Samsung Beat for T-Mobile Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Mark Brezinski Published on February 21, 2008 Comment on this |
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Accessing Music Software (5.54)
The Beat takes 3.61 seconds to get a song playing. Considering it has a shortcut key, and you can boot the player while the phone is closed, the Beat is slow. First of all, the shortcut operates like a secondary function, meaning you'll have to press the button for a few seconds before the player pops up. The player pops up quickly after the phone recognizes the input, but it'll be another second or so before you can actually get a song to play. While the Beat has a few time-saving features, its inefficient aspects ultimately negate them.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Samsung Beat | 3.61 | 5.54 |
| Razr2 V8 | 5.86 | 3.41 |
| Samsung Blast | 2.61 | 7.66 |
| Samsung SLM | 2.7 | 7.41 |
| Motorola W385 | N/A | 0.0 |
| Samsung Juke | 2.72 | 7.35 |
Dedicated Music Controls (14.0)
The Beat has quite a few media control keys. Its external, bee-themed d-pad has five: the center key is play/pause, left and right skip the track, down stops, and up lets you fool around with shuffle and repeat settings. On the left is the volume rocker, which will control playback volume. On the right side of the phone is a dedicated music shortcut key, but it only works as a secondary function.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (4.0)
Judging from its external media controls, name, and marketing, the Beat is a music-oriented handset. The software isn't bad for an entry-level device, but it isn't anything special either. Using the shortcut key will open up the media player, as opposed to the music library. The player itself is overwhelmingly lavender, but otherwise typical. The picture of a CD at the top would seem to indicate album art is supported, but we couldn't get it to recognize any of ours. The right soft key will bring up the library, and the left will open a very short options list. In the menu you can set a song as your ringtone or alarm sound, rate the song (which is a very rare feature), add it to a playlist, or edit its tags.
The settings menu has a few interesting option we don't normally see. Though the initial list of folders only includes artist, album, and playlists, you can opt to turn on additional sorting options such as composer, year, recently played, and most played. We definitely like the option to tidy up our sorting options, but we're not sure why the default view is so abbreviated. The options menu also contains a few equalizer presets (normal, classical, jazz, and rock) as well as an option to enable "3D sound".
The phone does support playlists, but only if they're made on the phone. Another somewhat annoying quirk was that the tags on our AAC files weren't recognized. Again, however, you can edit tags on the phone.
There were a few annoying facets around music playback as well. First, you'll need to dump the files into specific folders on the card, and the phone won't read into nested folders. Also, if you let the music player sit on pause for a half minute or so, it'll turn off automatically.
Overall, the Beat offers an average music player for an entry-level device. Given this, it's unfortunate it's being touted as a media handset, since this is hardly a feature worthy of the spotlight.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
The Beat doesn't have a client for online song downloading.
Streaming (0.0)
The Beat doesn't support any kind of streaming audio.
Podcast Support (0.0)
The Beat has no included podcast software.
Music Sync with PC (7.0)
Synchronization with the Beat can be done via Windows Media Player. All you have to do is connect the Beat to your PC via the included USB cable and wait for the drivers to install. Drag-and-droppers will be pleased to see both the Beat's on-board memory and memory card will show up as two different drives. Such users should dump their songs directly into the Music folder, since the Beat won't peek into nested folders.
Music Formats and DRM (3.0)
The Beat will support MP3, WMA, AAC and AAC+ files. It won't support any DRM-encoded music.
Music Interruption (4.0)
When a call comes in, the Beat will automatically pause the call. If you choose to reject the incoming call, your music will resume automatically. If you take the call, however, when you hang up a dialogue box will appear asking if you want to resume your music. Most phones begin playback automatically regardless, which is what we award the most points for.
Video
Video Software Access (3.12)
The Beat took 6.42 seconds before it could get a video file up and running. Compared to similar phones, this time doesn't seem to be bad; relative to all cell phones, the Beat is about three seconds slower than it should be. The process necessary to get a video playing is really complicated. From a keystroke perspective, you have to open the menu, then dial 6142. From a menu-navigation perspective, you'll have to go through Fun & Apps, Files, Videos, then Videos again (or Memory Card if that's where they're saved) to get to the album. At this point you'll have to wait for the video thumbnails to load before you can select a clip. The good news is that we didn't really encounter any lag between the video player opening and the clip playing. We would've preferred integrated music and video players, but the Beat insists they keep to themselves.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Samsung Beat | 6.42 | 3.12 |
| Razr2 V8 | 7.3 | 2.74 |
| Samsung Blast | 2.69 | 7.43 |
| Samsung SLM | 5.6 | 3.57 |
| Motorola W385 | N/A | 0.0 |
| Samsung Juke | N/A | 0.0 |
Video Controls (6.0)
The only basic function the video player doesn't provide is a full-screen mode. The player has controls for play/pause/stop, both skipping and rewinding/fast-forwarding, and volume.
Video Software & Organization (3.5)
The video player is essentially a slightly more confusing version of the music player. At first things seem typical: select will play/pause, left and right skip, and down will stop the clip. Then you see up, which has an icon that resembles a piece of paper with lines of text on it. We guessed it was the menu since, while the right soft key is assigned to "Back", there was left soft key option. In a surprising twist, it brought us back to the album.
Further investigation showed that, in order to access the menu, you first have to hit Back (which doesn't back you out to the album on the first press). Once you do, you'll unlock the super-secret "Options" menu for the left soft key. Unlike most hidden content, however, this menu doesn't have many items you'd actually want to access. In fact, there are no options in this bonus menu that aren't available through the album's menu. This means there aren't any full-screen options, or any controls above and beyond the d-pad functions.
Video Sync with PC (7.0)
Video can be synchronized with Windows Media Player. All you have to do is plug the device in: the drivers will install automatically and the device will show up as a viable sync target in WMP.
Video Formats (3.0)
The phone will play 3GPP or MP4 files encoded with either H263 or MP4 audio, but not encoded with H264. You also won't be able to play any Flash, Real Time, or Windows Media Videos.
Video DRM (0.0)
The Beat does not support any video DRM.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
Surprisingly, this entry-level device could handle all our test video files, which have bitrates ranging up to 768 Kbps. You should have no problems playing back ultra-smooth videos on the Beat.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The Beat doesn't support any online video downloading services, such as iTunes.
Video Streaming unscored
The Beat also doesn't support streaming video. As there is no set standard, however, we don't score this section. Going to YouTube.com, ZooVision.com, or WindowsMedia.com, however, will only result in error messages.
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