The Samsung Flight II updates the original Flight with a higher resolution screen and a larger, side-sliding QWERTY keyboard. It's a quick messaging device with Samsung's TouchWIZ interface on board. So does this compact messager soar, or is it headed for a crash landing?
The Samsung Flight II is a compact messaging phone, rounded on all corners. It's a little thick at a half inch, but it's actually shorter than the original Flight, and a bit thinner than the Pantech Pursuit, a comparable phone in AT&T's quick messaging lineup. The phone features a 2.8-inch, capacitive touchscreen up front, with Send, End and Back buttons just beneath the screen. A fairly generous, 4-row QWERTY keyboard slides out to the left. The phone is mostly grey plastic all over, with a few polished metal circles that ring the back button, the headset port and the camera. It's nondescript and unexciting, but it still looks modern. The rounded corners make the phone easy to hold during conversations. It might not fit into a tight pair of pants, but the Flight II has lost some weight since its predecessor, more than an ounce shaved off, so it didn't weigh me down.
The keyboard is nice for a simple messaging device. Each key has a slight hump and a small bit of space to separate them from the next letter. The layout is balanced with no funky breaks in the familiar QWERTY design. Letters take up the top three rows and the bottom row is devoted to symbols, which means you won't have to use the Fn key too much, even while entering Web and email addresses. The @ symbol is somewhat hidden, buried in the lower right corner, but it's paired with a .com key, a wise choice, and once I memorized their placement, I actually found this arrangement convenient. Still, I type @ more than I use an exclamation point, so maybe the ! doesn't need its own key. The keyboard has a shortcut key to create a new text message. Unfortunately, this key only works when you're looking at the home screen panels, not while you're browsing the menus or using a different feature on the phone. If I have to take multiple steps to use a shortcut, it isn't much of a shortcut, is it? Another minor complaint: the B key is too close to the 8 key. At a quick glance, I often mixed up the two.
On the left side of the phone is a volume rocker, nicely raised against the side of the device. The volume keys stick out more than any other key, which makes them easier to find. There's also an app switcher key on this side. On the right side, you'll find the camera button. It's a simple one-stage button, since the 2-megapixel camera on the Flight II does not use auto focus. There's also a screen lock key. You can hold down the lock key or hold your finger down on a button on screen to unlock the phone, but either way it always seemed to take too long to jump into the action.
Just above the lock key is the microUSB port, hidden behind a cover. It's too bad the Flight II didn't get the sliding port cover Samsung is using on its smartphones, because I prefer that design. Up top, you'll find a standard, 3.5mm headset jack, so you can use your favorite earbuds with this phone. The phone has a microSD card slot hidden beneath the battery cover, but not beneath the battery itself. The cover is easy to pry loose, so this isn't any trouble.
The keyboard is nice for a simple messaging device. Each key has a slight hump and a small bit of space to separate them from the next letter. The layout is balanced with no funky breaks in the familiar QWERTY design. Letters take up the top three rows and the bottom row is devoted to symbols, which means you won't have to use the Fn key too much, even while entering Web and email addresses. The @ symbol is somewhat hidden, buried in the lower right corner, but it's paired with a .com key, a wise choice, and once I memorized their placement, I actually found this arrangement convenient. Still, I type @ more than I use an exclamation point, so maybe the ! doesn't need its own key. The keyboard has a shortcut key to create a new text message. Unfortunately, this key only works when you're looking at the home screen panels, not while you're browsing the menus or using a different feature on the phone. If I have to take multiple steps to use a shortcut, it isn't much of a shortcut, is it? Another minor complaint: the B key is too close to the 8 key. At a quick glance, I often mixed up the two.
On the left side of the phone is a volume rocker, nicely raised against the side of the device. The volume keys stick out more than any other key, which makes them easier to find. There's also an app switcher key on this side. On the right side, you'll find the camera button. It's a simple one-stage button, since the 2-megapixel camera on the Flight II does not use auto focus. There's also a screen lock key. You can hold down the lock key or hold your finger down on a button on screen to unlock the phone, but either way it always seemed to take too long to jump into the action.
Just above the lock key is the microUSB port, hidden behind a cover. It's too bad the Flight II didn't get the sliding port cover Samsung is using on its smartphones, because I prefer that design. Up top, you'll find a standard, 3.5mm headset jack, so you can use your favorite earbuds with this phone. The phone has a microSD card slot hidden beneath the battery cover, but not beneath the battery itself. The cover is easy to pry loose, so this isn't any trouble.
Screen
The Samsung Flight II updates the screen resolution from the original flight by 80 lines, for a 240 x 400 pixel resolution instead of the older QVGA. The screen was plenty bright and colorful, but the improved resolution didn't help text and graphics enough. Text still looked wiry, and some icons came through with jagged edges, instead of smooth lines. Still, the brightly colored app icons in the main menu looked great, and photos looked fine holding the phone at arms length. Outside, the screen lost most of its brightness under bright sunshine, but it was still usable. The camera viewfinder was more difficult, but not impossible to use, even in the harshest glare.
Sound
Sound quality on the Flight II was average for a quick messaging device. On my end, the earpiece was plenty loud, but callers often had a hissing noise behind their voices during calls. On my caller's end, friends reported good sound quality, but the signal could break up from time to time, and this caused my voice to cut out occasionally. The speaker on the Flight II could use some work. It did a fine job handling mid-range sound, so voices came through sounding clean and clear, but not very loud. Music sounded lousy through the speaker. High end treble tones and low end bass seemed to disappear from my songs, leaving just the singer sounding loud and clear, like some strange reverse karaoke machine. With the sound turned off, the vibration was not strong enough for me to feel the phone in a crowded pants pocket.
Signal
Signal strength on the Samsung Flight II was pretty good. I always had plenty of bars of 3G service, and the phone rarely dropped calls. Over a long testing period, only three or four calls were cut short, and only one or two failed to come through on my end. Data service was very slow, a disappointment considering the phone should support AT&T's faster 7.2Mbps HSDPA network. But the Web browser crawled along at a snail's pace, and often the data connection would hang, leaving me waiting for pages to load.
Battery
The Samsung Flight II had no trouble holding a charge for more than a day of use. It wouldn't quite last through a weekend of steady use, but if I forgot to charge the phone overnight, I had no worries about making it through the next day.
The Samsung Flight II updates the screen resolution from the original flight by 80 lines, for a 240 x 400 pixel resolution instead of the older QVGA. The screen was plenty bright and colorful, but the improved resolution didn't help text and graphics enough. Text still looked wiry, and some icons came through with jagged edges, instead of smooth lines. Still, the brightly colored app icons in the main menu looked great, and photos looked fine holding the phone at arms length. Outside, the screen lost most of its brightness under bright sunshine, but it was still usable. The camera viewfinder was more difficult, but not impossible to use, even in the harshest glare.
Sound
Sound quality on the Flight II was average for a quick messaging device. On my end, the earpiece was plenty loud, but callers often had a hissing noise behind their voices during calls. On my caller's end, friends reported good sound quality, but the signal could break up from time to time, and this caused my voice to cut out occasionally. The speaker on the Flight II could use some work. It did a fine job handling mid-range sound, so voices came through sounding clean and clear, but not very loud. Music sounded lousy through the speaker. High end treble tones and low end bass seemed to disappear from my songs, leaving just the singer sounding loud and clear, like some strange reverse karaoke machine. With the sound turned off, the vibration was not strong enough for me to feel the phone in a crowded pants pocket.
Signal
Signal strength on the Samsung Flight II was pretty good. I always had plenty of bars of 3G service, and the phone rarely dropped calls. Over a long testing period, only three or four calls were cut short, and only one or two failed to come through on my end. Data service was very slow, a disappointment considering the phone should support AT&T's faster 7.2Mbps HSDPA network. But the Web browser crawled along at a snail's pace, and often the data connection would hang, leaving me waiting for pages to load.
Battery
The Samsung Flight II had no trouble holding a charge for more than a day of use. It wouldn't quite last through a weekend of steady use, but if I forgot to charge the phone overnight, I had no worries about making it through the next day.
Touch sensitivity on the Samsung Flight II could be quite bad. On the home screens and main menus, the Flight lagged behind my touch, sometimes by more than a couple seconds. Although the screen is technically capacitive, it acted more like a poor resistive touch panel, because the phone didn't just lag, it seemed to require some pressure to respond to my taps. This wasn't as much a problem in simpler apps. I could dial numbers or hit buttons on the music player lightly, and the phone always responded. But just about every other app and feature was significantly slowed by poor touch response.
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