Samsung Rant Review

Interface:

The Rant, along with the Samsung Highnote and LG Lotus, marks the launch of Sprint’s new One Click UI.  We love it.  On the homescreen the user has a “carousel” similar to HTC’s TouchFLO 3D.  Simply click to the left or right on the d-pad to navigate through the tiles, and when you pause on one it will bring up information.  For instance, if you stop on the Messaging tile a menu slides up that allows you to access voicemail, send a message and your text, picture and email inbox.  The Internet tile has a shortcut to your homepage, favorites and recent pages, allows you to enter a URL and also has a Google search box.


The carousel can be customized as well.  The Home tile has no popup menu by default, but the user can add “bubbles” for Finance, Horoscope, News, Sports News and/or Weather.  Everything but the home tile can be removed, though seven must be active at all times, and tiles can be rearranged to the user’s liking.  There are eight stock tiles and the user can have up to fifteen total, but right now there only six more available.  Preloaded tiles are Home, Messaging, My Account, Personalize My Phone, Shortcuts, Sprint Navigation, Google and Internet.  Others available right now are Call Log, Email, Get Stuff, Music, Text Message and Yahoo.  If left idle for a few seconds the carousel will fade and become transparent.

We particularly like seeing the Google and Yahoo options, each with links to very useful information.  The Google tile allows the user to choose four items from the following: Maps, Gmail, YouTube, News, Photos, Google SMS, Okrut, Calendar, Reader, All Products, Docs and Notebook.  This One Click UI is not only useful, but with Google App integration is also powerful and makes the users lives more seamless.  Verizon really could learn a thing or two from Sprint on how to implement a UI (or release a worthwhile phone, for that matter.)



Clicking on the Home tile brings up Sprint’s traditional 12-item menu found on all Power Vision (EVDO) phones.  It has the new visual style that launched on the Katana Eclipse, which by the way will be getting a software update for the One Click UI, and the icon layout is identical.  Submenus are a high contrast, easy to read white on black and we enjoy the font Samsung uses.  It looks like Sprint is ditching the theme option we’ve seen for a few years, but given how wonderful One Click is we’re ok with it.  The entire interface is very snappy, and there is zero menu lag.


Phonebook and Organizer:

The Rant can hold 600 phonebook entries with up to seven numbers and three emails each, as well as a slot for a URL, IM name and memo.  It is fairly standard, but easy to use and entries can be assigned a unique ringer and caller ID picture.  It would be nice if we could store more personal info such as dates and addresses, like Motorola phones allow.  Voice dialing is handled by the always wonderful Nuance VoiceSignal, though it appears the VoiceSignal name might be going away.


PIM features are as you would expect for a basic phone.   You’ll find a basic alarm clock, calculator, calendar, memo pad and world clock.  There’s not much else to say about these items, other than they’re there.