Samsung Alias 2 (Verizon Wireless)

Calls and speakerphone: We’re happy to report that the call quality during receiving and placing calls using the Samsung Alias 2 was quite impressive. Callers said we were loud and clear. Additionally, speakerphone quality was great and we appreciate how easy it is to activate and deactivate during a call – simply press the key with an icon of a loud speaker. This cell phone supports Visual Voicemail for an added monthly subscription fee and listening to messages via this feature was impressive. Often times we could simply press play and hear the message fine when looking at the cell phone without needing to activate the speaker.

Audio playback: We found playback of songs to be decent through the cell phone’s speaker. Songs come through loud but slightly tinny and the cell phone lacks audio-centric user controls, so you can’t adjust it. This Samsung cell phone has a 2.5mm headset jack and supports stereo Bluetooth, so you also can listen to music either via cell phone-enabled headphones or via a Bluetooth headset respectively. The good news is that unlike some other Samsung cell phones it doesn’t have a proprietary headset jack.

Menu/phone book: Like many Verizon Wireless cell phones, the Samsung Alias 2 has a standard menu system; if you're already accustomed to it, using this cell phone should be a breeze. That said, this is one of the more straightforward menu interfaces you’ll find on a cell phone with a graphical main menu display similar to the one found on the LG Dare. The interesting features about this cell phone are its dual-hinge design and E-Ink Keypad. You can flip the phone open either vertically or horizontally. Both ways will essentially show you the same display in the corresponding format. However, it’s the keypad that changes, thus the E-Ink. What appears on the keys will literally change based on the application you’re in or you can change the keys manually by clicking through the different keyboard options.

We particularly like how easy it is to use the phone book, which can store 1,000 contacts, each with five phone numbers, two e-mail addresses, a street address, notes, and a picture. Additionally, if you receive a text message from a new phone number you can easily save that number as a contact in the phone book. This Samsung cell phone also supports message threading, which means that you can view multiple messages about the same topic in one text message. However, if you want to use this feature you’ll need to select that manually from the Options menu before sending a text.

Camera/Video: The Samsung Alias 2 has a 2-megapixel camera and lacks a flash. It also lacks the ability to use the external display as a LCD for framing self-portraits. That said, there are a plethora of digital camera features including a self timer, multi-shot, brightness, white balance, auto shot and night shot. Image quality was acceptable; colors were vibrant, but images didn’t have a lot of detail. Once you’ve taken a picture, you can send it as a message, save it to the cell phone’s 80MB of available internal memory, or to an expandable memory MicroSD card (the Samsung Alias 2 will support up to a 16GB MicroSD card). You can record videos as well and overall quality is on par with that of the camera.

Music: The Samsung Alias 2 cell phone includes a MP3 player that does a decent job at playing back music. Though this cell phone lacks the ability to adjust audio-centric controls such as bass and treble, it’s a snap to use basic playback functions. It does have other MP3 player features such as shuffle, repeat, and playlists that you can create on-the-fly. We particularly like that once the MP3 player is in use you can use the external touch buttons underneath the external display to control the features.

As noted, listening to songs played through the cell phone’s speaker is decent, though a bit tinny when playing songs with a lot of bass (Note: This is typically the case with music phones). This Samsung cell phone will support an optional 16GB MicroSD card – you can store approximately 400 albums of music on a card with that much storage capacity – that’s a lot of tunes. The cell phone comes with 80MB of internal storage for storing tunes, however, that memory is shared with all cell phone features so if you’re going to be storing a lot of pictures or applications you likely won’t have a lot of room left for tunes.

Although you still can’t transfer music via Bluetooth, getting music onto the Samsung cell phone is easy via the included USB-to-Samsung proprietary connection cable, which also does double duty as the charger. Once you attach the Alias 2 to a PC computer via the cable (sorry, no Mac support) you can add music a few ways: synching songs from your PC music library via Windows Media Player 10, downloading songs from the Verizon/Rhapsody music service, or dragging and dropping songs onto the appropriate folder in the cell phone’s memory. Once you install the Verizon/Rhapsody music application onto a PC you can just drag and drop playlists onto the cell phone’s external memory. If you want to use the Rhapsody service for Verizon, you’ll need to go to Verizon’s website to download the application.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: We were able to pair the cell phone with a Plantronics 925 Discovery headset and call quality was just as clear using this headset as it was when just placing a standard call.

Look and Feel: It’s not immediately obvious that the Samsung Alias 2 is unique and maybe that’s because it’s a tad longer and wider than many flip phones on the market today. Like its predecessor, the Alias this cell phone is a multifunction device trying to meet the needs of two different uses: open it standard flip style and it's a typical cell phone; open it sideways so that the screen is in landscape mode and it becomes a functional texting/e-mail device with a full QWERTY keyboard. As such, the Samsung Alias 2 is slightly heavier than other more compact flip phones available. With the extra size comes a relatively large display with decent size letters and numbers and you can set the font size even larger. While the internal display is large and bright, the external display is a bit grainy and dark. Good news is that the internal display is visible in direct sunlight, however, if you’re wearing sunglasses you’ll have a hard time viewing it.

Keypad: At first glance, the 42 white squares on the keypad resemble something you might see used in the movie Tron. As noted, the big idea behind the Samsung Alias 2 is the metamorphic keypad - it's called an E-Ink keypad, which literally changes what appears on the keys depending on the function that is being used. The nifty feature here is that depending on which application you're using when you flip open the screen horizontally the ink on the keys change to fit that application - thus E-Ink. While it may take a little patience getting familiar with the changing keypad, it’s in many ways a much cleaner keypad. Overall, the keys feel quite nice under the fingers and there’s enough space between them that we never suffered a mis-type in a message or a mis-dial. Nice! This design also provides more instances to have dedicated launch keys and while there are many (Bluetooth, Alarm Clock, Speakerphone, Messaging, etc), there isn’t a dedicated key to launch the music application.

For a cell phone with such an array of high-end features, the battery life is good. Heavy cell phone users who make a ton of calls and send/receive loads of text messages daily will need to recharge it every three days. More moderate users will be able to make the Samsung cell phone last four days before needing a charge. If you are a light user, making just two to three 10-minute calls a day and light texting, the Samsung Alias 2 cell phone will last close to a week. We should note that if you plan on using more power-intensive features such as the camera and music player or leave the Bluetooth activated the battery will drain quicker.