Its so Shiny! Samsung Brightside from Verizon Wireless

Its so Shiny! Samsung Brightside from Verizon Wireless

Upon first glance, the Samsung Brightside  appears to be like rather a lot like a midrange, keyboarded smartphone.  At $99. 99, it's priced like one too.  however the Brightside is definitely simply an excessively bold characteristic cellphone.  It pairs a pleasant slide-out keyboard with a responsive contact display screen and first rate name high quality.  That's the brilliant aspect.  Unfortunately, the phone's show appears to be like horrible from any angle different than straight on, the digicam is poor, the video digicam is worse, and multimedia help is spotty.  whereas it might be an honest alternative for some, you'll in all probability be happier with both an easier telephone or a smarttelephone. Here's review for Samsung Brightside.

Samsung Brightside Design and name Quality

The Brightside measures four. four by 2. four by 0. 6 inches (HWD) and weighs four. three ounces.  It's made fully of black plastic, with a coarsely textured again panel.  There's a quantity rocker on the higher left aspect of the phone, in addition to lock and digital camera buttons on the best aspect.  apart from those, there are 4 perform keys situated beneath the phone's display.  At first, the three. 1-inch, 320-by-240-pixel capacitive show seems to be first rate.  It's an excellent size, and feels good and responsive.  however flip the telephone even barely and the colours look different, otherwise you can't see something in any respect.  until you're trying straight at it, the display is virtually ineffective.  That's a giant disappointment.  The display additionally doesn't shift orientation except you open the keyboard.  meaning you wish to slip the telephone open fairly a lot anytime you wish to kind anything, until you're keen to cope with typing on the on-screen quantity pad.

The telephone slides open to disclose a spacious four-row QWERTY keyboard.  The keys are barely raised plastic bubbles, and that i had no bother utilizing the Brightside to kind out lengthy messages.  however almost each time I flipped open the keyboard, I by accident pressed the phone's digicam button or activated the voicemail.  you may in all probability get round that with apply.

The Samsung Brightside is a dual-band EV-DO Rev 0 (850/1900 MHz) machine with no Wi-Fi.  Voice high quality is fairly good.  Voices sound clear and really loud within the phone's earpiece, although they lack depth and richness.  On the opposite end, calls made with the telephone sound a little bit robotic however clear and have common noise cancellation.  The speakerphone sounds superb and is simply loud sufficient for outside use.  Calls additionally sounded superb by way of a Jawbone period Bluetooth headset ($129, four. 5 stars), and the Nuance-powered voice dialing labored effectively over Bluetooth.  Battery life was common at 5 hours and 25 minutes of speak time.

Samsung Brightside Interface and Apps

The Brightside has a simple, clear interface, although it may profit from some customizability.  the house display consists of 12 icons, with a launchpad on the underside of the display on your contacts, quantity dialer, latest calls, and voicemail.  whereas I like this layout, it's restricted.  To hear to music or watch a video, for instance, you wish to faucet by to the Media Center, then select photos and Video, then select movies.  should you watch lots of movies, it would've been good to have the choice of changing an icon on the house display with a shortcut to the movies menu.

apart from the bodily digital camera button on the precise aspect of the phone, if you happen to want to take a photographgraph you first want to decide on My Pictures, after which discover the small digicam button buried within the precise nook of the display.  the choice to position a digicam button on the house display screen would've been a lot simpler.  or even I'm simply reviewing too many smartphones recently.  That grievance aside, i discovered the Brightside comparatively straightforward to navigate.

The telephone has an electronic mail app with entry to Gmail, Hotmail, Microsoft Exchange, Verizon. net, home windows Live, and Yahoo accounts, however it requires that you just have both a minimal information plan of $9. ninety nine per month, or pay a $5 month-to-month subscription payment.  for the reason that complete function of a characteristic cellphone is to save lots of money, these costs are a bummer.  The Opera Mini 5. 0 browser does a pleasant job of delivering clear WAP and HTML pages, however requires you buy a month-to-month knowledge plan.  Likewise, VZ Navigator 6 is obtainable for clear, voice-enabled GPS instructions for $9. ninety nine monthly additional.  Between that, the browser, and email, you're extra than half of the method in which in direction of paying for a smartphone information plan, which will get you a heck of so much extra.  The Brightside additionally contains all the usual apps, like an alarm clock, calculator, calendar, notepad, and stopwatch.

Samsung Brightside Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions

For multimedia, you get 78MB of free inner memory, alongside with an empty microSD card slot.  My 32 and 64GB SanDisk playing cards labored high-quality.  so as in your media to be recognized, though, it should be positioned in particular folders the Brightside creates whenever you insert your card.  The telephone is in a position to play AAC, MP3, and WMA music recordsdata which sounded advantageous via each wired earbuds and Altec Lansing BackBeat Bluetooth headtelephones ($129. 99, three. 5 stars).  The headphone match is a bit off, though—the final quarter of the three. 5mm plug was left protruding of the jack.  The Brightside additionally performs H. 264 and MPEG4 videos, however solely as a lot as QVGA (320-by-240) resolution, so that you almost certainly won't be watching a lot video.

The Brightside's three. 2-megapixel digital camera lacks an LED flash and auto-focus.  Shutter speeds are fast, at simply . 2 second to snap a photo, however the pictures don't look good.  The digicam captures common coloration element at best, and actually misses out on any high quality element.  Video is even worse.  The digital camera can file thimble-size movies at 176-by-144-pixel decision at 15 frames per second.  They're so small and grainy that it simply isn't price it.

The Samsung Brightside will get factors for the bodily keyboard and responsive contact screen, however loses virtually all of its stars with that horrible show and weak digital camera.  Most customers will most likely be higher off with the LG Extravert ($79. 99).  We haven't examined it yet, however it seems to be related to the Brightside, although hopefully with a greater display.  The LG Cosmos 2 (Free, three stars) is one other higher choice: a solid, inexpensive possibility for Verizon customers that wish to textual content however need to avoid wasting cash.  although it requires a month-to-month knowledge plan, the Motorola Droid Bionic ($99. 99, four. 5 stars) is a robust Android smartphone that will get you a large, stunning display, 4G LTE knowledge speeds, and entry to tons of of thousands of apps.  The Brightside tries too exhausting to appear to be a smartphone, however with out offering smartphone energy.

Benchmarks

Continuous discuss time: 5 hours 25 minutes

Samsung Brightside Price when released is $99.99

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