Samsung Memoir Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Marianne Schultz Published on April 10, 2009 Comment on this |
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| The Memoir's music organization and playback software is decent and could even prompt you to drop your dedicated digital media player in favor of carrying only the Memoir with you. The video software is quite basic and won't offer you the same pleasant experience found on other multimedia-oriented phones. | |
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Accessing Music Software (7.37)
To see how easy it is to start some music playing, we time how long it takes to get from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a test song starts playing. There is a Music application widget/shortcut on the Memoir's home screen by default, and this takes you right to the music player with the last song played cued up and ready to go, even if you were last browsing the music library. It took an average time of 2.72 seconds to start a song playing on the Memoir, which is pretty quick and should satisfy anyone who likes instant gratification in their media consumption. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
A song playing
Though we only test a phone in its default state, we do want to note that dragging that music application widget from the band on the left side of the home screen onto the "desktop" area of the home screen will put a mini-player with playback controls and song and artist information right at your fingertips. If you keep this widget there all of the time, you'll have even faster access to your music.
Dedicated Music Controls (3.0)
The Memoir doesn't have many physical buttons to begin with and aside from the volume controls on the right, and none of the remaining buttons serve to control music playback once you've exited the music application and are on the home screen. The music application can be opened as a widget on the home screen, however, giving you some on-screen controls to play, pause, fast forward, rewind, and skip to the next and previous songs. This widget isn't active on the home screen by default, though we award it one point since there is an easy way to get playback controls on the home screen.
The music widget active on the home screen
Music Software Functionality and Organization (7.0)
The music application's Music Library offers the following list to help you navigate through your music collection: current playlist, all tracks, playlists, artists, albums, and recently played. Once you choose one of these views, you can quickly jump to another view using a drop-down menu in the top right. These shortcuts will be handy since there's no way to search through your music to find a specific song or album by entering text.
The music library menu
You can add and edit playlists right on the Memoir without needing to connect it to your computer. The tags on our test AAC, MP3, and WMA music files were read with no problems, though only album art embedded in a music file will be shown, so if your album art is included as a separate file in your music library, you won't be able to view it on the Memoir. Rating music or creating smart playlists based on ratings or other criteria is not possible.
The playlists view
The music library is automatically updated when you add files to the phone or microSD card. As previously mentioned, if you place the music application widget on the desktop of the home screen, you'll have instant access to playback controls without needing to go through the menu system to open the music application.
The Memoir does have equalizer presets, called Sound Effects, to enhance the sound of various music genres. There is no manual equalizer or any way to create your own presets. There are no visualization effects that can be shown during playback. Background play is enabled by default, though you can switch this off so that music stops when you leave the application in the settings menu.
The equalizer menu
All in all, the Memoir's music player offers good functionality that could easily prompt you to leave your dedicated digital media player at home in favor of the Memoir.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
T-Mobile, the Memoir's exclusive carrier in the U.S., does not offer a music downloading service that allows you to purchase music on the Memoir and download songs directly to its memory. In comparison, both Sprint and Verizon offer such a service, though their prices are a bit higher than what you'd find in the digital music catalogues offered by Amazon and iTunes. Though AT&T does not offer such a service at this time, iPhone 3G users can purchase music over-the-air from iTunes.
Streaming (0.0)
To see if a device can stream audio content from the web, we visit a test radio station site that offers streams in MP3, WMA, and Real Audio formats and see if they work. The Memoir was unable to stream audio in any format from this site, though we didn't have high hopes for this since many phones we test are unable to do this. The only comparison phone that earned any points in this area was the HTC Touch Diamond.
Podcast Support (0.0)
Podcasts are becoming more and more popular and we like to see phones support them with an easy way to organize and listen to them on the device, and also a way to download them directly to the phone's memory, if at all possible. Unfortunately, the Memoir doesn't offer podcast support in terms of organization software, the ability to subscribe and download podcasts, or any dedicated desktop podcast syncing. Only the Nokia N96 and iPhone 3G offered some podcast support out of our comparison devices.
Music Sync with PC (0.0)
The Memoir does not come with any software to sync music with your PC or Mac. However, when connected to your PC, it will be seen as a USB Mass Storage device with which Windows Media Player can sync, earning the Memoir a few points in this area. Mac users will be out of luck since the Memoir could not even be seen as a USB Mass Storage device when connected to Macs in our office, requiring the microSD card to be removed and connected through a card reader for some drag-and-drop file transfer fun.
Music Formats and DRM (0.0)
The Memoir had no problems playing our DRM-free test MP3, WMA, and AAC music files. The Memoir's spec sheet states that it can also play MPEG4, MIDI, and WAV files. Files in any format with DRM protection cannot be played on the Memoir.
Music Interruption (10.0)
The Memoir handles incoming calls during music playback with ease. When a song is playing and a call comes in, music playback stops to play the ringtone instead. Once the call is rejected or ends, music begins playing again immediately.
Video Software Access (3.90)
To see how easy it is to access the video playback software, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a test video starts playing.
A video playing in portrait mode
On the Memoir, there is no video application widget on the home screen, but the application resides in the Main Menu, so it's still quick to get to, and it took an average of 5.13 seconds, just a wee bit faster than the iPhone 3G but a couple of seconds behind the LG Dare. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Video Controls (6.0)
During video playback in and portrait orientation, on-screen controls to pause/play, fast forward/skip forward, rewind/skip backward, and adjust volume are always available. In landscape orientation, these controls disappear after a few moments but return with a quick tap on the screen. The only thing missing is a full-screen toggle, which is a shame since you won't always be able to take advantage of the Memoir's large screen.
A video playing in landscape orientation with controls visible
Video Software & Organization (1.5)
The Memoir's video organization software doesn't do any automatic sorting to group your videos so you can easily find videos you captured using the Memoir versus videos you transferred to it from your computer, simply showing them in a list view in a file structure view as you'd find in Explorer in Windows. You can change the view to an icon view using a toggle button in the top left, but this presents a rather untidy screen full of icons and truncated file names - the list view is easier to manage.
The video library in list and thumbnail views
The More menu offers you the ability to sort the videos in the current list view by date, type, name, or size, but there is no way to search using multi-tap or the landscape QWERTY keyboard. As in the photo album software, you are offered the option to create a slide show, but it doesn't work - you'll see an error saying "No photo available" if you try to do it. This menu option should be removed to avoid confusion.
Since you're essentially viewing the folder structure of the phone's memory and the contents of the microSD card, the video library automatically updates when you go to view a folder. You can create more folders to better organize your videos, if you'd like, though it's not possible to create video playlists. You cannot rate videos, though you can move, copy, and delete them to aid in organization. Overall, the Memoir's video software is definitely the no-frills yet functional kind that doesn't offer anything special.
Video Sync with PC (7.0)
As with music, the Memoir does not come with any media synchronization software, but it will be recognized as a USB Mass Storage device by Windows Media Player, which can be set to automatically sync with it. Mac users will need to resort to a card reader to move files to the microSD card since the Memoir is not recognized as a USB Mass Storage device on Macs.
Video Formats (3.0)
The Memoir's spec sheet states it can play MPEG4, H.263, H.264, and 3GPP video files. We load video test files to check compatibility as well and found that the Memoir could not play our H.263-encoded 3GPP, MP4-encoded 3GPP, Flash, Quicktime, or Real video files. It had no problems playing our test WMV, MP4, and H.264. files, earning it 3 points in this area. Comparatively, the Nokia N96 and even the LG Dare can play more video file types.
Video DRM (0.0)
The Memoir cannot play back any DRM-protected video files, which is not at all surprising. We really only see this capability when a carrier or manufacturer has an affiliated digital media store, like Sprint does for the HTC Touch Diamond or like Apple's iTunes store for the iPhone 3G.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
To test video playback smoothness, we load test files at varying bitrates onto a phone and see how smoothly they play. The Memoir had no problem playing back any of our files, outdoing the Motorola ZINE that had trouble with the higher bitrate files we test.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
T-Mobile does not offer a video service that allows you to download videos directly to the Memoir, nor is it capable of this, along with every other one of our comparison devices.
Video Streaming unscored
We don't score video streaming capabilities since there is no single standard to provide a consistent baseline. We do look at some popular video sites, including YouTube's mobile site, to see what a device can do. The Memoir had no problems playing videos on YouTube or Zoovision, but could not stream videos from the Windows Media mobile site.
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