Samsung Infuse 4G Hands-On and Unboxing

Were home from NYC and it’s time to do a super personal Android friends included hands-on and unboxing for the ravenous community, all the detail you could possibly want coming throughout the rest of today moving on over to the weekend where we’ll have a full review. What we’ve got here is the brand new Samsung Infuse 4G, as carried by AT&T, and we’re opening this big beast out of the box early enough for you to be able to see it much before you’ve got the opportunity to hold it in your own hands – will it be enough to sell well before its big brother comes out in a few weeks?

First Impressions

Now that we’ve got the device in a non-crowded room and have a bit of a better perspective on how the device feels when we’re not entirely pumped up with caffeine, jet lagged, and tired of running with only a few hotdogs in our systems, we can offer you a bit of a different perspective.

While this phone does have the largest Super AMOLED Plus display on the market, and indeed the largest display on a device classified as a handset that I or we have ever experienced, the thinness of the device counters the height and length of the chassis. As Philip Berne mentioned yesterday, the device may have one gigantic display, but it certainly doesn’t feel like the phone is oversized. On the other hand, I have a feeling there will be those out there that feel exactly the opposite – I implore you to trust your heart, as always.

Next, the Super AMOLED Plus display is magnificently bright. As you’ll see a little later today in our comparison shots, there’s only one other device whose display can compare, that being the DROID Charge, another Samsung device, it too having the Super AMOLED Plus tech in place. On the back of the device, on the other hand, a lovely patterned texture identical to what you’ll find on the Samsung Galaxy S II – the difference is in the color. Samsung Galaxy S II is the darker of the two, while both of them feature an amazingly classy battery cover which instead of popping off the entire back half of the phone, acts more like a door, removing the textured bit only. Best battery cover yet!

Button Locations

It’s become somewhat of an oddity mentioning where the buttons and jacks are situated around the device as of late – one trend that I’ve been enjoying is the relocation of the power button to the upper right-hand side of the device instead of the top. With the power button in the upper right, and the volume dongle in the upper left, I’ve only to use my thumb and my index finger to adjust anything I need adjusted with physical buttons.

After that, all that’s left are the miniUSB (converting to HDMI out with included cord) on the bottom and the headphone jack at the top. Also on the top and the bottom are mics, one apiece for noise cancellation. Then there’s the big fat 8 megapixel camera on the back with LED flash, light sensor and proximity sensor up front next to the 1.3 megapixel camera for video chat and photos. And that’s it! It’s a fairly sparse phone in its hardware, truly.

Oddities

This phone comes with Angry Birds (original) pre-installed. Its gallery comes with a folder called Summer 2011 Trailers, this folder containing 6 videos, one each of the following films: X-Men First Class, Fast Five, Brides Maids, HOP, Cowboys and Aliens, and Kung Fu Panda 2. As you know if you were reading yesterday, you’re able to install third-party apps (historically this functionality has been disallowed on AT&T Android phones.) Preliminary tests show the battery to be down to 41% after only 2 hours — but I’m going to right here call this a fluke as it seems basically impossible, even though I HAVE been using this device rather heavily since it’s been opened.

Have a peek at the most lovely unboxing you’ve ever seen in your life right here, courtesy of natural light and our little Android pals:

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Wrap-Up

This phone is big an awesome to behold. If there were no Galaxy S II on the way, this phone would command a whole lot more respect that I expect it will end up commanding. As it stands right this moment, it’s being called the precursor to that much more famous phone, sort of like the Silver Surfer to that Galactus, if you know what I mean, and chances are Galactus will be getting here sooner than the Silver Surfer may have originally expected. On the other hand, here it is! We’ll be taking a closer look at this device over the next day or two and we’ll have a full review up for you before the end of the weekend!