Samsung Sway SCH-U650 (Verizon Wireless)

Reviewed by

Kent German

on 10/07/2008

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The Sway has a self-portrait mirror but no flash.

The Sway's 2-megapixel camera takes pictures in three resolutions, from 1,600x1,200 down to 160x120, and it offers a choice of three quality settings. Other options include a self-timer, spot metering, an adjustable ISO, brightness and white-balance controls, multishot, autoshot, and night modes, three color tones, a digital zoom (unusable at the highest resolution), and three shutter sounds--plus a silent option. Photo quality was quite good. Colors were sharp and there was little-to-no image noise.

The Sway offers great photo quality.

The camcorder records videos in two lengths; clips meant for multimedia messages are capped at 30 seconds or you can shoot for as long as the available memory will permit. Budding filmmakers can take advantage of a set of editing options. The Sway offers just 50MB of shared-internal memory, so we recommend using a microSD card.

You can personalize the Sway with a variety of wallpapers, display themes, clock format, and alert tones. You can download more options and additional ringtones from Verizon using the WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser. The Sway doesn't come with any games, but a wide variety of titles is available for purchase.

Performance
We tested the Samsung Sway in San Francisco using Verizon Wireless service. Call quality was very good, overall. The signal was clear and free of static and we had no trouble getting reception. What's more, the volume level was quite loud and voices sounded natural. At the highest volume levels, the audio did sound a little harsh, but it wasn't too bothersome.

On their end, callers said we sounded good, and a few did not realize we were using a cell phone. A few of our friends said the Sway picked up a fair share of wind noise, but that assessment wasn't universal. Automated-calling systems could understand us most of the time and the phone's whisper mode was equally satisfactory. Speakerphone calls also were good, thanks to the large speaker on the back of the slider. We also had no issues with calls over a Bluetooth headset.

The Samsung Sway SCH-U650 has a rated battery life of 4.5 hours talk time and 13 days standby time. The Sway has a tested talk time of 5 hours and 15 minutes. According to FCC radiation tests, the Sway has a digital SAR rating of 1.28 watts per kilogram.