AT&T Fuze Cell Phone Review - Messaging

The Fuze is well-equipped to handle all of your email and text and multimedia messaging needs. Our only gripe is that it won't create or interpret received emoticons as graphical images, though we're sure this hardly qualifies as a deal-breaker for anyone but teenagers.

Supported Email Services (8.0)
Just as you'd expect from a Windows Mobile device, the Fuze can handle just about any email set-up you need, able to use accounts under the POP3 and IMAP4 protocols and offering easy set-up without the need to enter server setting information for popular web email services including Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and AOL mail. All our comparison phones are equally capable here.

Push Email (3.0)
The Fuze is capable of push email through a connection with a Microsoft Exchange Server. There's a link in the All Programs menu called Get Blackberry Connect, but when we tried it, we were met with a web page that said it was "coming soon." Until then, the Fuze earns points only for the Exchange Server push capability.

Multiple Email Accounts (10.0)
Like all of our comparison phones, the Fuze has no problems whatsoever handling multiple email accounts and earns full points in this area.

HTML and Attachments (12.0)
The Fuze could appropriately display HTML emails and it had no trouble displaying any of our test attachments. The attachment types we test are Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and Zip files.

Email Customizations (2.0)
Here, we look at any customizations specific to the email application that allow changes to fonts, the way emails are displayed, and the ability to create and attach signatures automatically to outgoing emails. As with other Windows Mobile devices we've reviewed, the only customization possible on the Fuze that earns it any points here is the ability to create and automatically add signatures to outgoing emails.

Time to a New Email Message (3.82)
If you like to whip out your phone often to create emails quickly, you'll be happy to see this goes fairly quickly on the Fuze, taking an average of 5.23 seconds, making it faster than the Nokia N96 and Touch Diamond. The quickest way to get to a new email dialogue starting from the TouchFLO home screen is to scroll right to the interface's email portal where the create new email shortcut is a tiny icon in the top right. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Email Usability (11.5)
As on the Touch Diamond, the TouchFLO offers some cute eye candy, showing your email messages as letters in an open envelope that you can even flick through and read at least the portion of the message visible outside of the envelope. Selecting a specific message will bring you to it in its entirety in the email application. However, backing out of an individual message to get to the account's inbox is an exercise in frustration with no Menu option to get there while the back button takes you back to the TouchFLO view. In the TouchFLO view, the left virtual soft menu key is labeled Inbox and you are shown all messages in each account in a list view, and scrolling left and right with the D-pad will switch you to the inboxes of the other accounts you have set up. There's no unified email inbox that allows you to view the inbox contents of all of your accounts at the same time.

The email pane of the TouchFLO interface

A drop-down menu at the top left of each inbox view allows you to switch to another inbox or a sub-folder in a specific account. The drop-down menu in the top right allows you to select a sorting option between message type, sender, date received, or subject.

An email inbox

As with the Touch Diamond, we find the Fuze's email application to be very usable, if a little tricky to get used to at first, and full of features to keep your email in check.

Instant Messaging (0.0)
The Fuze has an instant messaging application that offers easy set-up for AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger accounts. Unfortunately, AT&T charges you for each IM sent and received as a text message, and we award no points for IM capabilities when this is the case.

The IM application

MMS Support (8.0)
It is possible to create MMS messages on the Fuze, and it's easy to do, to boot. When you're creating a new SMS, the 3rd option in the list that appears when you press the virtual Menu button is the Insert menu. Here, you can choose to attach a picture, video, audio file, vCard, vCalendar, or other attachment, such as a document. We like it when the SMS/MMS creation process is streamlined so that you don't have to back out and create a new type of message if you started out creating an SMS and then changed your mind to send an MMS instead.

Creating a new MMS

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
We rarely see business-oriented devices translate common punctuation and letter combinations as graphical smiley faces, also called emoticons, and the Fuze is no fun here with the inability to do this. The Touch Diamond that at least offered a menu option to insert the punctuational equivalents of emoticons, but the Fuze does not even do this.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (8.0)
The TouchFLO front end of the messaging is cute, showing your messages in tiny envelopes that you can flick through easily. There's an icon on the right that's a shortcut to create a new message. When you're creating a new message, there's a handy character counter to show you how much more you can type before your message will be split into multiple parts as it's sent.

Creating a new SMS

You can also access your SMS and MMS messages through the email application where they are organized under the Messaging header with their own inbox, outbox, sent items folder, and other folders just as email accounts are. While all of this isn't very pretty, it's quite functional and effortless to navigate once you get the hang of the layout.

Time to a New SMS Message (3.61)
In this test, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a new SMS dialogue is open. This doesn't take long on the Fuze, with an average of 2.77 seconds to complete this test, so you'll be able to fire off a quick text message in no time on the fly. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

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