Review: Samsung SCH-U540 Cell Phone (Acceptable But Not Astounding)

I just slammed the New York Times for sloughing off its article on a new cell phone from a Motorola/AT&T press kit, so I suppose that I should offer something better. Here goes, then, with my review of the cell phone I’ve been using for the past six months: the Samsung SCH-U540.

As of May 2008, the SCH U540 is available for $9.99 with a two-year contract from Verizon Wireless. Verizon calls that a special, but I was able to get the phone for free with a two-year contract some time ago when they were formally offering the phone for a fair bit more than $9.99, just by asking nicely. If you decide to get this phone, tell ‘em your best buddy got it for free, and then let the uncomfortable silence linger for four seconds before you ask the nice customer service person what she or he can do for you.

How nice is the phone? Well, they say you get what you pay for — but in this case you actually get a fair bit more than nothing: you get a cell phone to be sure, but also an mp3 player, a video player, a voice recorder, a 1.3 megapixel camera, a video recorder, basic internet surfing and bluetooth connectivity, all in a phone that weighs less than 3 ounces. I know that there are more stellar cell phones available, especially if you’re willing to spend $400 for something that begins with the letter i, but for no cost beyond cellular service this is a pretty good package of features in the abstract.

In practice, the phone has some annoying design flaws. Samsung decided to put three touch-sensitive buttons on the outside of the camera to operate the internal media player: rewind, play/pause, and fast forward. I’ve never been able to activate these external buttons for the media player, even when I follow the precise instructions in the accompanying manual. But the buttons do regularly start up the camera and voice recognition features, and not by my choice: I regularly hear demands for me to restate the name of the person I wish to call when I am walking down the street with the phone in my front pocket. That’s irritating and potentially expensive. I also have a number of photographs of the inside of that same pocket that I could show you, but why look at the image of black on black with a black border and black highlights unless you’re in a modern art museum? The placement of the buttons is a poor design choice from Samsung, assuming that users are not expected to hang the phone from a pendant around the neck.

Another poor design choice is the construction of flat rather than raised keys. When I’m trying to select a number to dial, I often end up quickly in some strange submenu with a prompt asking me if I’m sure I want continue the deletion. Egad! Yes, I’m a guy, but my fingers aren’t that big and I’m not that clumsy. I never had this problem with my previous cell phone, a phone that featured raised and variously textured keys on its keypad to improve my accuracy.

The speakers also leave something to be desired. The speaker for my ear is a narrow slit, and if I don’t place the phone up to my ear in just the right place, I don’t hear anything. The speakerphone creates an echo when I use it.

No, the SCH-U540 phone is not perfect. But does the phone work? Yes. And the device does more work than just serving as a phone. As a sometimes-mobile blogger, I am able to get yeoman work out of some of its other features. The 1.3 megapixel camera won’t create artwork to show to mom and dad. But I’m not an artist; my photographs are most often meant to be strictly functional, and the camera is certainly functional (Click on the thumbnail image to the left in order to see a sample of the possible photo quality). Because I carry my cell phone with me, I’m always prepared to take a photo if I see something going on that’s newsworthy or interesting to me. If what’s interesting is moving, I can record video of it, and if I have an idea I don’t want to forget, I can record a voice memo for later (although why recording time is limited to one minute is beyond me). Best of all, I can shove all the photos and video and voice memos I want onto the 2 gigabyte MicroSD card that fits into the phone’s innards. When I get home, I just pop the card into my laptop and within seconds have a useful image to write about.

If you have all the money in the world, please go right ahead and buy that iPhone. But if money is tight, the $0 cost of the Samsung SCH-U540 can’t be beat until they start giving people money to use a phone. For that cost, there are a lot of useful extra features the SCH-U540 offers… and the poor design for telephone use can be overlooked until you make your first million dollars, or at least until your 2 year contract is up and they start offering something better.