Criteria
Comments
Rating
- Reception and call quality No comments
- Display No comments
- Battery life No comments
- Camera No comments
- Ease of use No comments
- Design and form factor No comments
- Portability (size / weight) No comments
- Media support No comments
- Durability No comments
- Ecosystem (apps, accessories, etc.) No comments
Detailed review
Pros:
- very very nice screen. I am no brand loyalist but I have had Samsung monitors and TVs in the past and I've always been impressed with the sharpness. I'm not too clear on the difference between AMOLED (what this phone has) and regular LED, my understanding is that it's basically about power usage, but the Samsung screen looks terrific, extremely bright and sharp.
- surprisingly good speakers for a phone.
- physical volume buttons on the phone, so that you don't need to unlock it to adjust volume. Nice touch.
- Comes with more storage than most Android smartphones (8g default, expandable to 32g).
- cheap compared to most smartphones, mine was $50 at Bell Canada, the same price as some dumbphones and 1/4 the cost of an iphone 3gs. You may say that $150 isn't a huge difference but since we bought two - one for me, one for my fiancée - it is a $300 difference
- works with regular headphones: I can't stand the smartphones that have some oddly shaped headphone jack that requires an adapter.
- good build quality, buttons and phone seem to be simple and durable. Like most samsung things it is black on black with no color, that's fine with me but some people may not like that.
- smaller and lighter than my ipod touch, fits very easily in a regular pants pocket.
Cons:
- proprietary USB plug... why do companies still do this instead of using the standard mini-USB plug that works with any camera/mp3 player cable?
- Android 1.5. This isn't a huge drawback for me but OSes develop and I don't want to be completely left behind.
- Associated hardware (Samsung PC Studio) only works on Windows. Why don't they make Linux smartphones work on Linux? Of course this is really only relevant for firmware updates, otherwise you just mount the phone as a drive and drag music or what-have-you into the folder.
- very very nice screen. I am no brand loyalist but I have had Samsung monitors and TVs in the past and I've always been impressed with the sharpness. I'm not too clear on the difference between AMOLED (what this phone has) and regular LED, my understanding is that it's basically about power usage, but the Samsung screen looks terrific, extremely bright and sharp.
- surprisingly good speakers for a phone.
- physical volume buttons on the phone, so that you don't need to unlock it to adjust volume. Nice touch.
- Comes with more storage than most Android smartphones (8g default, expandable to 32g).
- cheap compared to most smartphones, mine was $50 at Bell Canada, the same price as some dumbphones and 1/4 the cost of an iphone 3gs. You may say that $150 isn't a huge difference but since we bought two - one for me, one for my fiancée - it is a $300 difference
- works with regular headphones: I can't stand the smartphones that have some oddly shaped headphone jack that requires an adapter.
- good build quality, buttons and phone seem to be simple and durable. Like most samsung things it is black on black with no color, that's fine with me but some people may not like that.
- smaller and lighter than my ipod touch, fits very easily in a regular pants pocket.
Cons:
- proprietary USB plug... why do companies still do this instead of using the standard mini-USB plug that works with any camera/mp3 player cable?
- Android 1.5. This isn't a huge drawback for me but OSes develop and I don't want to be completely left behind.
- Associated hardware (Samsung PC Studio) only works on Windows. Why don't they make Linux smartphones work on Linux? Of course this is really only relevant for firmware updates, otherwise you just mount the phone as a drive and drag music or what-have-you into the folder.
good review!
1 person found this review helpful