Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 Review
The Galaxy Mega 6.3 is big. Really, really big. That is quite literally the entirety of the list of interesting features that distinguish it from other Samsung smartphones. It is a shamelessly single-minded product. In a way, that's a good thing - it's certainly a big part of what even makes it possible to sell the Mega for just $480 off contract ($150 on).
Display
The Galaxy Mega has a visible screen area of 16.96 square inches. The Galaxy S4, with its 5" display, has 10.68 square inches. That is a difference of (roughly) 6.3 square inches, which means the Mega is nearly an entire iPhone 5 display larger than the Galaxy S4. The Mega 6.3 even has a full 33% more display area than the already quite large Galaxy Note II. Is the size issue sinking in yet? I hope so, though it won't stop someone from trying to say that a 5" smartphone is "basically" not that much smaller than a 7" tablet. That's true, if you either A.) have hands that can palm a basketball like it's a grapefruit, or B.) have little to no understanding of the concept of surface area and / or are just being difficult and annoying.
The display itself is pretty good, though not amazing. The resolution does mean if you get up close and personal, pixelation is evident. The LCD panel gets very bright, though, and works a hell of a lot better in sunlight than the Note II's dim AMOLED setup. Colors are reasonably accurate and Samsung's screen mode software is still in tow. Viewing angles are great.
Battery life
Surprisingly, it's not that amazing - if you're actually using the phone. The Mega 6.3's battery is only 100mAh larger than the Note II's, but its display is much bigger (and brighter), so that means it actually gets substantially worse battery life under moderate / heavy use. I'd say for longevity it's noticeably better than the Galaxy S4, in that it'll get you through a day and overnight without too much struggle. if you turn down the brightness, it's probably significantly better. But since Samsung's auto-brightness is far too aggressive (read: way too dim), I was often forced to set it manually.
Audio and speaker
Audio from the headphone jack has been perfectly good. That's more Qualcomm than Samsung, as the pieces responsible for digital to analog audio conversion and amplification are part of the Snapdragon chip. It hasn't given me any problems.
Samsung has upgraded, in a sense, the external speaker on the Mega, as it's much louder than the one on the Galaxy S4. It's not any better-sounding (it might actually be a little worse), but the added loudness means watching videos is something you can do in noisier environments, and notifications rarely go unheard
Camera
Samsung could have shoved a cheapo 5MP camera from one of the Tabs into it and called it a day. Luckily, they didn't.
From what I can tell, the Mega 6.3 has the same 8MP module that was used in the Galaxy S III and Note II, and that's a good thing. While no longer on the cutting edge of mobile photography, the Mega's camera definitely gets the job done in most situations. It's not very good in the dark, it's not very good at exposure correction, but it's also far from being bad, which was definitely something I feared about the Mega initially. Take a look at the sample photos and see for yourself.
Software
Performance and stability
The Galaxy Mega is reasonably quick, but it does feel substantially slower than the Galaxy S4 or HTC One. This is to be expected, as the processor in the MSM8930AB chipset is based on the old MSM8960, albeit with a refreshed Adreno 305 GPU. 1.5GB of RAM gives the Mega a substantial edge on mid-range devices with only 1GB of RAM, and seems to more easily avoid the memory traffic jams that plagued devices like the 2012 Nexus 7 and much of HTC's lineup last year. I don't know what it is, but Android really isn't handled optimally with less than 2GB of RAM. 1.5GB seems like a livable compromise, and I haven't had any of the rage-inducing slowdowns launching apps or switching tasks on the Mega that I have on the HTC One mini, which while it has the same chipset, only has 1GB of RAM.
Storage, wireless, and call quality
You have 16GB of space on the AT&T version of the Mega 6.3 (the 8GB version is not coming to the US, thankfully), of which about 10.5GB is usable. Is that all you could ever possibly want? No. Is the Mega a super high-end phone that should have 32GB as standard? No. There are tradeoffs here, and this is one of them. There's a microSD slot, of course, for your media storage needs.
Wireless performance on the Mega has been pretty good. I do find the signal a little weak compared to my other AT&T devices at times, though, and the Mega seems a little more eager to flip over to HSPA+ when I know I'm in an LTE coverage zone. It wasn't a major issue. I also had a few instances where data just kind of stopped working, which is probably some kind of radio firmware glitch. Going into airplane mode or rebooting resolved it, and the problem wasn't particularly common. The Mega's Snapdragon 400 series chipset does not support 5GHz Wi-Fi, which probably makes sense, as it's based on an older dual-core Snapdragon S4 setup. Wi-Fi performance was otherwise admirable. Bluetooth worked OK, though I did have some difficulty detecting devices before I was actually paired to them - it took abnormally long for them to show up as available on the Mega. The Mega also has an IR blaster, if you were wondering.
What's been really weird is the disparity in LTE data speeds on AT&T. Using an AT&T HTC One mini, which is powered by the same Qualcomm chipset as the Mega, I achieved 3x the downlink speed on average, though upload speeds were roughly similar between the two. Something weird is going on there.
Call quality on the Mega has been strong, and its size means the microphone is closer to your mouth when making a phone call, so that probably helps on the other end,
Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 Specifications:
GENERAL
|
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
| |
|---|---|---|
HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
| ||
LTE 800 / 850 / 900 / 1800 / 2100 / 2600 GT-I9205
| ||
Micro-SIM
| ||
2013, April
| ||
Available. Released 2013, June
|
BODY
|
167.6 x 88 x 8 mm (6.60 x 3.46 x 0.31 in)
| |
|---|---|---|
199 g (7.02 oz)
|
DISPLAY
|
SC-LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
| |
|---|---|---|
720 x 1280 pixels, 6.3 inches (~233 ppi pixel density)
| ||
Yes
| ||
- TouchWiz UI
|
SOUND
|
Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones
| |
|---|---|---|
Yes
| ||
Yes
|
MEMORY
|
microSD, up to 64 GB
| |
|---|---|---|
8/16 GB, 1.5 GB RAM
|
DATA
|
Yes
| |
|---|---|---|
Yes
| ||
HSDPA, 21 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps; LTE, Cat3, 50 Mbps UL, 100 Mbps DL
| ||
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot
| ||
Yes, v4.0 with A2DP, LE
| ||
Yes
| ||
Yes
| ||
Yes, microUSB v2.0 (MHL), USB On-the-go, USB Host
|
CAMERA
|
8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, check quality
| |
|---|---|---|
Geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection, HDR, panorama
| ||
Yes, 1080p@30fps, stereo sound rec., check quality
| ||
Yes, 1.9 MP
|
FEATURES
|
Android OS, v4.2.2 (Jelly Bean)
| |
|---|---|---|
Qualcomm Snapdragon 400
| ||
Dual-core 1.7 GHz Krait
| ||
Adreno 305
| ||
Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass
| ||
SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM, RSS
| ||
HTML5
| ||
No
| ||
Yes, with A-GPS support and GLONASS
| ||
Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
| ||
White, Black, Plum Purple
| ||
- SNS integration
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- TV-out (via MHL A/V link)
- MP4/WMV/H.264/H.263 player
- MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC player
- Organizer
- Image/video editor
- Document viewer
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail,
YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa
- Voice memo/dial
- Predictive text input
|
BATTERY
|
Li-Ion 3200 mAh battery
| |
|---|---|---|
Up to 420 h
| ||
Up to 17 h (2G) / Up to 10 h (3G)
| ||
Up to 82 h
|
MISC
|
1.09 W/kg (head) 1.09 W/kg (body)
| |
|---|---|---|
0.20 W/kg (head) 0.34 W/kg (body)
| ||
 |
TESTS
| ||
|---|---|---|
Samsung Galaxy Mega price in india: Rs. 29,100/-
Samsung Galaxy Mega Unboxing
Sign up here with your email
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon