Samsung Alias 2 U750 Review

Software / Features:

Four themes are included on the Samsung Alias 2 U750: Slick Black, White, Gliss, and My Place.  The My Place theme is factory-selected as the default, and shows an image that looks like a classroom wall with animated icons for the different menus.  While this is colorful, we feel that the Gliss theme looks best on the Alias 2, and you can change the menu layout between Tab, List, and Grid view.  Other customizations include the wallpaper, clock style, and menu fonts.



The phonebook on the Alias 2 and Trace are identical, which allows for up to 1000 contacts to be saved with their name and contact numbers, but it also allows you to save a person’s IM screen name, street, city, state, zip code, and country.  Once a contact is saved, you can assign them to one of 999 speed dial locations.



Because of the E-ink QWERTY keyboard, the Samsung Alias 2 U750 is ideal for those individuals who like to send a lot of messages.  The messaging menu hasn’t changed that much however, and still allows you to send and receive text, picture and video messages.  Once nice addition is that you can have messages threaded by Contact, which groups all the sent and received messages by a contact in one list view.  Of course Mobile IM is available, as is Mobile Email (for a monthly fee).






The 2MP camera is also a dramatic improvement over the previous model.  Images we took outside had excellent color representation, sharp edges, good detail, and accurate white balance.  Interior images only came out good if there was plenty of light, as low-light images were blurry due to the slow shutter speed and lack of flash.  Videos can also be recorded, but are limited to the mediocre 176x144 resolution.




Since the Alias 2 is not designed as music-centric phone, like the Samsung Trance U490 or LG Chocolate 3, it comes with the standard Verizon “red” music player, which categorizes your music files into genres, artists, albums, songs, and playlists.  Music playback through the stereo speakers was adequate, though lacking in bass and not as loud as with the Chocolate 3 or Trance.  We also experienced a lot of background distortion when using the Samsung Alias 2 U750 with our Motorola HT820 and S9 Stereo Bluetooth headsets, though music sounded fine with our 2.5mm wired earbuds.

Other software features include Mobile Web 2.0, VCast Video, VZ Navigator, ringtone and game downloads.  Phone tools include voice command, calculator, calendar, three alarm clocks, stopwatch, and world clock.  All of which can be used with the display in portrait or landscape mode.