Samsung Upstage Two-Sided Phone

Permalink: Samsung Upstage Two-Sided Phone by Franz Bicar

Samsung doesn’t only do slider phones, they also do two-sided phones. With this experiment, Samsung has produced the Samsung Upstage, their latest innovation. The Upstage features a small display on the phone side and, on the back cover, a large display for entertainment.

The phone in itself is a wonder. It is a combination, with one side serving as a phone and the other side looking so much like a portable media player. It is designed to offer the benefits of a large display with a large keypad without actually increasing the size of the Upstage.

However, with this design, you get a small media player, but also a less efficient one. It has good music and sound quality — a real plus in today’s phones where sound volume and quality seem to be so cruelly abandoned. But the complicated two-sided system makes it a cell phone that is really not for everybody.

A quick note, given the phone’s unusual design, it might not be the best phone to get your elderly parents or relatives.

However, if you are not intimidated by it, then you will appreciate its strong cell phone features and small size. It has a sturdy and durable design with a very thin, lightweight and narrow body that fits well in your pocket.

As mentioned, the two-sided design can be confusing at first. For that alone, the Samsung Upstage is not for people who are looking for a simple cell phone. For instance, you need to be on the small screen side to type in numbers but you can’t browse all of your inbox without using the large screen. To do this, you have to press the flip button to switch sides.

Its software features is one of the best produced by Samsung. It has an okay interface which is very easy to use. And the one that will interest a lot of people is that it is very responsive and performs very well.

But once again, its drawback is its unusual design as not all menu items can be accessed from the small display/phone side. For example, to view your inbox, you need to flip to the large display side. This can be quite annoying if you exchange a lot of text messages and need to refer to your inbox often. The same logic applies to many other menu items.

Since this is more or less a multimedia phone, lets take a quick look at its multimedia functions. The music player is Samsung’s usual music player. You can play your own music, stored on the included 64MB MiniSD memory card. 64MB is, of course, almost nothing, and you may end up tossing it away and buy a bigger card. The megapixel camera takes average pictures.

Sources:
http://reviews.cnet.com
http://www.phonescoop.com
http://www.pcworld.com