MetroPCS currently offers seven different smartphones, but only three of them support the carrier's 4G LTE network. Since MetroPCS doesn't have a 3G network, you're stuck in the 2G Internet slow lane without LTE. The $199 Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G offers users an alternative to the pricier LG Esteem ($299, 4 stars), our current Editors' Choice. While the Galaxy Attain is a fine midrange option, it could've been better with just a few tweaks.
Design, Call Quality, and Data Plans
The Samsung Galaxy Attain measures 4.6 by 2.6 by .5 inches (HWD). At 4.2 ounces it's light, but feels kind of thick, like it's hiding a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. (It's not.) Made of shiny grey plastic with a textured back panel, the Galaxy Attain looks and feels midrange, but it's a nice, comfortable phone to hold and use.
The 3.5-inch, 320-by-480-pixel capacitive touch LCD is nice and bright and looks sharp enough, although text can sometimes look a bit fuzzy.?It would've been nicer to see a higher resolution. Typing and dialing numbers feels fine on the on-screen Swype QWERTY keyboard, but haptic feedback feels a bit delayed.
The Galaxy Attain works on MetroPCS's LTE network where it can find it, and on the much slower 2G CDMA network where it can't. The phone also uses 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and connected to my WPA2-encrypted Wi-Fi network without a problem.
Reception is fine, but call quality has some issues on the Attain. Voices sound full, clear, and easy to understand in the phone's earpiece. But calls made with the phone sound fuzzy and thin on the other end, with poor background noise cancellation. Calls sounded fine through a?Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset ($129, 4.5 stars), and Nuance-powered voice dialing worked well over Bluetooth without training. The speakerphone was too quiet to use outside, though calls sounded fine. Battery life was good at 8 hours, 16 minutes of talk time.
4G LTE on MetroPCS is very different than it is on AT&T and Verizon. As we discovered in our Fastest Mobile Networks testing, rather than offering spectacular speeds, MetroPCS is going for decent speeds at very low prices. The carrier's average 4G speeds are more like a very good 3G network. This proved to be true with the Attain, which pulled in average download speeds of 2.6Mbps and uploads of 2.7Mbps.
MetroPCS's biggest selling point is its inexpensive monthly plans. For $60 per month, you can get unlimited talk, text, and data, along with unlimited music from Rhapsody or video on demand from MetroStudio. A $50 plan gets you unlimited talk, text, and Web with 1GB of streaming data, while a new $40 plan offers unlimited talk, text, and Web with 100MB of streaming data.?
Apps, Multimedia, Camera and Conclusions
The Galaxy Attain runs Android 2.3.6 (Gingerbread). There's no word yet on an update to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).?Samsung has made some modifications to the UI with its TouchWiz overlay. There are seven customizable home screens you can swipe between, which come preloaded with some standard apps and widgets. Like many MetroPCS phones, the Attain has been loaded with a fair share of bloatware, none of which is deletable.
The Attain is powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon S2 MSM8655 processor like the LG Esteem, though it benchmarks a bit slower. Still, it should be fast enough for most uses aside from high-end gaming. Google Maps Navigation and MetroNavigator both offer free, voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS directions. MetroPCS includes an IM and Social app, which bundles apps for AIM, Facebook, Google Talk, and Twitter, among others, all in one place for quick access. The Galaxy Attain should also be compatible with most of the 300,000+ apps in Android Market.
Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
Multimedia support is a strong point on the Attain. There's a microSD card slot underneath the battery cover. The phones comes with 1.41GB of free internal storage, along with a 2GB microSD card; my 32 and 64GB SanDisk cards worked fine as well. The phone was able to play back all of our music test files, and sound quality was fine over both wired 3.5mm headphones and?Altec Lansing BackBeat?Bluetooth headphones ($99.99, 3.5 stars). All of our test videos played back well in resolutions up to 720p.
The Attain's 3-megapixel camera takes surprisingly decent photos. Color and detail are both relatively sharp, considering the lower megapixel count. The camera records 720-by-480-pixel video at a smooth 30 frames per second both indoors and out. There's also a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat.
The Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G is a perfectly useful midrange LTE smartphone for MetroPCS. With better call quality and a higher-res display, it would have replaced the LG Esteem as our pick. But as it stands, the Esteem gets you a bigger, nicer display and better call quality, albeit for $100 more. MetroPCS's other LTE device, the Samsung Galaxy Indulge?($199, 3.5 stars), has a physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard, but it also has a lackluster display and poorer call quality than the Attain. If you don't want to drop down to 2G speeds, you may also want to check out the?LG Marquee?($279.99, 4 stars) over on Boost or the Huawei Mercury?on Cricket ($179.99, 4.5 stars). Both phones feature nicer displays and better call quality than the Attain, at similarly low monthly prices.
Benchmarks
Continuous talk time:?8 hours 16 minutes
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