Samsung Reality U820 Review

Introduction:

Touchscreen phones and messaging phones with QWERTY keyboard have become popular devices recently, and it’s now common to see these two technologies merged together. Two years ago Samsung gave it a try with the Glyde U940, but the capacitive touchscreen was plagued with problems and the keyboard had a poor layout. Then last year the manufacture replaced it with the Samsung Rogue U960, which used a resistive touchscreen and had a better designed keyboard, but also featured an AMOLED display and a 3MP autofocus camera with flash. Now Verizon Wireless has introduced a new model, the Samsung Reality U820, but just because it’s newer doesn’t mean it’s better than the Samsung Rogue, as it has a traditional TFT display instead of the AMOLED, and the camera lacks the autofocus and flash. This positions the Samsung Reality U820 to compete more directly with the LG enV3 VX9200 as both are mid-level messaging phones that sit below the higher-end LG enV Touch VX11000, but are still a step-up from the budget Samsung Intensity U450 and LG Cosmos VN250.

Included in the retail package is the Samsung Reality U820, 1080mAh battery, wall charger with detachable microUSB data cable, and user guides.

Design:

There are several phones in Verizon’s line-up that are offered in different color choices, and the Samsung Reality U820 is one of them, as it’s available in City Red and Piano Black (as reviewed). Both variations are constructed out of plastic throughout and have a glossy finish on the exterior. This includes the battery cover, which feels smooth and slippery, instead of having a raised texture like on the Samsung Rogue, or a soft-touch coating as found on the LG enV3 and Samsung Intensity. Because of this, the Reality can slip out of your hands if you’re not careful. Overall it’s slightly smaller than the Samsung Rogue, but still not as compact as the LG enV3. Despite this, the Reality feels comfortable due to its size and rounded edges, and it can be discreetly slipped away into your pants pocket.



You can compare the Samsung Reality U820 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Just like with the Samsung Rogue U960, the Reality U820 features a resistive touchscreen. Both are equality responsive and don’t require a lot of pressure to be pressed, but instead of coming with a high resolution WVGA AMOLED display, the Reality uses a 3-inch 240x400 pixel resolution TFT display, which is capable of 262K colors. When the Reality and Rogue are next to each other, you can tell the difference quite easily, as images and text on the Reality aren’t as detailed and colors aren’t as vibrant. But with the Reality next to the LG enV3, the advantage goes to the Reality. Located under the display are the send, end, and back buttons, but they do not light up, and around the sides of the phone are the volume rocker, lock key, standard microUSB port (instead of the proprietary port on the Rogue), camera button, voice command and speakerphone buttons, as well as the microSDHC memory card slot that supports up to 16GB cards.


Another feature carried over to the Samsung Reality U820 from the Samsung Rogue U960 is the sliding 4-row QWERTY keyboard. Their layout is nearly identical, except for the location of the emotion key (smiling face) and the OK button, but the keyboard on the Reality curves slightly up on the left and right sides, somewhat similar to a BlackBerry, while the keyboard on the Rogue is straight across. These minor differences don’t affect its overall usability, as both keyboards have average sized keys that provide good feedback when pressed. However, we still prefer the keyboard on the LG enV3, since its keys are a little larger and the d-pad is completely separate on the right side.

Software and Features:

There are a few software improvements included with the Samsung Reality U820 that are not found on the Rogue U960. The first is that the Reality comes with 3 homescreens, somewhat similar to the LG Versa, which you can swipe between by moving you finger from right-to-left or from left-to-right. When the display is unlocked, the homescreens will shows four icons along the bottom for the dialer, contacts, message, and menu. The TouchWiz 2.0 sidebar is still present, and when selecting it (the small arrow on the left side) the widget bar opens up. From there you can scroll the list, choose to run a program, or drag the icon directly to any of the 3 homescreens. There are a few extra widgets that are included on the Reality that aren’t on the Rogue, such as a mini music player, Bing search and WeatherBug. Overall, the TouchWiz on the Reality is easy to use and it worked rather smoothly, just like on the Rogue.


The main menu on the Samsung Reality has 12 icons and is displayed in a 3x4 grid. Unfortunately, there still are no themes to choose from, but now you can move the main menu icons to other locations on the grid and even replace them with other icons (such as Bluetooth, Alarm Clock, and My Pictures). Other customizations include selecting the 3 homescreens' wallpaper, clock format, and the font size, color and style.


No changes have been made to the phonebook, as the Reality allows you to store up to 1000 contacts, each with the name, 5 phone numbers, 2 email addresses and IM screen name, birthday and street address.


The appointment calendar on the Samsung Reality U820 is also a clone of the one included with the Samsung Rogue U960. It begins by showing the current month with the date highlighted in blue. Once the desired date is selected, you can add an event with the appointment name, start and end time and date, recurrence, alert tone, reminder, and alert time.


Since one of the main features of the Samsung Reality U820 is the QWERTY keyboard, most users will opt for this method of typing messages, but there is still T9 predictive for use with the touchscreen. Threaded messaging is also included, which will group all your messages together by contact, number, or email. Additional messaging options include Mobile Email, which allows you to send and receive email through your POP or IMAP account, as well as Mobile IM, to connect to people on your AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo! buddy lists. For those of you who use social networking, there are direct links in the Communities menu that take you to the mobile web sites for Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Photobucket, Friendster, and Twitter, but you can also do simple profile updates and picture uploads from the Communities menu as well. This is nice to have while on the go, but its functionality is limited and doesn’t replace going to the real social networking sites.



Multimedia and Camera:

One feature we are glad to see not carried over from the Samsung Rogue U960 is the outdated “red” music player. Thankfully the music player on the Samsung Reality U820 is similar to the one found on the Samsung Intensity U450 as you have 4 skins to choose from: simple, album artwork, visualizer, and lyrics. Furthermore, the music player can be used in background and will add a small widget to the home screen. This way you can enjoy listening to your music while sending and receiving messages. When we listened to MP3 files, the LG enV3 sounded louder than the Samsung Reality U820, due to its stereo speakers, but the Reality still sounds clearer than the Intensity.


The 3MP camera that is included on the Samsung Reality is a nice surprise. Even though it lacks autofocus, which is on the Rogue, images taken outside during the day have good color representation and have sharp edges, although some bright areas have a tendency to be overexposed. Naturally, when used indoors and in lower-light conditions, images have a tendency to show more grain and aren’t as sharp, as longer exposure times are used. Since the camera lacks a flash, don’t expect any passable results in the dark.






Other software features include Mobile Web with a quasi-HTML browser (as it likes to reformat the way web pages look – called “optimized view”), VZ Navigator for GPS guided driving directions, VCast Video and Music, and the ability to download games, ringtones and other applications. The Samsung Reality uses EVDO Rev 0 for data, instead of the faster EVDO Rev A, which means download speeds aren’t as fast as they are on the Samsung Rogue or LG enV3, but it is still quicker than using the 1X connection on the Samsung Intensity and LG Cosmos.

Performance:

Both the Samsung Reality U820 and Rogue U960 have excellent call quality, as voices sound clear and natural on both ends, and without any background noise or distortion. Signal reception was also identical between the two devices, with 2-3 bars showing in high coverage areas, and when going into the service menu both devices had between -86dB and -89dB of signal strength (closer to 0 is better).

The included 1080mAh battery is rated to provide up to 5 hours of talk time or 12 days of standby time. During our testing with the Reality we were able to get continuous talk times of 5 hours and 30 minutes on a full charge, which is 1 hour longer than the Samsung Rogue and 30 minutes longer than the LG enV3, but unfortunately standby times were only about 3 days with no use.

Conclusion:

The Samsung Reality U820 is a worthy competitor to the LG enV3 VX9200, as both are mid-level QWERTY messaging phones, but the Reality adds to it a 3” touchscreen, TouchWiz 2.0 UI with widgets and 3 home screen pages, and has better integration with social networking sites. Both the call quality and reception are good and equal to that of the Samsung Rogue U960. The only thing we feel that is missing from the Reality is the higher-resolution AMOLED display that is on the Rogue, but some may not mind its TFT display, as it is fine for daily use and comparable to most other mid-level devices. It is a tough choice between the Samsung Reality U820 and the LG enV3; so it pretty much comes down to preference…if you’d rather have a touchscreen with a sliding keyboard, or clamshell design with a non-touch display and an internal keyboard.