Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G: A closer look (photos)

The Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G, available in the next few weeks from MetroPCS, is a midrange Android 2.3 Gingerbread smartphone that manages to offer satisfying features while keeping costs at a reasonable $200 off-contract. Did I mention the Attain runs on the carrier's LTE network?

The Galaxy Attain 4G has a nice, silvery design with something we haven't seen for a while--a quartet of physical navigation buttons below the display.

The 3.2-megapixel rear-facing camera was surprisingly good outdoors, with autofocus and a flash as well. The front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera also did OK. Stick with this slideshow for test shots from the phone's camera.

The Micro-USB charger is on the bottom of the phone.

The power button (left) looks quite a lot like the 3.5mm headset jack (right).

The Galaxy Attain's camera took a pretty blah shot of our studio scene. (All these camera photos have been resized, but are otherwise untouched.)

Ditto CNET's Miss Lynn La, whose skin tones are grayed out. The photo could also be more detailed (she did comment that the flash is extremely bright.)

The camera did much better outside in even lighting.

Here's a close-up of a mural I shot with the Attain 4G.

The details could pop more, but the skin tones are right in this outdoor shot.

The camera phone did a good job of capturing color in this outdoor photo.