Samsung Sunburst – featuring AT&T cloud services
Thumbs Up:
The Sunburst is a lightweight, affordable and slim touch-screen cell phone that features internal accelerometer, GPS, full HTML browser, 2-megapixel camera
Thumbs Down:
The touch-screen responds slowly.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: GSM
Band: Quad-band of GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Phone Design: Candy bar
Caller ID: Yes
Other Features: Bluetooth, 2-megapixel camera, EDGE
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The Samsung Sunburst has inbuilt 189MB memory and a micro-SD expansion slot that accepts up to 16GB cards. The supported wireless interface is Bluetooth 2.0.
3 inches resistive touch-screen display has 240×400 pixels resolution that supports 18bit (262,000) colors. The additional features are Mobile email, AT&T Navigator, EDGE, Web browser, GPRS, and TTY compatible. The supported video formats are WMV, H.263 video with AMR audio, and MPEG4.
2-megapixel camera features 4x digital zoom, multi-shot, self-timer, and video recording. The image storage resolution options are 640×480, 1280×960, 1600×1200, and 2048×1536. The shooting modes are Frame, Mosaic, Smile Shot, Panorama, Continuous, and Single. The white-balance presets include Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent, Daylight, and Auto.
The Sunburst handset has 1000mAH lithium ion battery that has a life of 300 minutes talk time and 250 hours of standby time.
Razzle Dazzle:
The Samsung Sunburst has gray slab simple design that is a reminiscent of thick fog. It is 4.3 inches tall, 2.1 inches wide and 0.5 inch deep and weighs 3.08 ounces. The soft-touch finish of body and round edges provides comfortable feeling while holding in hands. The phone is wrapped inside gray matte with chrome details on the side.
Inside Dope:
Samsung is not a new manufacturer for the messaging mobile phones. The AT&T had announced to launch some messaging phones at CTIA 2010 and the Samsung Sunburst was one of them. The Sunburst features 3-inches touch-screen display, virtual QWERTY keyboard, 2-megapixel camera, excellent messaging features, and Web browser; but does not support 3G. Despite its sunny name, it does not transude a feeling of joy and warmth. It looks like other Samsung touch-screen phones such as the Caliber. The Sunburst costs $59.99 with two-year AT&T contract. On the dark side, its touch-screen is slow to respond occasionally. Still, the Samsung Sunburst is the first cell phone to feature AT&T online cloud services including AT&T Address Book.
3-inch touch-screen of the Samsung Sunburst has 240×400 pixels QVGA resolution that supports 262,000 (18bit) colors. The touch-screen is resistive instead of being capacitive. So, it is slow than the touch-screen of Nexus One and iPhone. You can set the Sunburst phone to provide the haptic feedback. What’s more – you can change the backlight time, the brightness time, the transition effects for page swiping, the greeting message, and the font type.
The Samsung TouchWiz interface is located on the left side of home screen. It consists of various shortcuts and widgets; which can be dragged and dropped to the home screen for instant access. The Samsung Sunburst has three customizable home screens like the Caliber that allows adding/removing shortcuts and widgets. We like that you can switch between these home screens by swiping the fingers on the screen. What’s more – you can change the wallpapers for each home screen. The virtual dial pad, contacts and menu button are located on the bottom row at display and remain visible in all home screens.
In curved style, three physical buttons including the Send/talk key, Back/Clear key, and End/Power button are located underneath the display. You will find the charger jack, the screen lock key, and the camera key on the right side. The micro-SD card slot and the volume rocker are on the left spine. The camera lens is located on the back side.
The Samsung Sunburst can save 1000 contacts its phonebook. Each entry can save four phone numbers, a note, a birthday, street addresses, a job title and company name, a nickname, a URL, and two-email addresses. You can categorize the callers into caller groups and pair them with one ring-tone and a photo for caller ID.
The basic feature set includes text and multimedia messaging, 17 polyphonic ring-tones, a stopwatch, a timer, a world clock, a unit converter, a tasks list, a memo pad, a calendar, an alarm clock, a tip calculator, a speakerphone, and a vibrate mode.
The advanced highlights are mobile-email, instant messaging, USB mass storage, PC synchronization, GPS support, stereo Bluetooth, voice recording, and voice command. The mobile e-mail provides access to Web mail services including Gmail and Yahoo for $5 per month. The pre-installed instant messengers are Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and AOL Instant Messenger.
Although the Samsung Sunburst is not a 3G phone, yet there is a full HTML Web browser. This features zoom in/out, search, favorites list, and basic URL location bar. You can hold the finger on the screen for few seconds, then move it up for zoom in and down for zoom out. The browser is not full featured like that of a smartphone. It has clunky user interface and does not support tabbed browsing.
As already mentioned, the Samsung Sunburst is the first cell phone to launch with AT&T cloud services. That includes AT&T Address Book – to manage the address book on computer and synchronize online; Online Locker – storing the pictures and uploading to a social media Web site; and App Store – buy and download ring-tones, applications and other options from the phone.
The Samsung Sunburst also has AT&T Mobile Music that contains all music applications such as Make-UR-Tones – app for making ring-tones, a song ID app, and MusicID2. It also houses inbuilt music player and works as gateway to AT&T Mobile Music store. You can buy and download songs via eMusic and Napster for $1.99 per song. The music player has similar interface like other AT&T phones and features on-the-fly play-lists, shuffle and repeat modes.
2-megapixel camera of the Samsung Sunburst features 4x digital zoom, self-timer, and video-recording. The still capture options are brightness, five white-balance presets, six shooting modes, three quality settings, and five resolutions. We captured some still pictures and recorded few clips for testing. The overall photo quality was good with sharp pictures, but the images were not good in low light.
The Samsung Sunburst comes with some games including Diner Dash Flo on the Go, Bejeweled, Tumbling Dice, and more. The preloaded applications are WikiMobile, Where, Loppt, AllSport GPS, and AT&T Social Net for instant access to social media Web sites such as Twitter & Facebook. You can personalize the phone with available ring-tones, alert-tones, wallpapers, and graphics. More options can be downloaded via AT&T AppCenter.
We made few calls through the Samsung Sunburst via AT&T for testing. The overall call quality was good. We received harsh and crackled sound at our end. At their end, the callers received loud sound with some scratches, static and background hiss. The speakerphone call quality was good, but the volume was not fully loud.
The battery life of the Samsung Sunburst is 10.4 days of idle standby time and 5 hours of talk time. Its digital SAR rating is 0.857watt per kg in accordance with FCC radiation tests.
Nitty Gritty:
You can buy the Samsung Sunburst because it is an affordable messaging phone with mid-range features and AT&T cloud services. Please remember that its touch-screen is slow and you have to pay $5 per month to access Mobile Email feature.
