Samsung Focus

Design:

The most striking physical feature of the Samsung Focus smartphone is the eye-popping, 4-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen. It boasts an impressive 480 x 800 pixel resolution and is superb for all your multimedia and communication needs. We’ll have to admit that it doesn’t amaze to the extent of the Apple iPhone 4’s 960 x 640 stunner, but by any other standard, it’s a real winner. The phone is slim and light, despite the large display, and is comfortable in the hand.

Not only is the display attractive, but the touchscreen functions smoothly and quickly. Scrolling is smooth and responsive and the gesture functions work well. The live tiles on the start screen can be interchanged in any way you like based on the Windows Phone OS. Anything you don’t want to be on the start screen can be easily removed and anything you want can be added. That includes individual webpages, maps, photos and playlists. These can all be pinned to the start screen with little more than a long tap. The idea behind this functionality is to allow you to get into and out of frequently used sites without having to first launch the associated app. As an example, you can access a specific webpage without having to first launch the mobile Internet Explorer browser.
The other major design feature of Windows Phone 7 is the organization around six categories of related content, called hubs. They include People, Pictures and Camera, Games, MS Office, Music and Videos, and Marketplace. They represent a new way of organizing and consolidating information that works very well.

Multimedia:

Speaking of hubs, Music and Videos is one of the best. Microsoft demands several hardware requirements of phone manufacturers in order to use the Windows Phone 7 OS and one of those is that the complete functionality of a Zune multimedia player is included. This means that you can drag and drop music and videos to the Zune client on your computer and the next time you sync, whether wired or via Wi-Fi, the content will be automatically transferred to the phone. Synchronization works with Macs as well as PCs.

New music and videos can, of course, also be purchased from the Zune Marketplace and downloaded to your computer or over-the-air to the phone. If you choose to invest in a Zune Pass subscription, you add the ability to stream unlimited music to the device. Windows Phone 7 devices also can stream using the built-in FM radio feature. Using it requires the use of a wired headset as the headset’s cord serves as the radio antenna.
The Samsung Focus smartphone offers a 5MP camera, which is also a Windows Phone requirement. It includes 4x zoom, LED flash and can record video in 720p high definition.

Call Features/Quality:

The Samsung Focus smartphone incorporates all of the calling features that have become commonplace on cell phones. It includes call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding and conference calling. Call quality was excellent in our area. The speaker phone worked well doing a good job of filtering out unnecessary background noise.

Memory/Storage:

The Samsung Focus smartphone has a substantial 8GB of integrated memory that can be expanded with up to a 32GB MicroSD card. The downside of this expandable memory story is that it requires a card that has been specifically certified for use with Windows Phone 7 devices which, at this point, are very hard to come by.

Battery talk time is an estimated 390 minutes which is acceptable, but not remarkable, in this sort of device. You can expect about 10.4 days of stand-by time.

Additional Features:

The MS Office hub is one of the most useful features of the Samsung Focus. It includes mobile versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint as well as a very handy application called OneNote Mobile which allows for quick memos, lists and other reminders and even allows for the attachment of voice recordings and images. You can view, create and edit Word and Excel documents using the phone, but PowerPoint files can only be viewed and edited. Unfortunately, the Windows Phone OS was released before copy and paste functionality could be incorporated. We expect it to be added in the relatively near future.

Summary:

Windows Phone 7 isn’t a perfect OS and it will inevitably be compared to other top smartphones. Nonetheless, it represents a giant leap forward from previous editions of Windows Mobile. The user interface is innovative and has a great, contemporary. The live tiles offer up-to-the-minute information that isn’t available with conventional icons. We’re also particularly fond of the Zune integration for multimedia functionality. The Samsung Focus smartphone is a great representation of the system at the leading edge and is very worthy of consideration when comparing options.