Digital Trends

Samsung SCH-u620 April 9th, 2007 | by Stewart Wolpin

Features and Design

Instead of going with a unique design for its first live TV phone, Samsung went with the familiar oval slider. At 3.76 x 1.86 x .85 inches and 3.7 ounces, the black u620 is smaller and a bit lighter than the LG, and its rounder edges make it a bit more pocket-friendly.

Under the 2” screen are two soft keys bracketing the navigation array. Nestled below the nav array are the Send, Clear (back), and End keys. Under the slider are black alphanumeric dial pad keys with white backlit characters. With the slide up, the phone becomes a bit top heavy. When dialing, your hand is down lower, creating a higher center of gravity, so be careful that the phone doesn't slip out of your hand while dialing one-handed.

On the phone's left spine, the volume toggle sits between the 2.5mm headphone jack and the microSD memory card slot. On the right spine are the TV antenna, the speakerphone and camera keys, and the TV button. All these buttons have hard-to-see etched icon identifiers. On the rear is the 1.3 MP camera lens, which sits between the flash and the self-portrait mirror.

For TV viewing, you'll be constantly switching the phone position from vertical to horizontal. To activate the TV, for instance, you pull out the side antenna (which juts out to the right when you're holding the phone vertically, but juts up when watching TV full frame), then press the TV button — no need to open the slider. But although you're supposed to watch TV while holding the phone horizontally, the program guide appears vertically, which means you'll only see listings for an hour's worth of programming for each channel. In comparison, the program guide on the LG aligns itself correctly depending on whether its screen is swung up or down; swung up in widescreen mode, you can see an hour and a half's worth of programming. Once you choose a program on the u620, the picture appears in portrait mode; pressing "Full Screen" re-orients the picture to be viewed horizontally.

This means you'll be constantly moving the entire u620 to get the correct screen orientation. In full screen mode, the control buttons are at the right of the screen, but maintain their vertical orientation. In other words, while watching TV in widescreen and holding the phone horizontally, you'd have to press what is now the right or left nav key (what had been the up-down keys when holding the phone vertically) to move to the next program. This is more disconcerting than bad; if not for the presence of the LG, which always maintains the correct screen and control orientation because its screen swivels, none of this would be worth mentioning.

Oddly, both phones have stereo Bluetooth, which is restricted to wireless music listening. For some reason, Bluetooth stereo doesn't work for TV listening on either phone, an annoying quirk considering that stereo Bluetooth headphones offer superior sound to wired cell phone headphones.

(One solution for both V CAST Mobile TV phones: the Plantronics Pulsar 260 stereo Bluetooth earphones. Instead of compact headphones, these use a Bluetooth dongle that you plug the comfortable, in-ear earphones into. When not using Bluetooth, the great-sounding phones can be used as regular 2.5mm wired earphones with an in-line mic.)

Like the LG, the u620 is an EV-DO phone with V CAST Music phone and the mobile Web. The u620 duplicates the LG’s copious contact fields in its phone book and has the same set of PIM and application tools, plus a stopwatch, but the LG's tip calculator is missing.