My Samsung Focus Experience

By Electric Jolt
in Hardware Hangout

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Electric Jolt

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I just picked up a Samsung Focus yesterday. My thoughts? I supported Windows Phone 7 obviously, but when I picked up a Samsung Focus, I was in love. The device's display is superior with it's Super AMOLED technology. The speaker has fantastic sound quality but as you'd expect, it's not aggressive as far as volume goes, and doesn't get very loud. The speaker also can't pick up very low audio and in some songs, I thought the song abruptly ended, until I heard it again, other than that, the speaker serves its purpose very well. As far as battery life, the device does very well at handling sporadic heavy-uses, such as downloading a couple games while playing a game with the speaker on the highest volume for 30 minutes. After a day of sporadic heavy-uses, it kept enough battery life to finish the day. I played music, went on the Internet, played a couple games, purchased some apps, changed some settings, used the camera several times, and also had several periods of the day where it was in sleep, and it survived the day fine.

The body of the Samsung Focus is beautifully designed, but, well, has a lot of plastic... You can see it in the pictures, the whole front looks fantastic especially with the AMOLED display, but it also is a fingerprint magnet, so is the back. The device also loves dust, taking my case off made it want to attract dust like crazy... So while it does have a lot of plastic, the design is great and I love it. Though you might want to test the cases out first because the case I use is terrible with the buttons, the volume up/down buttons flicker on-screen between 29 and 30 as the case presses both, the camera shutter button and sleep button also occassionally have issues... I can live with it, I'm getting a screen protector soon to protect the screen and cut down on fingerprints.

I've talked a lot about the Samsung Focus, and I'm sure you heard a lot about Windows Phone 7, but my experience with Windows Phone 7 has some good points. When I first got the phone, I used my mom's available upgrade to get the $199.99 price but an offer was running and I purchased it for $99.99, I do not have text messaging and use GoVoice for connecting to Google Voice. When using the Windows Phone Live website, I cannot ring, lock, locate, or erase my phone because that apparently uses text messaging and my text messaging is completely blocked. The problem with GoVoice is it does not notify you of new messages, voicemail, etc. Windows Phone 7 does not currently support visual voicemail... Also, when using the back button, it resumes the app where it left off, but it does not have the same effect if you start it from the start screen. The billing system on Windows Phone 7 is very confusing and unfinished, you cannot purchase using Microsoft Points but you can via billing it to your service provider and paying via your phone bill or via credit card. I would've preferred to be able to purchase Microsoft Points or a Zune Pass via billing it to your phone bill or credit card to buy apps/games/music/etc or to directly buy any of that via phone bill or credit card to provide 100% flexibility of choosing how to provide payment.

Also, there are no IM apps available except Messenger which obviously only supports Windows Live... When adding multiple accounts, it adds a second tile for that new email account added. So I have two Hotmail tiles, Hotmail and Hotmail 2. I wish it would put it all in on dedicated mail app. The browser does not support HTML5 and most mobile websites use HTML5 because they were designed for iOS which does support HTML5 and because of that, most websites render incorrectly. It does load websites fast and serves its purpose decently. The YouTube app serves as a plugin to deliver the videos from the browser to the Music + Videos hub so you can see previously watched videos in the hub and play them, but it does nothing more than that. Another YouTube app that has a UI and some basic features is available for free, although it does not feature logging in, commenting, etc, it is a step up from a simple plugin (though this YouTube app requires the official YouTube app to stream the videos in the Music + Videos hub).

With more apps coming to the Marketplace and OTA updates being rolled out as soon as January 2011, my Windows Phone 7 experience will continue to become better and better. :yes:

Samsung Focus front side (fantastic picture quality brought to you by my iPhone 3G ;) )

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Samsung Focus left side (fantastic picture quality brought to you by my iPhone 3G ;) )

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Samsung Focus right side (fantastic picture quality brought to you by my iPhone 3G ;) )

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Samsung Focus bottom side (fantastic picture quality brought to you by my iPhone 3G ;) )

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Samsung Focus top side (fantastic picture quality brought to you by my iPhone 3G ;) )

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Samsung Focus back side (fantastic picture quality brought to you by my iPhone 3G ;) )

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Samsung Focus lock screen (fantastic picture quality brought to you by my iPhone 3G ;) )

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Samsung Focus start screen (fantastic picture quality brought to you by my iPhone 3G ;) )

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Samsung Focus music + videos hub (fantastic picture quality brought to you by my iPhone 3G ;) )

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Samsung Focus case front side (fantastic picture quality brought to you by my iPhone 3G ;) )

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Samsung Focus case back side (fantastic picture quality brought to you by my iPhone 3G ;) )

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iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G USB cable and charger vs. Samsung Focus USB cable and charger (decent picture quality brought to you by Samsung Focus)

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As you can see in the picture above, the iPhone 3G USB cable is in terrible condition, just like all my other Apple USB cables. I have an outlet behind my bed, I plug the Apple charger in and the USB cable is plugged right into it, which hits the bed... The Samsung Focus USB cable feels much more durable than Apple's USB cables and the Samsung Focus charger has the USB port on the side and the USB cable doesn't hit into the bed like the Apple USB cable does. I enjoy the much more durable accessories. :) Hope you enjoyed the unprofessional review with the unprofessional pictures. :D

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Cupcakes

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The reason the quality is so crappy is a.) you need more light source, b.) you can't get that close to the object. The 3G has no focus on the lens, so that's why it's so blurry.

Definitely agree with the AMOLED screen though. I just bought a Samsung Vibrant last night after finally having enough of my iPhone 3G. Just really didn't want to go with Apple again. I contemplated going with a Windows based phone but I'd rather wait for it to mature some more before since I'd rather have more features/apps available for it then :).

Nice review though!

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Electric Jolt

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The reason the quality is so crappy is a.) you need more light source, b.) you can't get that close to the object. The 3G has no focus on the lens, so that's why it's so blurry.

Definitely agree with the AMOLED screen though. I just bought a Samsung Vibrant last night after finally having enough of my iPhone 3G. Just really didn't want to go with Apple again. I contemplated going with a Windows based phone but I'd rather wait for it to mature some more before since I'd rather have more features/apps available for it then :).

Nice review though!

I would've disagreed before I purchased my Samsung Focus about there not being enough apps since the marketplace is going to hit 3000 soon, but I totally agree now understand completely. With apps for IMing people not available and a limited amount of utilities and games, etc, it is only going to better as time goes on and in the next 2 years, all of that will come.

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~Johnny

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Just to address a coluple of points: Mobile sites usually don't use HTML 5. Very very few sites use HTML 5, let alone anything you'll come across on a mobile. It's just the rendering differences between IE & Webkit - the iOS mobile sites were only really targetted at the webkit rendering engine, because that's all iOS used. And unfortunatly IE can't render those sites properly, even though they're using traditional HTML4/CSS3.

And the "superior quality" thing of the Amoled screen, I kind don't agree with you there. I have an HTC 7 Mozart (with a super LCD screen) and a Samsung Omnia 7 (the european version of the focus, with the SAMOLED screen), and I can pretty much say that much prefer the Mozart's screen, just because of the Omnia's/Focus' pentile matrix. Text is a lot less sharp, and colours are not even solid anymore, and some tile colours are noticeably jaggy. For example, check out the difference between using hte blue tiles on hte start screen, and then using the orange. Whilst the blue doesn't look half bad, you can easily see the jaggy corners on the orange, something not evident on the Mozart. And red is even more offensive looking >__< Text also looks noticeably worse than a regular/super LCD screen, and if you bring the screen upto close and inspect it, it all falls apart and looks rather bad. Granted, you probably won't be using a screen that close to your face, but the difference is almost immediatly noticeable for me between the two (after the fact that the Omnia has much richer blacks of course :p)

On a side not though, I'm amazed you can actually get a plan without text messaging. I don't think we have those here in the UK, and considering texts cost network's basically nothing, it's rather bizarre!

<img>

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Electric Jolt

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I'm just wondering if I should buy a memory card now or not... :/ If I don't get a certified memory card, I don't want to waste my money and have a slow phone or something bad happening...

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Electric Jolt

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Good News for GoVoice users, I talked to the developer via a blog entry and mentioned GVMax, he replied about looking into it. It might bring push quicker. The developer has already planned to bring better performance and push to the app.

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spudtrooper

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Good News for GoVoice users, I talked to the developer via a blog entry and mentioned GVMax, he replied about looking into it. It might bring push quicker. The developer has already planned to bring better performance and push to the app.

Does Govoice google voice use voip for outbound calls or is it just fowarding somehow through existing cellular network? like i can use google voice from my pc to make outbound calls, but not sure how it works when used on a phone. anyone? :)

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greenwizard88

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I picked up a focus last Wednesday, and so far I've had 2 instances where the screen refuses to turn on, and I have to reboot. Also, the alarm seems abnormally quiet. Have you experiences these issues?

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~Johnny

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I picked up a focus last Wednesday, and so far I've had 2 instances where the screen refuses to turn on, and I have to reboot. Also, the alarm seems abnormally quiet. Have you experiences these issues?

On the issue of the alarm, the sound starts out very quiet, and slowly gets louder after each short little alarm ring, so after about 15-20 seconds it's full volume.

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Electric Jolt

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Does Govoice google voice use voip for outbound calls or is it just fowarding somehow through existing cellular network? like i can use google voice from my pc to make outbound calls, but not sure how it works when used on a phone. anyone? :)

You choose to call the person in GoVoice and it asks you if you want to dial that number and then your phone calls a random phone number (assuming it's a Google Voice phone number) and then it connects you with the person you wanted to call. No VOIP, but it would be nice...

Since you're coming from an iPhone 3G, how does the Battery life compare? Is it slightly better than the 3G was?

Much better, but if you do what I did today and play games non-stop and give your phone 15 minute breaks between playing games, well then, expect a soon-to-be dead battery. My phone is charging right now. And yes I did play games all day, it was a rather boring day today, plus I also purchased Twin Blades and had fun with that.

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spudtrooper

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Since you're coming from an iPhone 3G, how does the battery life compare? Is it slightly better than the 3G was?

Battery life is significantly better for me

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Electric Jolt

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Since I first charged the phone, I notice on every battery charge that it heats up a bit. My iPhone 3G and past phones and other mobile devices (iPod Touch, Zune HD, etc) never did this.

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Elliot B.

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Since I first charged the phone, I notice on every battery charge that it heats up a bit. My iPhone 3G and past phones and other mobile devices (iPod Touch, Zune HD, etc) never did this.

The iPhone 4, whilst on charge, playing games, holding it etc., gets rather warm, but not as hot as the iPhone 3G does.

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BajiRav

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Since I first charged the phone, I notice on every battery charge that it heats up a bit. My iPhone 3G and past phones and other mobile devices (iPod Touch, Zune HD, etc) never did this.

The only time my iPhone 3G did not get warm or hot was when it was not being used.

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Electric Jolt

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I cannot believe the prices the iPhone 3G is going for on eBay... I hated my iPhone 3G, the entire experience was terrible. It would warm up, battery would begin to die, it would become slower and slower... I absolutely hated it. But I just plugged in my Samsung Focus for a charge while it was sleeping and it was not warm, I now checked 20 minutes later into the current charge and it is heating up. It's different from my iPhone 3G though, my iPhone would warm up, this feels like it's releasing a steady amount of heat on the back of the device. It's no problem, but it is different for me. :p

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BajiRav

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A bit off topic but since there are WP7 owners here this should, if true, make you happy in a few months.

Rumor of January update.

that + if they add following would make it perfect for me.

  • update the Phone app to pivot view (Missed, Outgoing, Incoming etc)
  • optional threading in email app
  • server side search for emails
  • podcast support in zune (currently you need desktop client)
  • link conversations/calls from people hub
  • update browser rendering engine to IE9 even if RC (probably not happening this update)

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neo158

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that + if they add following would make it perfect for me.

  • update the Phone app to pivot view (Missed, Outgoing, Incoming etc)
  • optional threading in email app
  • server side search for emails
  • podcast support in zune (currently you need desktop client)
  • link conversations/calls from people hub
  • update browser rendering engine to IE9 even if RC (probably not happening this update)

this + Podcast support in the UK Zune Marketplace on the desktop.

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