Smartphones have all but taken over the mobile phone landscape, with various models managing to integrate more hardware and equipment as well as software and systems to help users maintain and manage their busy lifestyles. Manufacturers have continued to crank out newer and newer models to keep the race going, with sharper images, touch screens, sound quality, application storage and compatibility and contact range being the main targets of continued improvement. Each new model tries something new and dares to push the comfort envelope with new shapes and setups, whether slides or flip-tops, with various configurations of hardware and software under the hood. The success and failure of each model is relative, but some of course do better than others.
With its newest model, Samsung tries to dress up a mobile phone as a smartphone, albeit not without mixed results. Packing both a touch screen and full QWERTY keyboard into its compact frame, the SGH-A797 model – also known as the Flight – carries plenty of industry-standard features such as Bluetooth, a 2MP camera, a media player and GPS and 3G [via AT&T]support, all within Samsung’s typically-sturdy construction. The main trouble with the Flight, however, is that while well-intentioned in its multitasking, it seems to want to run in five directions at the same time – a sentiment apparent in various aspects of its features.
At 4.17” x 2.2” x .5”, the Flight is a little bigger – and at 4.8oz a little heavier – than most other phone models in its relative price point. At least its design is ergonomically sound; the phone fits well in one’s palm and slides open and shut with no locking or flimsiness issues. The screen clocks in at 2.8”, smaller than average 3” screens in a manner similar to T-Mobile’s Tap, although the QWERTY keyboard attempts to compensate for things that the touch screen cannot handle. However, lacking both Samsung’s signature TouchWiz interface and full HTML browsing deals the Flight a not-inconspicuous blow.
However, the aforementioned QWERTY is not without its strengths. Four rows of buttons feature letters and numbers sharing keys, with directional arrow keys and the standard keyboard control array also present. The responsiveness of the buttons is considerably better than that of the sometimes-clunky screen, and the typing of messages is generally intuitive and simple to accomplish. The Flight also features handwriting recognition, although the display is again too small to fully allow for solid support.
The integrated 2-megapixel camera features a wealth of customizable image settings – four resolution settings and three quality settings for its pictures, as well as a night-shot mode, four color effects and brightness adjustment, multi-shot mode and a very interesting smile-shot feature that automatically takes photos when smiles are detected. The interface for the camera is also fairly easy to pick up and use, with many of the available options readily accessible and easily implemented. Still images and 320×240 or 176×144-resolution videos as well as other data can be stored in SD cards, which the phone can support at up to 16GB storage capacity. The main shortcoming of the camera is that it lacks a flash.
The Flight also includes AT&T 3G support, as well as support for Cellular Video and AT&T’s Mobile Music, which are all seamlessly implemented with minimalist applications that nevertheless run well and prove more user-intuitive than visually sparse. A variety of music applications round out its multimedia capacity – support for XM Radio Mobile, for one, is notable, as is an application that allows a user to create ringtones as well as save music tracks as ringtones.
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