Samsung Galaxy Ring pales against rivals

The Samsung Galaxy Ring for Virgin Mobile. It costs $150 off contract, runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and has a dedicated camera button. But do you wanna buy it? Maybe not. I'm Jessica Dolcourt for CNET and this is your First Look. The Ring is one of a couple $150 phones for Virgin Mobile specs lineup generally from phone to phone, but on here, performance unfortunately is a little bit worse. It has a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, here it's on full brightness, looks very rich and colorful. One thing you notice though is when the screen is off, it looks really bad. It's sort of dim and has the strange cast and blackness on the sides that makes it seem like there's sort of a filter on top. It's very highly reflective and that unfortunately plays a role when you're looking at the content and just isn't as sharp and crisp as other phones next to it. Physically, the phone is compact, looks like a lot of other Samsung phones so much that I sometimes I got them confused and picked up the wrong phone while I was reviewing this one. Very glossy sides and surfaces, slips easily into pocket. It is compact enough to tote around. There's a dedicated camera button on the side, there's also a micro SD card slot on the other side that will take up to 64 gigabytes in external storage. On the back is a 5-megapixel camera with flash. Unfortunately, this one underperformed with mediocre shots that were usually dull and a little bit blurry. Same goes for the 720p HD video, audio did not pick up very well, and image was also the same sort of dull flat coloring. Inside, you've got a dual-care Qualcomm processor that should be all right but I found the found very slow. Data wise, the phone will also be slow because it is 3G not 4G enabled. Sometimes, I found that it took up to 5 minutes to fully load a website. Overall, if you are looking for a budget smartphone, keep looking, there are other options on Virgin Mobile and other carriers. I would skip this one myself. I'm Jessica Dolcourt. This has been your First Look at the Samsung Galaxy Ring. You can read my full review at CNET.com.