Samsung Transform Android Phone (Sprint)

Decent mid-range Android phone October 13, 2010

Reviewer:  Y. Nakai  (New York, NY United States) -

First, please note, this phone is NOT PINK. I don't know what joker put that in the technical specifications above, but it is your standard black / grey / chrome phone.

Before I purchased the Samsung Transform, I spent a good hour testing other Android QWERTY phones on Sprint - mostly the Epic 4G and the Intercept. While the Epic 4G was noticeably more responsive and had better screen contrast and more pixels, it is also significantly more expensive. The Intercept is slightly cheaper up front, but also feels a lot cheaper. So the Transform strikes a decent middle ground, and with the upcoming Froyo (Android 2.2) upgrade, the speed should improve significantly.

This is my first Android phone, and I'm very pleased. The keyboard and other physical design elements are solid and well thought out. The battery life is decent for a smartphone, and the MicroUSB charging port makes it inexpensive and easy to share cords with your other devices. Since the operating system is almost pure stock Android (with the addition of Sprint ID, which I haven't tested), it should be highly compatible and easy to modify. And the price is very reasonable.

The only reason I give it 4 stars rather than 5 is that the software, Android 2.1, is not as responsive as it should be, and because every phone should have physical keys to answer and end calls. The softkeys below the screen, and on-screen keys, are too unresponsive and hard to use without looking. This is a common problem, but even the Samsung Intercept accomplishes this basic usability task, so Samsung should know better.

Could be great, but is way too slow December 16, 2010

Reviewer:  S. Chung  (Bay Area, CA USA) -

I've owned smart phones since 2000 - had a Kyocera 6035, Samsung i300, i500, and a few generations of Palm Treo's, so I have some preconceived notions on what to expect from a smartphone. This is my first Android phone, and based on the specs it should be a great phone. Compared to the higher end Samsung Galaxy S Android phones, this pretty much has it all except for a few key differences:

1. slower 800 MHz processor (vs 1000 MHz)
2. smaller RAM size 256MB (vs 512MB)
3. lower resolution 480x320 screen (vs 800x480)
4. lower resolution 3.2 MP camera (vs 5MP)
5. smaller 4.6"x2.4 face size (vs 4.9"x2.5")
6. older OS Android 2.1 (vs Android 2.2) as of 12/21/2010

Besides being watered a down a little on specs, it pretty much has EVERYTHING else - full slide out keyboard, both front and rear cameras, LED camera flash, wifi, etc. If you look at the 6 things above, it is still pretty good - 800MHz isn't much different from 1GHz, plus it consumes less power. 256MB seems enough to run all the apps I've tried. 480x320 is the same resolution as the iPhone 3G, and it still is pretty darn good. Using a tiny lens, pictures captured by the 3.2MP CCD aren't much different in overall quality than ones captured with a 5MP CCD. The smaller form factor was a big plus for me (same size as an iPhone, just a little thicker to accommodate the slide-out keyboard) since the Galaxy S phones feel too bulky in my pocket. This phone also costs a lot less, and with Sprint it doesn't carry that idiotic $10 monthly add-on fee for the "privilege of owning a higher end phone". So why isn't this a 5-star phone!? Well, mainly because of item #6 - the older Android 2.1 OS runs the UI (user interface) so slowly, with so much lag, that it's almost unusable, at least from the point of view of the "power user" who wants to get things done quickly without much fuss.

On my phone it is common to see lag times in the 3-5 second range after tapping on something on the screen before the phone responds. Often the phone is too slow to track the movement of finger swipes across the screen properly so if you are trying enlarge a web page, answer the phone, turn on speaker phone, etc., you often have to try 2-3 times to get it to work. Also lots of "native" apps that you can download from the Android market are actually built as web pages that run off the built-in webkit engine, and they use a lot of javascript. Well, the experience with those apps isn't great, javascript is agonizingly slow.

In addition to the UI performance, there are a few design oversights which may or may not be an issue for other users. The biggest one for me is the lack of an LED indicator to tell you when there is something pending. So to check if you missed a call or if you have a new text, you have to turn on the screen, authenticate (which I have to do slowly so the phone can keep up with my finger movements), and pull down the status bar, and unless there is something pending you did it for nothing. In contrast my old smart phones used to just flash an LED which meant "you need to check something", so you could tell whether or not you needed to turn the screen on at all. Another peeve is that answering/hanging up a call is done via "swiping" your finger across the screen (i.e., with software) as opposed to having a hardware button to push, which means I have to be looking at my phone whenever I answer or silence a call - I can't just reach into my pocket and push a button. Finally, the battery life isn't very good, and it charges slowly (~2 hours). I have to charge my phone every day, and keep a charger in the car to make sure I don't run out of juice, but I suspected this would be the case before I bought the phone based on reviews of other Android phones.

Based on the performance improvements featured in the Android 2.2 release (just-in-time compilation, V8 javascript engine) and the reports of users with other Android phones that saw a remarkable difference when they upgraded to 2.2, I would speculate that this would be a great midrange phone if/when Samsung finally releases an upgrade to Android 2.2. They promised a release by the end of the year, and it's 12/21 and still nothing, so it's quite possible they decided to focus their resources elsewhere and we may never see Android 2.2 on this phone. Most likely their folks are working on getting the new Android 2.3 working on their higher end phones first. So, until Samsung releases Android 2.2 for this phone, I would recommend you stick with a different phone that already has Android 2.2+ on it.

Hate it. November 20, 2010

Reviewer:  Pinkeee 

This is the worst phone I have ever owned. I loved it at first, but have since seriously considered throwing it out of my car window MANY times. I won't go on about how sucky it is. But if you like to be able to, you know, answer or hang up a call, get a phone that lets you do that. Or say you just want to open the screen with the slider bar. Basic phone stuff. Forget about it. Don't even buy it for a penny.

First and last Samsung phone. Entry level phones should try help build customer loyalty for the next purchase not destroy your name brand.

Did I mention I hate this phone?

Slow, buggy, freezes a lot May 30, 2011

Reviewer:  DC 

I've had this phone for about 6 months and have been extremely disappointed. Besides being slow, it also freezes a lot and has a number of applications that don't work on it. On top of that I still haven't received the upgrade to Android 2.2. I contacted Sprint customer service about it and was basically told it wasn't their problem and to contact Samsung to pursue the manufacturer's warranty.

Slow and buggy October 23, 2010

Reviewer:  Vee  (NY) -

I really wanted to like this phone but the Samsung Transform is mediocre at best. The phone physically is quite clunky. It's not good for small hands but if you have medium to large hands, you should be fine with the size.
Despite having a processor speed of 800Mhz, this phone still manages to be almost as slow as my previous 528 MHz HTC Hero.
The battery life is not that great. Plus when charging the phone, it will charge to 100% but if you don't take the charger out of the phone quickly enough, your phone will go down to 98%. Very strange. You have to recharge in order to get back the other 2%. A real pain if you charge overnight.
Apps don't always open on this phone. You have to reboot your phone to get apps to open correctly.
The phone is quite limited in features despite the price tag.
The notification sound is the sound for everything except the ringer and the voicemail. No individual ringers for alarm, calendar, etc. There's also the annoying feature where every time I'd plug the phone in to be charged or into the USB port, the notification alarm would go off. I saw no way to shut this off.
I'm not a fan of Sprint ID and rarely if ever use it. All it does is take up valuable space on the phone.

The positives I have are that phone dialing is fast. Call quality is good. Plus, since it's vanilla Android and there is no TouchWiz hogging the memory, there's quite a bit of space for apps now.

Overall, I don't recommend this phone. If you're on a two-year contract or even a one year, you won't want to be stuck with this. I exchanged it for something else.