Thread: Review Of The Samsung Blast: Sturdy, Beautiful And Efficient, But Not Perfect

The Bottom Line:

The Samsung Blast is not a ghastly phone nor is it an extraordinary one. Its best persona are the design and its general performance but the camera (and sometimes sound quality) was below-average. The Blast could be a good choice for non-frequent callers that are not too picky on sound and camera but have a strong interest for text messaging and instant messaging and can't afford more advanced text-messaging cell phones.


Hardware & Design Quality

Pros:
• Robust and functional slider design. Easy to slide up and down with one thumb.
• The Samsung Blast features a new kind of keypad. Keys look just like a flat touch-sensitive keypad but they do recess a little when pressed and it doesn't feel cheap, it feels quite like a regular keypad without the bulkiness of it. I liked using that keypad.
• It is a Sure Type keypad, which means that letters are spread over 11 keys instead of the usual eight keys and there is enough room for "delete", "enter" and "alt" keys. This makes typing just a little faster than on a regular keypad with predictive text input, mainly because it is more accurate at guessing what you are trying to type.

Software

Pros:
• Average email options and good messaging functionality. It also comes with AOL, ICQ, Yahoo and Windows Live instant-messaging programs.

Cons:
• This is a small annoyance but I hate it: There is no dedicated speakerphone button, and when starting a call, you have to wait a little while before being offered to activate the speakerphone; so you can't dial and immediately start the speakerphone then drop the Samsung Blast on a table to free your hands.



Performance

Pros:
• Battery life seemed to live up to Samsung's claims.

Cons:
• The battery charger was quick.
• Take into account that the Blast T729 being a T-Mobile cell phone, it doesn't offer 3G web surfing nor advanced multimedia services like mobile TV.


Call Quality

Pros:
• Sound volume was high enough.
• Sound quality was variable but generally fine, with only occasional tunneling and chopping. Some interlocutors reported that my sound wasn't high enough and thought that I was not speaking in the microphone.

Cons:
• Sound volume coming out of the earpiece was appropriate but not overly high, which can be a problem in noisy areas.
• The speakerphone's output volume was slightly above-average but could be a problem in noisy environments.


Multimedia Experience

Pros:
• Samsung's simple and uncomplicated multimedia messaging system makes it easy to send pictures or voice memos on the spur of the moment as you go along your day. All you have to do is record sounds or take a picture, press send and the Samsung Blast offers you right away to send to your most recently used recipient.

Cons:
• Pictures weren't a "blast". Despite its 1.3 mega pixels, the Samsung Blast's camera produced grainy pictures in low light conditions, where other similar camera phones performed better. The brightness adjustment really makes a difference but the view you get when taking a picture never really corresponds to what you get when downloading the picture on your computer. The way I see it is that the lens and eye of the camera are so small that they probably don't exactly convey the benefits of the 1.3-megapixel picture sensor the Samsung Blast boasts. Buy it for any other reason but don't choose the Samsung Blast for its camera or you are in for sorrowing disappointment.



Liberty Level

The Samsung Blast did let me record a voice note and assign it as a ring tone. Buying a (not included) MicroSD card will allow you to transfer pictures and music files freely.