Introduction & Design
What T-Mobile might lack in the way of a high speed data network, they more than make up for with service plans and features geared towards families and messaging addicts. Their myFaves plan and Sidekick family of devices have caught on with budget-conscious parents and their SMS-obsessed teenagers alike
T-Mobile is working to (finally) roll out their 3G network in 2008, and they've also been working with manufacturers on a fleet of fun (and easy) to use handsets with advanced features and messaging-friendly form factors. The Samsung Blast is the first of this new wave of phones - its slim slider form factor will be familiar to Samsung fans, but the SureType-style keypad concealed beneath the sliding front panel is designed for the new wave of users to text as much as they talk.
Unfortunately, while the Blast looks great on paper and in photos, it proved less than a blast to use. The twenty button QWERTY layout is a great idea, but for all it promises in the way of easy typing in a stylish package, it lacks just as much when it comes to usability. Hampered by small buttons with limited tactile feedback and a crowded layout, Blast proved to be more of a compromise than an innovative solution. But if you've got small fingers and a small budget, Blast does offer a solid feature set in a stylish package.
Blast reminded me of the Samsung T809 - one of my all time favorite T-Mobile phones - when I took it out of the box. A thin (12.7 mm), slightly wider than normal (106 x 15 mm) slider, Blast is compact and light but solid in hand, and features an attractive black with red accents color scheme. I really appreciated Blast's light weight (just 79 g), especially given the quality feel of the internal sliding mechanism. This handset stays open when it should and stays shut when it should, and sliding between the two states is made easy by a great spring mechanism.
The front panel of Blast features a two inch display flanked by a speaker cutout above, and an extensive control array below. A circular five-way directional array is flanked by two softkeys as well as dedicated keys for T-Zones (Web browser), Call, Cancel, and Clear, and one programmable shortcut button. Samsung did a nice job with the navigational buttons, packing a comfortable layout into a relatively small space and giving the keys themselves good tactile feedback.
A camera button and accessory port grace the right side of Blast, while a volume rocker switch and microSD memory card slot can be found on the left spine. The power button rests along the top edge of the phone, and when you slide the front panel up, the rear side of that top edge reveals the camera sensor and a small mirror for self-portraits. I've always liked Samsung's design for slider camera phones, as it keeps the camera sensor protected from dust and scratches when the phone is slid shut.
Sliding the panel up reveals Blast's SureType messaging keypad - kudos to T-Mobile and Samsung for trying to put some smart design into a consumer messaging phone. Featuring twenty buttons where standard dialing layouts only have twelve, Blast maps letters to a regular QWERTY layout instead of the telephone-style ABC, DEF, GHI, etc arrangement. The result is both a more familiar arrangement of characters and only having one or two letters per key instead of three - a combination that should yield more efficient thumb typing.
While SureType has become quite popular on RIM's
BlackBerry Pearl (RIM developed the SureType system), I'm not so sure it will succeed on Blast. Blast's keys are a little too small and crowded together, and also too flush-mounted for my tastes. Perhaps my thumbs are a little on the big side, but I just couldn't get comfortable typing on Blast and while I appreciated the innovation I also longed for a regular keypad with larger - if fewer - buttons.
I should note that I've since tried T-Mobile's
HTC-made Shadow, which features a similar SureType style keypad in a slider phone form factor. Shadow's buttons are bigger and offer better tactile feedback and, in my eyes, really make good on the promise of the compact messaging phone idea. Shadow is notably thicker and wider than Blast, and a different beast in many ways, but is definitely an option if like me you like the idea of Blast but find the buttons too small.
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