Samsung Restore SPH-M570 Mobile Phone Review

Samsung Restore SPH-M570 Mobile Phone Review
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Introduction

The Samsung Restore, also dubbed SPH-M570 is another attractive addition to Sprint’s eco-friendly series of mobile phone devices. The mobile handset is made out of 77% recyclable materials, which includes 27% recycled plastic. Packed in a recycled package, the Samsung Restore mobile phone comes with an Energy Star charger and is preloaded with green-theme apps.

Design (4 out of 5)

The Samsung Restore is a decent looking, slick mobile phone made of shiny glossy plastic and chrome. Measuring 4.6 x 2.1 x 0.6 inches, the phone is no doubt bigger than Samsung’s Reclaim or Rant, but as light as 4.32 ounces. The phone sports an attractive QVGA display at 2.4-inches supporting 262,000 colors and a 320 x 240 pixel resolution. The screen size is large enough to allow for plenty of messages and the home screen contains the One Click interface of Sprint on the bottom row. The menu interface of the phone can be arranged to display either in grid view or in list view with adjustable backlight timer and brightness.

The navigation array features the Send key, Speakerphone key, End/Power keys, two Soft keys, Back key. But the most attractive part of the Restore is its toggle, which instead of the regular one is a square shaped, touch-sensitive, optical touch pad similar to that of the Samsung Moment. The two soft keys are placed on the left side of the phone’s display, for easy use when the keyboard is open. Moreover, to keep up with the eco-friendly theme of the phone, the mobile includes a quick link to the Planet Green website in its One Click interface. Just below the navigation array is a spacious number keypad. The keys are perfectly separated and raised above the surface for easy and quick dialing.

Sliding the display to the right opens up a full QWERTY keyboard and the display automatically switches to landscape mode from portrait. The phone further prompts whether to send an email or a text message. The keyboard is quite roomy with slightly raised keys and includes navigation arrow keys as well. The volume rocker is positioned on the left spine along with a 3.5mm headset jack and camera key on the right spine of the Samsung SPH-M570. The charger jack is placed on the top of the mobile phone, while the camera lens is at the back. Sitting just beneath the camera lens is a self-portrait mirror. The phone also contains a microSD card slot, but it can only be accessed after you have removed the battery cover.

Samsung Restore

User Interface (4 out of 5)

The Samsung Restore mobile phone features Sprint’s award winning ‘One Click’ and customizable user interface, which is simple to operate and easy to use. The phone has a new Sprint Zone Tile, an app which functions like a portal to apps, downloadable content, games and quick links to some of the featured downloads. Even though the interface has nothing particularly special about it, it is still a good carrier user interface and it allows the user to customize it just the way they want.

Sprint’s Samsung Restore

Features (4 out of 5)

The Samsung Restore features a phone book with room for 1,000 entries, each entry gives space for six numbers, a birthday, a URL, notes, an instant messaging handle, a street address, an e-mail, company name and a job title. Callers can be further assigned into groups or paired with a photo as a caller ID and attached with any one of 20 polyphonic ringtones. Moreover, you can use the wireless backup service of Sprint to store your contacts on Sprint’s servers.

The most basic features of the phone include a vibrate mode, an alarm clock, a calculator, a speakerphone, a world clock, a voice memo recorder, a tip calculator, a calendar and a memo pad. Other features of the Samsung Restore include stereo Bluetooth, USB mass storage, text and multimedia messaging, instant messaging and voice command features. The phone also supports threaded messaging to help you see back and forth texts in a conversation. As per the phone’s eco-friendly theme, it comes with an eco-calculator to measure the carbon usage, just the one you see on the LG Remarq.

Like most of Sprint’s messaging phones, the Samsung Restore SPH-M570 comes featured with popular networking applications such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook. The phone further features in-built GPS offering services like Sprint Navigation and Family Locator. Other applications of this phone include various Google services such as, YouTube, search, maps and a ScanLife barcode scanner. The ‘green’ apps of the phone include Green Glossary and Green Guide and they provide you with various tips to live a better eco-friendly life. Besides having POP3 email service, the Restore also supports Web email services such as Gmail and Yahoo and users can even use other IMAP and POP email servers. If you’re using Outlook Web Access, you can further sync your work email and Outlook calendar as well.

The Restore further features EV-DO, thus supporting various broadband services from Sprint such as Sprint TV, Sprint Radio, Sprint Movie and Sprint Music Store too, where you can download music to your phone or purchase it. The phone is also kitted out with a built-in 2 megapixel camera featuring five resolutions, three quality settings and loads of other presets. However, the image quality is not very satisfying and looks decent at best. The phone further features a camcorder that can record videos in standard mode or as MMS. The camera may disappoint but the music player of Sprint’s Samsung SPH-M570 is pretty good and you can set songs and shuffle modes or set the player go into the background while accessing other parts of the phone.

Sprint’s Samsung Restore

Performance (4 out of 5)

The Samsung Restore has a decent call quality, free from any distortion or interference with natural voice quality. But on the other side people might complain about your harsh and mechanized voice with slight distortion. The speakerphone is even worse with a lot of echo and hollowness in the voice. However, the EV-DO Rev. 0 speeds are quite satisfactory and the average audio quality of the music player can be improved with a headset. The phone has a good battery life offering 6 hours of talk time.

The Verdict (4 out of 5)

If you are looking for an eco-friendly mobile phone with decent multimedia messaging options, Sprint’s Restore SPH-M570 from Samsung is the best choice. This latest option for saving the environment will cost you only $49.99 on contract after rebate from Sprint and is available in two color options - Limeade and Midnight.

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