| Design | 3.2/5 |
| Display & Interface | 4/5 |
| Calling | 3.4/5 |
| Talk time | 4/5 |
| Messaging | 3.6/5 |
| Music | 3.7/5 |
| Video | 2.4/5 |
| Camera | 2.8/5 |
| Memory | 3.8/5 |
| Web browsing | 2.8/5 |
| Connectivity | 3.4/5 |
| Productivity | 3.4/5 |
| Scheduling | 3.4/5 |
| Laptop sidekick | 2.5/5 |
| Navigation | 4/5 |
| Gaming | 3/5 |
| Mobile services | 4.2/5 |
| Accessories | 3/5 |
| Value | 3.8/5 |
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Pros:
Unique dual-slide speaker design. Great One Touch menu interface from Sprint. Scroll wheel worked well in every app. Suprisingly robust messaging features. |
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Cons:
Music features are nothing special; even the speaker didn't impress us like it should have. Other multimedia features are a wash. Slow, mediocre Web browser. |
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| Conclusion: |
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| The Samsung Highnote would be a much better music phone if the musical features were truly something special. The music player needs a serious upgrade, and considering this is the only slide-out speakerphone on the U.S. market, the speaker should have been something truly impressive, a replacement for our mini speakers and travel alarm clocks. Instead, the phone gets the same music apps as every other Sprint Power Vision phone, and the speaker is comparable to, and not better than, many other music phones on the market. Kudos to Samsung for finally adopting a standard microUSB port, 3.5mm headphone jack and packing in a gigabyte of memory, but competitors, including arch-nemesis Nokia, has been doing this for years. We also think Samsung should have followed Nokia's lead with some real playback controls, since this is a music phone, after all. Still, besides these shortcomings, Sprint's One Touch menus make this phone competitive, with great shortcuts and a modern look to the interface. But if you're looking for a phone with some music power, strangely that's one area where it just doesn't stand out. |
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