Smartphone Review

The Samsung Propel Pro from AT&T is a Windows Mobile 6.1 slider phone with a full QWERTY keyboard and a stylish exterior. It’s a quad band world phone with Wi-Fi and some extras.

BUILD AND DESIGN
The first word that comes to mind when I look at the Samsung Propel Pro is “sexy”. The device has an ultra-sleek exterior that looks like polished hematite. It’s really quite striking, and looks much cooler than a lot of the other cookie-cutter phones on the market.

Even though the exterior of the phone is plastic it looks like metal, and the device feels very solid in the hand. At 2.4 inches wide, especially in my relatively small hand, it is so wide that its sharp corners tend to dig into my palm if I’m trying to use it one-handed. The phone is a little on the heavy side, but not too heavy, and the weight is pretty well balanced between the top slider and the main portion of the phone.

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BY: Ed Hardy, Brighthand.com Editor

Nokia has announced, but not yet released, the Nokia N97. This top-of-the-line Symbian S60 smartphone will include a touchscreen, sliding keyboard, 3G, Wi-Fi, and a host of other features. Read More »

BY: Jen Edwards, Brighthand.com Contributor
The Samsung Impression, one of the latest from AT&T, has a large touch-screen display and a spacious keyboard, along with an excellent camera. It’s a quad-band GSM world phone with Bluetooth and GPS functionality, plus fun polyphonic ringtones and highly customizable vibrating alerts.

It’s an exceptional device that might make you decide you need a new phone — even if you like your current one.
Design & Build
My first impression of this device was a good one; it’s a substantial phone that nevertheless doesn’t feel heavy. It’s nicely designed in almost every respect — rounded in all the right places, with a slide-out keyboard that functions well.

At 4.48 inches it’s just a bit taller than other phones, but it’s also a little narrower at just a hair under 2.25 inches, and it feels great in my relatively small hand. It’s a bit large in the pocket, but it works.

Most of the buttons are located on the sides of the device, and they’re large enough to manipulate easily while still being small and unobtrusive as far as aesthetics are concerned. The call, back, and disconnect buttons underneath the screen are flush with the front of the device, but well designed and still easy to use — my fingers don’t have any trouble finding them.

I have only one small complaint about the overall physical design of the Impression, and that’s the location and use of the Lock key. It’s located on the right side of the device, on the lower portion (the keyboard slider, not the display). You have to press and hold it for a couple of seconds to unlock the device, and both my test subjects and I had the same problem with it.

When you try to press the button with your thumb, you tend to also press on the left side of the device as well, which can start opening the slider and causing the display to slide over to the right, making it harder to keep pressure on that lock button. I could be making way too much of this point, but I still find it annoying after using the device for a week now, and it’s the only real problem with the physical design of the Impression. I’m learning to adjust for it and hold the phone slightly differently, but I felt this should still be mentioned. Read More »

BY: Ed Hardy, Brighthand.com Editor

The HTC Magic will be the second smartphone running Google’s Android to be released by a major carrier. This model will strongly resemble its predecessor, but lack the T-Mobile G1’s hardware keyboard.

I recently was able to get some time with a pre-release version of this device, and I recorded a short video preview of it: Read More »