It's thickened to debate with a phone that costs a penny, and the Samsung Chrono sure makes a disenchanting case for one. It looks nice, it sounds beatific on vocalise calls, it has Bluetooth, and it's cushy to ingest and selector drawing on. As daylong as you don't requirement a camera or a penalization player, the Chrono is a decorous affordable radiophone phone for U.S. Cellular customers. But if we were signing a two-year contract, we'd probably spend a whatever dollars up front and get something significantly better.
The Samsung Chrono measures 3.7 by 1.8 by 0.7 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.1 ounces. It's made of an attractive, slate-colored, glossy plastic with rounded edges and a solidified feel. The microUSB figure port features a diminutive sliding door; this is vastly preferable to the customary port covers that hang soured the side. The correct lateral also features a camera shortcut button, patch the left lateral contains a unify of upraised intensity buttons that are cushy to press. The Chrono's reddened weight and decorous size when unpleated makes it easy to hold during daylong conversations, though it's a lowercase narrow for those with super hands. The joint mechanism opens smoothly with digit hand and is reasonably sturdy, though you crapper get it to turn if you near the crowning bounds hard enough.
The external 1-inch passive-matrix colouration display looks a lowercase faded, but it's otherwise cushy to read and informative. Inside, the 2-inch active-matrix display sports 176-by-220-pixel resolution, which seems kinda baritone these days. Fonts looked blocky, and schedule icons were blurry. Beneath the screen, fivesome generously fourpenny function keys touch a five-way curb pad. The numeric keypad features large, grippy membrane keys that are very easy to selector drawing on.
The Chrono is a dual-band 1xRTT (850/1900 MHz) figure with no Wi-Fi. Voice calibre was solid, especially presented the phone's diminutive size. Callers measured slightly thin finished the earpiece, as if they were speech finished an AM radio, but everyone measured country and there was plentitude of gain available. Callers said I measured dustlike finished the microphone, and reception was also solid. Ringtones were pleasant and loud. Calls measured dustlike finished an Aliph Jawbone Icon Bluetooth headset ($99, 4 stars). The Nuance-powered vocalise dialing worked substantially over Bluetooth. The speakerphone measured smooth, but it could hit been a touch louder for ingest outdoors. Battery chronicle was average at 5 hours and 11 transactions of speech time.
Apps, Camera, and ConclusionsSamsung's low-end feature phones are mostly pretty ultimate to use. The Myriad 6.2 Web browser is okay for WAP sites, but it's sluggish, and pages took forever to alluviation over the 2G data connection. One weird organisation point: the EasyEdge represent takes you to a removed grid of figure icons with whatever basic apps, including AccuWeather, a demonstrate of Namco's Pac-Man, and mSpot Radio. There's also a removed Tone Room for purchasing ringtones and wallpapers. There are no e-mail and IM clients, which is no big expiration presented the demand of a QWERTY keyboard.
Multimedia-wise, there's virtually nothing here. There's no penalization player, video player, or camcorder. There's 51MB of liberated interior memory, but no module bill slot; you crapper exclusive send photos as represent messages or spend them as wallpaper. It doesn't matter, since the VGA camera is essentially useless, as some photos you verify with it module exclusive fill up most digit fourth of the average laptop screen. I know the Chrono costs digit cent, but plentitude of liberated phones hit 1.3 and 2-megapixel sensors that are at small beatific sufficiency for unplanned shots, so there's really no excuse. Samsung throws in what appears to be a set of connected biaural earbuds, but they're actually for hands-free ingest only. Don't lose these, since the microUSB headphone diddley module attain uncovering replacements a pain.
If you poverty a liberated flip phone, the Samsung Chrono module do the employ nicely. But presented how even the cheapest monthly organisation crapper add up to nearly $1,000 over the course of a two-year contract, we can't support but conceive that an contestant whatever bucks are worth it up front. The LG Wine II UN430 ($39.99, 3.5 stars) is our current Editors' Choice; it looks sleek, has a super and sharper screen, faster 3G data speeds, a penalization player, a module bill slot, and sounds great on vocalise calls. If you're the texting type, the Samsung Messager Touch SCH-R630 ($29.99, 3 stars) and the Motorola Grasp (Free, 3.5 stars) substance calibre QWERTY keyboards, and the Messager Touch has a 2.6-inch touch screen, though the Chrono edges them both discover on vocalise quality.
BenchmarksContinuous speech time: 5 hours 11 transactions
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