The keyboard is backlit and you can set the duration 7, 15, 30 seconds or always on, always off. The same is true of the main but not the outer display. You can also set main display brightness and outer display contrast. The K color inner LCD is vibrant with wonderful contrast. The Verizon desktop looks photorealistic and animations move smoothly with no ghosting. But the lower resolution display keeps the phone small and the display easily readable.
Verizon and Samsung make good use of its 96 x 96 pixels, showing signal strength both 1X and EVDO , date, battery level, and your choice of a digital or analog clock as well as wallpaper. The outer display acts as a secondary viewfinder for the camera as well and can display text messages. The inner display is superb indoors but is a bit hard to see in bright sunlight while the outer passive matrix display is readable indoors and out.
You can set wallpapers for both inner and outer displays and you can use your own camera images if desired. It has an internal antenna and middling RF. Since signal bars aren't always created equal, we also look at call quality and data drops due to loss of EVDO coverage and the bars are indeed accurate.
Call quality in 1 bar coverage areas suffers significantly and V Cast-ing with 1 bar of EVDO leads to sporadic connection drops. With two or more bars of 1x, call quality is good and quite loud for incoming calls. Call recipients could tell we were using a cell phone but had no complaints.
Above: front and back views of the original Samsung u Is that champagne colored finish chic or too '80's? Below is the newer Samsung Alias in silver and charcoal black. The samsung has all the standard call features you'd expect including call waiting, call forwarding, speed dialing, voice dialing and a full duplex speakerphone.
The speakerphone works with flip closed and activates automatically when the phone is in landscape mode. Its volume is adequate and the earpiece call volume is very good-- we rarely set the phone above the middle mark for volume.
There's a speakerphone button on the phone's right side and the volume rocker is on the left side. As with most Verizon phones, no headset is included in the box. Since the Alias uses Samsung's proprietary small flat connector the same found on other recent Samsung phones such as the BlackJack and Trace an adapter that allows you to use standard 2.
We tested voice calls and music playback using Samsung's stereo headset and quality was good and volume excellent. VoiceSignal's Voice Command is built-in and has dedicated key on the keyboard.
This is true speech recognition that requires no voice tag recording and it works great for voice commands and dialing. However the speech-to-text used for things such as dictating a text message wasn't quite as good as other Verizon phones with this feature.
You must first train or do "voice adaptations" before you can use speech-to-text, and that means reading back words to the phone, one at a time. The Samsung has four dialing fonts: "normal" which is black text on a white background, Rainbow text, Quill Pen handwritten multicolored letters that are quite legible and Sticky which are multicolored sticky notes each with one number reasonably readable.
You can change the font size from normal to large for the first two which are fonts rather than graphics. You can text in both portrait and landscape modes we suggest using the speech to text feature rather than the numeric keys when in portrait mode. The Mobile Web browser works only in landscape mode as well. The browser has only a 1 column view so you won't see anything like a desktop layout, but the good news is that you need not scroll side-to-side.
Verizon's V Cast Music player on the u is basic with no EQ, but it does support playlists and has a shuffle mode. When browsing music, the phone shows you only 1 artist or title at a time which is a waste of screen real estate. You can only use the player with the phone in landscape mode why? Fast forward and rewind buttons get you to the next and previous tracks with one short tap and pressing and holding will move forward or back within a track.
The phone has a hold button on the left side of the flip so you can toss the phone in your pocket without accidentally starting or interrupting playback. Music playback quality is good by phone standards when using a stereo headset and the volume gets plenty loud. You can download music to internal memory or to an optional card, but with only 50 megs or so of free internal memory, you're going to want a microSD card.
The cheapest and easiest way to get music on your phone is to use a card reader to copy music to the card. Be sure to insert a new card into the phone first and format the card so the proper directories are created on the card. V Cast video playback is at the middle of the pack with some video lag, good buffering speeds and occasional loss of audio sync. The phone is VZNavigator capable for those of you who need directions on the go for a fee. Verizon's usual set of profiles are here including headset, handsfree, DUN and Object Push for VCard transfer and serial port you'll use a Bluetooth enabled computer to browse, copy and push files to the phone.
We had no problem pairing with an using several popular headsets including the Samsung WEP, Plantronics Discovery and Discovery Range was average at 20 feet and call quality and volume were good with these three headsets. The u's 1. Images have reasonable sharpness, accurate color and noticeable noise indoors but an undue amount by any means. Color saturation is pleasing and the LED flash helps a tiny bit with low light shots if the subject is close.
The camera software has a a broad range of settings including timer mode, digital zoom, multi-shot modes, brightness and 10 color effects including the interesting "sketch" effect.
You can save images and videos to internal or card memory, and transfer them one by one from internal to card memory. The camcorder is good enough for MMS, but is too blocky to make for an enjoyable desktop playback experience.
The video camera can record in normal mode unlimited length or MMS mode short clips. All the keys were raised above the surface of the phone, and we found the keyboard to be spacious and tactile enough to type out text messages with ease. The backlight time of the keypad can also be adjusted. Features Though u's improved keyboard was notable by itself, it's the features that make the u really shine over its predecessor.
The SGH-d lacked multimedia features, but the u ramps it up with a megapixel camera, a music player, and full access to Verizon's V Cast capabilities. And its phone offerings are pretty good as well. The u comes with an address book including room in each entry for five phone numbers, two e-mail addresses, and a note. You can also save contacts to a group and pair each contact with a photo for caller ID or one of 10 polyphonic ringtones.
Other basic features include a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, instant messaging AOL, MSN, and Yahoo messengers are supported , e-mail, voice commands and dialing, a calculator, a calendar, an alarm clock, a world clock, a stop watch, a notepad, a speakerphone, a wireless web browser, and Bluetooth connectivity.
There's also an optional Wireless Sync e-mail feature that lets you sync up with your business or personal e-mail addresses. The Bluetooth technology on the u supports profiles for Vcard Push plus headset, hands-free operation, serial port, and dial-up networking. It's worth noting that you can only access the music player plus the V Cast services when the phone is in landscape mode.
The music player and V Cast interface is similar to that of other Verizon phones, right down to the red-and-white navigation menus. The 1. The camcorder has two recording modes: Clips meant for multimedia messages are limited to 15 seconds, but Normal mode lets you record for as long as the available memory permits.
Of course, you always can use a microSD card for more space. The quality of the photos was acceptable; though the images appeared a little blurry, they weren't as pixilated as that of a VGA camera, and colors remained bright and bold. The video quality on the other hand was pretty shoddy, especially in low-light conditions. Personalization options are plenty with the u Not only can you use the wide array of preloaded wallpapers and graphics, you can download more from Verizon's Get It Now service.
The same goes for ringtones and alerts. We managed to download Pac-Man in a mere second, and playing it in the phone's landscape mode was quite fun. We were impressed with the call quality, which was very good, and callers reported little to no static. The speakerphone quality was excellent as well; callers reported that we sounded loud and clear even though we placed the phone a couple feet away.
The audio quality did sound a little metallic, and people still knew we were calling from a cell phone, but it wasn't a deal breaker. We managed to pair the SCH-u with the Technocel T50 Bluetooth headset without a problem, and call quality from the headset was quite good as well.
We downloaded music files via V Cast Music within seconds. Browsing the web was also quite speedy, and video streamed without buffering issues. The video quality was pretty mediocre, however, with a lot of pixilation that was especially noticeable in action shots such as sports video clips. On the other hand, music quality was very good. It sounded loud and clear from the phone's speakers and through a headset.
The Samsung SCH-u has a rated talk time of 3. Our tests revealed an impressive talk time of 4 hours and 18 minutes. Nicole Lee. The Good The Samsung SCH-u has a sleek and attractive design with a cool, dual-flip hinge that lets you view the display in either portrait or landscape mode. The Samsung SCH-u lacks a dedicated camera key on the phone's exterior, and the video quality is mediocre.
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