The Samsung Profile SCH-R580 is a good messaging phone that is available at an affordable price of $439.99 after a discount on mail of $50 with a two year contract.

Design

The Samsung Profile is all black in color with slight gray inflections, a circled top to cover its height of 4.6 inches, having a width of 2.1 inches, thickness of 0.6 inches and a weight of 3.7 ounces. The display of the phone is 2.4 inches QVGA (320×240 pixels); this covers half the height of the phone. The Talk, End, the two soft keys, Clear key and a speakerphone are also situated on the device. The Select button is situated on the center of the device.

The framework of the profile is smooth and touch slippery, the back decorated with a 3.5 mm headset jack, a volume rocker, a camera prompt, a Micro USB charging port and a 2 megapixel camera that also allows a self-portrait. The micro SD card slot can be reached to after removing the back cover, which is a bad part but hats off to Samsung that it can accept up to 16 GB of flash memory. The two slides-out QWERTY keyboard has both a compact design and a full width of landscape mode.

Features

The Samsung Profile allows 1,000 entries in the address book with an ability to save multiple numbers to a contact, their e-mail address, a custom photo and a caller group. You can access through 22 polyphonic ringtones and get more through the US’s Cellular online Tone Room store. Users who want peace and silence can also enable their phone setting to silent mode.

The general features contain a memo pad, a calendar, an alarm clock, a calculator, a stop watch, a tip calculator, a unit converter and a world clock. The Profile also backs a speakerphone, Bluetooth, 3G EV-DO connectivity and voice commands.

The Samsung Profile allows text messaging, picture and video messaging, Facebook, My Space and Twitter. A user can also download enhanced chatting and communicating applications by purchasing them online. The music player can be accessed if you have a memory card. Other than that the phone has the basic Samsung player with buttons that enable Play, Pause, Forward, Back, Repeat and Shuffle options. The camera of the phone is familiar to other Samsung phones with a 2 megapixel camera and 4 resolutions varying from 320×240 pixels to 1,600×1,200 pixels. The camera offers three shooting modes, three excellence settings and five white-balance presets. However, there are no image editing tools available.

The Samsung Profile has an internal memory of 100 MB but it can accept up to 16 GB of flash memory. Customization can be done by downloading games and wallpapers from EasyEdge storefront.

Performance

On testing the Samsung Profile, we learnt that the call quality was stout with lurid and clear voices. Although, a few fragmentations and jogs were sensed frequently but it did not leave the caller unimpressed of the call quality. The battery offers 6 hours of talk time and 12.5 days of standby time. The performance of the Samsung Profile SCH-R580 is just like other basic Samsung phones with much more room for improvement!