AT&T Fuze Cell Phone Review - Hardware

The Fuze offers numerous options to enter text thanks to its physical keyboard and multiple on-screen keyboards and handwriting recognition options, and it goes quickly as well. Unfortunately, the touch screen isn't as sensitive as we'd like and the D-pad leaves much to be desired with buttons too close to other controls. If you want to use your own headphones, you'll need to use an adapter since the Fuze doesn't have a dedicated headphone jack.

Text Words Per Minute (9.52)
Frequent emailers and texters will be happy to know that fast typing speeds are possible on the Fuze, though our touch screen comparison devices still came out on top. In this test, we select the fastest text entry method, time how long it takes to enter a standard set of text into a blank memo or similar interface, and calculate words per minute from this result. The fastest text entry method on the Fuze is the physical QWERTY keyboard with T9 enabled, and we were able to complete our test in an average time that yielded 47.62 words per minute.

The Fuze's QWERTY keyboard

This is a hair faster than the T-Mobile G1, but still a bit behind the Blackberry Storm and the iPhone 3G with their virtual QWERTY keyboards. We've found that physical keyboards in landscape mode offer more space for your fingers to cover, plus the Fuze's keyboard buttons offer a fair amount of resistance that take more effort than we'd like to press. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

T9 and Auto Complete (10.0)
The Fuze offers a variety of ways to enter text, so you're sure to find the method that works best for you. The default virtual QWERTY is the compact QWERTY that is very similar to the SureType keyboard found on Blackberrys. You can change this to a full QWERTY keyboard, a phone keypad, and methods that recognize hand-written text. You can enable word completion for all text entry methods and enable auto correction.

A few of the on-screen text input options

One-Handed Typing (8.19)
If you prefer to type one-handed, you can still enter text at a fast clip on the Fuze. In this test, we enter the same set of text used in the text words per minute text above using only one hand the fastest text entry mode, which turned out to be the virtual phone keypad with T9 enabled. Here, we managed 40.97 words per minute, not far behind the result achieved with 2 hands on the physical QWERTY keyboard, and better than every other one of our comparison phones. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Keypad Backlighting (5.0)
The Fuze's D-pad and other control buttons are backlit with a bluish-white light that is even and pleasing to the eye. The QWERTY keyboard is backlit similarly, though the lower left quarter of the keyboard was visibly dimmer than the rest of the keyboard for some reason. There are no separate controls to adjust the control button or keyboard backlighting separately from the screen, which is a shame. The keyboard's backlight will turn off on its own after a few moments and you need to press a key to turn it back on. It would be nice to have an option to keep the keyboard backlight on all the time when it's revealed, the negative impact on battery life notwithstanding.

The Fuze has an ambient light sensor and its ability to control the keyboard's backlight is hidden in the Buttons pane in the main Settings menu.

D-Pad/Joystick (4.0)
The Fuze's D-pad is much like the Touch Diamond's with its directional buttons essentially hidden in the fascia below the screen. Though we didn't have trouble with the Touch Diamond's D-pad, we had frequent errors with the Fuze's where a surrounding control button was pressed accidentally instead. The up and down buttons are terribly cramped against the bottom edge of the screen and the edge of the phone, respectively, and while it offers good tactile feedback and travel, we'd prefer a design that doesn't sacrifice function for form.

The Fuze's control keys

The D-pad is also touch-sensitive, allowing you to swirl your finger around the center select button clockwise or counter-clockwise to zoom in or out and scroll, though this works in only a handful of situations.

Touch Screen (4.5)
The Fuze has a resistive touch screen that will respond to touches made by your fingers as well as a stylus or other object. As mentioned in the Keypad section, there are a number of on-screen text entry options available. While the TouchFLO interface seems to be geared to be finger-friendly, it's still not responsive at all, resulting in applications opened accidentally, jerky scrolling, and more unpleasantness. The screen also requires firm presses, which is a pain when what you're aiming for is small, such as a link in a web page. Comparatively, the screens on the T-Mobile G1 and the iPhone 3G are far better.

Jog Dial (0.0)
The Fuze does not have a jog dial.

Soft Buttons (0.0)
The Fuze does not have physical soft menu buttons.

Volume Control (4.0)
The volume buttons are in the worst place possible when it comes to taking pictures with the Fuze, as they are right where your left thumb will be as you hold it in landscape orientation. The buttons themselves are only slightly raised from the phone's surface and while they offer good tactile feedback, they don't have much travel, and are only slightly better than the ones on the Touch Diamond.

Power and Standby (5.0)
The Fuze's combined power/standby button is on the top and sits flush with the surface of the phone. Like the volume buttons, it doesn't have much travel but does have good tactile feedback. It can be a bit challenging to press unless you have a good grip or leverage on the Fuze, though at least you'll be less likely to turn the phone on or off accidentally.

Other Buttons (3.0)
The Fuze has a dedicated Push-to-Talk button on the left below the volume buttons, which, unfortunately cannot be re-assigned to control anything else. The Home and Back buttons share the fascia with the D-pad's directional buttons and the Send and End buttons. Like the Send and End buttons, they offer good tactile feedback and travel, but they're easy to press accidentally if you're aiming for one of the D-pad's directional buttons instead.

Primary Screen Gross Resolution (0.0)
The Fuze's screen has a resolution of 480 x 640 pixels, just like the Touch Diamond. Everything on it is crisp and detailed and it's a delight to use.

Primary Screen Pixels per Inch (14.61)
With such a high-resolution screen that's relatively small, the Fuze's screen packs in a lot of pixels per inch – 292.24, to be exact, higher than any of our comparison phones. The more pixels per inch, the more detail and color saturation can be displayed, resulting in a richer display of media.

Screen Physical Size (6.84)
The viewable area of the Fuze's screen measures 2.737 inches diagonally, a hair under the claimed 2.8 inches. While this is nothing to sneeze at, watching a video on the Fuze's screen is not quite the same as viewing one on the larger screens of the Blackberry Storm or the iPhone 3G.

Screen Brightness (8.90)
The Fuze's screen puts out a just-okay 88 lumens in our test of screen brightness where we navigate to a blank white web page in a darkroom with the screen on its highest brightness level and measure its output with a lux meter. We also turn off the ambient light sensor to ensure the screen won't dim under our testing conditions. The Fuze's result is a far cry from the 207 lumens put out by the iPhone 3G, and even much lower than its sibling, the Touch Diamond, at 163 lumens.

The screen brightness settings

As previously mentioned, the Fuze also has an ambient light sensor that will automatically adjust the screen's brightness according to your lighting conditions. If you turn this off, you have 10 brightness levels to choose from, with separate options for when the Fuze is operating on battery power or AC power.

Screen Bright Light Performance (9.0)
We found the Fuze's screen to be easy to read in lighting conditions mimicking bright sunlight. It takes a little bit to get around the glare of the screen, but once you do that, you're golden.

Color Depth (8.0)
The Fuze is capable of showing up to 262,000 colors, putting it on par or above the rest of our comparison phones, except for the Nokia N96 that can show up to 16 million colors.

Secondary Screen (0.0)
The Fuze does not have a secondary screen.

Power & Data Ports (8.0)
The Fuze has a single port that does double duty for power and data connectivity. While it has a proprietary shape to accommodate HTC ExtUSB accessories, it will also accommodate mini-USB plugs. Having a single port for both functions is nice, particularly when you can also charge via USB while the Fuze is connected to your computer. It gets bad, though, when this port is the only port available for other functions as well, which we'll cover next...

Headphone Compatibility (4.5)
The Fuze, like many other HTC devices we've seen, does not have a dedicated headphone jack. Instead, you must use the power/data port and its combined mini-USB and HTC ExtUSB connector. Fortunately, the Fuze at least comes with an adapter to let you use your favorite 3.5mm headphones with it, but the adapter is a little clunky and who wants to carry around an accessory like this that can easily be lost? We give a solid boo and hiss to the Fuze for this headphone jack tomfoolery. Its only redeeming quality in this area is the A2DP Bluetooth profile that will let you use stereo Bluetooth headphones and circumvent this silly jack completely.

Internal Storage (3.0)
The Fuze has 512MB of internal storage. Of course, this doesn't hold a candle to the 4GB of internal storage of the Touch Diamond, much less the 8 or 16GB you can get in an iPhone 3G, but it's sufficient to get you started with a handful of songs and photos.

Expansion Slot & Format (6.0)
The Fuze has a microSD card slot that can take cards with capacities up to 32GB, which is a blessing considering how little internal storage the Fuze has. Our only gripe here is that the Fuze doesn't come with an expansion card in the box, so you'll have to get one on your own if you want to have anything even approximating a decent media library with you at all times.

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