Samsung Sync

[milohimself]

Just picked it up, because my old Motorola, being a standard POS Motorola, finally broke. Pretty good phone so far, I like it. Reception is actually decent at my house.

I think the big thing worth noting with this would be AT&T's 3G apps. They're okay. You can stream XM music, but reception is spotty at best, and songs will cut out multiple times. If it were free, I'd give it a shot every now and then, but it costs, so I pass.

That brings me to the real music app here, the media player was actually suprisingly high quality. I picked myself up a 2gb SanDisk micro SD and loaded a few hundred songs on it. Navigation of the library is very easy, and the sound quality is actually very good through Samsung's stereo earbuds. Solid bass, but maybe I've been listening to an iPod for too long. The external speaker is about as good as you can expect it to be on a cell phone.

Back to the other 3G apps, MEdia Net is always a solid limited internet. Everything comes up right quick. The video section is kind of shoddy in quality. If you're looking for mobile video, Verizon Wireless pretty much has the market pinned. The LG 9400 is untouchable in that area, IMO. But for limited internet usage, the Sync is solid.

As far as the nuts and bolts of the phone go, they're just okay. Menus are a little tricky to get around. Some basic functions, like calendar usage, are pretty easy. Some others, like text messaging, can get somewhat cumbersome. It does have a big bright display, which is a plus. The buttons, while big, are kind of awkward, which may be due more to the shape of the phone than anything.

Overall, I'd say this one's okay. The phone really is kind of uncomfortable to me, but I suppose it could just take getting used to. Big things for me on a cell phone are a good media player and being able to surf just for scores and news headlines, which the Sync does do very well. The competition for me would be AT&T's new Sony Ericsson W580, but I'm going to pass on it because I like the 3G MEdia Net. There are better media phones out there, but I'll stick with this one because it does just what I want it to do.