Samsung Focus Windows Phone (AT&T)

A phone that lets you focus on your life, not the device November 7, 2010

Reviewer:  Robert L. Stinnett  (Boonville, MO) -

I've been a Windows Mobile user for years -- partially because it was necessary to interact with various workplace based e-mail and networking programs, and partly because I always found them to be "boring, but dependable". Windows Mobile never was the life of the party, but rather was always the responsible one that made sure that after the party was over that everything got cleaned up and everyone made it home safe. That was the past 10 years, but times, they are a changing... the Samsung Focus has taken the boring Windows Mobile interface, replaced it with the all new Windows Phone OS and turned a boring mobile smartphone into a serious player that all of a sudden may very well be the life of the party.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Samsung Focus early on, and I have to say that I've had a very hard time putting this phone down. It's absolutely nothing like I've used before when it comes to a Windows phone. The entire interface has changed, and the phone itself has went from business boring to social media connected powerhouse.

One of the first things you will want to do when you get a Samsung Focus is to pop in a memory card. The Focus is the only U.S. based Windows Phone that currently supports expanding its memory via a MicroSD card. You'll want to do this from the get go because otherwise you will need to do a master reset on the phone to get it to pick up later. This is because in the new Windows Phone OS the microSD is not removable -- it actually becomes part of the overall system memory and is a permanent addition to the phone (which is why its located behind the battery). I highly recommend you pop in a 32GB card to give you a 40GB phone out of the box -- it will let you really put the phone to use storing your media and other data while not having to worry about it down the road.

Next, get ready to be connected to your family, friends and social networks like never before. One of the absolutely coolest things about this phone is how good the AMOLED screen looks. With a 480x800 display size, the display is very crisp and the colors are almost -- well, almost true to life in many aspects. I really didn't appreciate how well the display looked at first but once I started using the phone I was just constantly blown away at how darn well this screen on this guy looked. The Windows Phone OS uses what I like to call "squares" or "slides" to display information, and they are constantly updating and even changing color and pictures. Your friend just post something to Facebook? You'll know in an instant without having to switch back and forth between a Facebook app. New email arrive from a friend? Boom - another square changes to reflect it. It's really cool and you have to experience it firsthand to understand how revolutionary this type of interface is. It let's you focus on the world around you, and not constantly have to be pecking away and fooling with the phone. On my old Samsung Jack I was constantly switching between apps and looking at the phone -- with the Focus it's like I'm just glancing to see whats going on in my social circles and at work. My only gripe? In direct sunlight the display is a bit bleached, but still holds its own. Much better than my old phone - though not as good as I think it could be or would like it to be.

One thing you will want to make sure you have setup (and many of us already do) is a Windows Live or Xbox Live account. When you first power on the phone you will be prompted for your Windows Live ID. You don't have to provide one, and the phone works just fine without it -- but if you do provide one you are going to really unleash the power of this device. It's what ties everything together -- your social networks, email, photos, etc. I would highly recommend that if you are going to go the Windows Phone route you make sure that before the phone arrives you get a Windows Live account up and running if you don't have one already.

Battery life is good -- not great -- and holds up comparable well to other smartphones. The phone does a lot of synchronization via the Windows Live ID and such, so it is hitting the network a lot. I noticed that I could get through about 1.5 days of normal usage without a recharge. My best was 2.5 days when I wasn't checking email or using apps too much. You'll probably want to go ahead and pick up a spare charger for the office or the car.

So this thing is a phone right? Let me tell you, the phone quality and sound through the earpiece was amazingly crisp and clear. I've struggled a lot with my old Samsung Jack find it difficult to hear, especially when outside. The Focus totally redefined for me what a good voice call is. I had no problems being outside with background noise and still being able to hear and hold a conversation over the phone. The speakerphone portion was equally crisp and loud without being tinny.

Of course nowadays no phone is complete without a camera -- and the 5MP camera with LED flash that comes with the Focus takes some surprisingly good pictures. I shot a lot of pictures of the changing fall scenery and uploaded the pictures from the phone to several photo sites. The pictures were very clear and even low light pictures were bearable (not great, but bearable). It is not going to replace a really good digital camera, but it can certainly hold its own in the photo world and is probably more than most folks need. I thought the LED flash was particularly nice, though don't expect it to provide a ton of light -- and it can drain the battery, so don't get too flash crazy.

AT&T of course has their bundled apps on the phone, but they haven't taken over the phone with them as they have tended to do in the past. On the main menu AT&T has been very conservative and only taken up 3 of the "slides" for their use and left the rest for you to go nuts with. I was very pleased with that, but do wish I could just get rid of AT&T branding altogether - but at least they tried to keep a small footprint.

Overall, this is a major step up in the Windows Phone world. It's not an iPhone, but I really do think that its a good alternative for folks who don't want an iPhone for whatever reason, or for those who want to try something different. Microsoft and Samsung have really raised the bar a bit and have created a device that is lightweight, crisp and clear, and has a darn good OS behind it. I think once people start to us the new OS and the social features of it you are going to see a lot of other phones start to copy it because after you use it for a while you really do get to like it. The phone is very speedy and I found that even with several apps running at once there was no noticeable lag or delay. In a nutshell, it's more organized than an Android (in my opinion) and runs circles around the iPhone in terms of multimedia capabilities (Zune integration, XBOX Live integration, etc.)

I'm very happy with this phone and look forward to getting to know it more in the coming months. I really think that if Microsoft keeps it up they could really give the iPhone a run for their money!

What Happened To Microsoft? January 8, 2011

Reviewer:  Geir Friis  (Nesconset, NY United States) -

What happened to Microsoft?

I took a chance and ordered the Samsung Focus Win7 phone from Amazon. My current phone was the HTC Fuze and I liked it. It had so many capabilities, but was very cumbersome to learn how to use and using it was never easy. I got used to it after a while and really grew to enjoy and to depend on the whole smartphone experience.

I had wanted to get the iPhone, but after trouble with a new iPod (160GB, Gen 7), iTunes and having my otherwise perfect, best ever computer experience with the Win 7 Asus ROG G73J laptop tainted, I was reluctant about Apple. With the new iPod, my computer freezes every time: restart and everything is perfect except iTunes and iPod. So, I couldn't get myself to order the iPhone.

After two days the Samsung Focus Win7 phone arrives. A few minutes later the phone lights up. Hundreds of contacts are in. A few more minutes: numerous mail accounts are set up and running; Facebook as well. I get to put my favorite contact in the upper left hand corner with shuffling beautiful pictures. I put my favorite photo on the beautiful (!!!) 4 inch welcome screen and start messaging. And phoning and mailing and web browsing. It is all so easy and I slowly realize I enjoy the phone's feedback (little vibrations) and super rapid response.

I get the free Netflix app and fire up a free streaming movie. It's amazing. I will seriously be watching movies on this thing! The sound is great. My photos are available and well organized and look stunning. I get the free IMBD app and my local theatres show up with show times and easily accessible reviews etc. I input my WIFI password and it's immediately accessible. Everything just works and it's so rapid and I'm slowly starting to realize I have something special on my hands. I shoot a couple of picts with the wonderful camera function and mail and message them so easily!
I take some photos of my phone's different screens to mail my girlfriend. It's so easy to arrange everything on the phone practically and beautifully and I really enjoy showing her my new phone arranged just for me with my favorite images everywhere. (<Helle3)

The next couple of days I use the navigation (just works!), get the Adobe Reader and Kindle app (I will read books on this!), get the local weather for a couple of places, YouTube is running. Everything just works so easily! I talk to my phone and without fail it understands my heavy Norwegian accent and Norwegian names in my contacts list. I ask for directions in the navi app and browse the web with my voice. It all just works!

This Win7 phone is so far ahead that I think it will take a while before the critics catch up and realize how good this is. Apple would have wanted to be behind this experience. How Microsoft came up with this new way of interacting with your phone is truly surprising.

The Win7 way of smart phoning is transformative. This phone is so good you don't even realize it in the beginning. The Win7 software and way of phoning is a truly stunning achievement. BTW I have a pittance of Microsoft stock, but they haven't paid me to write this review. Who would have thought Microsoft could bring a product as good as this to the market?

In conclusion I'd like to point out that I'm aware that this is a very emotional review and it leaves out a lot of technical details. But this phone is two steps into the future and I'd like to call attention to that. I leave it to the many other great reviews to cover technical details.

Get this phone and be prepared to be stunned!

.............................................................................

Edit: With the Mango update, I enjoy the phone even more! :-)

Better than the iPhone or Android November 27, 2010

Reviewer:  David A. Cornelson  (Chicago/IL/USA) -

I had an iPhone 3G for two years and it was a decent phone for awhile. I was never happy with the way it handled calls. It had a weak speaker, dropped calls, and was very flaky. Some of the apps were good, but as a phone, I never thought it was very good.

I've since upgraded to the new Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7 and I love it. Just as a phone, it's significantly better than any cellphone I've ever had. Calls come through clearly and I've never lost a call in the middle. Granted it's only been a month so I haven't tested this with AT&T's suspect service in many places, but so far, the phone is great at phone calls.

The operating system is drop dead simple to use...in fact, it's so simple, people might get confused. They'll be done so quickly with checking things, they won't realize they can put the phone away within seconds. I have 4 e-mail account tiles and I see updates on the wallpaper instantly. I can click the power button and see if I have any e-mail or messages without even unlocking or digging into any apps.

The integrated People hub is awesome. I can check Facebook in a second and comment or Like posts instantly.

The one major complaint I have is the lack of syncing local Outlook contacts with the phone like I could do with the iPhone, but I just migrated my contacts to Live.Com (Hotmail) and now they're in my phone.

Overall, I love the phone and the new operating system.

Pure Joy November 12, 2010

Reviewer:  Andrew L. Robinson  (Bellingham, WA) -

I have had my Windows Phone for 3 days now and it continues to rock. Previously, I have used a Blackberry Curve and a Samsung Android 2.1 device. The Blackberry has been my phone of choice for the past 9 months but while reliable, the integration with Exchange is marginal at best and requires an enterprise plan (which comes out of my pocket). The Android was poor all around. Things have hopefully changed but v2.1 wasn't ready for prime time., simply didn't work for me and I returned my phone after just a few days.

The Exchange integration with Windows Phone is fantastic. I have two ActiveSync accounts running. One to my personal (paid) Google Apps Premier account and the second to my employer's Exchange 2010 server. And just for fun, we even tried the "Wipe the Phone" functionality from within Exchange and it does work. (We also tried that with an Android v2.2 device with similar success.) My iPod Touch 4G email client has horrible Exchange support which eliminated the iPhone from consideration. I have read that gmail integration works identically using either IMAP or Active Sync. Most people will have to use IMAP since they don't have paid accounts. The big take away is that device does support multiple ActiveSync accounts and in fact I had a third one on there just for fun.

The People hub is beautiful. I can optionally "link" any contact with another and they become a single entry. You can also unlink contacts without affecting the original properties. I am able to selectively associate FB contacts with existing contacts while not overwhelming my contacts with the 300 FB contacts that I have. Simple. Affective. It just works. Contacts from my 2 ActiveSync accounts don't provide any issues.

The calendar is very clean and in my opinion far easier to navigate than on an iPhone. It nicely combines calendar items from multiple ActiveSync (and I would assume IMAP) accounts.

The dial by voice is very clean. I used this feature quite a bit on my Blackberry and it was the same era technology as was provided on my Verizon Motorola flip phone of 2-3 years ago. The Windows Phone is clearly an upgrade from that. It seems to have better comprehension of what I am speaking and it plays back contact names much more clearly than with my Blackberry. (I can't comment about anything on an Android 2.2 device but my experience with v2.1 was that dial by voice was pretty much useless assuming you could start the app while driving.) With Windows Phone, a single depression of my Bluetooth ear piece does the trick.

Things that I don't like:

The built in Facebook integration within the People hub is very clean and works well but the stand alone Facebook client is only ok. It appears form all I have read that this was a last minute addition and it needs a bit of cleanup. My biggest issue is that without multi-tasking, it takes 4 or so seconds to load the FB app and the app exits when you move to any of the other hubs on the phone. This is not a major issue but certainly an annoyance.

The twitter app is ok but I wish they removed the teal background and just used the default (black or gray) backgrounds that are standard throughout other apps on the phone. I have tried Seesmic and it is only ok. Hoping for improvements with that app in the near future.

All in all, a fantastic start. Time will well if Microsoft is successful and in my opinion, this will mostly be dictated by how quickly Microsoft is able to provide updates and additional features. A great start!

PS: The display on the Samsung is out of this world and this should be everyone's first choice for a Windows Phone. I hear good things about the LG and that might be something to consider if you need a physical keyboard but I haven't seen one so I can't compare or comment. I don't miss "copy and paste" as their constant popping up all over my iPod provides me with never ending frustration. It really isn't that big of a deal. Multi tasking will be nice.

I love my WP7+Samsung Focus! A+++ December 14, 2010

Reviewer:  hackerxunil 

This review comes from a previous iPhone owner and as this is a good phone I was like most of the people bored with its UI and plus with Apple style, examples here are iTunes which sucks compared to Zune and list goes on...Well so saying that I wanted to give it shoot; here I am after 4 weeks using it. The first thing is...nothing is perfect and especially a very first release of this OS. However, for a first release the phone deserves definitely 5 stars and one extra for Microsoft having enough balls of risking and releasing its original perception of UI - not copying iPhone, Android or Blackberry. It was risky but Uncle "Steve" Ballmer deserves this one!

Things that I Like:

-Awesome, beautiful display (4" perfect size)
-Blazing speed of the OS
-Live tiles
-expandable memory
-phone doesn't drop calls unlike iPhones (not even one drop for full 4 weeks so far)
-feels solid not plastic like some people think
-Bing voice recognition search, maps etc,
-Seamless Exchange integration as well as regular local Outlook accounts
-Can open my Corporate email attachments seamlessly(pptx, xlsx, docx, pdfs)
-Zune Player
-The best phone on the market if you are serious gamer
-Xbox apps are awesome
-Skydrive integration
-Can take battery out/replace it/full access to the guts of it.

Things I don't like:

-no copy, paste (but it is coming early next year)
-no multitasking (coming early next year)
-no flash for IE (coming next year, read Adobe is working on it)
-not many apps only 4000 (but apps growing fast)
-wireless sync is lacking on demand sync and the phone has to be connected to the charger (I read this is also coming as a next year's update)
-Why Microsoft didn't release this phone 2-3 years ago!!!

Bottom line is, I love this phone. For the first early release it is a success for Microsoft, the things that are missing would be quickly added with the new software update, at least we don't have to wait 3 years....right Apple funboys....? Some WP7 haters would pinpoint on the sales numbers as compared to iPhone and Android, well I thing we have to give it time so the phone market for WP7 can go with full speed. Also, no matter how great this phone is it has to compete with already established market of OSX and Android. So, whoever is on the market for new phone forget about "OLD" Windows Mobile and at least try it out(Samsung Focus)...you won't be disappointed.

UPDATE (August 21)

Nothing much to say about the headset itself as my good opinion didn't change, but there is whole lot new things about the OS!

Yes, people i have the newest MANGO update OS version 7.10.7712.60
All I can say is that it rocks!!! So many little features, and few big onces. Here is the list:

-Now my focus has IE9 which nothing compared to the previous browser, it is fast and screen bigger, MS moved the URL bar on the bottom leaving more browsing space. I also thought to gain even more space they should add auto-hide option to the URL bar, if not in use it would disappear also, leaving 100% of your screen to browsing!! Nothing like iPhone or Android.

-The whole OS is faster and smoother even more, old installed apps run faster, load even faster.
-Finally full multitasking! YES!! Just hold the back button and here you go. Being on the call you can open anything you want, let's say MS Word doc with the information that you want to give to the caller, etc.

-Improved Copy/Paste

-Tap on the search botton, it will take you to BING. Now MS added scout, which finds everything in your area, eat+drink, see+do, shop, highlights.

- the music icon on the bing page is equivelent to Shazam app that can listen to the music and give you title, etc.
- the vision icon is awesome, it will scan your book barcode, tex, CD, DVDs. Usuful? Hell yea...This weekend i went to the mall and found great suitcase for $250, i scanned with the bing-vision and bing found one for $151. I ordered and just received two days ago!!

-improved marketplace
- the list goes on, MS in total add 500 new features!!!

I Hope this will help pick a great headset which is Samsung Focus and its great freshly improved OS!!