The Blast's camera is hidden behind the sliding face.
The Blast's 1.3 megapixel camera takes pictures in seven resolutions from 1,280x1,024 down to 176x144. Other features include a night mode, white balance and brightness settings, metering exposure, ISO, five color effects, 30 fun frames, a self-timer, and a digital zoom. The camcorder takes clips in two resolutions (176x144 and 128x96) with sound and a set of editing options similar to the still camera. Clips meant for multimedia messages are capped at one minute, 15 seconds; otherwise you can shoot for as long as the available memory permits. The Blast offers 11Mb of internal storage, but you can use a MicroSD card for more space. Unfortunately, photo quality wasn't great. Colors were washed out and images were slightly blurry. The SGH-T729 comes with an image editor if you want to alter your pictures to your liking.
The Blast has average photo quality.
Though it's short on flashy multimedia options, the Blast offers a rudimentary MP3 player for playing tunes. The interface is painfully basic and the sound quality was unremarkable. For playtime, the Blast offers three games: Forgotten Warriors, Midnight Casino, and Cannonball. There's also a demo of Brain Challenge. If you want more options, you'll have to buy games from T-Mobile's T-Zones service via the WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser. What's more, you can personalize the SGH-T729 with various wallpapers, color skins, and sounds. More options are available for download.
Performance
We tested the quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; EDGE) Blast world phone in San Francisco using T-Mobile's service. Call quality was generally good. Voices sounded natural and the reception was clear in most environments. Static was apparent once in a while, but it usually occurred only when we were in interior rooms of a building. We also had little problem finding a signal and we rarely lost reception. The volume level was fine when we were in a quiet setting, but it was a little too soft when were speaking in a noisier location (like on a street). Users with hearing impairments may want to try the phone first.
On their end, callers said we sounded fine, although they did say we sounded a tad robotic at times. But it wasn't a huge issue. Voice-automated systems were able to understand us without a problem.
The SGH-T729 has a rated battery life of five hours talk time and 8.3 days standby time. Our tests only revealed a talk time of three hours and 53 minutes. According to FCC radiation tests, the SGH-T729 has a digital SAR rating of 0.84 watts per kilogram.
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Samsung Blast SGH-T729 (T-Mobile):
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