Samsung Blast Cell Phone Review
By Mark Brezinski
Reviewed.com Editorial Staff
September 11, 2007
The Samsung Blast is a T-Mobile exclusive, and costs $99.99 with a two-year contract. With inconsistent software and shoddy construction, the phone doesn’t inspire much confidence in your purchase. We found twisting the phone made it creak and shift; we definitely got the sense we could break it easily. Opening the Blast reveals the sliding mechanism’s spring and a fairly large passageway to the inside of the phone. It is also rather light, which makes it seem even less sturdy.
The Blast was able to dial our test numbers in 3.36 seconds on average. This is a pretty fast time comparatively, which should indicate that making calls is simple. The only problem we ran into was the phone’s tendency to not register a quick double-tap of the same key. This means any time the same number occurs twice in a row, you’ll always feel yourself checking the screen to make sure it registered. You might have to rely on your contacts list, since it circumvents your need to retype numbers. The Blast handles contacts well enough, allowing you to add customized pictures and tones, as well as the ability to jot down a few notes. The other organizational features are the Blast’s strong suit; it has a fairly comprehensive calendar for a phone of its class, and the ability to make notes or tasks, which is rare outside of dedicated business devices. The Blast suffers from its alerts, however, which you will more than likely miss.
The Blast had a bit of a problem on our audio testing, specifically the sent frequency portion. The Blast tends to overemphasize lower and middle frequencies, with a sharp drop-off as it gets to higher frequencies. This means the former two will be overemphasized, while the latter one receives the opposite treatment. This means higher voices may sound muted and lower voices may sound tinny. The Blast does a better job handling the frequencies it receives, but also overemphasizes some middle tones. Again, this results in a tinny voice. The Blast had good side tone, however, measuring -19.56 decibels. Side tone refers to the amount of your own voice the phone plays back to you, and should fall around -18 decibels. Side tone helps you judge how loudly you’re speaking; the Blast won’t make you feel like you’re whispering or yelling when you aren’t.
The Blast is certainly not a multimedia phone. Its still and video capturing capabilities are pretty bad, with low resolution and subpar color handling. There are some extra features for the camera we don’t usually see, like metering, multi-shot, and ISO options, as well as some fun extras. Given how bad the camera is to begin with, however, most of these options lose their value. On the other side of multimedia, the Blast has a pretty little media player interface, complete with some basic visualizer options. What it does not have is any sort of organizational tools or sorting capabilities. You also can’t play music in the background while you do other tasks.
Messaging is another stronger point on the Blast. It has an e-mail client that isn’t Web-based, which is very rare outside of business devices. It handles SMS and MMS well, though it does keep the two separate. Messaging does suffer from the aforementioned problem of failing to register consecutive key presses, more so here than elsewhere. You can add contacts or calendar entries to your messages, which is, again, uncommon functionality. The software takes a nose dive at the Web browser, which is incredibly basic. The bookmark functionality is just a list numbered 1-15 that you can store entries in; there are no organizational features such as folders, or even an easy way to rearrange entries. The browser also doesn’t allow you to check out your browsing history or view your cache, which is interesting since there is an option to empty your cache.
The Blast exhibited standard battery life, if dipping slightly toward the lower end of average. Call time was 4 hours and 3 minutes, which is a bit low considering most phones can handle upward of six hours. Music playback was good, lasting a little more than nine and a half hours, which is how well most phones perform. The Blast did all right on browsing, which is a very taxing task for a phone, lasting 4 hours and 23 minutes.
All in all, the Blast has more features than most phones in its class, but doesn’t do any of them particularly well. In fact, in a few areas, like multimedia, the added extras don’t make up for the overall failings of the main feature. It also has very poor design, and the exposed spring on its back made us nervous for those with long hair. As it stands, its added functionality doesn’t make up the $100 difference between it and any phone you get free with contract. Perhaps if you want a messaging phone but don’t text particularly fast, or if you want a phone that does a lot of different things, then the Blast is for you. Most likely, however, it isn’t.
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