(See my post below this, I found a BestBuy Coupon that works on the Triumph)
Well, thought I would post my benchmarks and impressions having just got one :3
(edit, added some more info)
Benchmarks (stock):
On Quadrant it scored an impressive 1695, beating out everything on the comparison board by a large margin including the Evo4G and the Droid X.
BenchmarkPi scored 1064ms
CPU Benchmark scored 721ms
Neocore scored 65.1FPS
Personal thoughts:
Keeping in mind this is a budget phone with a MSRP less than half of a contract phone's, I'm fairly impressed. Although I've used faster phones such as the Evo3D, the Triumph has great appeal as a phone that will accomplish most any task asked of modern smartphones.
Maybe not as fast, but it's capable of anything I've tossed at it so far, with exception of maybe really high end gaming (but how much of THAT have we seen on Android. Oh, and no pre-paid phone in thise price bracket should be considered a "gaming" phone)
Speaking of cameras, I would say it's just a small step behind the EVO 3D's 5MP camera. The Front Facing isn't super quality, but stays sharp and this is important as I've seen a fair amount of tiny FFC's that were blindingly blurry. It also has an LED flash- so so nice to have!
UPDATE: Camera's autofocus stopped working, I did everything even reset the phone and nothing, it makes a nasty noise and doesn't even look like it's trying to focus. Changing to FFC, and back to main cam puts it into focus, but when the phone tries to auto-focus it goes way out of focus again and makes a noise. Exchangie time... Warning to buyers- use the camera and make sure yours is focusing well before return period elapses.
Build quality wise, I actually like it. Okay, it's not metal but it's still a step above phones like the Galaxy S on T-mobile. (shiney plastic with definate flex and hollow sound when tapped). I like the soft-touch rubbery feel alot, but have doubts about how it'll wear. The sharp edges and blocky feel make holding it secure feeling The screen looks great and I don't see the blueish tint most complain about in whites. Again, not the highest resolution, but I think at this level I'd personally opt for performance gained by the missing pixles (unless you have extremely great vision and want to read web-text zoomed all the way out- then the lack of resolution might be an issue. But common, we've got the power of ZOOM for that! ;3) The buttons are a little sketch, mainly the volume rocker, it's hard to judge up from down. Screen is nice and bright, btw. Gorilla Glass, as I've noticed in another thread- awesome!
Had to add- Reception... I did have a LG Op. V, and the Triumph does NOT pickup signals as well, particularly with WiFi on. In my room I got two bars with the V, the Triumph has none or maybe 1 bar if placed in just the right area. If I had 3 bars on the V, I have 2 on the Triumph, and so forth. This isn't a big deal to me and maybe 90% of you, but if you have a really weak signal with the V (one bar), you're probably going to have none with the Triumph. Funny thing though, when I CAN grab a signal, the data speeds run on par with the V. I suspect maybe the antenna isn't the problem- maybe the phone is just abandoning the signal before the V does.. Speculation, again, the Galaxy S had a issue like that which the modding community was trying to tackle (making it hold the signal at higher noise levels during which it'd normally just report signal-loss and abandon the connection) or something like that but I don't know the gritty on it all.
Power wise, I believe this is the same processor and GPU that pushes the Thunderbolt, right? Well, with the lower resolution screen, and ample second-gen snapdragon there's no complaints in the performance world and the benchmarks bear that out, very snappy and I feel with a custom rom this thing could fly. The only hiccups I've seen are homescreen scrolling and I suspect this is only software-side. HDMI out looks and preforms great.
Now, another weak spot- speakers. It has little stereo speakers but they're oriented on the left and right side of the bottom of the phone in PORTRAIT orientation... This seemed to be awkward because most of my stereo sound is enjoyed from videos I watch in landscape.
Go figure... It's the same screwy design as on the Iphone and I prefer the speakers be placed landscape. Makes more sense to me.
Update: I reset my phone after I made this review (attempting to fix the Netflix rebooting issue) and lo-behold, the volume on the speakers is louder. Now it's still not as loud as some other phones I've used, but it's decent. This didn't effect the headphone jack, still outputting pretty low volume levels with traditional headphones however completely adequate for earbuds. Why it became so silent? I'm not sure, it seems this phone has some bugs that hopefully will be ironed out.
Using Multitouch Visualizer 2, it looks like real-life multi-touch to me and all the game controls for joystick/buttons I've used work great. I did note it only supports 2 points, unlike say the Galaxy S which supported 4 if I recall right (I had a custom rom, might've been only 2 on stock on that phone aswell).. Might not be important to end-users as I don't think there's any need for more than 2 touch points, but I thought I'd mention it.
Battery life- Tested it out and got through 3 Netflix movies (startrek- 1 hour durations) and it died at 26 minutes into the 4th. So I will say, streaming video you'll get atleast 3 hours 26 minutes which is probably the most power intense task I can think of, but my battery is brand new and it might go up/down in capacity quickly during it's first few charge/discharge. In standby it lasted 5 hours only dropping to 92%. With webbrowsing/play I managed about 2 hours from full charge and it dropped to 85%. All figures were at medium brightness, as that's what the light sensor seems to think is ideal 90% of the time (and it seems to be wrong alot)...
The USB power adapter they include is weak, only outputting 850mA and charges the phone slowly. Attached to my 1.9A universal USB charger I observed much faster charge times and will be important to anybody that is usage intense on their phone. So get a good universal adapter, and jam the one included into the back of your nick-nack drawer.
Call quality is good and aside from issues with the speakerphone already mentioned it's on par with the LG Op. V.
Status light- welcomed return VS say the Galaxy which has none!
And... I've run out've things to talk about!
So, bottom line... Is this what most people need? Yes! Totally. Is it what everybody will want? No!
Let me explain. On a whole, it's a fairly dull phone and at face-value it's weak to most modern post-paid subsidized phones and costs more money up front. To those that want a glitzy speed demon, years of battery life, qHD screen, bleeding-edge Android gaming/graphics (what little exists), epic ego-boosting physical design (metal, body-glass, alot of curves, etc), GO AWAY. Hah! This is not your phone!
Now for anybody that wants solid design, a wide degree of capability and features to play with (FFC, HDMI, etc), in a package that is contract-free and operates on cheap plans. This is worth a try! It's the first phone I've seen on a pre-paid that stands up to post-paid options, and even knees a few older ones still popular in the market in their gentlemen's areas. Hah! Sure you'll pay more up front, but compare to say Sprint (480 minutes, 79.99 bucks/mo)... Almost half the price a month, 1200 minutes, and you're saving 840 bucks over the course of a 2 year contract you'd normally be locked into. (I'm not getting nitty-gritty with service comparisons, just justifying it's higher-than-subsidized price for those that don't understand the concept)
That's about it! Happy phone-hunting! I hope this has been helpful to someone!
Well, thought I would post my benchmarks and impressions having just got one :3
(edit, added some more info)
Benchmarks (stock):
On Quadrant it scored an impressive 1695, beating out everything on the comparison board by a large margin including the Evo4G and the Droid X.
BenchmarkPi scored 1064ms
CPU Benchmark scored 721ms
Neocore scored 65.1FPS
Personal thoughts:
Keeping in mind this is a budget phone with a MSRP less than half of a contract phone's, I'm fairly impressed. Although I've used faster phones such as the Evo3D, the Triumph has great appeal as a phone that will accomplish most any task asked of modern smartphones.
Maybe not as fast, but it's capable of anything I've tossed at it so far, with exception of maybe really high end gaming (but how much of THAT have we seen on Android. Oh, and no pre-paid phone in thise price bracket should be considered a "gaming" phone)
Speaking of cameras, I would say it's just a small step behind the EVO 3D's 5MP camera. The Front Facing isn't super quality, but stays sharp and this is important as I've seen a fair amount of tiny FFC's that were blindingly blurry. It also has an LED flash- so so nice to have!
UPDATE: Camera's autofocus stopped working, I did everything even reset the phone and nothing, it makes a nasty noise and doesn't even look like it's trying to focus. Changing to FFC, and back to main cam puts it into focus, but when the phone tries to auto-focus it goes way out of focus again and makes a noise. Exchangie time... Warning to buyers- use the camera and make sure yours is focusing well before return period elapses.
Build quality wise, I actually like it. Okay, it's not metal but it's still a step above phones like the Galaxy S on T-mobile. (shiney plastic with definate flex and hollow sound when tapped). I like the soft-touch rubbery feel alot, but have doubts about how it'll wear. The sharp edges and blocky feel make holding it secure feeling The screen looks great and I don't see the blueish tint most complain about in whites. Again, not the highest resolution, but I think at this level I'd personally opt for performance gained by the missing pixles (unless you have extremely great vision and want to read web-text zoomed all the way out- then the lack of resolution might be an issue. But common, we've got the power of ZOOM for that! ;3) The buttons are a little sketch, mainly the volume rocker, it's hard to judge up from down. Screen is nice and bright, btw. Gorilla Glass, as I've noticed in another thread- awesome!
Had to add- Reception... I did have a LG Op. V, and the Triumph does NOT pickup signals as well, particularly with WiFi on. In my room I got two bars with the V, the Triumph has none or maybe 1 bar if placed in just the right area. If I had 3 bars on the V, I have 2 on the Triumph, and so forth. This isn't a big deal to me and maybe 90% of you, but if you have a really weak signal with the V (one bar), you're probably going to have none with the Triumph. Funny thing though, when I CAN grab a signal, the data speeds run on par with the V. I suspect maybe the antenna isn't the problem- maybe the phone is just abandoning the signal before the V does.. Speculation, again, the Galaxy S had a issue like that which the modding community was trying to tackle (making it hold the signal at higher noise levels during which it'd normally just report signal-loss and abandon the connection) or something like that but I don't know the gritty on it all.
Power wise, I believe this is the same processor and GPU that pushes the Thunderbolt, right? Well, with the lower resolution screen, and ample second-gen snapdragon there's no complaints in the performance world and the benchmarks bear that out, very snappy and I feel with a custom rom this thing could fly. The only hiccups I've seen are homescreen scrolling and I suspect this is only software-side. HDMI out looks and preforms great.
Now, another weak spot- speakers. It has little stereo speakers but they're oriented on the left and right side of the bottom of the phone in PORTRAIT orientation... This seemed to be awkward because most of my stereo sound is enjoyed from videos I watch in landscape.
Go figure... It's the same screwy design as on the Iphone and I prefer the speakers be placed landscape. Makes more sense to me.
Update: I reset my phone after I made this review (attempting to fix the Netflix rebooting issue) and lo-behold, the volume on the speakers is louder. Now it's still not as loud as some other phones I've used, but it's decent. This didn't effect the headphone jack, still outputting pretty low volume levels with traditional headphones however completely adequate for earbuds. Why it became so silent? I'm not sure, it seems this phone has some bugs that hopefully will be ironed out.
Using Multitouch Visualizer 2, it looks like real-life multi-touch to me and all the game controls for joystick/buttons I've used work great. I did note it only supports 2 points, unlike say the Galaxy S which supported 4 if I recall right (I had a custom rom, might've been only 2 on stock on that phone aswell).. Might not be important to end-users as I don't think there's any need for more than 2 touch points, but I thought I'd mention it.
Battery life- Tested it out and got through 3 Netflix movies (startrek- 1 hour durations) and it died at 26 minutes into the 4th. So I will say, streaming video you'll get atleast 3 hours 26 minutes which is probably the most power intense task I can think of, but my battery is brand new and it might go up/down in capacity quickly during it's first few charge/discharge. In standby it lasted 5 hours only dropping to 92%. With webbrowsing/play I managed about 2 hours from full charge and it dropped to 85%. All figures were at medium brightness, as that's what the light sensor seems to think is ideal 90% of the time (and it seems to be wrong alot)...
The USB power adapter they include is weak, only outputting 850mA and charges the phone slowly. Attached to my 1.9A universal USB charger I observed much faster charge times and will be important to anybody that is usage intense on their phone. So get a good universal adapter, and jam the one included into the back of your nick-nack drawer.
Call quality is good and aside from issues with the speakerphone already mentioned it's on par with the LG Op. V.
Status light- welcomed return VS say the Galaxy which has none!
And... I've run out've things to talk about!
So, bottom line... Is this what most people need? Yes! Totally. Is it what everybody will want? No!
Let me explain. On a whole, it's a fairly dull phone and at face-value it's weak to most modern post-paid subsidized phones and costs more money up front. To those that want a glitzy speed demon, years of battery life, qHD screen, bleeding-edge Android gaming/graphics (what little exists), epic ego-boosting physical design (metal, body-glass, alot of curves, etc), GO AWAY. Hah! This is not your phone!
Now for anybody that wants solid design, a wide degree of capability and features to play with (FFC, HDMI, etc), in a package that is contract-free and operates on cheap plans. This is worth a try! It's the first phone I've seen on a pre-paid that stands up to post-paid options, and even knees a few older ones still popular in the market in their gentlemen's areas. Hah! Sure you'll pay more up front, but compare to say Sprint (480 minutes, 79.99 bucks/mo)... Almost half the price a month, 1200 minutes, and you're saving 840 bucks over the course of a 2 year contract you'd normally be locked into. (I'm not getting nitty-gritty with service comparisons, just justifying it's higher-than-subsidized price for those that don't understand the concept)
That's about it! Happy phone-hunting! I hope this has been helpful to someone!
