The lightweight, eye-catching handset boasts a three-megapixel camera and Samsung's handy "TouchWiz" widgets. But is it really worth $149, with a two-year contract?Available now on T-Mobile, the Highlight might have made for an attractive choice for casual chatters looking for something between, say, a bare-bones handset and the iPhone. It's light, it's got a touchscreen, and it lets you indulge in some basic messaging, multimedia, and camera features—and the snazzy, colorful shell ("fire" and "ice" flavors are available) doesn't hurt.But $149 with a two-year contract, and a $50 mail-in rebate? That's a lot to ask for a middling handset like the Highlight, especially considering that you can snap up a new, 8GB iPhone 3G from AT&T with a two-year service agreement for just $99.That's not to say that the 3G-enabled Highlight itself is a bad phone. Indeed, it's one of a series of new Samsung touchscreen devices armed with the handy "TouchWiz" interface: a column of scrolling widgets for e-mail, weather, news, your photo collection Web browsing, and so forth.Just tap and drag one of the widgets on the column, and it'll snap onto the home page, where you can then arrange your selected widgets in any way you see fit. (Future TouchWiz phones will feature multiple home screens for additional widgets.) It's a nice (if occasionally sluggish) set-up, especially if you're not keen on tapping through multiple menus to get to the Web browser.The Highlight's messaging features are relatively ro
bust for a non-smartphone like this, including support for popular Web e-mail accounts, instant messaging, and SMS and picture messaging. The on-screen QWERTY keypad is a bit basic and clunky (I wouldn't want to type out a novel on the thing), but serviceable for brief blasts of text. Because the Highlight's three-inch display is resistive (that is, its made of multiple layers of plastic that react when pressed together), it feels squishier than the capacitive displays of the iPhone, the Palm Pre, or T-Mobile's own G1.On the multimedia side, the Highlight comes with your standard music and video players (T-Mobile has yet to launch a streaming video or music download store, unfortunately), along with a three-megapixel camera that snaps vivid, if slightly hazy photos (it'll shoot video as well).Call quality on the Highlight was quite solid, even in my lead-lined Brooklyn living room, while the speakerphone sounded loud and clear. Samsung promises 6.5 hours of talk time from the Highlight—nice if it's true, although phone manufacturers tend to guesstimate on the high side.Other features include microSD memory expansion (up to 16GB), voice commands, and GPS (with turn-by-turn directions via TeleNav). Missing in action: Wi-Fi.
Overall, not bad—and remember, Samsung isn't positioning the Highlight as an iPhone competitor. That being the case, however, I'd expect the Highlight to sell for, say, south of $99 (with service).
But at $149 (and that's only after the $50 mail-in rebate), well ... that's way too high, especially considering that you can get the similar, TouchWiz-enabled Samsung Behold on T-Mobile with a five-megapixel camera for just $129 (with a two-year contract).
bust for a non-smartphone like this, including support for popular Web e-mail accounts, instant messaging, and SMS and picture messaging. The on-screen QWERTY keypad is a bit basic and clunky (I wouldn't want to type out a novel on the thing), but serviceable for brief blasts of text. Because the Highlight's three-inch display is resistive (that is, its made of multiple layers of plastic that react when pressed together), it feels squishier than the capacitive displays of the iPhone, the Palm Pre, or T-Mobile's own G1.On the multimedia side, the Highlight comes with your standard music and video players (T-Mobile has yet to launch a streaming video or music download store, unfortunately), along with a three-megapixel camera that snaps vivid, if slightly hazy photos (it'll shoot video as well).Call quality on the Highlight was quite solid, even in my lead-lined Brooklyn living room, while the speakerphone sounded loud and clear. Samsung promises 6.5 hours of talk time from the Highlight—nice if it's true, although phone manufacturers tend to guesstimate on the high side.Other features include microSD memory expansion (up to 16GB), voice commands, and GPS (with turn-by-turn directions via TeleNav). Missing in action: Wi-Fi.Overall, not bad—and remember, Samsung isn't positioning the Highlight as an iPhone competitor. That being the case, however, I'd expect the Highlight to sell for, say, south of $99 (with service).
But at $149 (and that's only after the $50 mail-in rebate), well ... that's way too high, especially considering that you can get the similar, TouchWiz-enabled Samsung Behold on T-Mobile with a five-megapixel camera for just $129 (with a two-year contract).
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