Samsung Evergreen Review

Introduction:

Sprint might host the healthiest amount of eco-friendly devices in the market right now, but it appears that AT&T will soon be stepping up to the plate with an offering that's sure to impress. Constructed out of 70 percent recycled plastic, the Samsung Evergreen SGH-A667 is your typical looking messaging phone that consciously takes into consideration Mother Earth. Even the retail packaging is made out of 80 percent recycled paper and comes with an Energy Star 2.0 efficient charger. Priced at $29.99 with a contract, this handset will easily attract individuals who are concerned with the environment – while still satisfying their messaging requirements.

The package contains:

Design:

In all honesty, there's nothing too fancy or pretty to say about the Samsung Evergreen since its your typical looking messaging phone from the manufacturer. It doesn't necessarily scream premium quality or construction. The glossy black plastic shell does feel slick and attracts the occasional smudge, but it doesn't feel as cheap as one would think it to be. Although it's a little bit more bulky (0.59” thick) than other similar offerings, it does make the handset feel somewhat average in weight (4.50 oz) when holding it. Pushing its eco-friendly nature aside, there isn't anything thrilling to say about this boring looking handset.



You can compare the Samsung Evergreen with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

If you're able to somehow overlook the poor viewing angles exhibited by the handset, you just might find its 2.4” QVGA (240 x 320) display agreeable in usage. When setting it to its maximum brightness option, it's able to radiate some distinctive and deep looking colors. However, we struggled in making out fine text due to the fact that it lacks any sharpness to it – plus, it doesn't help either when you're trying to combat its viewing angle problems. Taking it for a stroll outdoors in direct sunlight also proves to be challenging since you lose focus and a good majority of visibility. Without much question, it's clearly not the highest quality display employed on a handset that we've seen.


The 4-way directional pad underneath the display is decent in size and prominent enough to make out with our fingers. Offering a good response without much fault, it makes navigating fairly hassle free while its selection key provides a natural tactile response when pressed. The keypad itself is spacious in size and will accommodate even the largest of fingers since buttons can be easily pressed without that much effort.

Access to the microSD card slot can be found on the left edge of the phone along with the adequate sized and responsive volume rocker. While on the right side, you simply will find the dedicated shutter key, task menu button, and microUSB port. Placing our attention to the rear, you'll find its 2-megapixel camera, outlined with a chrome trim, next to the speakerphone grill. Lastly, yanking off the plastic cover will provide you access to its battery and SIM card slot.


Even though it doesn't utilize the most durable materials, there is a snappy feel to the handset when you're opening it to expose its 4-row QWERTY keyboard. Some will find the layout to be quite familiar since it borrows some design cues from other Samsung handsets. The hard plastic buttons are actually accompanied with a distinct tactile feel when pressed – which makes it rather easy to type away long messages without much fatigue. Moreover, it manages to even include a dedicated messaging button and another 4-way directional pad. After breaking it in, we soon found ourselves typing away with ease.

Camera and Multimedia:

Being under the curve with its 2-megapixel camera, images produced by it aren't pretty to say the least. Instead, it produces some soft looking shots that lack vibrancy in just about every lighting condition. In fact, they appear to have a hazy appearance to them – which ultimately makes them look out of focused. Taking it indoors, things don't get any better seeing that images have an extremely muddy look to them. In the long run, the below average quality it's able to put out will indeed make anyone forget about taking photos with the handset.




You know that it generally won't get better in the video capture department if it fails in taking photos. Fittingly, it's only able to shoot at a maximum resolution of 320 x 240 pixels at a capture rate of 14 frames per second. Hardly impressive, there's a fair amount of pixelization that can be seen with its playback – which also doesn't aid its cause when there is some noticeable choppy movements as well.

Overlooking its conventional looking music player, which displays the essentials, we instantly are awaken by its crackly sounding tones that absolutely strain at the loudest volume setting. However, toning it down a couple of notches can prove to be tolerable to the ear.


Video playback can only be done in landscape orientation, but there's nothing too spectacular with its performance – even more when it's only able to load low quality videos. We managed to play a movie trailer encoded in MPEG-4 320 x 240 resolution without much fault seeing that it runs effortlessly and without much hiccup.


With approximately 100MB of free internal storage out of the box, you can always supplement its capacity by adding a microSD card – which will happily accept a maximum size of 16GB.

Internet and Connectivity:

If you want to show off your eco-friendly phone to friends abroad, its quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) and dual-band UMTS (850/1900 MHz) connectivity will keep you connected at all times. And if you tire of holding your handset to your ear while placing a phone call, its inclusion of Bluetooth 2.1 will enable you to connect a wealth of wireless headsets to it.

Packing along Opera Mini, the handset is able to load up pages in a decent amount of time, but we did notice that it didn't fully load up all of the images on our site. Disregarding that one item, it does a commendable job in scrolling since it's responsive – although, it does take a couple of seconds to render images if you scroll too fast. Zooming in, it'll make text a lot easier to read both size-wise and the fact that it fits accordingly to the length of the display. Collectively, we're satisfied with the performance it's able to radiate.


In addition to Opera Mini, the Evergreen also comes with the NetFront Browser which unfortunately, pales into comparison in regards to performance. Sure it might produce better desktop-like visuals, but it's unable to load complex sites due to the paltry amount of memory on board. Granted that it manages to do fine with mobile friendly sites, its slower than molasses experience in scrolling full sites is a nightmare on its own – so it's probably better to stick with Opera Mini.

Performance:

Due to the lack of power emitted by its earpiece, you'll need to have an air tight placement to your ear in order to sufficiently hear anything. Even worse, voices on our end sound distorted with a little bit of static noise evident in the background. However, our callers fared a bit better since they said that out voice sounded expressive and clear cut. Thankfully, the speakerphone's strong output manages to make voice sound extremely audible, deep, and without much distraction.

Blessed with high coverage to AT&T's network, we didn't experience any aberrations with signal strength and it didn't drop any calls during our testing in the greater Philadelphia area.

Battery life seems to be average with the Samsung Evergreen as we obtained a talk time of 6 hours on a full charge when the manufacturer has it rated for 5 hours of talk and 250 hours of standby time. On a daily basis, the handset will easily hit the one day mark on normal usage and still have enough juice in the tank for the next day.

Conclusion:

If there's one thing that's clearly evident with most eco-friendly phones, it has to be that they're not all too appealing in terms of design – and the Samsung Evergreen follows accordingly. However, it proves to be quite functional at its core as being a messaging phone. Typically, the name of the game here is its focus on being eco-friendly, and rightfully so, it also manages to excel in that regard with its choice of recycled materials and environmentally conscious apps. Although there are better and more attractive messaging handsets out there, you undoubtedly will need to pay more for all the extra features and functionality. For $29.99, the Samsung Evergreen is a good choice for those who take a liking in the preservation of the planet – but don't expect it to turn heads.

Software version of the reviewed unit: A667UCJI2

Samsung Evergreen Video Review: