We slide open the newest consumer QWERTY phone in our Samsung Propel review. Has AT&T entered the square-QWERTY phone market with a splash?
Review summary of the Samsung Propel:
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 Following the most recent trend toward stout, square-shaped, QWERTY messaging phones, the Samsung Propel comes out somewhere in the middle. It's not as basic and clunky as the Verizon Wireless Blitz, and it's not as classy and refined as the LG Lotus on Sprint. The interface is woefully outdated, and actually looks more pinched and drab on the Samsung Propel than it does on, well, every other AT&T multimedia phone. And that's the real problem. The phone just isn't very special. It's a below-average AT&T multimedia phone, when it should be a unique messaging device. We would have liked to see a unique UI built around messaging alerts, full support for as many messaging and social network services as would fit on the phone, and less worry about Cellular Video and location-based services. If AT&T and Samsung had just focused on the messaging, this phones would really take off. Release: October 2008. Price: $50.
Pros: Large keyboard. Good price. GPS navigation and capable, mobile Web browser.
Cons: Interface looks very yesterday. Messaging options are limited, a real shame on an inexpensive QWERTY phone.
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Full Samsung Propel Review:
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Design - Good
The Samsung Propel looks somewhat like a Samsung BlackJack remade as a slider. In fact, the phone is more like the Samsung Sangria, a European phone running Windows Mobile. Instead of the business OS and enhanced, high-end features, the Samsung Propel is a simpler messaging phone. It runs the same basic AT&T multimedia OS as every other low-end AT&T 3G phone, like the Samsung SGH-A737. The phone uses a simple icon-based menu, with icons for AT&T Music, AT&T GPS and YellowPages.com. The screen itself looked fine displaying wallpapers and pictures, but the menu text and icons came out looking blocky or dated.
As a full-QWERTY slider, the phone was short and squat while closed, but still felt comfortable in the hand. In fact, we could see using the device closed often, except that the interface is unfriendly to opening and closing the phone. If you close the phone, apps like AT&T Navigator will quit. You can unlock the navigation keys and open these apps while the phone is already shut, but if you open and close the phone again, the app will quit.
We also wish there were more dedicated keys. We appreciate the messaging key right up top, and the camera and vibrate keys at the bottom of the keyboard, but no camera key? Even the application switcher key doesn't switch to the camera, you have to drill the menus to start it up. The phone uses Samsung's proprietary connector port for USB and headphones, and we would have liked to see Samsung go with microUSB, as they did on the Samsung Rant and Samsung Highnote on Sprint.
Calling - Good
The Samsung Propel sounded fairly good in our calling tests. Our callers didn't hear any significant noise or static, and things were mostly clear on our end. The phone did sound like it was slowly fading into some of the voices coming through, especially during the long pauses on some answering machines we tried, but overall the quality was good. Reception was also impressive on this phone, as it received a solid 4-5 bars of service while other phones on AT&T's HSDPA network in our New York office tended to lag behind. Battery life could have been better. We got just under 5 hours of talk time in a single call, which is close to AT&T's 5 hour claim. Blame the HSDPA network, but for a phone this size, we'd love to see a super-long life battery.
The phone has a fairly basic address book. It looks simple, but packs enough fields for casual messaging, including e-mail and IM fields, as well as a few phone number slots. We'd like to see some kind of synchronization for contacts, but the Samsung Propel has none. The phone also lacks voice dialing, which is a feature we depend on if we're forced to make calls from the road. Conference calling was fairly easy on the phone, and we also found the speakerphone to be adequately loud, though not abusively so, as we prefer.
Messaging - Good
Here's where the Samsung Propel should really shine, but instead the phone is saddled with the same tired AT&T multimedia interface, including all of the same old messaging apps you'll find on simpler phones that lack a QWERTY keyboard. Here is a missed opportunity to attract some of the Sidekick market before they head towards smartphones. We would like to see a range of e-mail services supported, including corporate e-mail, as we find on the LG Lotus on Sprint. On this phone, we don't even get Gmail, because it doesn't make the preset list. We'd also like to see more IM clients besides AOL, MSN and Yahoo; and the ability to stay signed on to multiple IM services is a must, but on this phone it's a miss. Text messaging through SMS worked well, however, and we were pleased to find some robust recipient options, including the ability to send to groups and dig through our contacts list.
The keyboard was about average, but was much better in the center keys than it was on the outskirts. The top row and the sides felt crammed up against the edges, especially the hard ridges that ring the sides of the phone. This same ridge actually helped typing on the bottom row, which is mainly devoted to dedicated application keys like the camera and Cellular Video service. The keys were also quite flat, and typing was much less comfortable overall than it was on, say, the Samsung Epix business phone that we recently reviewed.
Multimedia - Good
For multimedia, the Samsung Propel gets the basic AT&T 3G complement, which includes AT&T music apps like the XM radio service and MusicID, as well as streaming videos from Cingular Video. XM radio wasn't bad, but lacked the wealth of channels of the real service. The simple music player on the phone was also competent, and though it lacked interesting playback options or easy playlist creation, it did manage to read our Windows Media-synchronized tracks, including our album artwork in a tiny thumbnail on screen. The video player on the phone hardly worked at all, and couldn't play our MP4 videos or anything beyond a simpler 3GP file. Cellular Video was sluggish to start, and the picture was blocky throughout. Besides the poor video quality, however, the CV service, made up of short, streaming clips, can't possibly compete with AT&T's much better Mobile TV service.
Web browsing - Good
Surprisingly, the Samsung Propel was able to load our homepage without any trouble. The Access Netfront Web browser chewed through all our images, and though our masthead came through looked choppy and pixilated, at least the phone didn't run out of memory loading our page. We expected the Web browser to be faster over the 3G network, but it wasn't too bad. The entire Web experience is decidedly mobile, without any hint of being desktop-grade. Still, it should work in a pinch, especially for mobile sites, which loaded fairly quickly on this phone.
Camera - Mediocre
Images from the Samsung Propel's 1.3-megapixel camera were obviously small, but also somewhat blurry, especially under challenging lighting situations. Under the best circumstances, the pictures looked accurate and okay, but as light dimmed, things became unrecognizable. At this resolution, though, clearly the camera is a tacked-on feature.
Self portrait
Well, at least it only gets better from here. The picture, taken after multiple attempts at a clear shot, was still blurry. Almost none of the book titles behind us are visible. Lining up the shot was even difficult, as the self portrait mirror was so tiny that it didn't help our aim.
Street musicians
Can you tell that there's a man sitting behind some drums in this shot? It wasn't this dark in person, but clearly the camera can't handle the difference between the bright sun above and the shade below.
Starbucks corner
This one is a little better, thanks to all the bright light shining down. Still, everything is blurry even at the small 100% crop, and there are parts of the building that are completely blown out. The fine lines of the structure are also noisy and feathered.
Sunshine
We just liked this shot for the severe lens flare, even with the blown pixels. Seriously, it looked cool to us.
Panorama
The Samsung Propel has the worst panorama stitching we've ever seen. It seems to want to take the pictures itself as you move the camera, but there are no onscreen guides and the timing of the shots seems to be way off. Plus, even when it gets the shot, things look distorted.
GPS navigation - Good
For location-based services, AT&T has included AT&T Navigator, which is based on TeleNav's software, and also Where, which is a widget-based point-of-interest app we've seen before. TeleNav is for turn-by-turn directions, Where is for finding the closest Starbuck (or the world's largest ball of twine, seriously). AT&T Navigator had some trouble finding us, even on the highways in suburban New Jersey, out in the open. It felt as though the program was frequently caught loading something, though the delay was never terminally long. Where was a fun app to play with, but we wish it integrated better with AT&T Navigator to provide turn-by-turn directions, in addition to a simple map.
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