Samsung Focus Flash Review

Introduction:

When the platform officially launched over a year ago, all Windows Phones at the time were deemed as high class smartphones, partly because of Microsoft’s stringent hardware requirements. Now that Microsoft’s mobile platform has a solid year under its belt, it’s primed to explode even further with the latest class of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango devices. The Samsung Focus Flash is right there to get the party started for AT&T. Flaunting a fabulous $49.99 on-contract price, it’s sure to get some attention with its affordable cost, but let’s hope that it’ll shine just as magnificently as some of the juggernauts in the Windows Phone camp.

The package contains:

Design:

For its price, we’re amazed to tell you the truth that Samsung is able to construct a device that resonates with some quality traits to make the Focus Flash such an appreciable little guy. Compact and lightweight  (4.1 oz) in form, the handset employs an understated design thanks to its hard lines and angular cutouts, which all combine together to offer an easy on the hand feel. Moreover, despite the fact that its comprised out of plastic, it has a metal battery cover.



You can compare the Samsung Focus Flash with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Rather than retaining the same screen size found on the original Focus, we find a smaller 3.7” WVGA (480 x 800) Super AMOLED (not Plus) display on the Focus Flash. Obviously, it’s smaller in footprint, but thanks to WVGA resolution, it results in producing sharper details and clarity to make faint text easily distinguishable. On top of that, its Super AMOLED panel is such an attractive thing to behold as its pops with rich colors, wide viewing angles, and a high brightness output to make it very visible.


Being a Windows Phone and all, we find the usual trio of buttons beneath its display, however, it boasts a physical start button – with the back and search keys maintaining their capacitive form. Meanwhile, a front facing VGA camera is perched above the display, but its purpose is shoot self-portraits as video chat has yet to establish itself with the platform.

Around its sides, the Samsung Focus Flash features a two-level shutter key, power button, volume rocker, 3.5mm headset jack, microphone, noise cancellation microphone, and microUSB port.

Lastly, there’s a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash and speakerphone grill located in the rear.

Interface and Functionality:

Being part of the new class of Windows Phones, the Samsung Focus Flash is outfitted with an upgraded processor to meet the times. Specifically, it’s powered by a single-core 1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 processor that’s coupled with 512MB of RAM. Granted that it’s the second-generation Snapdragon CPU, as opposed to the third-generation one in use by some Android smartphones, it’s nevertheless still more than enough to provide one wickedly fast platform experience – though, Windows Phone in general exhibits these qualities.

We’ve gone through Windows Phone 7.5 Mango extensively in our overview article, and more recently, we experienced it on the HTC Radar 4G. In any event, it’s an incremental step that deepens the platform’s core functionality to better adapt to the existing standards we expect to find nowadays – like Twitter integration and multi-tasking. Still, Mango retains the same visual eye-candy with its Metro UI that made us gravitate towards the platform from the beginning, like its dynamic live tiles, but it’s still sorely behind in the personalization department when you compare it to something like Android.


As much as we adore the handset’s compact figure, it does prove to be a challenge in the messaging department for individuals that have larger sized fingers. Sure the keyboard layout is rather cramped, but as we’ve seen countless times, the Windows Phone keyboard is remarkably adept in keeping us typing without much falter – thanks to its dashing responsiveness and killer predictive text.


With Mango’s presence, the email experience has been refined to offer a universal inbox system and threaded conversations. And of course, the setup process is simple as pie seeing that it essentially requires only our email address and password to automatically set up.


Interestingly enough, there aren’t a whole lot of apps preloaded on the device – though, AT&T is the exception since its presence is pronounced. In fact, its packs apps like AT&T Code Scanner, AT&T myWireless, AT&T Navigator, AT&T Radio, AT&T U-verse Mobile, and YPmobile. Besides those, Samsung’s very own Now app is once again a featured item as it aggregates the weather, news, stocks, currency, and top tweets.
 


Internet and Connectivity:

By now, we’ve come to terms that we’ll never experience Flash content on a Windows Phone device, but despite that, we’re not all that heartbroken about it. For starters, thanks to its HSPA+ speeds, the Focus Flash is able to easily load our web site in under 30 seconds. Additionally, when you throw in its buttery smooth operation with its navigation controls, it essentially provides us with a useful and engaging web browsing experience.


Due to the fact that this is an AT&T bound smartphone, it’s also compatible to work with other GSM networks around the world – with 3G and HSPA+ connections intact with most places too. Not surprisingly, it features all the usual suspects of connectivity items like aGPS, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi.

Camera:

Of course, we’re naturally inclined to believe that this handset is a camera-centric one because of the ‘Flash’ moniker in its name, but instead, it simply shoots some average still shots. Overall, details are rather flat looking and sometimes appear fuzzy indoors, plus, it has a cooler color production with almost all conditions. With low lighting shots, it exhibits some faint noise, but what’s more distracting is that colors are visibly washed out looking. Needless to say, you’ll be able to get away using them for small printouts, but for larger ones, it’ll only exacerbate its blemishes.

The handset shoots 720p videos, but the results are nothing worth bragging about since they’re void of any reasonable details. Compounding its problems, videos tend to have a bluish tinge, and that audio recording is considerably grainy. Yet, the only bright spot that we find is its smooth capture rate of 29 frames per second. For something tagged as being “high-definition”, it’s very card to live up to that title after looking over its results.

Samsung Focus Flash Sample Video:



Multimedia:

When so many music players out there are static in form, it’s always refreshing to always check out the Zune experience with Windows Phone for the simple reason that it employs one of the best presentations out there. To complement it all, the audio quality from its speaker is impressively potent to provide us with some tones that are robust to the ears – plus, it doesn’t crackle at the loudest volume setting.

Nowadays, nearly all devices are able to play high-definition videos with little effort, but what makes it such an alluring thing with the Focus Flash, is the Super AMOLED display it’s packing along. Besides it smoothly playing our test video encoded in DivX 1920 x 1080 resolution, the rich colors and vividness that it exhibits make our eyes glow with envy.

Out of the box, the handset only has 6.67GB of free storage, so that means you’ll need to be careful on what you load since it’s not a whole lot of room to play around with.

Performance:

Nearly everything appears in tip-top shape in the calling quality department as both ends of the line are greeted with natural sounding and distortion-free voices. Even better, the speakerphone exhibits the same traits as well, but the earpiece is simply lacking with its volume output – causing us to jam the phone next to our ear in noisy environments.

Displaying mostly 4 out of 5 bars in high coverage areas, we’re content with its strong signal reception – plus, we didn’t experience any dropped calls during our testing in the greater Philadelphia area.

Some would think its 1,500 mAh battery is on the small side, but for a handset of its size, it’s soundly effective in providing ample battery life. In fact, we’re able to achieve close to 1.5 days of normal usage on a single charge, which should also appease heavy/power users with a day of usage.

Conclusion:

There’s no arguing that we’re spoiled time after time with some high-end smartphones, but to tell you the truth, it doesn’t require a super-spec’d device to offer a resounding Windows Phone 7.5 Mango experience. Rather, the Samsung Focus Flash is simply one of those understated smartphones that deceptively has a lot of offer for its price – thus, giving us a good performing smartphone that won’t cost us a leg and an arm to purchase. Naturally, we’ll eventually see a decent amount of killer spec’d Windows Phones in the near future, but in the meantime, you can still experience something worthwhile with the Samsung Focus Flash.

OS Version: 7.10.7720.68

Samsung Focus Flash Video Review: