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Author: cellphone-freebies.com

Description: Performance

We tested the dual-band (CDMA 800/1900) Samsung UpStage in San Francisco using Sprint service. Call quality was admirable overall; voices sounded natural, and we had enough volume. On the reception side, there was little static or interference, and we had no trouble getting a signal. Though they could tell we were using a cell phone, callers reported no significant problems either, even when we were in noisy environments. Also, we had few troubles speaking to automated calling systems. Our only complaint was that the audio sounded somewhat harsh at times. It wasn't a huge deal, but the bass-heavy effect was noticeable in a few different calling situations. Speakerphone calls weren't always reliable. On our end the sound was fine, but callers couldn't quite hear us unless we were in quiet environments. On the other hand, we didn't have any problems with voice commands.

We successfully paired the UpStage with the Samsung SBH170 stereo Bluetooth headset. Call quality remained decent on both ends, though callers had slightly more trouble hearing us at times. We also used the headset to listen to music and were generally satisfied with the sound quality. There was slight bass-heavy effect to the sound, but that could be due to the headset. We also listened to music using the headset adapter and some generic 3.5mm earbuds and had the same experience. Without the headset, music quality wasn't quite as good due to the somewhat unimpressive output of the single exterior speaker.

On the whole, the UpStage's EV-DO connection was strong, even when were in buildings. Streaming video quality was on a par with that of other Samsung EV-DO phones, such as the Samsung SPH-M610. Few of the videos were pixilated and grainy, except when there were quick movements on the screen. There was also little choppiness, and only one video paused for rebuffering. The sound from the videos mostly matched the movement of the speakers' mouths, but it was too low and bass-heavy when we didn't use a headset.

The connection to the Sprint Music store took more than few minutes to load the first time around. It was much longer than we've encountered with other Sprint music phones, but once we were up and running the connection was pretty solid. Songs took a just few seconds to download from the Sprint Music store, and it took about a minute and a half to transfer 40MB of music from our PC--not bad at all. The Music Sync software was easy to use and loaded without a hitch, but the music player had a tendency to be somewhat sluggish at times. What's more, we also had a bit of trouble when we disconnected the Bluetooth headset in the middle of a paused song. When we restarted the song, the UpStage was unable to play songs downloaded from the PC. The error message didn't clear unless we turned off the phone and started it again. It happened only once, but it's a still a point of concern. At the time of this writing, Sprint said it was investigating the issue,

The UpStage has a rated battery life of 2.5 hours talk time. That's pretty low, but when using the extended battery, the promised talk time climbs to a more respectable 6.3 hours. In our tests we managed to beat the rated time for the internal battery by an extra half hour but we fell short of the promised time for the extended battery by coaxing just 5.5 hours on a single charge.

Music-only battery life is promised at 7 hours or as long as 16 hours with the extended battery. Yet we managed to pull much more juice from the UpStage in our tests. Using the internal battery, we managed 11.3 of music time while the extended battery gave us a full 27 hours for our tunes--impressive indeed. According to the FCC, the Samsung UpStage SPH-M620 has a digital SAR rating of 1.4 watts per kilogram, which is rather high.