Okay Geek Farm
Ask Max: Samsung Solstice II or Samsung Mythic?
Darryl Cobb
In today’s edition of Ask Max, I had an interesting question from a friend. He wasn’t interested in a smartphone but rather interested in something midrange. Of course, I had to fight back all sorts of urges to tell him why he shouldn’t stop at a lower tier but reach for the cutting edge. The only thing that stopped me though was realizing this fact: the bleeding edge isn’t for everyone. So he came to me with two phones in mind, The Samsung Mythic and The Samsung Solstice II. And he threw down the gauntlet. Which one do I choose? Let’s examine this.
OS Performance: Both use Samsungs homegrown Touchwiz 2.0 software. This isn’t the Touchwiz 3.0 layed over Android. This is all Samsung. This means that all the widgets and extras come from Samsung alone, no Android Market here. What I did notice when watching the videos on CNET was the Solstice II looked very lagging whereas the Mythic was reasonably smooth. The Solstice II seamed to hiccup each time from transitioning from each of the 3 homescreens. Why is this important? There is no pull out keyboard, only the soft keyboard on the touchscreen. Texting could be very frustrating. The Mythic seemed to handle the touchscreen tasks better in all aspects.
Talk Time: Chances are the reason you are looking at a feature phone is because using social media and the web comes secondary to calling and texting. Here you have to weigh your options. The Solstice II has a talk time quoted of up to 300 minutes vs. The Mythic’s 180 minutes cap. Of course any texting or surfing could lower each one but still, the Solstice II is almost double the Mythic. Here’s where it gets tricky, CNET had the Mythic with better overall call quality than the Solstice II. However, they didn’t rate The Solstice II’s as terrible.
Features: The Mythic weighs in better at almost every turn here. Better camera (3.2MP vs. 2.0MP), larger display (3.3in vs. 3.0) and Multimedia Messaging Support (MMS). However, the Solstice II has some tricks of it’s own with more IM support (Yahoo, AOL and Windows Live Messenger), supports more audio formats (eAAC+,AAC +,WAV, MP3, WMA, MIDI, AAC, AMR) and it does video recording. So where do your needs lie? And just to throw this out here, the Mythic does have downloadable apps whereas The Solstice II only allows you to download games.
How much are they?: The Samsung Solstice II is $29.99 on contract and The Samsung Mythic is Free on contract. Again, these are pretty good values for how much they are asking, especially if you are not into all the features of the latest smartphones on the market.
So What Did I recommend?: Based on the all the information that I gathered, the videos I watched the information my friend gave me about his needs in a phone, I recommended the Samsung Mythic with a qualifying statement. That battery life advantage of the Solstice II is hard to overlook, especially for someone who is always on the go. 6 hours vs. 11+ hours is really hard to ignore. The reason I recommended the Mythic first was the bigger screen, the snappier OS feel and the better camera and call quality.
As always, if you have any questions for me feel free to ASK MAX on twitter: @maxrobes2000 or on Kik: maxrobes2000.
