Samsung Beat Review

Interface:

Well, it seems that Samsung has skimped out on its interface this time around. While it’s still the same kind you expect, it just seems bland and boring. Until you go over one of the selections, everything is in black and white. Well, at least it’s responsive.


Phonebook:

Samsung seems to have just carried over the phonebook from other handsets. There is a limit of 1000 contacts that can be stored and they’re all listed in alphabetical order displaying the first and last name, number, and where they’re saved.


Organizer:

You’ll find all of the standard things to be expected for the organizer, alarm, calendar, tasks, calculator, tip calculator, world time, synchronizer, unit converter, timer and stopwatch. All of these are within their own menu so there’s no searching through the Beat for them.

Messaging:

The standard messaging can be found here. T9 is there to help you text that much faster. There’s the simple text messaging option, picture messaging which is surprising as most phones now have text and picture together, and voice notes. There was no email client found but we figure this is because you have access to one through T-zones, with a charge of course, but at least Samsung and T-Mobile were kind enough to add IM clients, AIM, Yahoo!, ICQ, and Windows Live.


Connectivity:

Samsung made the Beat a quadband phone, which allows you to use is anywhere in the world as long as there is a GSM network within range. An annoyance we found is that everytime we were in an area with no signal, we were constantly asked if we would like to search for networks when the handset was opened.

It’s no surprise to find that HTML websites aren’t supported but with EDGE speeds, you’d be waiting quite a while. WAP pages are very organized but we found that there is a lot of scrolling to be done. Samsung PC Studio is used to connect to the PC.

Camera:

The 1.3 megapixel camera, while average for its class, takes adequate photos. Most are blurry and in bright environments, they tend to come out overexposed. The camera interface is the same that is found throughout Samsungs lineup.

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Multimedia:

We’ve finally come to the main part, the media player. All the sound is playing through the speaker found on the front and to our surprise, it sounds great for its class and size. There was almost no distortion with the sound, even when turned up all the way. With the volume set to the lowest level it can barely be heard and the highest is very loud so you have plenty of choices. There are plenty of ways to access it as well, through the menu, the shortcut button on the side, and by pressing and holding the play/pause button on the front controls.

The headphones did not disappoint as well and sound through them was just as good. It seems that Samsung did their homework and made sure this would perform well. Sure, the iPod and similar MP3 players will sound better but it’s just amazing to see how well it performs for its size and price.

The interface, like most things, has just been taken from other handsets so if you’re familiar with other Samsungs, you’ll find that it’s the exact same setup. The D-pad controls the main functions, play/pause, stop, forward, and so on.






The display highlights which song you’re listening to and who wrote it. Just below this, there is a rating system, equalizer setting, followed by the time of the song and your progress.

Well, generally the equalizer is useless and is here too right? Wrong. While it doesn’t make it an amazing experience, the sound did change with each setting. With that being said, there are four to choose from: normal, classical, jazz, and rock. Along with this, there is also something called 3D sound which changes the sound to appear as if it were more broadened instead of just targeted and the person using it.


Software:

The Beat supports Java MIDP 2.0 applications. There are preloaded games found on it but they’re pretty much all trial but you can go out and download some free applications.