Samsung Juke Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Robin Liss Published on November 05, 2007 Comment on this |
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Accessing Music Software (7.35)
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Samsung Juke | 2.72 | 7.35 |
| LG Chocolate Vx8550 | 2.04 | 9.80 |
| Sony Ericsson W580i | 1.56 | 12.82 |
| Razr2 V9m | 4.96 | 4.03 |
| Samsung Blast | 2.61 | 7.66 |
| Apple iPhone | 3.10 | 6.45 |
Dedicated Music Controls (0.0)
The Juke has no dedicated music controls. When we look for dedicated music controls, we're looking for keys that solely perform media player functionality, or keys that are remapped to a media player function when there's a song playing and you're not currently in the media player application. While the Juke supports background playback, none of its controls affect the song volume at the home screen. The volume rocker changes the phone volume, which is independent from music volume. The scroll wheel, which normally doesn't perform any functions, still refuses to do anything. This is disappointing from a music-oriented device; it would make it more flexible if there were some buttons that could control the music.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (7.3)
The Juke has above-average music software, which makes sense considering how heavily it's being marketed as a music handset. You can sort songs by four categories: title, album, artist, and genre. It doesn't let you assign ratings, and there is no active search. There is also no automatic library update, since it doesn't accept memory cards. It does support playlists, but these are a little limited; It only supports playlists that have been made either with the VCast Music Manager or Windows Media Player. You can create and edit playlists on the device, however, but doing so is a bit of a pain. Thankfully, we had no problems viewing tags (Idv3, iTunes, and Windows Media Player), so all of the song and album names on our test files were correctly transferred. .
One interesting aspect of the Juke is that it supports a few extra features, but not all at once. For example, under the skins option (which, by the way, doesn't actually allow you to change skins) you can choose to turn on album art, a visualizer, or lyrics. We like the inclusion of the lyrics option, though we assume it's only for VCast songs. We also were happy to see the visualizer is actually a visualizer, as opposed to the static animation some phones try to pass off as a visualizer (Samsung's Blast comes to mind). In the same vein, the Juke has an actual equalizer. In addition to 15 presets, it also lets you fiddle around with a few unmarked switches yourself. While the DIY equalizer only has 13 positions per slider, we appreciate its inclusion. There are also a few options for "3-D" effects, but none of them really do much.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The Juke doesn't support online song downloading; only ringtones can be downloaded. Given the media focus of this device, this seems like an odd omission.
Streaming (0.0)
The Juke doesn't support streaming audio since it lacks both an Internet browser and VCast.
Podcast Support (0.0)
The Juke doesn't have any software support for podcasts.
Music Sync with PC (9.0)
Music Sync with the PC is done via Windows Media Player. While examining if the Juke has any special synchronization software or settings, we noticed there is an option under the Music menu called "Sync Music." We were surprised to see this, since we were under the impression the phone has no built-in sync software. As it turns out, we were right. Sync Music does one of two things: if the phone is connected to a computer via USB, it displays "READY TO SYNC MUSIC," if not, "CONNECT CABLE TO PC." That's all it does. You can also just use a file manager to drop music files into the appropriate folder on the phone, but keep in mind it won't let you do this with unsupported files.
Music Formats and DRM (3.0)
The Juke supports MP3 and WMA files. The documentation claims the phone will play AAC files, but we couldn't get it to recognize our test file, which was created in iTunes and has a .m4a extension. Keep this in mind when you're attempting to fill up your Juke. As for DRM, the Juke can only play Verizon's own VCast songs. As mentioned previously, getting VCast songs onto the phone is a bit of a pain, since it requires you to download software.
Music Interruption (10.0)
When you receive a call while music is playing, the Juke performs exactly how it should: it pauses the music for the duration of the call, and resumes playback when the call ends. It even added a bit of a pause after playback, so it didn't abruptly resume. The only aspect we feel could have been better is if the music faded in gradually, as it can be a bit jarring going straight from a whispered phone conversation with your significant other to the thrash metal you were listening to before.
Video
Video Software Access (0.0)
The Juke doesn't support video playback, so it will get 0 scores in most of this section.
Video Controls (0.0)
N/A: doesn't support video playback.
Video Software & Organization (0.0)
N/A: doesn't support video playback.
Video Sync with PC (0.0)
N/A: doesn't support video playback.
Video Formats (0.0)
N/A: doesn't support video playback.
Video DRM (0.0)
N/A: doesn't support video playback.
Video Playback Smoothness (0.0)
N/A: doesn't support video playback.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
N/A: doesn't support video playback.
Video Streaming unscored
N/A: doesn't support video playback.
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