Samsung Focus I917 Unlocked Phone

Product Description

Samsung Focus I917 Unlocked Ph E , Sena Smh10d Bluetooth Helmet Communicati System , Jabra Halo2 Bluetooth Stereo Headset , Motorola 89509n Universal Bluetooth Headset , Jawb E Era Headset , The Samsung Focus weighs 4.07 ounces and measures 4.84 x 2.56 x 0.39 inches. Its 1500 mAh lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 6.5 hours of talk time, and up to 300 hours (12.5 days) of standby time. It runs on the 850/900/1800/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS/EDGE frequencies as well as AT&T's dual-band 3G network (850/1900 MHz; HSPA/UMTS) plus international 3G networks (2100 MHz).


This review is from: Samsung Focus I917 Unlocked Phone with Windows 7 OS, 5 MP Camera, and Wi-Fi--No Warranty (Black) (Wireless Phone Accessory)
I have been using this phone for about two months by now. Before I bought the Samsung Focus I owned the HTC Surround, Apple's iPhone 3GS, and HTC Touch Pro. I will review not just the phone, because I think the OS is also very important when talking about a WP7 Phone.

Dimensions and Characteristics
the screen size is bigger than iPhone's 3G or 4G. Talking about image quality, I prefer the Focus, the image is brighter and color look awesome. This phone is really slim and light, the opposite of HTC Surround, which is much thicker and heavier because of the sliding speaker. The built in camera is good and you have a good flash light also which is nice to have when taking pictures in dark ambience, but of course, the image quality is much lower than using a digital camera.

User Interface
Microsoft has done a great job redesigning the screens in WP7 (now WP7.5) with "Metro". You will see that the icons (which are called tiles) in the main screen are "alive" and are not static icons like the iPhone or Android or Blackberry. The tile gives you information about your contacts or a group of contacts (updates from Windows Live, Facebook, My Space, Messenger, Twitter and LinkedIn). Now many applications are using live tiles to give you specific information so don't have to launch the app to see some important information. Also live tiles make the main screen more attractive... I like them.

Zune vs. iTunes
After using iTunes for several years, I just realized that if you don't have an Apple's computer, then you will have some troubles using iTunes (at least that's my experience). I have to say that I like Zune much more than I like iTunes. Zune is all about multimedia, the user interface is really nice, full of watermarks which change depending of what you are viewing and that makes you enjoy using the software, the opposite feeling when I use iTunes which I consider boring and I use it because I have to in order to synchronize my iPod.

Touchscreen
I think Focus' touchscreen responds better than iPhone's 3GS or 4G. The screen responds incredible fast (compared to iPhone) and touch is very accurate (much better than I got in Touch Pro... I can't even compare them!)

Marketplace vs. Appstore
In Ecuador the items you can purchase from Appstore is very limited due copyright terms (but Apple opened many items last week for Ecuador). In US you will find a lot of more applications in Appstore than Marketplace, even though Microsoft is doing a great job with developers, but there is a long way to go. I would really like to have applications in Marketplace like Google Maps (even though you have gMaps) and Skype (which has been announced to be delivered be the end of 2011). If you think the applications are something really important when you have to pick your phone, then I recommend that you look at Zune or Marketplace if those applications you really like are available for WP7. If the application is not in available, then you can check at developer's forums if there are any plans to develop the software, but now you can find almost every great application in WP.

Keyboard
If you are used to type using a built-in keyboard (like Blackberry 9300 or similar), then you will have some troubles while you get used to type on the screen. iPhone's and HTC's keyboard work pretty much the same, both respond fast and the size of the letters are good enough to type without making many mistakes. You can turn on the grammar checker that helps you to correct misspelled words (several languages now with Mango Update). Even though 99% of the time I write in Spanish, I have to say that the spell checker works great.

Office Hub
I expected more from WP7 Office hub. The office applications are extremely basic and I still don't know how to synchronize documents from the phone to the PC (without using Skydrive), or transfer files from the PC to the Phone.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I am not an expert about phones; but I have used several models and OS and I really like WP7 (which is completely different of Windows Mobile. WM was the worst OS I have used!).
With Mango Update (also known as Windows Phone 7.5) you can create groups of your contacts and pin the group to the home screen. Since you can link information from Messenger, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter of your contacts, live tiles will tell you if anyone of your contacts in the group has shared something in any of those networks and you can make any comment or share anything you want without using any app, because everything is integrated in the OS, but not everything is perfect, now I have to charge the phone twice a day, actually now I have a charger at home, at office and the car (I hope there is a way to fix this because the battery lasts some time 5 or 6 hours, if you play a game then it will last 1 hour).

In the Message Hub now you can send messages not only using the regular SMS, you can send messages to your contacts in Messenger and Facebook Chat. The phone will let you know if the contact you are writing to is connected to one of those two networks (or both), otherwise it will suggest sending a regular SMS.

I am really happy with this phone and I don't find any reason to go back to iPhone or change to Android. I also think this phone is better than HTC Surround due to a better screen, is lighter and has a better camera.