Another week, another Android smartphone hits the Canadian market. This time up is the Samsung Galaxy S Infuse 4G from Rogers Wireless. We’ve spent the past week playing around with the mid-level smartphone, and today we’re ready to post our thoughts. Curious? Then click on through to read our review of the Samsung Galaxy S Infuse 4G.

Hardware

Straight out of the box, the first thing we noticed about the Infuse 4G was how large it was, measuring out to 32mm x 71mm x 9mm. Why so big? Because it has to house an almost ridiculously large 4.5” Super AMOLED Plus display which takes up the majority of the front of the device. Above the screen is the earpiece and a front-facing camera, while below it are four capacitive buttons: menu, home, back, and search. On the back of the device is an 8-megapixel camera, LED flash, and external speaker. The top houses a 3.5mm headphone jack, while the left and right side have the volume rocker and power switch. Even though it’s large, the Infuse 4G is not the least bit bulky, and fit in our hands as well as we could have hoped for such a large device. And despite being made mainly of plastic, the Infuse 4G was well built. The only part of the phone we questioned the quality of was the battery cover, which is made out of a flimsy piece of textured plastic. It was securely attached to the phone, but each time we pried it off of the Infuse 4G we were worried it would snap in two.

Display

As we previously mentioned, the Infuse 4G has a mammoth screen that measures out to 4.5”. It’s Super AMOLED Plus, too, so it’s not only unbelievably bright, but black levels are very deep and colours really pop. The size of the display does have its disadvantages, however, as pixel density definitely takes a hit. Nonetheless, the images are sharp and clear enough enough that the lesser density didn’t bother us.

Performance

The main weakness of the Infuse 4G is what’s powering it — a single-core Hummingbird processor that clocks in at 1.2GHz and 512MB of RAM. Well, on paper, anyway. We half-expected the Infuse 4G to be a bit sluggish, but it proved to be anything but that having excelled in our processor torture tests. The only tasks it wasn’t fully capable of handing were 3D games and Flash videos, but then again, even some of the most powerful handsets have their own troubles in those areas.

Camera

The main 8-megapixel camera on the Infuse 4G took wonderful pictures. No matter the lighting condition, all of our images came out very sharp with high levels of detail and minimal amounts of noise. The 720p videos we recorded weren’t quite on par with the quality still images, but they were still better than mostly any videos we recorded with other devices.

Connectivity

Placing and receiving phone calls on the Infuse 4G was a joy. The earpiece provided a clear, natural sound, while the speakerphone was amongst the best we have experienced on a smartphone. Everyone we spoke to commended the phone on the sound quality, and many had a difficult time believing we were calling from outside in a noisy environment. As for data, we found that the Infuse 4G was extremely quick at pulling and sending data over Rogers’ HSPA+ network. Because we were curious, we decided to pit the Infuse 4G and its 21Mbps radio against the iPhone 4 which has a chipset that tops out at 14.4Mbps. Running side-by-side, the iPhone 4 averaged 6.1Mbps down 1.6Mbps up while the Infuse 4G averaged 3.9Mbps down and 1.1Mbps up. Although it was clearly beaten, the Infuse 4G is still no slouch, and as previously mentioned, performs very well in real-world scenarios.

Battery Life

The Infuse 4G ships with a 1750 mAh Li-ion battery. Even though we are power users, we found that the Infuse 4G was more than capable of making it through one of our hectic days without needing to be charged. How is the Infuse 4G able to last so long when most Android smartphones can barely make it eight hours without dying? Two reasons — both the Hummingbird processor and Super AMOLED Plus display draw very little power to operate.

Conclusion

It’s always hard to write a conclusion about mid-level smartphone because were so used to the higher-end products. But when it comes down to it, we have to judge them based upon how they performed against the expectations we have for devices in their category and class. When it comes to the Infuse 4G, we think it is easily amongst the best in the mid-level smartphone category and is a good buy for anyone who isn’t willing to blow their savings on the latest and greatest.