Samsung Galaxy Beam

The Samsung Galaxy Beam is all about its power packed projector. Its performance is amazing. It may be used by professionals for presentation. For a general user, it may not be of much use. Apart from it, all other features you can get in many other smart phones at almost half the price. But its overall performance is brilliant. Its battery life is good.

Read original review at TelecomTiger.

The Galaxy Beam is a pretty difficult phone to sum up. The projector is a brilliant addition and works surprisingly well, but the phone side of the device is a bit of a let down as it's slightly underpowered for the price and comes running an older version of Android. If it's mainly the projector bit you're interested in then you may think it's worth the money, but if you're primarily looking for a speedy, high-end phone and will only use the projector occasionally then it's probably best to look elsewhere.

Read original review at TrustedReviews.

There's definitely some excitement to be had when reviewing a device so out of the ordinary, but we found it a little difficult to make a final judgment call. The Galaxy Beam does well at what it claims to be good at (projecting media), but it's otherwise mediocre at best. That's not to say it's a horrible phone, but the low-to-mid-range feature set makes it a tough sell at $430, especially when you can pay the same price for much nicer devices these days. In this situation, it means that you either have to love the projector enough to justify the higher price, or the feature is so important to your business that you're willing to sacrifice a lot of modern functionality to get it.

The Beam is interesting as a proof of concept, but we don't see it blossoming into anything more than that at the present time. That's not to say this über-specific category doesn't have a future, but something as unique as a projector would likely find more success in a more premium phone: it needs to be incorporated into higher-end devices without making compromises in components, firmware or size. Only then can it be viable as a mainstream device. Until then, it's a fun gadget to show off to friends, but that's the extent of its strengths.

Read original review at Engadget.