at all. On the latest firmware (XXJPQ) the phone is nice and smooth for basic operations. It struggles a bit when you start to do things like play angry birds, but it is still quite playable. It's 3.2" touch-screen display is big enough so that even people with bigger fingers (like myself) can use the soft keyboard. Wi-fi support is good with 802.11b/g/n standards and supports WPA2 security. The 3.2MP camera does a decent job at taking pictures (better quality than most phones I've used). About it's only downsides are the small amount of RAM (256MB), slightly low resolution on the screen (240x400), and use of the rfs file system. So as a stock 'smartphone' is does a pretty good job for its price range (Would give it a 3 out of 5). But the real magic comes when you load a custom firmware (ROM), kernel, change the file system, employ some better drivers for the GPU and sound, and overclock the CPU... Now some people would probably stop about here and just say no thanks, would rather keep my factory warranty. But that's the beauty of it. Unless hardware fails on you device while you have custom firmware loaded, your factory warranty is never at risk. So feel free to play around with different ROMs, kernels, and configurations. If you follow the instructions supplied, you can always roll it all back to stock factory settings very easily.
My one of these has the following setup:
CPU: Overclocked upto 800MHz using an 'on-demand' governer
GPU: Chainfire3D GPU drivers
Sound: Voodoo sound drivers
File System: ext2 & ext4
I am currently waiting on the latest release of the Kyrillo's ROM (v6.0) which will allow overclocking up to 1366MHz (depending on what each individual phone is capable of going up to).
After tweaking the phone with these simple and relatively easy upgrades, you can turn a cheap, average device into something that is fighting well above it's weight. But what about battery life?! Surely you'd expect higher CPU speeds etc. would cause more drain on the battery. Surprisingly, battery life is barely affected by this, losing maybe 1 hour of battery life under normal use (and using a smart governor). So after tweaking the phone just a little (maybe 2 hours of loading firmware/kernels etc, and waiting for reboots) and you turn a device that I would give 3 out of 5, into one I would give 5 out of 5 (just because of price compared to features after tweaking).
Samsung Galaxy 3 specs
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