A few months ago I wanted to upgrade my phone. My last one was the cheap LG Flare from Virgin Mobile, which was fine for calls, but as far as texting and media features go, it was lacking. OF course, if I wanted a better phone, I had to go out of Virgin Mobile's network. So, I shopped around on eBay for a phone that would work on T-Mobile's network, since the prepaid option is pretty flexible (you can buy the prepaid SIM package for $7 directly). I wanted a phone that offered more than my old LG handset, something that could play music, take pictures and even make texting easier. The Samsung Blast seemed like a decent option, especially for only $75 new. While it's a far from horrible phone, there are many issues with the handset that has already made me consider looking for a better phone.
Let's begin with the design. The Blast is a fairly thin slider phone, with a decent size screen, a 20-key keypad, and a somewhat cramped navigation set. When the phone is closed (slid down), the construction feels fairly good. When you have the phone open (slid upward), the top half of the phone feels a tad bit loose. Not so much that it feels like it will fall apart, but it can jiggle slightly from side to side. My co-workers have similar Samsung sliders (like AT&T's A727), and they felt more solid than my phone does. Also, the Blast has the camera on the top half of the slider, which is obscured by the back when the phone is closed. It would be nice to access the camera without sliding the phone up.
The display is pretty nice. It's well backlit, and is fairly high in contrast. It's still difficult to see in outdoor light unless you really crank up the brightness, which just drains the battery even worse than it already does. A downside to the slider design is that your screen is more prone to scratches than a flip phone, and I found that out pretty quick after a month. I'm not sure what in my pocket scratched the screen, but now it looks like there is a piece of hair permanently stuck to the front of the phone. Why can't the plastic be made more scratch resistant?
The sound is adequate. I've read in some reviews online that the Blast had low call volume issues, but I found the level of sound to be quite decent. I never had much trouble hearing anyone on my end of the phone. The speakerphone is okay, although it seems like the volume is much louder when you play music. Speaking of music playback, the sound isn't quite as bad as you would expect out of a small speaker. It's pretty similar to the quality that I heard out of my older Motorola Razr. Not exceptional, but functional.
The keypad is interesting. Instead of having a full QWERTY keyboard, the design is similar to the Blackberry Pearl's keypad, which consists of 20 keys. Most of the letters or symbols share a key, which means some keys will have to be double tapped. So, while texting is easier than it is on a standard keypad, it's still not as smooth as using a full QWERTY keypad, and the fact that predictive text is the default setting every time you text makes using the function slightly more cumbersome. To me, predictive text just doesn't work well, and seems more difficult to use rather than just spelling the word out. The navigation keys felt a little cramped. While making calls and hanging up is easy, the odd oval shape for the D-pad makes navigation a little rough, and the OK key in the center is sometimes tough to press, since it's pretty small.
The camera is decent, but not exceptional. The resolution is 1.3 megapixel, which seems like the standard for almost every low-end phone that has a camera these days. Compared to the Motorola Razr that I had (which also had a 1.3 MP camera), the pictures are fairly comparable in quality, except that some pictures come out a little grainier on the Blast than the Razr. I'm not entirely thrilled about how pictures are stored, though. I can't see why Samsung does not include the option of storing your pictures DIRECTLY on to the MicroSD card after taking the picture. Instead, you have to move the picture from the phone to the memory card, and you'll have to do that a lot if you take a lot of pictures, since the on-board memory is pretty low. Most phones give the option of saving your currently taken picture to the memory card, so why didn't this one?
The music player sort of leaves some things to be desired as well. While the phone has no problem streaming the music from the memory card, it does have a problem playing more than 30 songs from a playlist. How many people who use MP3 players only PLAY 30 songs? This is kind of ridiculous. Also, there's no way to connect or even adapt headphones to use to listen to music. The only option seems to be Bluetooth headphones, and that's a bit costly to only stream 30 songs. Maybe the designers don't anticipate the battery to hold power above 30 songs.
I tried using the e-mail feature of the phone (I have an AOL account), but like many of the others have said in their reviews, it's a pointless exercise. I was just trying to use it to see if it worked, and clearly it doesn't. Aside from e-mail, music and a camera, there are no other notable features to speak of. It's a fairly basic handset. Yes, you can play games, but those have to be bought through the T-Zones service from T-Mobile. In terms of on-board functions, there's nothing much that's revolutionary.
Now we get to the battery life. At first, I thought it was just the battery itself that was causing problems with how long the device stayed charged. For some reason, the phone would be dead after two days (maybe less) from being charged. Every other phone I've had, the standby time was much greater. My Razr and Flare could go by almost a week without being charged under the normal use that I put it through. Thinking it was the battery itself, I ordered a new one, just to see if that would make an improvement. It didn't. I don't know how or why, but the battery seems to drain pretty quickly even under light use. It's pretty bad to have to charge this thing every day.
After having this phone for about four months, I'm already looking at other phones. While the Blast is serviceable enough for now, I feel like the feature set falls short of my expectations, and the battery life is just plain awful. For those who are looking at one of these phones as one of the "free" offerings from T-Mobile right now (under a contract), I would ask what else they had. This is a phone that I would not want to be stuck with for 2 years, let alone six months. So unless you find this phone really cheap without contract online, I would pass on this one. There are better options for $20 more than what I paid for this phone.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 74.99 Recommended for: Stylish Trendsetters - Hip and Trendy
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