Haven't we seen this phone before? Check out our Samsung Rant review and see why this Sprint phone isn't like the phones it so resembles.
Review summary of the Samsung Rant:
 |
|
Scoreboard » Features » Side-by-side » Gallery » |
 We're sure that Sprint and Samsung will forgive us for thinking this phone was a rip-off of the older LG Rumor, because after some time using the Samsung Rant we're ready to recommend it to anyone looking for a fun, easy-to-use QWERTY phone with some surprisingly robust messaging options. This isn't a complex, corporate smartphone, it's still very much a consumer-level device, but if you'd like to be able to check your work e-mail on your little personal phone, it packs all those features at the best price. Sprint's One Touch interface, with all its shortcuts and included apps, makes this phone much smarter than the average bear. We think the combination of improved hardware and interface design, the nice selection of messaging features, the great price, plus a few multimedia functions thrown in at the end for good measure, makes this an easy phones to recommend. There's plenty of room for improvement, but for only $50, we wouldn't want this phone to get too smart, would we? Release: October 2008. Price: $50.
Pros: Nice, advanced feature set at a great price. Great improvement over similar predecessor, thanks to improved hardware and interface design. Corporate e-mail app.
Cons: Web browser sluggish and unreliable. Lacks all the tiles of other Sprint One Touch phones. Multimedia options are very basic, not compelling.
| Poor |
Mediocre |
68%
GOOD |
Very good |
Excellent |
|
|
|
Full Samsung Rant Review:
|
Design - Good
When we first saw the Samsung Rant in person, we asked our Sprint rep if Samsung had simply licensed the design from LG, because the phone looks strikingly similar to the LG Rumor. We weren't fans of the latter phone, but thankfully a considerable amount of work has gone into improving Sprint's iconic messaging device, and we're pleased to say that the Samsung Rant is an improvement in every way. The keyboard on this phone is much better than on LG's device. Samsung added an extra row of keys, which makes room for a more natural layout. The Samsung Rant even has inverted-T arrow keys, and the keys were softer, more comfortable and much more sensitive than on the LG Rumor, which couldn't keep up with our fast fingers.
Otherwise, the two phones have the same external features, except that Samsung has wisely opted for microUSB ports on their recent Sprint One Touch phones, instead of their original proprietary connector. There is a microSD card slot hidden under the battery cover, but we didn't have to remove the battery to check out the included 256MB card. The screen on the phone is only 176 by 220 pixels, but thanks to its rich color depth of 262,000 colors and a snazzy, high-contrast interface, it looks much better than other screens with the same resolution.
Interface design - Very good
The Samsung Rant benefits from Sprint's new One Touch user interface. One Touch is basically a menu bar at the bottom of the standby screen, what Sprint calls a carousel, and this is loaded with interchangeable widgets and shortcuts in the form of tiles. When you move to a new tile, a bubble window pops up with bookmarks, search fields and other useful bits, even some basic RSS-style headlines. You can choose up to 15 different tiles, and these can be moved around into any order you choose. Most of these are simply bookmarks to various mobile Web sites, but this simple explanation understates their utility. For instance, Yahoo has its own tile, and from the Yahoo bubble you can jump to Yahoo Maps, Yahoo Calendar and Address book, Yahoo Messenger and Mail, and even Flickr. There is a tile for Sprint Navigator, a tile that aggregates all your incoming message alerts, and one useful tile that acts as a shortcut menu that you can customize freely. It's a very nice interface design, and though we wish it offered just a bit more function and a bit less jumping to other apps, it looks great and offers plenty of utility.
Calling - Good
The Samsung Rant has plenty of nice calling features, but unfortunately call quality on the phone suffered during our hands-on tests. We heard crackling and static during calls, and the phone suffered from reception issues. In lower Manhattan, we maxed out at 3 bars of service, and as we traveled into the New Jersey suburbs we often lost Sprint reception entirely and ended up roaming. This didn't affect calls as much as it impacted data use on the phone, but it was frustrating all around. For battery life, we got just more than 6 hours out of a single phone call, which is more than the 5.6 hours that Sprint promises.
The Samsung Rant has a simple contact list, with fields for phone numbers, e-mail, IM screen name and a URL. Through the corporate e-mail app on the phone you can access your Exchange or Lotus Domino work address book, and also copy these numbers to the phone. We wish there was a more automated sync process to copy our entire work contact list, but as it stands it's an impressive feat for a simple messaging phone.
Speaker-independent voice dialing gets its own dedicated key on the Samsung Rant, and this app worked perfectly in our tests. Conference calling was also especially easy, with top-level soft keys and even a gentle menu reminder on how to join two calls; it's very nicely handled. The speakerphone was also surprisingly loud, almost competitive with the Samsung Highnote, which has a dedicated slide-out speaker.
Messaging - Very good
The Samsung Rant far surpasses the older LG Rumor when it comes to messaging features, thanks mostly to Sprint's robust One Touch interface and the apps that all the One Touch phones have onboard. In fact, the other two new One Touch phones, the Samsung Highnote and the LG Lotus, pack the same messaging features, but these phones are also two to three times as expensive, respectively, and don't go much beyond what you'll find on the Samsung Rant. For only $50, the Rant is a tremendous bargain, with all the standard messaging options you'd expect, including Instant messaging for AOL, MSN and Yahoo, as well as SMS and MMS messaging. But what you might not expect is the powerful e-mail app, which comes with plenty of presets, as well as options for POP, IMAP and even corporate Exchange or Lotus Domino accounts. We can't remember seeing another phone in this price range that gave us access to our work e-mail accounts, and the Samsung Rant did a fine job checking our mail and alerting us when new messages arrived. It wasn't as fast as a dedicated push e-mail phone, but it got the job done and the app looked good doing it.
The keyboard on the Samsung Rant is perhaps the biggest improvement over the LG Rumor, even more important to this phone than the faster 3G networking, which doesn't make much of a difference on a messaging device. The keyboard slides out with a solid, reassuring snap, and the screen orientation flips to landscape mode quickly. The keys themselves were relatively large and soft, on a textured background. Typing was a breeze once we got the hand of the wide layout. We wish the keyboard were smart enough to enter the corresponding symbol key when we held down a letter key, but instead this action did nothing at all.
The Samsung Rant doesn't get all of the tiles of its more expensive brethren. There are no Facebook or Myspace tiles, though these were really just bookmarks to the mobile versions of the respective social network sites. In fact, MySpace is still available through Sprint's "Social Zone" Web-based app, as are a host of other social networking sites (but not Facebook). We're curious as to why Sprint isn't including the same set of tiles on every phone.
Multimedia - Good
As a 3G, Sprint Power Vision phone on Sprint's EV-DO network, the Samsung Rant gets access to Sprint's Music Store as well as the streaming Sprint TV service. Skip the Sprint TV stuff. The video was choppy when it would play, but often we got only the audio portion and not the video part of the stream. In any case, the streaming content is hardly worth watching, especially considering the poor-quality picture. For music, the phone synchronized nicely with our desktop using Windows Media Player, or you can browse the files yourself in Mass Storage mode. The media player was very basic, but to its credit it was the same player you'll find on the musically-inclined Samsung Highnote phone. The phone uses a sub-standard 2.5mm headphone jack, but can also connect to stereo Bluetooth headphones for wireless listening. The speaker on the Samsung Rant was surprisingly loud, almost as loud as the speaker on the Samsung Highnote, though not nearly as clear. Still, we didn't expect to find anything so vibrant on this small messaging device.
Web browser - Mediocre
The Web browser on the Samsung Rant was underpowered and fairly slow. It choked on our homepage, eventually offering up a small portion of our content but not nearly the entire page. This is too bad, because QWERTY phones make for easy typing in Web browsers. Plus, one of the key selling points of this phone over the older LG Rumor is the 3G networking, so we wish the phone would put Sprint's EV-DO service to better use. As it stands, the browser was very sluggish and looked like a standard mobile browser, nothing special here.
Camera - Mediocre
The camera on the Samsung Rant was mediocre, but not as horrendous as some of Samsung's previous attempts. The camera did fine with detail on well-lit shots, and even managed to focus a bit in low-light situations. Still, we saw plenty of purple fringing and as soon as we zoomed in to a 100% crop, the lack of real quality was evident.
Self portrait
This happy snap self portrait was easy to line up, thanks to the included mirror next to the lens. But the camera gave us a bumpier complexion than is true to life (we swear). Also, notice that anything white in the shot, like the truck behind us or the white sweater to right of the pic, was surrounded by a bluish halo.
Neon sign
The fact that the camera can keep a steady shot under these difficult conditions is impressive. Sure, there's plenty of noise, and the white wall is rendered reddish by the confused sensor. But this result isn't too bad, in a pinch.
Glass building, Blue sky
The camera held onto some fairly accurate colors and even captured some of the reflected detail nicely. Still, everything in the shade has disappeared in this admittedly bright shot.
Street scene
This picture shows better handling of contrasty dark spots, with plenty of details still available in the shade. But the overblown areas are prevalent, and the image takes on an over-sharpened, TV-like quality.
GPS navigation - Very good
The Samsung Rant uses Sprint Navigator for turn-by-turn directions, and in our tests the phone did a fine job finding us in New York City and tracking us on our drive home to the suburbs. Standard complaints about Sprint's One Touch apply here. Though Sprint Navigator gets its own tile on the carousel, this just allowed us to jump into the Sprint Navigator app, it didn't offer any useful info on its own. While this was convenient to jump directly into a map of our current location, we wish the point-of-interest database was accessible from the home screen. That's a feature we've seen on plenty of other 3G multimedia phones, and it would be very useful to have here.
Price and availability
The Samsung Rant is available now on Sprint for $100. A $50 mail-in rebate is available when signing up for a qualifying plan.
|
|
|
|
|
Archive