Samsung SCH-U470-Juke Red Review - Features

Juke 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 tracks over the air.  Silly.

That being said, once you've connected Juke to a computer and loaded its 2GB of onboard memory with your favorite tunes, it works much like an iPod.  Pressing and holding the button in the center of the scroll wheel launches the music player, which displays menus and track information horizontally.  I found it very easy to scroll through albums and artists, skip from track to track, and fast forward or rewind within a song.  And, actually, it's a bit more versatile than an iPod in terms of file format compatibility, supporting WMA and WMA Pro in addition to MP3 and AAC audio tracks.

Juke comes with Verizon's Music Manager software, and also is compatible with Windows Media Player.  I'm a Mac user myself, and I was able to connect the phone to my computer via USB, where it showed up as an external storage device (like a flash drive).  I was then able to drag and drop music files right onto the phone - so long as I put them in the right place, the music player recognized them when I disconnected Juke from the Mac.

Beyond the music player, however, Juke's feature set is pretty basic.  Integrated GPS does let you use Verizon's VZ Navigator and other LBS services with Juke (for a fee), though the phone's small screen doesn't make it the ideal portable GPS device.  There's also a 500-entry phonebook with support for photo and ringtone caller ID, a calendar with alarm clock, and the other usual personal information tools.  VCast multimedia is not supported on Juke.

Juke's VGA camera is pretty underwhelming, but also not entirely out of place on a phone that's so small and generally so limited in terms of other features.  The camera can capture still photos in three resolutions up to 640 x 480, and features night-shot, a self-timer, and a few image and quality settings.    Image quality on photos snapped with Juke actually wasn't too bad considering the low-end specs and lack of a flash.  Photos came out pretty clear with decent detail and color relative to the fact that this is in no way a "serious camera phone."  Photos taken in low-light were generally not so viewable, and the device does not support video capture.

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