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The Samsung Galaxy Xcover has a 1500mAh battery, which is pretty generous and should, on paper, provide a relatively long life. We've not seen an official battery life quote from Samsung, but elsewhere we've seen it quoted as good for 11 hours talktime on 3G and up to 640 hours of 3G standby.
We found the battery to live up to the usual smartphone expectation of delivering about a day's worth of life between charges, but what you get will of course very much depend on how you use the Samsung Galaxy Xcover.
When we left it on overnight just with Wi-Fi on, it lost about a tenth of its charge just ticking over. Playing music for an hour lost it about 20 per cent.
And over a two-and-a-half hour period when we used the video camera, played music continuously and sent and received emails over Wi-Fi indoors and 3G outdoors, the battery drained down to close to half of its power.
So, we reckon if you use the Samsung Galaxy Xcover on a daily commute, you ought to budget for an afternoon power boost, and another in the evening.
Connectivity options don't run to the likes of DLNA and HDMI - this isn't an expensive enough smartphone to warrant those.
But Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are of course here, HSDPA supports 7.2Mbps downloads and 5.76Mbps uploads, and those who like their location-aware services will be pleased to see A-GPS is here too.
In addition, you can use the Samsung Galaxy Xcover as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot.
