Samsung Focus Windows Phone (AT&T)  |
| my wallpaper. with iphones you swipe left to right to unlock but with the Focus you swipe up. It's very slim and light its what everyone notices when they first have it in their hands. Also 848 by 480 rez is bright, clear and good contrast. |
I got a new phone since my old phone was dying on me and I decided on the Samsung Focus (same price as iPhone 3GS but better specs). It's a mid tier Smart phone but can hang pretty much with iPhone 4s and HTCs and what not. The main driving force in getting this phone was that it was affordable, had a big 4 inch AMOLED screen to put my videos/pictures, quick to navigate and easy to text.
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| Touch screen is good and pinch to zoom works well on websites and pictures. |
The main screen shows the shortcut icons. They are somewhat customizable since you can arrange them wherever or you can delete or add more and also some of the icons are animated. For instance, if you are logged on to Facebook, your People icon will display the main picture of your contacts from Facebook in little squares. Also the phone seems to choose a random picture in your Pictures to display that as the icon and same goes for your Music and Videos icon but will use album art instead. The OS is Windows Phone 7. It is not as customizable as Android but its smooth and quick.
Zune software is needed to transfer media from computer to phone or vice versa. It is similar to iTunes. What I like about the Zune software is that if you delete your media from your computer but still have it on your phone, you can still copy those files back to your computer which you cannot do with iTunes. That's the only real difference but a big one. Also you can sync wirelessly. Its great if you're just transferring songs or pictures. If you transfer videos, it's best to transfer with the usb cable but wireless syncing works well.
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| cool app but I wish it also lists My Videos as well. |
The YouTube app by lazyworm is pretty neat. you can view portrait mode as shown in the picture or landscape to view full screen. You can swipe left or right to view more videos from the author or keep swiping to view your subscriptions or favorites or go to search.
I don't really want to talk much right now about the games (might do some app reviews in the future but not sure) except that the selection is decent and still growing since the Windows Phone 7 market is still growing but a couple games that I do like are Pool Plus Friends since you can play against random people real time. I also like the card game Speed (can play 2 player mode on one phone not with random people) and Blocked In (puzzle block game).
Overall pretty good phone. Battery life is average to above average but viewing a lot of videos kills it, no surprise there. Texting is easy in portrait or landscape mode. speakerphone volume is loud and call quality is good. Theres a bunch of other things that I didn't bring up since I don't want to do a full review but there are no glaring negatives about this phone. If I were to give any criticism is that it doesn't play all video file formats. it can play 720P files but files should be h.264 mp4 or divx/xvid avi and does not play .flac audio files. Also no equalizer when listening to music. Still a great phone and I already can't wait for it's successor.
if you have questions regarding the Focus let me know!
