Samsung Propel Pro review – A messaging smartphone
For:
Full QWERTY keyboard, lots of e-mail solutions, support for GPS, Blutooth, Wi-Fi and 3G
Against:
Bulky, the phone has proprietary jack for power adapter and headphones.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Samsung Propel Pro is based on WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM technology. Supported bands are WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900. Application softwares include Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile, Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, Microsoft Voice Command, Microsoft Office Mobile, Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft Direct Push, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messanger, Adobe Flash Lite, XpressMail, Calculator, ActiveSync, Calendar, Alarm.
Additional features Voice command, Conference calling, Call forwarding, Speakerphone, microSD card slot, EDGE, USB, GPRS support, Voice dialing, Wi-Fi, TTY compatible. Bundled OS is Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1.
The display of the phone is 2.55 inches big and has a resolution of 320×320 pixels. Included accessories are 3.5mm Headset adaptor, USB cable, Battery, AC travel charger.
Razzle Dazzle:
The square design of the phone gives it a boring board room kind of look. We would advice the younger generation to stay away from this phone, it is made exclusively for business users who don’t care much about the looks and want a phone with good messaging features. The display of the phone is glossy which means it will attract tons of fingerprints. This makes the phone dirty easily.
Inside Dope:
Samsung Propel Pro comes with AT&T service, it has a full QWERTY keyboard and has a slider interface. From the looks, you will easily make out that this is a business smartphone. The handset costs $149.99 and you are bound by a 2 year service agreement. It comes with three megapixel camera which can take good photos and the call quality is impressive too. We were surprised to see that the phone lasted much longer than the rated talk time when we tested it in our labs. It doesn’t have the best design though; the phone is thicker than other smartphones like Nokia E71x and Samsung Epix. A thick phone looks a bit boring and you will easily feel the extra flab when you put it in your pocket. The display isn’t touch screen based, you will have to use the slider keyboard and the navigation buttons instead. A non-touch screen smartphone is rare in market these days and we wonder why Samsung did this. On the bright side, the keys are comfortable to use with their large design.
Display
Display of Samsung Propel Pro is 2.5 inches big and has a resolution of 320×320 pixels. It could have been a bit bigger than this, the display gave us sharp video and text was easy to read. In bright sunlight, the display wasn’t clear but this isn’t unexpected in LCDs. The Home screen can be customized with a variety of background images, color schemes and layouts. The sliding panel mode gives you quick access to your applications and information from Home screen.
Navigation array and keyboard
There is no touch screen so you will have to rely on the buttons for communicating with the phone. Navigation array below the phone is made up of a joystick for navigation, back button, home shortcut, End and Talk keys, and 2 soft keys. Except for the joystick, all the other buttons are easy to use. The joystick wasn’t precise in selecting and scrolling through the menus. Below the navigation array you get a full QWERTY keypad which is revealed when you slide up the display. The keyboard is well designed, we didn’t have much problems typing on it but they are cramped, there is no gap in between them. This might make people with big thumbs uncomfortable to type on the keyboard.
Design
The Samsung Propel Pro comes with microSD card slot, volume rocker and power button on the left and on the right side you get Samsung’s proprietary headset/power jack and camera capture/activation button. The camera is underneath the two layers so you will have to slide open the phone to user it.
Phone book/PIM features/Accessories
There is no limit to the memory for phone book, you can store as much as the memory permits. You also get to store 250 more contacts in the SIM card. You can assign a ringtone to your contact. Apart from that, grouping of contacts and video caller ID is also supported. The phone comes bundled with reference material, software disc, USB cord and AC adapter. PIM features on the phone include a stopwatch, unit converter, world and alarm clocks, voice notes, task lists, RSS reader and PDF viewer. The phone comes with Windows Mobile operating system so you can download plenty of applications for your phone. Voice features on the phone includes multimedia and text messaging, voice commands, conference calling, three way calling, speed dialing, and quad band world roaming.
Camera
The Samsung Propel Pro has a three megapixel camera at the back which comes with autofocus and video recording capabilities. For still, you options for tweaking the image qualities, resolutions, scenes, and shooting modes. There is also ISO control and white balance setting option. For the video mode, you get options for effects, white balance, 3 quality settings and two resolutions. Picture quality of the camera was impressive. Image was sharp and nice and colors didn’t looked totally washed out. They didn’t have the yellow/orange effect that we see in smartphone cameras. Quality of video was decent, with minimal pixilation or blur. For storing you photos, you get 256MB ROM/126MB RAM and the external card slot supports up to 8 GB of memory.
Call quality
We tested the Samsung Propel Pro for call quality and it was quite impressive. The audio got hollow occasionally but it didn’t get too irritating. We would still talk with our friends comfortably. The quality dips when you revert to speakerphone but this is not unexpected. The volume was loud enough and we could hear what our friends were saying comfortably even in noisy environments. For Bluetooth calls, we paired this phone with Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones and Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset, both paired up really fast and the quality was stellar.
Battery life
Samsung Propel Pro is powered by a 1440mAh lithium ion battery which gives a rated talk time of six and half hours and rated standby time is 12 days. When tested the battery of the phone lasted for about ten hours in our phone calls.
Verdict:
Samsung Propel Pro is a good Windows Mobile smartphone but you might get turned off by its bulky design. We would recommend you to take a look at other smartphones instead of buying this.
