Samsung Blue Earth S7550 Preview

Introduction:

The Samsung Blue Earth S7550  is created with environmental protection in mind. The phone body and packaging are both made from recycled materials and the device features a solar panel that extends its battery life. Unlike most similar devices, this is not all about it. The phone features a 3-inch touch sensitive screen, TouchWiz interface and a set of quite decent functions to make it an appealing handset for the wide public.

Design:

The Samsung Blue Earth S7550 comes packed in a box made from recycled materials, but that´s not all, since that´s what the handset itself is made of. The manufacturer says plastic in its body is made of recycled water bottles. Anyway, we can definitely say the origin of its materials has nothing to do with its great overall feel. Moreover, no substances that can be defined as environmentally harmful have been used in its production. The Blue Earth comes with a nice, appealing design and the mystic blue color of its front side will certainly make it distinguishable in the handset crowd.



The 3-inch screen utilizes capacitive technology and shows great promise in terms of sensitivity. Our prototype has an unfaltering affection for fingerprints, but frankly, we have seen worse.

The interestingly shaped send and end keys are located just below the display, but neither of them is backlit so to cut down on power consumption. The “back” key is in between, the volume rocker is on the left hand side of the Samsung Blue Earth S7550, while both display lock and camera shutter are on the opposite. Samsung considered it fitting to equip the phone with an all-in-one microUSB port that allows connecting the phone to a computer, charging it or plugging in a pair of headphones.



You might even miss the 3-megapixel camera on the back, since the solar panels taking up the better part of the back panel will probably be the first thing to fix your eyes on. They are a stronger reminder of the ecological orientation of the device than a large inscription saying “Eco” would have been. At least they will provide you with a decent reason to brag about advanced technologies and stuff. The whole idea of integrating an alternative power source and doing it in such a cool way is awesome. We just hope the solar panel will contribute to an extended battery life on a single charge. Whether or not this is the case indeed will become clear in a future review of a retail unit.

Interface:

Aside from the exciting solar panel, the Samsung Blue Earth S7550 delivers quite a decent functionality controlled via the phone’s TouchWiz interface. The home screen consists of three separate pages that host well-known widgets and you are free to place any of them wherever you like.



We couldn’t find the widget dedicated to separated garbage collection practices, but we did spot another interesting one for a program called Eco walk. The app counts your steps and keeps you posted on how many calories you burned, how many trees you saved and your contribution towards reduced amounts of CO2 emissions released in the atmosphere thanks to the fact that you´re merely walking rather than cruising in your SUV. We believe many ladies will love the app, if not for the saved tree count, then at least for the burned calorie statistics.



Everything else about the interface is pretty much standard. The main menu is divided into three screens that allow icon rearrangement to your own liking. If you feel like venturing deeper into the settings you will eventually come across the Eco mode that helps the Samsung Blue Earth save energy by decreasing screen brightness and shortening the time before the handset switches to power saving mode if unused.



Expectations:

The Samsung Blue Earth S7550 comes with a bold, eye-catchy design and delivers decent interface functions that, thanks to the 3-inch touch sensitive screen are easy to handle. The idea of integrating a solar panel is awesome and we do hope it will prove useful in real life, but we will tell you about that when we have reviewed a final, retail unit. If we account for all the eco-friendly features of the device and the environmentally friendly measures taken in its manufacturing process, we can definitely say the Blue Earth makes for a fully functional cell phone of an entirely new, more responsible generation.