Samsung SCH-U470-Juke Red Review - Introduction & Design
Editor Rating:   4.34 4 5 3 5 5 The Samsung Juke for Verizon is a cool little phone that makes calls, plays music, and tucks away almost unnoticed in a pocket or purse. Featuring two gigabytes of built-in storage, a front-mounted scroll wheel for navigating through your music library and contacts list, and a unique switchblade design, Juke is small, slick, and easy to use.
Samsung and Verizon left a lot out of Juke in order to make it tiny and inexpensive. There's no 3G data, no access to Verizon's VCast multimedia offerings, and a very small - if bright and sharp - display. You're not going to want this phone if you text, email, or surf the Web a lot on the go, and Juke's VGA camera and low-res screen won't do much for the technophiles out there, either. But if you're looking for a cool little handset for calling, listening to music, and the occasional GPS usage, Juke is a neat piece of gear that works really well. If you like its look, that is.
While Juke measures a pretty thick 21mm from top to bottom, with a length and width of just 97 x 30 mm, this is a long and narrow phone. As such its display is a mere 1.45" across. The front panel of the phone is taken up by the display and the metal scroll wheel, which I found responsive and easy to use. Flicking or twisting the panel swivels the phone open with a satisfying snap - it takes a fair bit of force to get the motion underway, but the mechanism works quite well. Inside there's a standard dialing layout with a twelve button keypad and navigational array consisting of two soft keys, Send and End/Power keys, a Clear button and a dedicated key for the camera. The scroll wheel doubles as a D-Pad for navigational purposes, as well. While the keypad is a bit crowded, the buttons themselves are big and I found them surprisingly easy to use. All in all I really liked Juke's design, with a few notable exceptions. First off, the phone is pretty thick, and while it's overall diminutive dimensions and fashionable design help offset its thickness, its still, well, thick. More importantly, direction in which the top panel swivels is a bit counter-intuitive, and whenever I flipped the thing open or shut I had to immediately turn the whole device upside down in order to read the display - someone in Samsung or Verizon's UI department should have figured out how to program Juke's screen rotation to avoid this issue. Also, while Juke does come with a wired stereo headset, it uses a 2.5mm headphone jack which just seems silly to me. If you're going to bother putting a headphone jack on a music phone at all, why not just make it the universal 3.5mm size that will work with the headphones people already own? Reviews by manufacturerVerizon Wireless, Sprint PCS, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG, Sanyo, HTC, Palm, BlackBerry, Sharp, Pantech, BenQ, Apple, Eten, o2Our fancy algorithm says this stuff is related...Monday, August 04, 2008I really want a juke phone I waiting to get on Saturday, May 31, 2008it says the phone will not work in my area.i've been using verizon phones in my area for over 3 yrs.Whats up with that comment????  Samsung Juke for Verizon WirelessWith the Samsung U470 being slated as the Juke, this has to be short for Jukebox since the device offers a 2GB music player and comes with stereo earphones and a USB cable right out of the box. Tips & tricks: Standard Samsung Juke TipsAll of the direction keys are also shortcut keys when you open the phone. When you press the up direction key it automatically creates a new text message. Press the bottom direction key and you get sent to your calendar. Left direction key you get sent to the pictures menu. And on the right direction key and you get sent to the Get It Now menu. You can personalize just about everything on the Display Settings menu, and while...Samsung SCH-U470-Juke Red in-depth review - FeaturesJuke is being marketed as a music phone and it does feature a very intuitive, easy to use music player. However, it doesn't work with Verizon's VCast Music store (or the company's other VCast services). While I can understand that Verizon wanted to leave 3G off the Juke in order to reduce its size and cost while maximize battery life, I can't understand them launching a new music phone that doesn't let customers purchase and download...Samsung SCH-U470-Juke Red in-depth review - Display & AudioJuke's display is tiny but bright and easy to read, so relative to the overall goal of making a small handset with a trick design and good music player, I think Samsung did a good job here. Just 1.45" across, the display's resolution is only 128 x 220 pixels, but it does support 262,000 colors. As such, fonts, menus and images all rendered quite well on the LCD screen. Customization options include adjustable font sizes and...Samsung SCH-U470-Juke Red in-depth review - Messaging, Internet & ConnectivityJuke supports SMS and MMS messaging, but it's tiny display and somewhat small keypad make it a poor choice for heavy-duty texters. That being said, Samsung's T9 predictive text implementation is solid and the optional Get it Now mobile IM application supports AIM, Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger. Email is not supported on Juke. Internet on Juke is limited to Verizon's Get it Now options for purchasing ringtones and wallpapers,...Samsung SCH-U470-Juke Red in-depth review - ConclusionIt's nice to see companies pushing the design envelope at both the low and high ends of the mobile phone spectrum. While expensive smartphones and feature phones are gaining full frontal touchscreens and easier-to-use user interfaces, some lower end models are also getting design overhauls, often based around a single advanced feature. T-Mobile's Blast (also a Samsung phone), for instance, is a mid-range slider built for messaging... Noah introduces us to the Samsung JukeWith the Samsung U470 being slated as the Juke, this has to be short for Jukebox since the device offers a 2GB music player and comes with stereo earphones and a USB cable right out of the box. Other key features include stereo bluetooth, a built in GPS chip that will work great with Verizon's GPS navigation services. |
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Juke is a uniquely designed handset. It's long, narrow, and a bit on the thick side, and somehow reminds me of an oversized, squared-off tube of lipstick. Samsung sent me the Blue version of the phone, which features a shiny silver click wheel as well as a silver keypad. 
