Samsung Saga User Reviews

I was really excited when I first got this phone.  The optical mouse by far exceeds any trackball or optical trackball on any device on the market.  Everyone phone should have one.  However, the hardware/processor problems were unbelievable.  I am about to receive my 4th replacement.  There have been 4 - yes, 4 - complete processor failures where the device just goes into complete meltdown.  The first time, the phone rebooted itself, but never came back up.  The next time, it was replaced because after a couple of months, it became very sluggist and started rebooting itself once or twice a day.  The next 2 times - both within a month of eachother - the device started to reboot itself constantly.  It's like watching a slideshow.  The phone reboots, and within a minute of coming back up, it reboots again, making it totally unusable.  It's a shame that this phone is such a failure because it really has nice features, a great display, and a nice keypad.  I am going to stretch this as long as I can, and wait for the new phones to come out around the holidays.

hey folks, this phone is brilliant. this is about my 6th smartphone/android phone, and i have to say, it's my favorite. super 'navigation' mode, 'mouse' mode button and function. nothing like it. thin, solid. touch, stylus, full keyboard, virtual mouse, small round touch for navigation .fast, most software you need comes preinstalled.wifi, bluetooth, fast cdma data.so many apps to choose from, it's not easy to know which to pick...all phones should have this problem.prostouch screenmousefull keyboardnice displaythin and solid constructionwificons?can't think of anyvery very nice samsung product

I know there are some compaints about this phone first there is no problem if you lock your keys and then turn the screen off, these are two different keys.  The power button up top turns the screen off the d pad / mouse toggle key when held down locks the keys.  The only peoblem is the battery time however it is better than mose pda phones.  I love the mouse to death.  I would not use another phone ever.  An extended battery can be purchased from Samsung.  This phone is a winner, best phone I have ever used, I think the mouse makes it easier to navigate than an iPhone, and keeps your screen cleane. 

Well, I thought the Saga would be the phone that broke me of my Blackberry...but no.  I did my best to research this phone before my purchase and the only global complaint was about the battery life. There were several people out there who really knocked windows mobile 6.1 but I wasn't swayed so I made the purchase. I used the phone for a little over 2 weeks before returning it. Here's some things you're gonna want to know if you're looking at purchasing this phone.
1st. The ringer volume is pathetic. The loudest it will go is barely audible in the car with no radio on, and forget about hearing it if you're in another room in your house. This was unbelievable to me b/c who would make a phone that you can't hear when someone calls you? This still baffles me and I don't even own the phone anymore.
2nd. Battery Life is also pathetic. You make a few calls, browse your email, and check the weather and you've drained the sucked to half power. After a full night's charge you can barely make it to 3 o'clock without having to plug it back in. Everyone was right about this one. Please consider this before purchasing...I understand there's an extended battery available...
3rd. Windows Mobile is very sluggish. I had never used Windows mobile before this phone, but I had heard lots of good about it and some bad. I didn't really mind it, in fact i enjoyed the way the contacts were set up and how the text message conversations were like chatting on the web, but dang it if windows mobile is not the slowest OS on any phone I've ever used! I mean seriously, you select an icon or push the button for contacts and you have to wait several seconds before anything happens. This was very frustrating. The most frustrating thing about windows mobile though is having to individually close applications every time. Every time you open your contacts, or a web browser, or email, or anything else and then change to something different, the application is left open and running in your task manager. Imagine on you computer opening up five internet browsers and not knowing that they were running until you check the task manager. Yeah that is what is going on with this phone. You have to manually go to task manager and individually close apps if you go from one screen to another without ending an application. This was extremely annoying and poorly designed. This was probably the deal breaker for me.
4th. If you plan on placing this phone in your pocket you will be very disappointed. So the phone obv has a feature that lets you lock the keys and also a button that turns the screen off. This is all well and good, but if you put your phone in your pocket like me these feature are completely useless. All you have to do to turn the screen back on is hit any button. Any button. So, when the phone's in your pocket and say you sit down then 9 times out of 10 the huge center optical mouse button is going to get clicked and ta da, the screen's back on. This used to happen all the time and I'm convinced that this had a lot to do with the poor batter life.
Overall, the idea of this phone made me purchase it. I really liked the keyboard, touchscreen, and a few other features, but the cons heavily outweigh the pros. I'm thinking that if you're used to windows mobile and plan on using a holster for this phone you might could make due, but for someone like myself this device is completely impractical. I was very disappointed with this device simple because it seems like samsung did not do adequate field testing before releasing it. Maybe this is the reason the phone is only available on verizon's website and it's not in stores?....

I have had the phone for a few days and I absolutely love it!! A little background before my review. I am a Sales Manager in Verizon's Indirect Channel and I am certified for technical support.
Overall, I have only one complaint, that being the battery life leaves a little something to be desired. Otherwise, this is an outstanding device. The optical mouse is a very welcome change from the standard D-pad. I found the touch screen to be very responsive both to the stylus and my pudgy little fingers. Compared with my treo, processing data was like lightning even without the Wi-Fi being enabled. Speaking of Wi-Fi, the connectivity was seamless for me and I didn't notice any difficulty accessing the web. Ear-piece volume is great and for someone with normal hearing the ringtone is great. End-users with hearing impairments may have difficulty using the device.
Given that its a Windows Mobile phone, end-users should have little to no difficulty getting adjusted to the phone. In comparison to the Q9 or to the 700wx, you will find the Saga to be an able competitor. I found this device to be more responsive than the Omnia or Touch Pro and, even though I love BlackBerry, this touch screen responds much much better than the Storm.
For the mobile professional, this phone would be an incredible asset.
 
LASTLY, THIS REVIEW CONSTITUTES MY OPINION ONLY!! I DO NOT SPEAK ON BEHALF OF THE CORPORATION OR ITS INDIRECT AGENTS.

I love this phone. When I first got it, I couldn't understand why the battery was dying so fast. Then I realized that you have to wait for the GREEN LIGHT to come on to indicate a full charge. The battery meter (percentage) is useless and incorrect.
The screen will turn off in a call if you set it to do that in the settings. All of the complaints on here are people that don't know what they are doing and instead of admiting it, they blame the phone.
The keyboard is great. The optical mouse is great. The touch screen is great (especially for Opera and Skyfire).

I find the phone to be very usable. I was about to drop Verizon since I was going to start traveling overseas and my work involves GSM, so I was looking for a SIM based phone. The Samsung came around and I was looking for a touchscreen, WiFi and Windows Mobile. Satisfied all of those.
The phone when in lock mode sometines loses the mouse cursor, so there is a problem there. The 6.1 OS is way better than the other versions. I find it navigatable and easy to remove items.
The   Opera browser is strange. Can't figure it out and don't have the patience either. It seems to enlarge pages to the extent you can't read or navigate. I close it and find IE...believe it or not
 
The BIG question. Does the phone really work when overseas? We'll see, cos when I'm out there and it doesn't; I'll drop that baby right back in their laps when I return.
 
 

I actually really like this phone. I was choosing bet. t-mobile's android and this and couldn't think of a reason i could sell my boss on the android vs. a wm phone. In addition i was able to copy and past my older wm settings from sprints horrid treo 800w. i am not a wm fan but the saga runs it great. The keyboard is a decent size for my fat fingers and i love the optical mouse. The mouse makes the phone so much more functional than other smart phones i had. It is a good hold over until verizon gets a cool phone or android starts catching on.

I purchased this phone about 3 weeks ago, and have waited until a substantial amount of time had passed before writing a review on it.  It drives me crazy when people review a phone they just pulled out of the box, and have no time to deal with usability, possible bugs, and just have time to experience the phone in its entirety.  I am actually an employee of the company, and have had ample time to play with many phones, and haven't found one yet that really suits what I'm looking for, until I found this phone.  My previous 3 phones were the Motorola Q9m, the Blackberry Curve, and the Motorola Q9c.  The Curve was so extremely slow, and had almost no RAM to use the programs the phone had, and through my experience, our Blackberries aren't always as high-quality as the competitors' (because of our proprietary software.)
My first impressions of the phone were extremely positive.  The optical mouse is wonderful, the touch screen is wonderful, and the top keys are a very convenient addition.  My only complaint is the form factor, because the i-760 had so much potential for a huge screen, this would've been a great chance to create a huge screen slider, but then again, it is Samsung.  Also, I would've loved for there to have been a back button on the top keys, like the Motorola Q9's, as that was a convenient addition.  I would agree with the PhoneArena review complaining that the keys are too small for full emails, but I only text message and send short emails, so it's not something I have personally had complaints about yet.  And as a side note on the optical mouse, for the people complaining that it's so much less convenient than a d-pad, you can change the setting of it, 2 ways even.  If you tap the lock key on the side of the phone, it toggles mouse & navigation mode, or you can go into the optical mouse settings, and change it there.  I really feel that this phone hits on all points except for my picky complaints.
The usability of the phone is just as terrific, with very few flaws as well.  The browsing experience is great due to Opera, and is going to give you the same desktop experience the highly touted (and highly disappointing) Storm gives.  I personally enjoy the Saga's web browsing more, because the optical mouse gives me so much freedom, where as a touch screen only phone is so limiting for me, not to mention my large thumbs are so inaccurate, regardless of the phone.  The media player works just as well as any other, with 3rd party apps playing a big role in my personal media experience, downloading "finger-friendly" media players that give me more flexibility.  My one complaint about the media player is that there's no way on the physical keyboard (that I've found anyway) to skip through songs, like on the Q9's, which is a feature I find myself longing for.  As far as 3rd party apps go, it's difficult finding software that's designed specifically for the Saga, as it is brand new, and extremely looked-over, but I have found that many of the Touch Pro apps work well, if not, I move on and try another app.  The email service is, of course, WinMo, so it works just as well as any other WinMo phone, and I don't really receive that many emails, as it is a personal phone, not a business phone, so I have no complaints there.  The camera is so-so, but I honestly don't feel like this phone needs a great camera, because the purpose of this phone isn't to be a camera phone, it's a business phone.  I never use the camera, nor have I ever used a camera on a previous phone, because I just don't have a use for it.
I actually found that reception was much better for me than ALL of my previous phones, and between my wife and I, we have covered almost all of Verizon Wireless' lineup.  I had the Chocolate 3 temporarily, which is one of our top performers for reception, and this phone gets better service in problematic areas than that did.  In our home, we get 1 bar of service with all other phones, and I actually get 3 bars EVDO there.  Call quality is fantastic as well, as I never have trouble with clarity, volume, etc, overall terrific.  The inclusion of Wi-Fi is absolutely awesome, because now when I'm at home, & I don't feel like whipping out the laptop, or booting up the desktop, I don't have to deal with the slow wireless internet (even though for wireless standards, it isn't slow at all, I just have no patience.)

 have had the phone for about 2 weeks ,  Phone is always dialing out "broadband access"  WM is buggy

I really wanted to like this phone, since it's my only option to sync with Exchange over the air while global roaming on Verizon. Sadly, it's a miserable device, and the most ill thought out implementation of WM6.1 i've ever seen. The batter life is terrible, the touchscreen doesn't disable while talking, so when you're done you have 25 different apps open doing who knows what, the screen turns on every few minutes for no reason (probably the reason for the poor battery life), and it takes a ridiculous amount of clicks to do anything. The lack of d-pad navigation really makes this a horrible experience - the optical mouse in d-pad mode requires you to swipe multiple times to go down menus (ie if there are three headings to navigate down, you need to swipe your finger 3 times, much more annoying than simply clicking 3 times). I grew to like mouse mode, or at least found it incrementally less punishing than using d-pad mode.

There are not enough words in the English language to describe how horrible this phone is! Had mine for a week, and can think of nothing better to do with it than smash it to bits with a hammer.
If dealing with WinMo 6.1 weren't enough punishment, the touch screen is a total pain to use, constantly putting you into a screen you didn't select etc. You must use it with a holster as if you put it in your pocket, it will do all kinds of crazy things like pocket dial the last call you made or worse, send phantom text messages, reset functions, once it even de-selected the phone from the settings tab. I pulled it out of my pocket to see that I had missed three calls, and all of them had came in the past 5 minutes. When I went to the settings tab, there was a big red X through the phone icon. ridiculous! 
I am certain there is a bug in the firmware as about once a day the phone will "lock up" where the touch pad works as far as moving the cursor around the screen, but the button function of the mousepad does not work, nor does any other button on the entire phone work, including the on/off button. So....when it goes into this lock up mode, the only thing you can do is to remove the back of the phone and take the battery out for a few minutes and re-install. It will return to it's normal crappy operation at that time.
The battery life is utterly ridiculous. This morning I unplugged it from the charger at 8:30 am, used it sporadically through the day, maybe 60 minutes talk time total. By 4:00 pm I was getting a low battery notification and by 5:30 it had shut itself off due to low battery. Completely unacceptable! 
Unless you like headaches and frustration, I would avoid this phone completely if at all possible.
 

Just letting you know, there is a switch on the left side that lets you use the optical mouse as a d-pad and vice versa.

I received my phone yesterday and started playing with it last night and today. I used to have a Moto Q with WM5 and used a Blackjack II abroad with WM 6.1. I'll have to say I HATE the touchscreen and clutter UI of the Pro version of WM. WM smartphone, at least for my purposes, is a much more streamlined and reasonable user experience. The optical mouse is cool, but what used to take 2-3 clicks of the d-pad on my Q now takes futzing with the optical mouse and a cursor to open and highlight things - there is no d-pad to move around the UI, a major flaw. That said, the optical mouse is ininitely better than pulling out the stylus to do basic tasks. I'm going to give this 3 1/2 weeks to get used to WM Pro with the mouse before I return the thing.
Where is the Motorola Napoleon?????