Samsung Eternity Review

Interface:

The Eternity is AT&T’s first phone utilizing the TouchWiz interface. Samsung did a great job giving users a fresh new look to the software on the device. From the home screen to the main menu, colors are beautifully displayed and we had no problems viewing text. Although the phone uses an array of screen transitions when navigating through menus, there was no lag in speed which plagued the F480.


What you see is what you get with the phone software. There is a minimal set of personalization options with the interface which leaves us wondering why Samsung did not take the time to correct this for the U.S. launch. Users can change some settings with the phone to an extent such as using a taken photo as the wallpaper. The Eternity only provided four wallpaper options and no screen savers. Like we said, what you see is what you get when it comes to the personalization preferences.

Although AT&T packed the Eternity with its usual lineup of software applications, it did not make use of the accelerometer sensor. You will find certain programs not rotating to landscape view when you rotate the phone. In other applications, you can only view the phone in landscape view rather than in portrait mode. The lack of offering the user to choose their positions to be a little annoying. Scrolling through the phone was a breeze and we did not have any problems selecting commands. Long scrolls are accompanied with vibrations to give the user a physical feedback.

The TouchWiz interface of course brings its heavily advertised feature:

Widgets:

Forget about the home screen, because it is now called “Widget”. Its idea is to let you add certain given “programs” and to let you arrange them the way you want. These can be found in the taskbar on the left side, from where you can drag them. It would have been nice to allow users to add more widgets than what the phone allowed, but they will be limited with the following:

- Analog clock
- Digital clock
- Dual time zone clock
- Mobile TV
- Today
- Calendar
- Wallpaper
- Alarms
- Photo
- Birthday
- Sound Profile
- Bluetooth
- Calculator
- Music Player

Shortcut Menu:

You can enter this menu, by pressing the functionality button, located next to the camera button on the side of the phone. No matter which menu or application you were in, 6 shortcuts will be visualized on the screen. They lead to the music player, messages, back/cancel command, the main menu, the Internet browser, and the dialing pad. This feature will help you reduce the use of the main menu to a minimum.


Phonebook:

Here you can save up to 2000 contacts with up to 5 numbers, including home, business and office. On top of that, you can add pictures, ringtones, birth date and a short note. Searching is done only by first name, which is a common problem, but is largely annoying when present in such a high-end device. Additionally, you can scroll through your contacts using the magnifier icon on the side and navigate to the letter of the first name.



Organizer:

The Samsung Eternity offers some rather useful options, to help you organize your day. From the main menu, you can set up to 10 alarms, to make sure you make it to work/school on time. In the calendar, you can store up to 300 events. It can be viewed as an entire month, week or day. On top of that, from the tools menu, you are able to write short reminders and tasks (limited to 100). There is also the world clock, the calculator, the unit converter and the timer with a countdown timer. Everything that needs to be here is present.


Its built in memory is 200 MB, and it is expandable via microSD cards. However, we experienced the same problem found on the F480. Cards that were operational in other phones needed to be formatted before installing into the Eternity.