Samsung SCH-u740 - Great on the Go but Disappointing Battery Life

Author's Rating:

Pros: full QWERTY keyboard; tip calculator; world clock; alarm clock; small size

Cons: battery life; phone gets hot easily & quickly

The Bottom Line: 
Definitely the phone to get if you don't want a Blackberry, Treo, or iPhone, but want to get something great for texting and work!

Author's Review
Now that I've had this phone for a few months now I can actually write a review on it. As a previous user of only Nokia and Motorola phones, I've recently given in to buying Samsung.

Screen
The screen size on this phone is pretty good considering how thin and small the phone is. The only complaint I have is that with all my old Motorola phones with color screens, I was able to utilize the phones as a handy flashlight. The screen on this phone, while bright, still lacks the pop and flashlight capability the Motorola phones have.

Buttons
This is not a phone I can see a lot of males using. The buttons are really, extremely small since they are fitting a QWERTY keyboard on a thin, tiny phone. I am female and have to press my keys very carefully and slower than usual. The other thing is that I type faster than the keys register on the phone. So a lot of times, I know I will have pressed the keys, but it doesn't register on the screen and I end up dialing a wrong number. I have to remind myself to slow down since it is not as quick as a Motorola or Nokia. The buttons are pretty handy and easy to use.

The reason I got this phone was to text, and the QWERTY keyboard is definitely very handy. This was the smallest and thinnest phone Verizon offered which was not a Blackberry and had a QWERTY keyboard. I think it is easier to type on than an iPhone. In fact, whenever I use an iPhone I end up making more mistakes than using my Samsung.

I love how convenient it is to read and send texts. I love being able to utilize this phone like a keyboard easily and quickly. It makes communicating with friends and family so much easier. The flip feature is awesome, where you can have a bigger screen to view things if you flip it into the landscape mode.

Battery Life
I found myself very disappointed with this phone's battery life. Don't expect to get a lot of talk time on this phone. I get about two hours and then it hits two mini bars left. This is one annoyance. The other annoyance is that if you don't use a Bluetooth headset but use an old school headset like I did (yes, with the little cord), you can't talk on your headset and charge your phone at the same time. The phone comes with an adapter so you can use your corded headset. However, this adapter uses the same slot as your battery charger.

The one plus is that it does not take too long to fully charge this phone.

Reception and Heat Transfer
The reception is decent but not as good as the Motorola phones. I get dropped calls here and there. The only drawback is that the phone gets very hot so I like using my headset.

Other Various Features
This phone comes with many other features like it functions as an MP3 player. The camera is decent but lacks a good flash (Motorola's camera is better). There are less than 10 ringtones that come with the phone, which is annoying. However, I like the user friendliness of the phone. You can change your background and background tag line. I am IN LOVE with the tip calculator, regular calculator, alarm clock (where you can set three different alarms), and with the world clock (I travel a lot). These make the phone like a little mini computer without having to buy a Blackberry. For about $20 more a month, you can check e-mail and access the web, and for about $5 more a month, you can get GPS capabilities. I did not buy any of those so I can't tell you how they are.

Durability
Okay, okay, I am notorious for multi-tasking and dropping my phone. I have already dropped this phone once. I expected the flip feature to come apart and was afraid to look at my phone in pieces on the floor. Thank goodness when I looked there were only two pieces - the battery had fallen out and that was it. So the flip feature is somewhat flimsy, but so far it has survived one drop on the ground (knock on wood).

Bottom Line
I'm pretty happy with this purchase. I know I've compared the Samsung SCH-u740 with Motorola a lot, and Motorola won some of the battles, but you really can't beat the number of functions this phone has packed in it, and you can't beat the size it is when it has a full QWERTY keyboard. For a business person like me who is always on the go, it is great alternative to a Blackberry/Treo/iPhone!

Oh yes, one last thing - I don't know why Samsung, for their general photo, has an analog clock on the phone. It makes the phone look so outdated and awful in the ads. You can actually change it to a digital clock to appear on the front. Don't worry - you can change all the options!