Samsung UpStage-M620 Red Review - Introduction & Design

I might be dating myself here, but do you remember those Reese's Peanut Butter Cups ads that hawked chocolate peanut butter cups under the slogan, "Two great tastes that taste great together"?  Every time I used the Samsung UpStage over the past few weeks I thought of that slogan.  Combining a phone on one side and a music player on the other, this inventive candybar phone seeks to answer the question, "What if I glued my iPod nano to the back of my cell phone?  Huh?  Would that be cool?" 

Reese's succeeded in merging chocolate and peanut butter into a sweet hunk of candy goodness.  Samsung and Sprint didn't fare quite so well with the UpStage.  While the design is eye-catching and the device itself a thing of beauty, in practice the UpStage is more frustrating than innovative.  For basic calling and listening to music, UpStage works pretty well.  But for more advanced functions - of which the handset boasts many - the user is required to flip the phone back and forth far more than is reasonable to ask of a consumer.  The display on UpStage's phone side is too small to use for texting or scrolling through contacts, and the controls on the music side are too limited to use for entering data (such as text messages or contact info).  As such, the UpStage winds up a very pretty device that's ultimately more satisfying to hold and look at than it is to use.

On the plus side, UpStage is one of the cooler mobile phones you're going to find on today's market, let alone under the corporate flag of a U.S. carrier.  For the sake of comparison, UpStage is just a bit larger than an iPod nano, measuring 103 x 44 x 9 mm and weighing a scant 73g, the handset is a marvel of modern technology.  It all but disappears when tucked away in a shirt, jacket, or pants pocket.  Much as a Reese's cup is made of two distinct flavors that merge together, UpStage is comprised of two distinct sides joined by software and a "Flip" button on the side.

The music side of the device is dominated by a 2.1" LCD screen capable of displaying 262,000 colors at a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels.  I was actually a bit surprised to learn that this isn't a full QVGA (320 x 240) display - text, images, and video rendered bright and bold in both portrait and landscape modes.  Beneath the display is a square shaped navigation pad.  The center of the square is a play/pause button, and that's bordered by a touch-sensitive strip marked with Menu, Rewind, Fast Forward, Back, and End icons.   The touch controls actually serve purposes beyond their labels, depending on what menu is on the screen above.  For instance, the top left and right corners of the pad often function as soft keys corresponding to choices at the bottom of the display.  The entire touch pad can also be used to scroll through menus by either tapping or sliding a finger to move the on screen cursor left, right, up, or down.  Sliding and holding a finger on the pad activates repeated scrolling much like pressing and holding a key on a computer keyboard.  

I found the touch controls to be a bit erratic, but actually less so than other touch sensitive phones I've tried (LG's Chocolate comes to mind as a notorious offender in this regard).  After a bit of acclimation, I was able to touch, tap, and slide my way around UpStage's menus with relative ease.  Still, the touch pad's cool factor was a bit offset by the fact that it's just not as responsive as good old fashioned buttons.

Flipping the handset over to the phone side, we find a small display above a large array of dialing and navigation buttons.  This display is a 1.4" LCD affair that produces 175 x 65 pixels across 65,000 colors.  When dialing, numbers are big, bright, and colorful on this screen.  When entering alphanumerical information such as contact info, an SMS message or Web URL, well, the display feels pretty small. 

The buttons beneath the display are arranged in the standard cell phone format: navigation pad with dialing layout below.  A four-way directional pad with select button is flanked by twin soft keys and dedicated buttons for camera, Back, Call, and End.  Below these are the expected 12 dialing keys, which are roomy and provide good tactile feedback.  The phone's speaker and microphone are also located on this side, at the top and bottom edges respectively, and the camera sensor is also at the top of this side.

Along one side panel of UpStage is a sliding lock switch, Flip button, and plastic capped microSD memory card slot.  The other side panel houses a rocker switch to control volume along with a recessed Reset button and a plastic capped headphone/charger port.  The phone is finished in a nice matte black with silver chrome trim - it looks hip and classy, unlike some of Samsung's chrome-finished slider phones of recent memory.

The phone comes packaged with an external "battery wallet."  This leather-bound case contains an extra battery meant to offset both the power drain of listening to music (and watching video) on the handset, and the battery limitations caused by UpStage's slim profile.  UpStage snaps into the center of the open-ended wallet, and the wallet can then be flipped open from either side to access whichever side of the phone you want to get to.  The wallet is nicely designed, though a sharp seam did rub my cheek the wrong way once or twice during use.  One detail of note: No battery cover was mentioned because there is none.  UpStage's battery is not user replaceable, which is both unusual and potentially unfortunate.
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