Samsung ATIV Odyssey Review – Verizon’s Under $50 Windows Phone 8

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

When I first found out that the Samsung ATIV Odyssey from Verizon retailed for only $49.99 with a contract, I admittedly had a couple of concerns. First off I was worried that the Odyssey wasn’t going to have the performance needed to keep up in today’s market of ‘Super Phones’, my other concern was it not having the feel of a quality piece of equipment. The first point turned out to be a non-issue. The second point, there are a couple of aspects that could be improved on. We’ll get to those shortly though.

When we compare the performance of the Samsung ATIV Odyssey to the Lumia 920 back in November, they were pretty well neck and neck. There weren’t many performance differences through out the tests, especially if you wanted to see something that you could feel in day to day usage. As an unscientific test method I went through and downloaded a couple of the more popular games for the phone. Each one that I played was responsive, fast, and played extremely well on the Samsung ATIV Odyssey. I didn’t experience the phone hanging or freezing up at all and I never had to wait for the phone to catch up to me. The overall experience was great.

I mentioned above about a couple of aspects that could be improved on. Mostly it comes down to the style of the Samsung ATIV Odyssey. It isn’t necessarily that the styling of the phone is bad, more that it is simply on the plain side. Which isn’t exactly a negative, but it isn’t exactly going to make it stand out from the crowd either. Much of the style comes down to personal preference. One thing that I didn’t care for was the feel of the material used, at least not for the back cover. When removing the back cover to take the battery out or remove the SIM card, it felt like the cover was going to break. It never did though. It may be a much stronger material than it feels, but short of actually trying to break it, it would be hard to determine that.

Verizon offers a variety of different data packages when shopping for phones ranging from 1GB up to as much as 50GB of data. The 1GB data plan starts out at $50.00 and each step up increases the cost by $10 until you go past the 20GB plan.

• 1GB $50
• 2GB $60
• 4GB – 20GB +$10 per 2GB
• 30GB $225
• 40GB $300
• 50GB $375

Each of the data plans can be shared by up to 10 devices, beyond the data plan there is the line access fee of $40 per device. If you’re worried about talk time, no worries, each of the plans include unlimited talk and text with the data plan.

Legit Bottom Line: The Samsung ATIV Odyssey was my first experience with the Windows Phone 8 platform, and it was certainly a good one. The Samsung ATIV Odyssey is an overall great phone, and at only $49.99 it wont cost you an arm and a leg!