Samsung Memoir Cell Phone Review - Software
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Marianne Schultz Published on April 10, 2009 Comment on this |
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| The Memoir's interface is nice, but we found it to be less responsive than we'd like for a touchscreen device. The operating system was rock solid during our time with it, presenting no glitches or shutdowns at all. Web browsing is just okay, with the browser lacking some navigation features to fully take advantage of the Memoir's large screen. | |
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OS (4.5)
The Memoir runs a proprietary operating system, which usually means that 3rd-party developers have little to no access to create applications for a device and that all development is done in-house by the manufacturer. We award proprietary operating systems fewer points than smartphone operating systems since they are typically quite limited in terms of extensibility and customizability. We found the Memoir's operating system to be pretty nice for a feature phone, and while a little unintuitive in some areas, it's easy to use and navigate. During our time with it, it was very stable and definitely more attractive than many others we've seen. Samsung did some nice things to maximize the accelerometer in the interface, such as the ability to tilt the phone to move from one picture to another in the photo album application.
Home Screen Score (8.0)
The Memoir's home screen shows you all the basic information you expect to see on any cell phone plus some extras courtesy of its Widgets feature. The standard information you can see includes the time, date, signal strength, battery level, and indicators for Bluetooth, missed messages, and more. On the left side of the screen is a translucent band that can be hidden or kept in view at all times. The applications there can be dragged out to home screen where they open as widgets showing real-time data and give access to media without requiring you to leave the home screen to open the application. For example, here is the weather widget in action:
The weather widget showing real-time information
Dragging the calendar widget onto the desktop area will open a miniature month calendar, though there's no way to show upcoming appointment information. Dragging the photo album widget onto the desktop will give you direct access to saved pictures with arrows to scroll through them. All in all, this is neat functionality that we like to see, and we only wish that more widgets were available to download.
The home screen with the widget band visible and then hidden
Extensibility (3.0)
Proprietary operating systems are usually much more limited in terms of their extensibility, with the emphasis usually on a small library of carrier-supplied applications for a fee. The Memoir can run Java applications, which gives you a little more flexibility, but we encountered problems with the Java versions of Google Maps and the Opera Mini browser - Google Maps couldn't be installed at all and Opera Mini installed but could not connect to the internet. T-Mobile offers some applications, but the catalogue is pretty limited at the moment. We downloaded The Weather Channel application, a Java application that costs $2.99 per month, and found that it, unsurprisingly, did not maximize the Memoir's touchscreen interface or accelerometer.
Customizability (5.0)
Here, we consider how much of a phone's interface can be changed to suit a user's tastes. On the Memoir, the Display Settings in the main Settings menu allows you to change the wallpaper, font type, and create a greeting message. The Memoir doesn't come with a lot of wallpaper images, but you can purchase more from T-Mobile - we downloaded one for $1.49 and set it as the wallpaper immediately upon download. The font options aren't much, with only 3 types available, but this is still more than we usually see on cell phones.
The settings menu where the font and wallpaper can be changed
There's no way to change the menus or reorganize applications, though you can choose what Widgets to show on the home screen and drag and drop those onto the desktop area to your heart's content. The Memoir offers an average amount of customization options in total.
OS Responsiveness (5.0)
The Memoir's operating system was quite stable during our time with it - we encountered no glitches or shutdowns at all. Responsiveness was less than ideal, however, with some lag for screen input to register across the board, particularly noticeable in long lists where scrolling was slow and jerky. Turning off the haptic feedback seemed to decrease this a bit, however, though this may not be a trade-off some are willing to make. We did notice some oddities that proved annoying during text entry. A full virtual QWERTY keyboard is available in new item dialogues when you hold the phone in landscape orientation, but when you want to go to another field, the entry dialogue itself remains in portrait orientation, requiring you to flip the phone back and forth between the 2 positions if you want to keep using the QWERTY keyboard. This is quite silly - the entire interface should work in landscape orientation when you're holding it that way.
Browser Features (5.0)
The Memoir's specs brag that is has "Real Web Browsing" and upon seeing this, we wondered if Samsung defines 'real' the same way we do. The Memoir's browser is capable of showing WAP and HTML web pages, Javascript elements, frames, and images, and it can handle encryption. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any advanced browser features - it cannot show Flash or Java elements, nor can it do Atom or RSS feed reading, cookies, or password management. All of this adds up to the lowest number of browser features among our comparison phones.
A web page open in portrait orientation
Browsing Interface (4.5)
The Memoir's browser is straightforward, with just about everything you can do present on the screen in the menu bars at the top and bottom. Just as you'd expect, the address bar, forward and backward controls, and home and refresh buttons are at the top, plus a zoom button. At the bottom are buttons to access bookmarks, switch to full-screen mode, and a menu key that offers you a whole 2 menu options. There's also a "Go To" button that does the exact same thing as tapping on the address bar at the top.
A web page open in landscape orientation
When you navigate to a full HTML page, you see only the top right corner of the page, and you'll need to scroll around a lot to see the rest of the page. Unfortunately, there's no way to zoom out to see the entire page at once - the zoom button at the top won't back you out that far. When you rotate the phone to landscape orientation, the view changes accordingly and the menu bar on the bottom re-positions itself to the right side. The only menu options available when viewing a page are "Save Image" and "Copy URL to Message."
There's no browser history, but you can save bookmarks, though there's no way to organize them into folders. The home page defaults to T-Mobile's WAP page, and there isn't any way to change this. You can't have multiple sites open at once. If you're viewing a long web page, there's no quick way to get back to the top without lots of tedious scrolling.
The Bookmarks menu
Despite its large screen that should make web browsing a pleasure, the Memoir's browser offers the least useful interface among our comparison phones.
Browser Access (10.0)
To see how easy it is to start browsing the web, we do a different sort of timing test here to take data network connectivity and hardware capability out of the equation. We "time" how quickly we can get to a web page by counting the number of steps required to do so (we count the entry of the URL as a single step). With a shortcut to the web browser on the home screen, it takes only 3 more steps to complete this test on the Memoir, matching the HTC Touch Diamond and the iPhone 3G.
Gaming (2.33)
The Memoir comes with 4 Java games in total, 3 of which are only demo versions. The only full game, PhotoPuzzle, is the most boring of all of them. Fortunately, you can buy more games from T-Mobile, but they will cost you around $2.99 for a monthly subscription or $6.99 to purchase one for unlimited play with no monthly fee.
The Games & Apps menu
We purchased Tetris in Java form to try it out and found the on-screen controls to be terrible. Touchscreen phones can be hard for gaming - unless the screen is über-responsive and the game is optimized for the interface, it's not going to be a fun experience.
Playing Tetris
Calculator (8.0)
At first blush, the Memoir's calculator seems pretty basic, until you hit the function button in the lower left corner that changes it to a full scientific calculator. The calculator is easy to use, though we'd prefer slightly larger buttons.
The Memoir's calculator in basic and scientific modes
Alarm (7.0)
The Memoir's Alarm application allows you to set multiple alarms at the same time. You can name each alarm, specify a repeat schedule and a snooze option, and choose a specific alarm tone for each alarm. It's not sophisticated enough to let you choose a specific date for an alarm, nor will it let you specify a repeat pattern that's not based on the days of the week, but it's still more than sufficient to get you out of bed for work in the morning, and you can even set alarms to sound if the phone is off at the time.
Creating a new alarm
Document Software (0.0)
The Memoir does not have any document reading/editing software.
Other Software (0.0)
The Memoir does not have any other software that significantly enhances its feature set.
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