Samsung Messager Touch SCH-R630 – Good call quality
For:
Compact and ergonomic design, full QWERTY keyboard, call quality is good, 2 megaphone camera, 3.5 mm headphones jack
Against:
Below par photo quality, no quick access feature to the browser or e-mail apps
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Samsung Messager Touch SCH-R630 has a 2.6 inches touch screen with 240×320 pixels resolution. The music player supports the following audio formats – M4A (Apple lossless), WMA, AAC and MP3. The phone has a microSD/microSDHC and also 100 MB internal memory. Phone book features includes caller groups, multiple numbers per contact, picture ID, ring ID and 1000 entry capacity. PIM features includes converter, memo, stopwatch, timer, world clock, tip calculator, calculator, calendar, and alarm.
The phone has 2.1 stereo Bluetooth. The phone has a 2 megapixel resolution. The rated talk time is five hours and standby time is 288 hours. Dimensions of the device are 4.13 x 2.12 x 0.59 inches with 3.81 oz weight. It is a dual band CDMA phone based on 1900/800 MHz frequency.
Razzle Dazzle:
Samsung Messager Touch SCH-R630 has a lot in common with other Samsung touch screen handsets, for instance- Samsung Seek. Messager is 4.13 inches long, 2.12 inches wide, 0.59 inch thick. It has a slender and simple silhouette. The corners are rounded and the contours too are curved. This phone will cuddle quite comfortably in your hand. The exteriors are made of soft plastic which adds to the feel of the device.
Inside Dope:
Samsung makes a lot of phones just for small service operators like MetroPCS and U.S. Cellular and this latest phone by this company is another example of that. Both this and the Messager II are entry level phones and the design is quite similar to Rant, also by the same company. Rant had a slide out QWERTY keyboard along with external number keypad. But Messager Touch does something different; it has a full sliding keyboard, touch screen coupled with the trademark Samsung TouchWiz feature. The look is sleek as compared to its predecessors. This is a pretty decent phone for people who message a lot. The cost of this handset is $49.99 with mail in rebate and after a two year contract. Samsung Messager Touch SCH-R630 has a 2.6 inch display with resolution of 240×320 pixels and supports 262,000 colors. You can change the dial font size, backlight time, lock screen font color. The phone has a resistive touch screen so don’t expect an iPhone like experience on the screen. You will have to press a bit firmly for registering your presses. On the bright side, the screen doesn’t lag at all.
Navigation array and keyboard
Samsung Messager Touch SCH-R630 comes with three home screens for the TouchWiz interface. There is an icon on the top which makes the TouchWiz icon tray pop up. You can customize the different home screens by adding an icon from the tray. There are different tools like calculator and calendar but you cannot add your own icons.
On the home screen’s bottom, you have shortcuts for the main menu, shortcuts list, contacts list and phone dialer. The latter has a big number keypad with shortcuts to text message. There is no virtual keyboard for entering the text but we don’t care much about that since a physical keyboard is always better. The QWERTY keyboard’s mechanism is smooth and very solid.
Phone book and PIM features
Samsung Messager Touch SCH-R630 comes with a 1000 entry limit phone book and a single entry can accept multiple numbers, note, e-mail address, and a pic for the photo caller ID. You can assign separate ring tones for different friends. Some features worth mentioning here include world clock, timer, sketchpad, stop watch, alarm clock, calendar, notepad, unit converter, tip calculator, standard calculator, speaker phone, and vibrate mode.
Music player
Samsung Messager Touch SCH-R630 has a simple music player and it is the same as previous Samsung handsets. Songs can be stored only on the external memory and up to 16 GB memory cards are supported. The tracks are categorized by album, artist and genre. Standard shuffle and repeat modes are also there. Music quality is pretty good but we don’t recommend listening through the external speaker.
Camera
Samsung Messager Touch SCH-R630 has a two megapixel camera on the back. You get four options for resolutions and three settings for quality. Other settings include 4 shooting modes, brightness, self timer, color effect, white balance, night mode, metering, and 3 shutter sounds along with silent option. Photo quality is strictly OK but that is not unexpected from a 2 MP camera. The camera can also record videos at resolution of 176×144 pixels.
Call quality
Samsung Messager Touch SCH-R630 has a good call quality. We could hear our friends quite well and the voices too were natural. On the other side, our friends said they heard a bit of distortion. However, this was occasional and didn’t irritate too much. Speakerphone call quality is below average and we won’t complain since it is not unexpected in a cell phone. Voices were loud enough but they sounded tinny. On their side, our friends said that our voice was muffled and there was a lot of echo.
Battery life
Samsung Messager Touch SCH-R630 has a rated battery life of five hours for talk time and the stand by time is 12 days. We haven’t tested its battery life yet but we will do it soon and update this section.
Verdict:
The keyboard and touch screen of this handset make it a great choice for multimedia phone users
