Samsung Blast for T-Mobile Cell Phone Review - Intro
|
Mark Brezinski Published on August 30, 2007 Comment on this |
|
|
|
|
The Samsung Blast is only remarkable for bad reasons. Its software lacks finesse, making it a poor media player, imaging device, and Web browser. The organizational software is better than most phones in its class, but is still lacking some important features. The phone is also very poorly constructed; the plastic case looks cheap, and it twists, creaks, and separates under even moderate pressure.
The Blast does have its good points, but even they are marred by annoying quirks. As previously mentioned, it offers slightly more organizational software than most other mid-range phones, allowing you to write and organize notes and tasks. This additional functionality is offset by a horrible alert system, however, so trusting the Blast to remind you of appointments is certainly not a good idea. The e-mail client isn't Web based, (which is a rarity in most non-business devices), but it doesn't check for mail in the background. Messaging is supposed to be the focus of the Blast, and it does a pretty decent job of that. It would handle messaging well if it weren't for the keypad's tendency to be unresponsive at times. The Blast really is a mixed bag; for every decent feature, there are two other poor ones that drag it down.
The Blast costs $100 with contract, after online or mail-in rebates, and is available exclusively from T-Mobile. It also supports the T-Mobile online store, where you can download songs for $1.99. That's a buck more than Sprint's music store.
Tour & Design - The Blast's plastic cover is eight parts cheap toy, one part phone, and one part exposed spring.
Audio Quality - The Blast has below average audio quality; both sent and received sound had problems.
Imaging - The Blast has a camera that's about on par with other phones and video capture that's a double, if not triple-bogey, at best.
Making/Receiving Calls - The Blast shows itself to be fairly speedy with making calls, though its non audio alerts could result in a missed call.
Messaging - The Blast offers some decent messaging capability, such as the ability to attach calendar entries or contacts to messages and a reasonable (if somewhat quirky) e-mail client.
Organizer - The organizational tools on the Blast are surprisingly good; there are a good selection of tools for setting up and tracking appointments.
Multimedia - The Blast has a really attractive media player, but abysmal media organizing features.
Software - The Blast has some interesting software on it, but much of it is shallow. It does many things adequately, but nothing well.
Battery Life - The Blast was on the low side of average pretty much across the board.
Connectivity - The Blast is a quad-band GSM phone with an EDGE data connection. It also supports Bluetooth 2.0.
Hardware - The Blast's hardware didn't impress us. Its buttons didn't have good play, and its keypad repeatedly failed to register quick double-taps.
Other Features - The Blast doesn't have any other interesting features.
Value & Comparisons - Here is where we list a few other phones that have the same or better functionality than the Blast but cost the same or are cheaper.
| Next | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
