At every price point, there are certain phones that are built like
tanks -- finely-tuned machines that were obviously designed and
built with a meticulous eye for detail. They don't always look
good, but they feel good -- and when you're talking about a device
that you're likely going to be holding, using, and typing on for
hours each and every day, "feels good" is a surprisingly important
checkbox to mark.
The Samsung
Exclaim doesn't fall into that category. At $79.99 on contract,
it's cheap, but it's not that cheap -- in the QWERTY
category, the Rant, Lotus, and Rumor 2 all
cost less and we're pretty sure we'd rather have any of them,
particularly the Lotus. Sprint Navigation works well (as it usually
does -- though we didn't like how the portrait softkeys were still
functional in landscape mode, so the bottom key confusingly
corresponded to the left function) and the Exclaim has one of the
loudest, best speakerphones we've heard, but it's doomed by its
whopping 17.8mm of girth, its cheap, bendy plastics, and the fact
that it lacks a rudimentary touchscreen for entering digits --
something that the similar LG Neon has (for
$50 less) and the Rant overcomes with a dedicated, fixed numeric
keypad. Yes, the Exclaim slides down to provide the functionality,
but it's an unnecessary mechanical burden that adds more thickness
than it's worth -- put simply, there are better ways of doing
this.
For what it's worth, the slide-out keyboard works quite well --
teens and twentysomethings will appreciate the dedicated text and
emoticon buttons, and the duplicated softkeys and directional keys
are helpful -- and 3G is a plus, but in the face of hot, cheap
competition from other models in Sprint's lineup (including some of
Samsung's own, ironically), the Exclaim is a definite pass.
[ Via: Engadgetmobile ]
[ Tag: ]
- samsung Galaxy predictably coming to O2 UK
0 comments:
Post a Comment