Samsung Glint SPH-M610

Call Quality

Calls and speakerphone: Overall, calls were loud and clear on this cell phone, though we still had to use the side keys to lower the volume occasionally. We also appreciated that two people can talk and be heard on this phone simultaneously. Additionally, speakerphone quality was just as impressive. We particularly appreciated the dedicated key for activating the feature.

Audio playback: MP3s played through the cell phone’s stereo speakers came through loud and clear. We were even able to turn on the media player on and leave it blasting tunes in our office while working.

Ease of Use

Menu/phone book: We found using the phone book and navigating through the menu intuitive. You have a choice of two menu schemes: Samsung's or Sprint’s. Both are easy to use and view. Even entering and accessing phone numbers was easy. You can store up to 500 contacts, each of which can include 5 phone numbers, an e-mail address, a Web site, a nickname, and notes (you can manually enter street address info in this slot) for each. We did find one odd occurrence: missed calls appear in both the Missed Alerts and Call History folders on the cell phone.

Camera/video: The Samsung M610 has a 2-megapixel camera lens sitting on a hinge at the top of the cell phone. You can snap a picture from any vantage, but if you want to use a viewfinder, you’ll need to flip open the cell phone and look to the internal screen. However, the cell phone has a ton of advanced features, including a meeting option that can help with color accuracy. You can choose between the Average setting or spot metering to help enhance lighting options. There are also a few white-balance modes to choose from: Auto, Sunny Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, and Manual. Finally, we have seen fun shooting filters such as monochrome and sepia before, but this cell phone also offers aqua and green.

Unfortunately, the Samsung M610's built-in camera didn’t fare so well. As expected, color accuracy is impressive when viewed on the cell phone, as long as there’s good lighting when you snap a picture. However, if there isn’t sufficient lighting, colors appear a bit drab, and color quality diminishes further when you transfer the pics from the M610 to a PC. The pictures tended to have a lot of noise, which means you’ll see lots of specks on the actual photo when you view them on a computer. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of detail in pictures either.

On the plus side, the Samsung M610 supports PictBridge, which is a way to send pictures from a camera directly to a PictBridge-enabled printer. Since the M610 has a 2-megapixel camera, you’ll be able to print quality 4x6 photos. In order to use this feature, you’ll need a cable that connects the camera phone to the printer. If the printer has Bluetooth, ditch the cable and send photos via the cell phone’s Bluetooth connection.

Music: Sprint’s initial efforts at music (the company dabbled in it a few years ago with the Uproar) were less than stellar since so much of the experience was tied to the Sprint Music Store; you also needed a data plan to access the music you purchased. However, we’re ecstatic to report that’s not the case anymore. If you can get music onto this Samsung cell phone, you can listen to it without logging onto the Sprint Music Store. The actual player settings are a bit slim, so don’t expect to do much to enhance music played on the Samsung M610. About all you can find out is information on the song currently being played.

As mentioned earlier, the phone's MP3 playback quality is impressive. The cell phone supports both MP3 and Apple’s AAC audio files (sorry, there's no support for Microsoft’s WMA files). The number of songs you can save on the cell phone will depend on what else you have stored on the Samsung M610. (Note: If you store only music, you’ll get a mere 8 songs.) The good news is that the M610 comes with a 64MB TransFlash card for extra storage, and you can save about 12 more songs on the card.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: We were able to easily connect to a Bluetooth headset (we found call quality was acceptable with the Motorola H500). Additionally, you can use the Bluetooth to print pictures from your cell phone using the included PictBridge feature.

Design

Look and feel: For a cell phone that’s thinner than the Motorola Razr and arguably as sleek, the Samsung M610 surprisingly isn’t more popular. The cell phone is also large; when you flip it open and hold it up to your ear to take a call, it fits comfortably along your face, and you can easily line up the phone’s microphone with your mouth. True, its black exterior tends to attract fingerprints, but you'll need to examine it very closely to see all the smudges. We should note that if you carry a bag with a black lining, you might want to dedicate an area to store your cell phone since it can easily get lost floating around your tote.

Instead of following the trend among cell phones of incorporating an external display that sports photo caller ID, the M610’s exterior screen is more retro; it has two blue lines that include all the pertinent information (caller ID, date, time, network strength, and battery life). However, flip open the phone and you’ll see a beautiful, crisp display with big numbers that is viewable in most lighting situations; those who have a hard time reading the numbers that appear on a cell phone screen need look no further. However, we did find the automatic screen backlight setting is too short for our preferences, but that’s easy enough to change. Our favorite feature occurs when dialing a phone number; the numbers appear on the screen in multiple colors, illuminated as if it were the Lite-Brite game.

Our main quibble with the cell phone’s design is that you need to remove the battery to insert or remove the 64MB external memory card. The other issue is one that appears increasingly in Samsung cell phones: the headset and battery share the same port and aren’t in any way standard.

Keypad: Flat keypads are all the rage, but we’ve yet to encounter a keypad as flat as the one found on the Samsung M610. While we love the flat keys, we should note that they tend to be difficult to dial by feel in the dark. However, the keys are large and spaced far enough apart that misdials are rare, even for those who have larger fingers.

Battery Life

This is one area where the Samsung M610 exceeds expectations. On average, we needed to charge the cell phone every four to five days when using it regularly to make calls and send/receive text messages. But when we made two to three 10-minute calls a day with light texting, the Samsung M610 lasted slightly over a week without needing more juice. Additionally, we should note that leaving Bluetooth activated doesn’t have an adverse affect on battery life.