Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 review

Introduction

Screen size. Just like last year was the year of the multi-core processor, 2013 is surely the year of the big screen. There was a time when 5 inches of diagonal were considered overkill, but with just about every major brand now flaunting a fullHD five-incher, it seems the only way to go is up.
And Samsung has done just that. With the release of the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3 the Galaxy Mega 5.8, the Koreans are looking to blur the lines between phone and phablet even further, and add even more inches to its repertoire of display sizes.

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 is the lesser half of the new Mega duo, and if a 6.3″ screen is just too big for you, then 5.8″ may be just your size. Plus, there may even be a few people out there that might still consider it a phone.
So, what does the Mega 5.8 offer that other large-screen devices do not? Is the optional dual-SIM support and the more attractive pricing the only redeeming quality it has over the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Note II? We’ll tackle all those questions and more, but first let’s take a look at the key features at a glance.

Key features

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE; quad-band 3G with HSPA; LTE; Dual-SIM version available
5.8″ 16M-color qHD (540 x 960) TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen
Android OS v4.2.2 Jelly Bean with TouchWiz UI
Dual-core 1.4 GHz Broadcom CPU, VideoCore IV GPU
1.5GB of RAM
8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash,1080p video recording @ 30fps, continuous autofocus and stereo sound
1.9 MP front-facing camera, 1080p video recording
Dual shot and dual video recording, Drama shot, Shot and sound
Dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA
GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS
8GB of built-in storage
microSD card slot
microUSB port with USB host and MHL
Bluetooth v4.0
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
Accelerometer and proximity sensor
Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
2,600mAh battery
9mm thickness; 180g of weight

Main disadvantages

Big, even for a phablet
Resolution on the low side for the screen size
Midrange performance
Design is a bit played out by now
Shared camera interface makes framing tricky

One thing to keep in mind regarding the 5.8-inch display is that it goes with a reduction in screen resolution as well, so you get even less pixels per inch than the Mega 6.3. We won’t go as far as to say that at 190ppi the screen is “bad”, but it cannot obviously measure up to the ultra-crisp 400+ppi displays of the most recent 1080p flagships.
When compared to the Mega 6.3, it seems that some additional sacrifices come with having a smaller display. As far as connectivity goes, gone are NFC capabilities, the IR-port, as well as the support for the new 802.11ac WiFi standard. But let’s keep in mind that the Mega 6.3 doesn’t come with a dual-SIM version, so it’s not one-way traffic.

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 is powered by a Broadcom SoC, featuring a dual-core CPU – something we we haven’t yet seen clocked at 1.4 GHz, so we’re curious to see how it fares against the dual-core 1.7 GHz Krait CPU of the Mega 6.3. The latter is expected to trash its rival in benchmark tests, but is the difference obvious in real-life scenarios?
But all that in due course – up next, join us as we take a look at the exterior of the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8.

Eco-friendly retail package

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 comes in Samsung’s latest retail packaging, made entirely of recycled paper and printed with soy-ink. It’s 100% recyclable and eco-friendly.

The eco-friendly packaging houses the standard set of accessories
The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 has the standard set of accessories. The A/C adapter, to be used with the supplied microUSB cable, are joined by a pair of earphones. All of the above are painted white.

360-degree spin

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 stands 162.6mm tall and 82.4mm wide. That’s a tad more compact than the 6.3-inch counterpart (measuring 167.6mm x 88mm), but a millimeter thicker. Either way, the 5.8-inch diagonal still results in a larger device than both the LG Optimus G Pro and Samsung Galaxy S4.

Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 next to the Optimus G Pro (left) and Samsung Galaxy S4 (right)
Compared to Samsung’s famous Galaxy Note II phablet, the differences in thickness (9mm vs. 9.4mm) and weight (182g vs. 183g) are virtually nonexistent.

Design and handling

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 runs by the Galaxy S4’s playbook in terms of design, just like the Mega 6.3. It is a facelift of the Galaxy S III, a bit more angular and with slimmer bezel. Unlike the Mega 6.3, the LED flash of the Mega 5.8 is located to the left of the camera, rather than underneath it.

The updated Galaxy design language
The screen on the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 is bigger than most phones (including the Galaxy S4). It’s so big it barely fits on the device – the bezels are very thin, especially on the side. It also makes very efficient use of the front surface, rivaled only by the Mega 6.3, the S4 flagship, and the Sony Xperia ZL.
The device is slightly more compact than the Mega 6.3 and some will possibly find it comfortable enough to hold. The slim bezels look good but offer no proper rest for your thumb and the slippery back doesn’t help much either. Single-handed use is only possible for a limited number of tasks.

The Galaxy 5.8 is large even for big hands
Samsung has enabled a smaller keyboard in some places (the QWERTY keyboard, the dialer keyboard), which does improve usability a bit. However, the notification area is completely out of reach and the lower corners are tough too – both areas of high importance when working with Android.
You can pocket the Mega 5.8 and since it’s slim and fairly light it won’t bulge in your pocket or feel like a brick, but sitting down with such a large device in your pocket can be uncomfortable.

Display stretches the qHD resolution

At the core of the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 is the 5.8″ screen. It’s a massive TFT LCD of 540 x 960 pixels resolution, which works out to 190ppi. Unfortunately, this is even lower than what’s found on the 720p 6.3″ screen of its elder brother, and is a far cry from the 441ppi found on most 1080p 5-inch flagships.

Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 has a huge screen
You have to take into account that bigger screens are usually held further from the eyes, which partially makes up for the lower pixel density. If you’re coming from a Galaxy S4 you’ll immediately spot the lower sharpness, especially when looking at text, but other than that the screen image quality is good.
With all this talk of pixel density, we have to mention the resolution and how it affects the interface. While the screen of the Mega 5.8 is much bigger than that of the Galaxy S4, it doesn’t fit more shortcuts or other UI elements. Samsung could have drawn the elements smaller, but that would have affected the image quality as smaller text doesn’t render as well on the relatively low pixel density (compared to the previous and current generation of flagships).
The Mega 5.8 screen has good viewing angles with no color shift and only slight contrast loss when looking at the display at an angle.
The brightness control in the notification area is quite handy and can be hidden to make room for more notifications. It also features an automatic brightness mode with a slider to tweak the algorithm, making the display generally darker or brighter than the surrounding ambient light.

Display test	50% brightness			100% brightness
Display test	Black, cd/m²	White, cd/m²	Contrast ratio	Black, cd/m²	White, cd/m²	Contrast ratio
Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8	0.32	335	1045	0.56	559	1003
Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3	0.12	160	1364	0.32	440	1379
Samsung N7100 Galaxy Note II	0	215	∞	0	402	∞
LG Optimus G Pro	–	–	–	0.41	611	1489

The screen is a bit reflective though, which brings the sunlight legibility down.

Controls

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 features a standard set of sensors on its front (proximity and ambient light), alongside a 1.9MP camera and a status LED, all clustered around the earpiece.
On the other side of the screen is the traditional arrangement of a hardware Home button and capacitive Menu and Back keys. Stock Android has moved away from this arrangement, but Samsung still holds to it.

Earpiece, front-facing camera and sensors above the screen • Menu, Home and Back keys below the screen
There’s extra functionality too: upon a double tap, the Home key launches S Voice, while a press and hold opens the task switcher. A long press of the Menu key launches Google Now, and a long press of the Back key toggles the Multi-window tray (the Multi-window feature needs to be active for this to work).
The Volume rocker is placed on the left side of the Galaxy Mega 5.8, while the Power/Lock key is on the right. Both are positioned proportionally lower on the tall device, so they are at about the same height from the bottom as the ones on the Galaxy S4.

Volume rocker on the left • Power/Lock key on the right
There’s no dedicated camera shutter key, but the volume rocker can be set to act as a zoom lever, as well as a camera shutter key.
On the bottom you’ll find a microUSB port alongside a microphone pinhole.

microUSB port and mic pinhole
At the top of the device is the standard 3.5mm audio jack.

The 3.5mm audio jack is alone up top
Around the back of the device there’s the 8MP camera lens, centrally placed at the top. It protrudes from the 9mm thick body and the device rests on it when placed on its back, which makes it unstable and means you should be careful not to put it on a surface that can scratch the lens glass.
On either side of the camera lens you’ll spot the LED flash and the loudspeaker grille.

The large back cover houses the protruding 8MP camera, LED flash and loudspeaker
The back cover is made of the hyperglazed plastic that Samsung favors in recent years and can be opened. Below it is the 2,600mAh battery, which can be removed too. The battery is smaller than that of the Galaxy Note II (3,100mAh), but the lower screen resolution of the Mega 5.8 must’ve been considered.
Underneath the back panel is where you’ll also find the microSD card, and, as our model features dual-SIM support, two SIM card slots on opposite ends of the battery. Both slots require the battery to be removed in order to be accessible, so no hot-swap there. The microSD card is hot-swappable.

Both SIM cards require the battery to be removed

New TouchWiz with lots of options

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 comes with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, the latest release of the Google platform available and the same build introduced by the S4 flagship, also available on the Mega 6.3. The most recent version of TouchWiz tries to stay relatively close to stock Android, but adds many options for customization and a wide range of new features.
With that in mind, the Mega 5.8 lacks a few of the more advanced extras – such as Smart Scroll and Air Gestures – found on the S4.

The lockscreen features the new widgets introduced with Android 4.2, though Samsung fiddled with them a bit. The default lockscreen shows the time along with a personal message overlaid on beautiful photos pulled from TripAdvisor, which can be set to change every 3, 6, 12, or 24 hours.
The water ripples have been replaced by a lens flare effect, but you can switch back to the old one if you prefer, or disable it altogether.

The lockscreen shows beautiful photos and cool widgets
The lockscreen has multiple panes, each containing one widget. The page to the right of the default one is special and can either be a list of favorite apps (the default TouchWiz setting) or a shortcut for the camera (as in pure Android).

Favorite Apps are the default for the Galaxy Mega 5.8 • the camera alternative
The pages to the left contain different widgets – email, Google Now, Messaging, music player, Yahoo! Finance and News, Smart Remote and you can download apps from the Play Store that add new widgets.
There are no app shortcuts at the bottom of the screen by default – the Favorite Apps widget to the right has taken over that role, but you can enable them and have up to five easily accessible shortcuts.

The lockscreen shortcuts are not enabled by default but are still here
The greeting on the lockscreen can be changed – you can type something else, set a different font and color. You can also disable the personal message altogether and remove the time and date.

Customizing the lockscreen
The notification area features five toggles (eight in landscape mode) that allow you to quickly turn certain features on and off. There are more than five toggles, of course, you can swipe horizontally to get to the others. Or you can tap the rightmost button that reveals a grid of all the shortcuts, 14 in total. Alternately, you can a swipe down the notification area with two fingers to reveal the grid directly.
From grid view, you can access the notification panel settings, which allow you to rearrange this grid (the top row toggles are always visible), or enable/disable the screen brightness slider to make more room for notifications.

The new notification area is better than the one in stock Android 4.2
Another neat trick is to long press on a toggle to go to the related settings (e.g. Wi-Fi settings).
The notifications themselves have not changed – they can be expanded to reveal more info via two-finger swipe or dismissed with a sideways swipe. Sometimes they also have helpful buttons on them like “Call back” and “Send SMS” on a missed call notification.
The homescreen looks mostly the same. Samsung has provided many of its own custom widgets like Samsung Hub, S Travel, etc. There’s a wraparound feature, which lets you scroll homescreens infinitely by going from the last to the first one, and vice-versa.

Homescreen
The Mega 5.8 homescreen auto-rotates, just like on tablets, enabling landscape use of the entire interface. Auto-rotation is more than welcome – the Note phablets just don’t have it. We like that the Galaxy Mega doesn’t stubbornly insist on being just a phone. The homescreen is a lot more comfortable to use in landscape, especially the dock icons, which are easily within range of a quick thumb tap.

The Mega 5.8 rotates the homescreen like a tablet
You can pinch zoom to get into the overview mode of all homescreen panes. There can be up to 7 and you can easily add, remove and rearrange panes from here. One pane is marked as “home”, that’s the one you go to when you press the Home button – any of the available homescreen panes can be set as default quite easily.

Managing the homescreen panes
The app drawer hasn’t really changed since the early days of Nature UX. The app shortcuts are presented as a customizable grid, alphabetized grid or list and you can hide shortcuts (good for bloatware you can’t uninstall), view only downloaded apps, uninstall apps and add folders.
As before, widgets are in a separate tab in the drawer.

App drawer • widgets drawer
Pinch to zoom in the app drawer works the same as on a homescreen, giving you an overview of all panes as thumbnails. You can choose to have your app drawer ordering to custom, alphabetical grid or alphabetical list. There’s a dedicated downloaded pane too, where all your downloaded apps go.

App drawer at a glance • options
When you drag out shortcuts and widgets to the homescreen you get a list of small thumbnails of all the homescreen panes with the silhouettes of the widgets there so you can check how much space is available on each pane.

The small thumbnails of homescreen panes make finding room for a new widget a breeze
The App switcher interface is accessed by holding down the home button. It provides a list of thumbnails of all your open apps which can be swiped to the sides to dismiss and there are three buttons at the bottom: Task manager, Google Now, and Kill all apps.

The app switcher • Task manager
The Galaxy Mega 5.8 comes with Multi-window, which lets you run two apps side by side on the screen. You can adjust the dividing line giving one app more space. Only compatible apps can be used with Multi-window, for now that means mostly the ones that come preinstalled on the phone.
You can move the small arrow that brings up the drawer with the Multi-window apps to make it easier to reach with your thumb. You can also move the whole drawer to the other side of the screen. This improves ergonomics a bit.

The multi-view arrow can be relocated

Multi-window mode on the Galaxy Mega 5.8
Samsung tweaked the Settings screen to use a tabbed interface. There’s four of them – Connection, My device, Accounts and More. You can find the relevant features in their corresponding place – display, for instance, is in the My device tab.
The new arrangement makes navigating the settings menu much faster and more intuitive.

The updated settings menu
We like what Samsung has done with the latest iteration of TouchWiz. The company has amassed an intimidating pile of features and options, but that’s not a bad thing – the default setup is good enough for regular users, while power users get to have it their way without the need for third party apps.

Synthetic benchmarks

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 uses a dual-core Broadcom SoC clocked in at 1.4 GHz alongside a VideoCore IV GPU. While we have seen the Broadcom chipset before in a Samsung device (most notably in the Samsung Galaxy S II Plus), we haven’t seen it clocked at 1.4 GHz. It’s curious why Samsung chose the generally low-end Broadcom chipset for the Galaxy Mega 5.8 while sticking to a far more capable Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC for the Galaxy Mega 6.3, but we assume price is a factor.
With the notable exception of web browsing, it’s been our experience that the Broadcom SoC generally performs worse than its Qualcomm equivalents – even those with lower clock speeds – so we’re not expecting anything spectacular in terms of performance.
BenchmarkPi tests single-core CPU performance, and the 1.4 GHz processor scores towards the bottom of the pack in this benchmark, right around the previous generation Samsung flagship, the Galaxy S III.

The AnTuTu CPU benchmark is where the Mega 5.8 really struggles. Granted, it’s pitted against mostly quad-core competition, but the device is far behind the pack by a large margin.

We ran GLBenchmark off-screen, which means we’re testing at a fixed resolution, which lets us test the raw GPU power. The VideoCore IV is one of the less popular mobile GPU’s around, and the one found in the Galaxy Mega 5.8 did not impress.

But most games are rendered at native resolution, so we’re including Epic Citadel, which uses Unreal Engine 3 – a popular game engine for mobile developers. Here, the Galaxy Mega 5.8 matched the performance of the other devices and just as them often ran into the 60fps limitation of its screen, so you can count on pretty great gaming performance.

Broadcom chips usually punch above their weight when it comes to web browsing performance, and the one inside the Galaxy Mega 5.8 is no exception. In both the Sunspider and Browsermark 2 web benchmarks, the phablet scored towards the top of the charts – a notable improvement over the previous benchmarks.with the exception of web browsing, we were generally the Galaxy Mega 5.8 chipset is hardly anything worth writing home about. Whether it’s due to getting better dual-SIM performance or simply cutting down on costs, the Broadcom chipset used by Samsung in the Galaxy Mega 5.8 is not up to par when compared to the Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile SoC’s we find in most recent Samsung smartphones.
However, the difference isn’t huge when talking real-life scenarios as Jelly Bean’s Project Butter delivers smooth UI navigation even here. App loading times, on the other hand, could be much better.

Phonebook is top notch

The phonebook on the Galaxy Mega 5.8 packs an incredibly wide range of features. The four tabs on top are still present and provide access to the Phone app, Groups, Favorites, and Contacts.
As usual, there are various options to filter contacts by phone numbers, groups and multiple sorting. You can import/export contacts to/from the SIM card but you can’t display them alongside the phone memory entries.
Samsung has a proprietary feature in the phonebook that enables quick dialing (by swiping a contact to the right) or sending a text message (left swipe), which are really handy.

Phonebook swipe options
The Quick contacts feature, upon a tap on the contact picture, shows a pop up menu with shortcuts to call, text, email or chat via Google Talk. In our dual-SIM model, you’re even able to choose which SIM to call or message from.

The quick contacts menu
Tapping on a contact reveals all the details available. There are two tabs here – the first one is the About tab, which shows the person’s photo on top. If configured, the right tab displays their latest updates from social networks or Google Talk.

Viewing a contact
Information is perfectly organized into different sections for phone, email, etc. The top right corner has shortcuts to contact editing and favorites.
If the phonebook finds duplicate contact entries, it’ll prompt you to join them. Furthermore, there are a plethora of options once you hit the Menu button. You can view the call history, as well as join, unjoin and share contacts.
There’s plenty of contact information you can assign to each contact and it still remains neatly organized. You have all the types listed (numbers, email addresses, etc.) and, just like the previous version of TouchWiz, there’s a plus sign on the right – tapping it adds another item of that type. Pressing the minus sign under it deletes the unneeded field.

Editing a contact
The reject list blocks certain numbers, or even prefixes (e.g. block foreign calls). It works great with preset numbers and you can also bar unknown numbers. There are third party blacklist apps in the Play Store but it’s nice to have this out of box.

Reject list works great
You can choose a specific vibration pattern as an incoming call alert, just like you would a ringtone. A set of predefined patterns is offered, but you can make your own too. You can also assign a custom vibration to specific contacts.

Assigning a custom vibration
The phonebook app on the Galaxy Mega 5.8 is really something. It’s almost too advanced for some users but its interface is simple enough so you can only use the features you need.

Dual-SIM Telephony

Our Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 model I9152 comes with dual-SIM support, which is one of the few areas where it has the upper hand over the larger 6.3-inch model that doesn’t have a dual-SIM variant.
The Mega 5.8 comes with a dedicated SIM Manager to configure how calls and data are handled on both cards. As we said in our hardware tour, neither SIM card on the Mega is hot-swappable, so a reboot is always required when changing cards.
Whenever you add a new SIM card and power the device on, an interface pops up allowing you to rename and even change the icon to easily identify different SIMs. This interface can be accessed at any time from the settings menu. The Mega remembers the settings for any SIM you customize, which is great if you’ve got more than two SIM cards.

SIM cards can customized for easy identification
The Galaxy Mega allows for both SIM cards to be active simultaneously, meaning that you can receive a call on one SIM even while you are on a call with the other. What happens is that calls from your other SIM are forwarded to your currently active SIM’s network, which you can put on hold to answer (this might incur additional network charges). You can place the two calls on and off hold as you please.
You can toggle the Dual SIM Always On option on or off for either SIM card. Effectively, this enables call waiting and call forwarding so you can switch each SIM card on and off individually (which can help save battery).
You can also pick which SIM is to be used for mobile data – only one can be used at a time.
Underneath the quick system toggles, there are big buttons labeled SIM 1 and SIM 2, for quick switching between cards before dialing a number. During a call, the active SIM gets displayed at the top of the call interface.

The SIM card selector in the notification area
The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 offers top notch in-call audio and managed to hold onto signal trouble-free even while managing two SIM cards. Earpiece volume is great and Samsung has even gone as far as adding an in-call equalizer, which does wonders. Of course, no matter how hard they tried, the Mega 5.8 is obviously not the most comfortable piece of hardware to hold up to your ear.
The phone app on the Galaxy Mega 5.8 features Smart Dial – it searches names and numbers simultaneously. Only one contact is shown (with contact photo) and you can tap the down arrow to view the rest (the number above the arrow indicates how many contacts have matched your query). At the bottom, there are individual dial buttons for each SIM card.

The dialer lets you choose which SIM to call from
Direct Call is here too and lets you dial a number by lifting the phone up to your ear while browsing contacts or reading/composing a message.
Voice dialing is available too and taken care of by the newly added S Voice, which activates on a double tap of the home button. All you need to say is “Hi Galaxy” and speak your command (e.g. “call Dexter”). It takes a while to process voice commands but in general it has more uses than other voice-recognition apps for Android.
The call log is the tab next to the dial pad. It displays all the dialed, received and missed calls in one list sorting your call history by contacts.

The call log • two view modes for Favorites
Thanks to the proximity sensor, your screen will automatically turn off when you hold it up to your ear during a call. The available options during a call include taking a note, using the keypad, muting, holding the call or adding another call to this conversation.
The dialer also offers quick shortcuts for making a video call or sending a message instead.
We ran the I9152 Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 through our traditional loudspeaker test, where it scored an overall result of Average. While it may be easy to miss in noisy environments, you should have no problem hearing it under normal conditions. You can find more about the testing process here.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overal score
Sony Xperia Z	60.1	58.3	61.6	Below Average
Apple iPhone 5	66.8	66.1	67.7	Below Average
Nokia Lumia 920	61.6	64.8	65.8	Below Average
HTC One X+	64.6	65.8	74.6	Average
Asus Padfone 2	57.3	66.7	77.8	Average
Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8	66.6	64.6	71.8	Average
HTC Butterfly	69.0	70.7	77.9	Good
Oppo Find 5	70.7	67.7	73.0	Good
HTC One	69.3	66.6	75.9	Good
Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4	70.6	66.2	77.3	Good
Google Nexus 4	71.1	66.6	78.8	Good
Samsung Galaxy S III	75.1	66.5	75.0	Good
LG Optimus G	74.6	71.3	82.7	Excellent

Smart Stay and gestures

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 comes with a number of advanced features first introduced with the Galaxy S4 and shared with the Mega 6.3. Unfortunately, some features are left out, likely due to the less capable Broadcom chipset located in the Mega 5.8.
The only more advanced feature that made the cut is Smart Stay. It prevents the screen from locking as long as the front-facing camera can see your face, which is great for reading.
Smart Rotate, Smart Scroll and Smart Pause are not included although the Mega has the required hardware for it (a front-facing camera), unlike the Air Gestures, which need a special new sensor on the front.
Then there are a number of motion gestures, which are not exactly new. There’s direct call (dial the contact whose info you’re currently viewing by lifting the phone up to your ear), smart alert (makes the phone vibrate when you pick it up if there are missed events), zooming and panning in the gallery, a shake of the phone to refresh the list of Bluetooth devices and muting alarms or pausing music playback by putting the phone face down.

The gestures from the S III and Note II are onboard too
You can also pause the music player by putting your palm on the screen. A palm swipe takes a screenshot.

S Voice and Google Now

S Voice is Samsung’s answer to Apple’s Siri and Google’s own Voice Actions – it can be used to initiate or answer a call, dictate text, play music, open an app, change a setting, make a memo (including voice memo), add a reminder, schedule an event, set or snooze an alarm or timer, check the weather, do a search on the internet, take a photo, look for local listings (e.g. nearby restaurants) and even get an answer to a question.

S Voice
The problem with S Voice is not nearly as fast or as accurate at recognizing your speech input as Google Now. Fortunately, being a Jelly Bean smartphone, Google Now is also included with Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8.
Google Now integrates with your Google account and can access your daily routine, internet searches, email, etc. and give you information relevant to your interests and daily needs.
It provides traffic information to your work or home, knows those scores of the sports teams you follow, has the weather forecast for your location and can even tell you who Kevin Spacey is. It even has its own separate widget on the homescreen.

Google Now and its homescreen widget

Messaging with room for customization

The messaging department looks similar to the phonebook – you get a list of conversation threads and you can swipe on a message header to start a call or send a new message (this is a little redundant, but gets points for consistency).

Messaging and swipe gestures
Landscape has an optional split-screen view, which puts the list of conversation threads on the left and the messages in the currently selected thread on the right. That’s a great way to utilize the big screen.

Split-screen view in landscape mode
To add message recipients, just start typing the corresponding name or number and choose from the contacts offered.

Chat view • attaching multimedia
The keyboard of the Galaxy Mega 5.8 displays an additional row above the letters for numbers – like a full-fledged computer keyboard does.
There’s also a Swipe-like mode which tracks your finger and guesses the word you’re trying to type. This feature works great but has limited language support for now. Another swiping function lets you move the text caret by swiping left or right on the keyboard. Only one of these two features can be enabled.

QWERTY keyboard • Continuous input • landscape mode
On a screen this big, the floating keyboard is a nice option. It takes up less space on the screen and can be moved around, plus the smaller keyboard may be easier to type on for some (“smaller” here is relative, it’s still quite big compared to phone keyboards).

Floating keyboard
Adding any multimedia content to the message automatically converts it into an MMS. You can either quickly add a photo or an audio file to go with the text or compose an MMS using all the available features (like multiple slides, slide timing, layout, etc.). The multiple slides are all shown inside the compose box.
You can use S Voice to dictate your message or use Google’s built-in voice recognition software if you don’t feel like typing. Since this is a Jelly Bean device, you can also use voice typing without a data network connection, as long as you have downloaded the necessary language packs. Samsung also provides the option to change the default input method.
Samsung has left a lot of room for customizing your messaging experience. You can choose from different bubble styles and background and can use the volume button to increase or decrease the font in conversations to really make use of that 5.8″ screen.

Customization options
When you’re composing a new message you can use the Translate option. The same goes for messages you’ve received. This feature probably won’t see much use but it’s there should you need it.
What will come in good use, however, is the new Direct call (again) feature. When you are reading a message from someone, their number will be automatically dialed by just lifting the phone up to your ear.
Just like the dialer, the Messaging app has built-in spam prevention. You can block some numbers (or all unknown numbers) and even add specific phrases to be blocked.

The spam filter can block numbers of phrases
Moving on to email, the Gmail app has grown handy shortcuts at the bottom of the screen but is mostly unchanged. It supports batch operations, which allow multiple emails to be archived, labeled or deleted. The default app supports multiple Gmail accounts, but there’s no unified inbox.

Gmail app
A cool feature in Gmail is that you can swipe an open message left or right to go to the previous / next. Swiping on a specific line in the inbox will archive the message.
The Samsung Email app can handle multiple POP or IMAP inboxes. You have access to the messages in the original folders that are created online, side by side with the standard local ones such as inbox, drafts and sent items.
In the upper-left corner you’ll find a context menu prompt, which lists all your folders. It’s not accessible with a swipe from the side so you’ll need to tap the mail icon each time you want to gain access to it.

Generic email app
Turning the phone landscape activates the split view – the left side of the screen shows the list of emails, while the right side shows a message. This is the same kind of interface we’ve seen on the Galaxy Tab.
Google Talk handles the Instant Messaging department. The G-Talk network is compatible with a variety of popular clients like Pidgin, Kopete, iChat and Ovi Contacts.

Gallery gets it done

The gallery on the Galaxy Mega 5.8 can be sorted into albums, all photos and videos, time, location, etc. Just like in the phonebook, you can choose what kind of content should be displayed – photos and videos from the phone, Dropbox, Facebook or Picasa.
You can pinch to zoom in the gallery and thus manage the size of the thumbnails.
Upon choosing an album (for instance Camera) you’re taken into that album’s stack of photos but a swipe to the right will list all albums. In this mode you can browse images in a dual-screen mode and easily select files from multiple folders.

Gallery • the list of albums • changing thumbnail sizes
Upon a press and hold on a picture, the gallery gives you the option to select multiple images, which you can then mass delete, share, copy or move.
The Galaxy Mega 5.8 is great for viewing photos – the screen is as big as most photo frames and the lower resolution doesn’t really show. The great viewing angles do, however.
When viewing a single photo, you’ll find several sharing shortcuts and a delete button above the photo, while below is a line of small thumbnails of all other photos in the album. You can tap those small thumbnails to move to other images or you can just swipe to the side.

Viewing image • Sharing options
You can easily retouch photos right in the Gallery itself. The photo editor gives you options like crop, rotate, color and effects. You can also make a memo on top of the picture.

Editing a photo
The Gallery also supports highly customizable slideshows with several effects to choose from, customizable music and speed. You can also highlight specific images to be included in the slideshow.

Highly customizable slideshow
You can print photos straight from the gallery, though this only works on Samsung printers.

File manager

The My Files app hasn’t changed really – it’s an efficient and simple to use file manager. It can move, copy, lock and rename files in bulk, even send multiple files to another phone. My files will only browse the memory card and the large internal storage (it can’t access the system drive). We wish Samsung had the same sidebar with the folders on the left, just like in the gallery.

File manager

Music player has folder support

The TouchWiz music player on the Galaxy Mega 5.8 is jam-packed with features and supports a wide variety of file formats, including FLAC, Wave, etc.
Music is sorted by the usual Artist, Album, Playlist, etc. but there’s also Folder support – it’s quite handy as it saves you the need to sort songs into playlists like on so many other players. You can customize the categories that show up along the top via the settings menu.

Samsung Music player
Then there’s Music square – it’s quite similar to the SensMe feature of Sony smartphones. It automatically rates a song as exciting or calm, passionate or joyful and plots those songs on a square (hence the name).

Music square options
The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 can also search for content on third party DLNA servers like PCs or other phones on the same network.

Nearby devices
Samsung has enabled equalizer presets (including a custom one with 7 bands) along with the sound-enhancing SoundAlive technology, which features 7.1 channel virtualization. Samsung uses SoundAlive in some of their MP3 and Android-powered media players.
The Galaxy Mega 5.8 Smart Sound, which equalizes the volume between tracks. Adapt Sound from the S4 is missing.

SoundAlive equalizer • Smart Sound
The Now playing screen gives you the usual options – a scrollable timeline, play/pause and skip controls, repeat and shuffle, volume control but it also adds lyrics support, an AllShare shortcut and a direct sound settings shortcut.

Now playing
While listening to a song you can find music controls in the notification area and the lockscreen.

Music player options • controls in the notification area and lockscreen

Capable video player with spotty codec support

The video player, found on the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 has the last watched video on top for quick access. Under it there are two tabs – personal (showing you the videos on your local storage), and Nearby devices, which shows the PCs and players on your local Wi-Fi network.

Video player • nearby devices
The video player lets you choose between three crop modes for how the video fits the screen. The video player lets you squeeze the best viewing experience out of the large screen. You can adjust video brightness, color tone and enable outdoor visibility too.
Some of the same SoundAlive audio enhancement technology is available here too.

Video player
Pop up play is here too – it moves the video in a small floating window and you can use other apps on the phone while still watching the video. You can use pinch zoom to adjust the size of the video. Samsung should probably retire this feature in favor of a Mutli-window app.

Pop up play
The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 offered a list of subtitles and let us pick. It scans for all subtitles, so the file doesn’t have to have the same name as the video file.

Subtitles support
While the video player has most bases covered, including XviD, MP4 and MKV files of up to 1080p resolution, DivX is not supported, and neither do videos with AC3 or DTS sound.

Good 8MP camera

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 has an 8MP camera just like the one on the Mega 6.3, which captures photos of up to 3264 x 2448 pixels. There’s a 1.9MP camera on the front, but there’s no dual-shot mode like on the Galaxy S4.
The user interface is based on the Galaxy Camera interface. A virtual shutter key and a capture video button are always available in the viewfinder, so you don’t have to switch modes. However, this is certainly not the most convenient solution, particularly in situations where you’re shooting full resolution 8MP photos, but are forced to frame your videos in a 4:3 viewfinder.

Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 user interface
The Mode button brings up a carousel of different shooting modes, each mode comes with a descriptive image and text. When you get familiar with those modes, you can switch to the grid, which drops the descriptions but is faster.

Carousel and grid views for the Mode selector
There are more settings in the top left corner, but they won’t be used very often. Nevertheless, there’re a number of interesting options here like the setting for the volume rocker to act as a still shutter key, a video shutter key or a zoom lever. Another interesting option is contextual file names – the Galaxy Mega 5.8 will name photos with your location (GPS needs to be on for this to work).
You can customize the shortcuts available here, but most people will probably stick to the Mode selector.
There are relatively few manual settings, the Galaxy Mega 5.8 just gives you an ISO setting, white balance and exposure compensation.
There are a few less mode options on the Mega 5.8 than its larger 6.3-inch cousin. Gone are modes like HDR, Drama, Night, Eraser, and 360 photo, but you get Burst shot mode, as well as Panorama, Sports, Beauty face, and more.
Best Photo and Best Face snap multiple photos and let you pick the best one (in the case of Best Face, you can tweak each face in the photo individually), while Beauty Shot does some automatic touch up.
Sound & shot captures a photo and records ambient sound. It sounds pretty cool – for example, you can hear the sea gulls in a beach photo or the roaring of car engines at a race – but we had problems sharing the shot. All the Galaxy Mega 5.8 would send is the still image, a JPEG, while the sound remained on the phone. Shame that Samsung didn’t use the standard Audio note feature of JPEG photos for this one.
Photos have a lot of fine detail and low noise levels. Colors are slightly fairly accurate, but contrast is somewhat too low occasionally. We have, of course, seen more detailed output from 8MP shooters, but the Mega 5.8 is still a nicely competent cameraphone.

Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 camera samples

Photo quality comparison

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 has the previous generation of flagships to contend with in our Photo quality compare tool.

Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 in our Photo quality compare tool

1080p video camera

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 stores videos in MP4 files at 30fps with a bitrate of 17Mbps. Stereo audio is recorded at 120Kbps and a sampling rate of 48kHz. These are the same numbers you’ll find on the Galaxy S4. You can also capture 1080p photos during recording, but it’s hard to see the point in that.
Touch focus is available before and during video recording and you can switch back to continuous autofocus. The continuous autofocus tends to trigger a bit too often, so it’s nice to be able to switch between the two.
Videos captured with the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 have a an average level of fine detail, and certainly not as good as the S4. They also have rather low contrast, just like some of the stills, which takes some of the fun out. Noise levels are low, while colors are similar to those in still images – overall accurate but slightly oversaturated.

Video quality comparison

You can also take a close look at the quality of Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 videos in our Video quality compare tool. There are a number of phablets and even tablets you can pit it against.

Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 in our Video quality compare tool

Connectivity is nothing spectacular

The Mega 5.8 may have mostly midrange specs, but Samsung didn’t skimp on the connectivity features. The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 has the basic quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and 3G connectivity for both SIM cards.
The phablet has Wi-Fi support which includes a/b/g/n, with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz band compatibility. There’s also the low-power Bluetooth 4.0 on board.
The AllShare DLNA functionality, which used to be a standalone application, is now more tightly integrated into the respective Samsung applications. To share or access content on nearby DLNA-enabled devices, you do this directly from the My Video app and the Music Player.

Web browser on a near tablet-sized screen

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 has a large enough screen to almost rival 7″ tablets in terms of comfortable web browsing. The pixel density of the screen isn’t very high, but that only matters if you like reading text at low zoom levels (it gets fuzzy).

Browsing GSMArena.com on the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8
The browser supports both double tap and pinch zooming along with the two-finger tilt zoom. There are niceties such as multiple tabs, incognito tabs, text reflow, find on page and so on. You can also tell the browser to request the desktop version of web pages if you don’t want to meddle with mobile pages design for the smaller ~4″ screens.

Page options and settings • tabs
The brightness and colors option gives you four different presets to adjust the display according to your preferences. Automatic brightness is an option, too, and works only within the browser.
The web browser also works nicely with Multi-window and there’s a translate option in case you come across a website in a language you don’t speak.
Flash cannot be enabled even in the stock Android browser as support for plug-ins has been dropped.

S Apps and more

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 features a wide array of advanced features and applications out of the box.
One of the coolest apps is called Group Play. It shares various multimedia across multiple devices in the same room, but unlike DLNA it’s interactive.

Group Play
Unfortunately, the Group Play app on the Mega 5.8 lacks the ability to share music, due to the fact that it does not have NFC connectivity to pair with other devices.
Nevertheless, the more useful share document and picture options are enabled – you can have the same picture appear on everyone’s phone and you can draw over it if you need to highlight a certain element of the image.

Sharing a photo and drawing over it
Finally, perhaps the coolest feature of Group Play is that it allows for multiplayer games to be played on several phones simultaneously. Of course, only supported games work.
Moving on, there’s Samsung Link, another way to share content between devices. Unlike Group Play, Samsung Link is intended for personal use. You can link the phone to a computer that is synced with Dropbox, SkyDrive or SugarSync and remotely access content on that device.

Samsung Link lets you access content from your computer remotely
S Translator will help travelers – it can translate between two languages using either typed text or by using speech recognition. It can read out the resulting translation too, if you don’t think your Korean accent can cut it. S Translator supports all the widely-spoken languages – English, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and, of course, Korean.

S Translator can be invaluable while traveling
Finally, the Mega 5.8 comes preloaded with a special “Samsung edition” of the TripAdvisor app. Besides the ability to have rotating lockscreen images, the Samsung-specific version of the app allows you to login with your Samsung account, use the S Travel widget for a quick peek at certain popular travel destinations, as well as automatically add relevant travel information to your photos.
Otherwise, the app lets you find interesting things to do if you’re in a new city, as well as hotels, restaurants and even flight information. Most locations have reviews posted by other TripAdvisor users, so you can quickly see if a place is worth it or not.

The “Samsung edition” of the TripAdvisor app

Office Editor is limited out of box

As to Office functionality out of box, the Galaxy Mega 5.8 gives you only the Polaris Office viewer, rather than the full-fledged editor. The viewer does not show up in your app drawer, but instead only opens when you select the relevant document from the My Files app.

Polaris Office viewer
Nevertheless, you can view most document types, including PowerPoint, Word, Excel as well as PDF. If you want full editing capabilities, you can download the full version of Polaris from Samsung Apps for free. We suspect Samsung included only the viewer to save on space, as it’s 26 MB worth of a download.

Organizer is as robust as ever

The Calendar can be viewed by Day, Week, Month or Year, or by a list of all your upcoming tasks or events. The small date cells display only limited info on the events for the day, so you’ll have to select the event for more relevant information. Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder.

The calendar application
There is also a calculator on board. It is nicely touch optimized – the buttons are big enough and easy to hit, and there’s advanced logarithm functions if you rotate it to landscape mode.

The calculator
The Samsung Galaxy Memo 5.8 features a decent alarm clock application which allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own start and repeat time. There’s also a World clock, a stopwatch, and a timer. They are easy to work with and can come in handy.

The Clock application
We’ve been familiar with the S Memo app ever since its debut on the Galaxy Note, and its functionality remains more or less the same. It allows you to create notes either via a virtual keyboard or simply by doodling with your finger. Samsung even sells a special display-friendly ball pen for enthusiasts.

The S Memo app

Google Maps and Navigation give you the most out of GPS

The Samsung I9152 Galaxy Mega 5.8 comes with a GPS receiver, which got a satellite lock in couple of minutes with A-GPS turned off. A-GPS can speed this up quite a bit, but requires Internet access. We didn’t experience any issues with GPS performance.
The Galaxy Mega 5.8 comes with Google Maps and Navigation. Voice-guided navigation has become a viable solution since the v5.0 update. Vector maps are smaller and easier on the data traffic and reroute is an option if you go off course without the need to connect to the Internet. In fact, the only time you need a data connection is when you initially plan the course – Navigation will cache the needed maps.
Quite naturally, the app also supports the Street View mode. If it’s available in the area you’re interested in, you can enjoy a 360-degree view of the surroundings. When the digital compass is turned on it feels like making a virtual tour of the location.

Google Maps includes Street View as well
If Google Maps Navigation doesn’t do it for you, you can grab an alternative app from the Android Market – there are both free and paid ones.

Google Play backed up by the Samsung Apps store

The Google Play Store has had a minor visual update recently, and the tiled interface allows app thumbnails to more effectively scale on larger displays like the Mega 5.8’s. The functionality of Google Play is just as before; you have apps laid out across several scrollable tabs – categories, featured, top paid, top free, top grossing, top new paid, top new free and trending. Apps usually have several screenshots (some even offer a demo video) so you can get an idea of what the app looks like before installing it.
You can also check out comments and ratings, as well as the number of downloads and so on, to help you decide whether the app is worth it.

The Android Market will give you access to hundreds of thousands of apps
The Google Play Store is full of all sorts of apps. From music / video players, to file managers and various tools, you’ll always see something worth a try.
Samsung has added its own app store to the mix. It features largely the same type of interface as Google Play, except here you’ll find a far smaller number of apps. The good news is Samsung uses this repository to distribute some exclusive titles and some promotional offers available only to its customers, like the abovementioned Polaris Office editor.

The Samsung Apps store

Final words

The Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 is the smaller member of a pair that leads the “go-big-or-go-home” campaign. If you’re looking for a device that gives you big screen action without breaking the bank, it’s a device worthy of your consideration as it falls in just short of the tablet range.
The dual-SIM support is also a huge plus in this regard, as many emerging markets have users who are keen on having not only the ability to wield a larger screen around, but also be able to place calls across multiple carriers. That being said, the dual-SIM functionality may not be without its fair share of sacrifices.
The Galaxy Mega 5.8 comes with a dual-core Broadcom chipset that gives you less than stellar performance, particularly when compared to its larger Qualcomm Snapdragon-wielding counterpart, the Galaxy Mega 6.3. Whether Samsung determined that the Broadcom chipset manages dual-SIM functionality more effectively, or if it’s used to simply keep the price down is anyone’s guess, but the fact remains that you’ll get no better than last year’s midrange performance from the Galaxy Mega 5.8. Good thing is Jelly Bean goes a long way towards masking the deficiencies and UI navigation is pretty smooth.
If you’re looking for an even more affordable dual-SIM big screen alternative to the Mega 5.8, another in-house solution can be found with the Samsung Galaxy Grand. While it also sports the less-than-stellar Broadcom chipset, you’ll be getting a 5-inch screen, with the same amount of onboard storage, 1 GB of RAM, and the same 8MP camera capable of 1080p video recording, alongside a 2MP front-facer.

Samsung Galaxy Grand I9082
If dual-SIM support isn’t that important, but a large screen is, why not check out the Samsung Galaxy Note II? It’s got an HD-resolution screen that’s only slightly smaller at 5.5 inches, and you’ll be getting more storage space, 2 GB of RAM, and the great S-Pen functionality, all powered by a much more capable 1.6 GHz quad-core Exynos chipset. 4.2.2 Jelly Bean update for the Note II has still not been released by Samsung, but it should come in the following months.

Samsung Galaxy Note II N7100
Arguably the most interesting alternative is the Huawei Ascend Mate. Packing an even larger 6.1″ display, the Chinese smartphone has 720p screen and a quad-core chipset without costing more than the Galaxy Mega 5.8.

Huawei Ascend Mate
Acer also announced a huge phablet of its own with the Liquid S1. The 5.7″ handset will have a dual-SIM version and while its four Cortex-A7 cores aren’t all that great, the 720p resolution of its screen is definitely a huge upgrade over what the Mega 5.8 has.

Acer Liquid S1
For the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8 to be relevant to a smartphone user, it comes down to a very specific set of needs. First, you just have to have a large screen, second, you need to have dual-SIM support and finally, you have to value Android 4.2 Jelly Bean pretty high. If this is you, then the Mega 5.8 offers a package that few can match.
If at least two of the above three conditions aren’t set in stone, however, take a look at the above recommendations for some alternatives. By the way, the Mega 6.3 is clearly a superior package but it seems it runs a greater risk of being cannibalized by the Notes – the upcoming model and the current second generation. The Mega 5.8 is seemingly playing it safe and keeping it simple. Dual SIM on a massive screen may not be the most compelling combo but one that might be in demand in select markets.

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