Sprint Upstage (Samsung SPH-m620) Review - Making/Receiving Calls
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Alfredo Padilla Published on April 10, 2007 Comment on this |
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Dialing Speed (5.92)
To test dialing speed we measure how long it takes to make a call to 5 different phone numbers from the home screen with the phone unlocked. The Sprint Upstage took an average of 3.38 seconds to make a call, a very good time, comparable to LG Chocoate's 3.61 seconds and significantly better than the Motorola Razr V3m's 4.9 seconds. You should note however that if you are working on the other side of the phone and need to make a call, the need to hit the "flip" button and turn the phone over to dial a number will add several seconds. Although you can dial from the contacts menu on the "back" side, you will need to flip over the phone in order to listen and talk.
Talk and End Buttons (6.0)
The talk and end buttons on the Sprint Upstage are located on the "front" side of the phone, flanking and slightly below the directional pad. The buttons are made of smooth soft plastic, and are differentiated from other control keys by slight indentations, and from the directional pad by a raised ridge that surrounds the directional pad. The keys are a good size, and clearly marked, although the small size of the phone overall does make all of the controls feel slightly cramped, especially for those with larger hands. Key travel is slight, and tactile feedback when pressed is barely felt. Overall we found the keys adequate, and certainly liked them better than the strange arrangement found on the LG Chocolate. Call Management (6.5)
The call management features on the Sprint Upstage are fairly basic. The call history can be viewed by outgoing, incoming, recent and missed calls. When looking at a list of calls you can move to the next list by using the left/right keys, and move amongst your call history using up/down.The left soft key brings up a menu that allows you to send a message to a number, save it, erase it, or erase all calls in your history. The left soft key allows you to call the number. You can also access a history of all your calls if you hit the send key. This list is not sortable, but the menu options are the same. Selecting an item on your list will show you what time and date the call was made/received.
When in a call you can access features via the left soft key, including turning the speakerphone on, switching to a bluetooth headset, recording up to 60 seconds of a call with the voice memo feature and initiating a 3-way call. The left soft key is mapped to mute. This is a good array of options, and we especially liked the fact that you could record a call; a feature not found on phones like the LG Chocolate or Razr V3m.
Startup to Call (3.46)
To measure how long it takes to make a call from phone off mode, we time how long it takes to start the phone up and make a call to five different numbers. We then take the average as our score. The Sprint Upstage took an average of 28.9 seconds from startup to call. This is significantly faster than the Razr V3m's 35.7 seconds, but slower than the LG Chocolate's 20.8 seconds. The Upstage is hurt by the fact that the phone starts up and places you in the "back" by default, requiring you to hit the flip key before you can start dialing a number.
Ring Volume (8.1)
To measure ring volume we choose the loudest ringtone available on the phone and measure how loud it gets using a sound pressure meater 4 inches away form the phone. The Sprint Upstage scored 80.9 decibels, significantly less loud than the LG Chocolate's 88.7 decibels or the Razr V3m's 88 decibels. In fact the Upstage is one of the quieter phones we have reviewed, which may be a problem when you are hoping to hear your ringtone in a loud environment.
Ringtone Customizability (0.0)
The Sprint Upstage does not allow you to use your own music files are ringtones, this is an unfortunate omission for a music oriented device, albeit an unsurprising one since ringtone sales are a cash cow for carriers.
Non Audio Alerts (2.0)
The Sprint Upstage has a vibrate alert, but it might as well not as it is extremely weak, and we barely felt it in our pocket while standing still. The combination of a low ring volume and almost useless vibrate alert means that missed calls on the Upstage may be a regular occurence. you also receive notification via the screen when you get an incoming call, but this is only useful if you are happen to be looking at the screen when a call comes in.
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