Samsung Upstage Reviewer's Comments
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The Samsung Upstage has a split personality − literally. If you look at one side of the phone it looks like a cell phone but when you flip it over it looks like an MP3 player. Even though it is dual sided, it is only .37 inches thick.
This phone is great for music but we didn’t like the small screen on the phone side that has to be used for text messaging. However, if you are Sprint Nextel user and do not send a large volume of text messages this is a good music and video cell phone choice and Sprint offers very reasonably priced upgrades on this phone. New Sprint customers can get this music phone for under $30.
Samsung Upstage Screenshots. Click to Enlarge
Music Features:
This cell phone may not get all the cool points that the new iPhone is getting but it is a highly functional music phone. The phone can play MP3, AAC, MIDI, M4A, MP4 and 3GP formats and has the ability to play streaming audio. In terms of ringtones it can play polymorphic and MP3s.
Music files can be downloaded from the Sprint Music store, iTunes or from your PC. Files are easy to transfer and though the music sync works with PCs (including Vista OSs) it does not work with Macs.
The phone can play music through its loud speaker or through stereo headphones. It also can support Bluetooth headphones and it comes with an adapter for 3.5 headphones and the adapter includes a microphone
Voice/ Text Features:
This music phone has good basic phone features like three way calling, voice dialing and a speakerphone. It can send standard text messages, voiceSMS and picture mail. Samsung labels the Upstage as a dual-band phone, 800 and 1900 MHz. The Upstage’s wireless protocol is CDMA.
Internet Features:
The cell phone itself does not have the ability to display full web pages but it can be used as a modem for a laptop. The phone displays WAP pages only but it is compatible with all major IM services.
Lifestyle Tools:
The Samsung Upstage includes basic lifestyle tools like a calendar, calculator and alarm clock. It also has a location feature (gps) for location based applications, this also works with 911 emergency calls.
It has a 1.3 mega pixel camera than can record video,video messages are limited to 30 seconds, but recorded video length depends on the quality and the amount of memory available.
The Upstage’s camera has 2X Zoom, three quality settings, brightness and white balance controls, a night mode, a self-timer, color effects and fun frames. For easy printing, the UpStage supports PictBridge technology for transferring images to a printer. This phone can also display video and supports games.
Technical Specifications:
This phone is thin and light but its battery life is only two hours. However, it does come with an extended battery wallet, this wallet can be used as a protective case for the phone and can be used for back up energy.
In terms of memory, this phone supports microSD memory cards for a total of up to 2GB of memory. The Samsung Upstage comes with an extra 64MB memory card.
We would have liked to have seen a longer phone battery life and a bigger screen for text messaging.
Wow Score:
This phone is cool looking, amazingly thin and is the only phone that has one side that is the phone and one side that is the MP3 player.
Summary:
For the price, the Samsung Upstage is hard to beat. But if you need better Internet features or are not a Sprint customer you may want to consider one of our higher ranked products.
©2008 TopTenREVIEWS, Inc.
