Samsung Caliber (MetroPCS)

Summary: I bought one of the first 5 of Caliber's shipped to Mansfield Texas on February 26th. This is my first smartphone but I have used freinds Iphones and win mobile smartphones enough to make a few observations. This phone is what I would call a mid level smart phone, it has more features than some other smart phones in a neater package but it certainly not as good as an Iphone or a Motorolla Droid phone. It is however much lighter and smaller than either of those units. I haven't had it long enough to comment on the long term quality of construction but it seems very solid overall so far. Call quality has been great, text is easy to enter in the QWERTY mode, and overall phone operation is very well thought out and intuitive. This is also my first Metro PCS phone, so I cannot comment on the overall quality of thier service which so far has been fine as I travel between Arlington and Mansfield Texas daily. One caveat I have is that so far I have only been connected at the 1X CDMA speed, there is no 3g coverage in my areas of operation. This speed is fine for internet surfing, mobile email, and banking but not good for mobile video. The phone came preloaded with many useful applications including Metro PCS's navigation which works extremely well and speaks the names of streets with excellent accuracy, it works better than my one year old Garmin but it's use is limited to areas where you get Metro PCS's data coverage which limits its usefulness out of town. You also get local news and weather, a mobile email program which lets you intergrate multiple email accounts including corportate email (with permissions) and a few others I haven't tried out yet. As stated by Cnet the touchscreen interface is good, not great. It is not as refined as the Iphone but once you get used to it's quirks it is just fine, my major complaint with it is that when you try to slide your finger across the screen to view your other home screens you can often either end up simply moving a widget to the edge of the screen or activating a widget. My solution was to arrange the widgets in a way that leaves an open space all the way across each screen for your finger to track across. This has eliminated the problem for me. One other complaint about the touchscreen and widgets is that the widgets are not all the same size and shape when shown on your home screen which makes them sometimes difficult to arrange to allow the open space as I described. Battery life is good, I'm charging every other day while using internet features two to three times a day, about 30 texts per day, and 30 mins of phone time per day. I think the picture quality is actually quite good, the key is bright lighting as indoor photos taken with and without flash are much softer and with (as Cnet notes) muted colors than photos taken outdoors. Also, about the widgets, there are a number of widgets available to download at no charge from Metro PCS but a great many are simply versions of a theme, I think there were 5 or 6 different clocks. Hopefully as time goes by more and more useful widgets will be added. There is a kinda cool blood alcohol estimating widget, but it became useless after a few drinks because It's too complicated to use once inebreated. Hmm, maybe someone should make a breathalyzer phone.

My bottom line-
If you are on a budget, don't travel a lot, and aren't already committed to another carrier for the rest of your days this phone and carrier are worth a long hard look at least. This is a pretty solid phone at a reasonable price with a very affordable rate plan. I was able to switch from AT&T and go from an old Slivr phone with limited talk and text to a fully featured smart phone with unlimited service and it ended up being less expensive.

The service charge is currently $50.00 per month which includes all taxes and fees, and all features are unlimited.