With V Cast for video, music and navigation, the Samsung SCH-U540 does just about everything. But does it do them well?
Review summary of the Samsung SCH-U540:
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 The Samsung SCH-U540 would be a low-end phone, if it weren't for the vast range of services that V Cast brings to the table. It would be hard to describe a phone with streaming, full screen video, GPS navigation and an over-the-air music store as being low-end, but the U540 handles none of these features exceedingly well, and no differently than every other Verizon Wireless V Cast phone. Messaging was a nice surprise, with some good text options and a full plate of pre-loaded settings for popular messaging services. Still, otherwise this phone seems very mid-range, neither exceptional nor terrible in any way. Price: $50.
Pros: Attractive looks. Large keypad makes for easy typing. Landscape mode for full screen video.
Cons: Middling call quality. Poor Web browsing. Mediocre music player. Poor video playback, compared to mobile TV. No accessories.
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Full Samsung SCH-U540 Review:
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Design
The Samsung SCH-U540 looks like a modern Samsung flip phone. Which phone? All of them. It looks somewhat like the Cingular SYNC, more like Sprint's M500. In this way, the U540 takes on a generic feel; with broad buttons and relatively flat shell, it doesn't stand out, but it isn't offensive. The interface is all Verizon Wireless, all the time. You get a few theme variations, but the menu hierarchy is what you get on every Verizon phone. Once again, all the 3G features are hidden under the "Get It Now" menu, which is Verizon Wireless' code for "Buy It Now." It is too bad, because as much as this phone borrows design cues from other Samsung hits, it doesn't borrow the recent innovations in menu design that Samsung has been slipping onto their phones, such as nested windows and cooler color schemes. The external screen is nothing special, its wide pixels produce a screen door effect and keep colors from being sharp. The internal screen is more colorful, but still only 176 by 220 pixels, so fonts looked a little blocky.
Calling - Good
The Samsung SCH-U540 is a nice, middle-of-the-road phone when it comes to calling. Calls sounded okay. Callers complained of some tunneling of our voices on occasional calls, but it may have been more of a reception issue, and the U540 averaged only 2-3 bars of 1X network coverage, and 1-2 bars of EV-DO coverage. The feature set is adequate. Bluetooth is there, and the speakerphone, which blasts from the U540's impressively loud stereo front speakers, sounds very good. Speaker-independent voice dialing gets its own key on the keypad's face, which we liked. Still, the phone lacks conference calling, a popular feature. The contact list is complete, with just enough fields, and no real frills. The address book and call menus suffer from the poor-looking fonts and bare menu structure, but otherwise function well. Verizon Wireless even offers a backup assistant to keep your contact list safe, but this is an additional download and subscription service. The battery life performed as expected -- we got almost exactly the 3.5 hours Verizon Wireless said we would, which is still not fantastic performance these days.
Our favorite: We're big fans of speaker-independent voice dialing
Our request: Conference calling, and make it all look pretty
Messaging - Very good
With it's large keys, the SCH-U540 makes a fine messaging phone. It has pre-loaded settings for AOL, MSN and Yahoo instant messaging and e-mail, which we prefer to manual setups on mid-range phones. We were also pleasantly surprised to find some useful text formatting options on the SMS application, which help us fit all of an incoming message and more than 2/3 of a full 160-characters on outgoing messages. Though the message app doesn't allow live, while-you-type searching into "To:" fields, you can simply enter a contact name, and your message will find your friend. The phone offers easy SMS, with picture and video messaging capabilities. Overall, we were happy with how messaging performed. Though none of the dedicated messaging apps, for e-mail, IM or SMS, looked especially pretty, they all did a fine job and functioned properly.
Our favorite: Pre-loaded settings for popular services
Our request: Make it look nicer, with text that is more legible
Multimedia - Mediocre
The SCH-U540 is part of a category that has become a new mid-range, though compared to other 3G phones the device is really closer to the low-end. It features access to all of Verizon Wireless' 3G features, including V Cast Video and Music store, the mobile Web, and VZ Navigator, but it handles none of these features in any way that sets it apart from any other V Cast phone. Video looks okay, but not nearly as good as V Cast Mobile TV. Once you've seen mobile TV, whether from V Cast or Modeo, it is hard to wait for streaming buffers to fill, and there is a bit of waiting on this phone, about 10-30 seconds before a short, two-minute clip would start. To it's credit, we do appreciate the video player's landscape mode, which showed video clips full screen. The music store has a lot of depth, but the music player itself lacks any interesting features. Though the touch-sensitive buttons worked very well, better than most touch-sensitive controls we've seen recently, touching play on the face button does not activate the player. Instead, it is buried deep into the sublevels of Verizon Wireless' standardized menu. Also, the phone lacks A2DP support, which has really become a standard on true "music phones."
The camera is the same, lousy lens we've seen on other mid-range phones, and the 1.3-megapixel sensor proves that 1.3-MP is the new VGA, the de facto standard for barely mid-range multimedia phones. The browser is also a disappointment, as it can't venture too far beyond the Verizon Wireless deck without getting hopelessly lost. Neither our infoSync World homepage nor The New York Times homepage would load at all. Finally, the GPS sensor and VZ Navigator had significant trouble finding us, whether we were in New York City or just outside the city in the New Jersey suburbs.
Our favorite: Full screen videos in landscape mode
Our request: A better GPS sensor would be a nice start
Accessories - Poor
Nothing but a charger, that's what you get with a so-called "V Cast Music Phone." Even the cheapest of digital audio players, aside from their phone brethren, come with three things: memory, a USB cable and headphones. If these necessities aren't included, we hardly agree that this phone could be called a music phone. You can buy the accessories separately, but this adds $30 to the price of the phone for the software, cable, and headset, and another $20 for a microSD card. There should be a kit that offers a deep discount to new phone buyers on these accessories.
Our favorite: Um, we appreciate the charger, at least
Our request: Include everything we need to listen to music
Price and availability
The Samsung SCH-U540 is available immediately from Verizon Wireless for $80 with a contract agreement.
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