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Display, Multimedia Maven The Impression's 3.2" AMOLED display (active matrix organic LED) with haptic feedback steals the show. It's incredibly color-saturated and bright. The Eternity has a nice display, but it literally pales in comparison to the Impression's. Like the Eternity, it's very responsive to touch and is one of the best on the US market. Though it uses resistive rather than the capacitive technology found on the iPhone and T-Mobile HTC G1, it doesn't feel like a let down in comparison, as do some other touch screen phones when compared to the iPhone. The display is the perfect venue for photo viewing and video playback. The Impression does an excellent job of playing CV, AT&T's streaming video service that's included with their $15/month unlimited feature phone data plan. There's an on-screen button that switches to full screen playback, though this doesn't maintain proper aspect ratio for 4:3 content. Even with half bars of 3G, CV plays back with no pixelation or artifacting and looks very sharp. The Impression really handles video well and AT&T's CV has come a long way in terms of quality, surpassing both Verizon and Sprint's offerings.
Samsung's TouchWiz user interface is nearly identical to that on the Eternity, Samsung Behold and Samsung Memoir. The Impression gains several useful widgets (the Eternity's selection is a little lame). These include widgets to launch the web browser, use AT&T Navigator, speed dial (yes!), several clocks and favorite contacts. Just as with prior TouchWiz phones, there's no way to download and add more widgets. What ships with the phone is what you get. The phone's screen and buttons lock automatically and the right side unlock button is much too fiddly. The phone's curved sides and slider make it hard to get a grip and the button is very small and recessed.
Video Review Here's our 10 minute video review of the Samsung Impression that includes a walk around the device, hardware keyboard, CV streaming video playback, the user interface and more.
Phone and Data Again, there's little different from the Eternity here. The Impression, like the Eternity, has above average earpiece volume and has clear audio for both incoming and outgoing voice. Reception is just average on 3G and the phone sometimes drops to EDGE when it's held against the head for a call (having started with 1/3 of full signal on 3G). Reception isn't atrocious by any means, but 3G isn't wildly robust in weaker coverage areas. That said, the phone hasn't dropped a call, even when switching between 3G and GSM during a call. The Impression has speed dial via a homescreen widget and there's no voice dialing. The Impression features the same NetFront 3.5 web browser that's found on the Eternity. By feature phone standards, this is a very good HTML web browser that also handles WAP sites. It does a good job of desktop rendering, loads pages quickly and supports scrolling by dragging the page with a finger. If you want a good web browsing experience but don't want to move up to a smartphone, the Eternity and Impression are the winners on AT&T. Alas, the phone does not support Flash.
Email support is the same as other AT&T feature phones. Their Mobile Email Java client (located under "Games & Apps") handles a selection of popular personal email services like Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, Earthlink, Bellsouth, Mindspring, NetZero and Juno. You can't add MS Exchange accounts, nor POP/IMAP accounts from domains other than those listed. The Instant Messaging client is integrated with the SMS/MMS application and it supports AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo. IM can run in the background thanks to the Impression's multitasking capabilities. GPS, Camera and Music Too The Impression uses the same 3 megapixel fixed focus camera as the Eternity, and image quality is the same. Photos are decent with pleasing colors and reasonable exposure for both indoor and outdoor shots, though sharpness isn't as good as an autofocus lens camera phone. As with the Eternity, the camera can shoot photos and video and you can send these via MMS or save them to a card for transfer to a PC. The media player is quite capable and handles MP3, AAC, Real, WAV and WMA formats including protected WMA sold through AT&T's music store. The Impression supports MTP mode for music transfer over USB, as well as mass storage mode. Unlike the Eternity, there's no 3.5mm stereo jack, just Samsung's blade connector that handles USB, charging and headsets (a headset isn't included). Thank goodness for A2DP Bluetooth stereo.
The phone's video player can play content stored on microSD cards. We tested it with several MP4 format files originally encoded for the iPhone and iPod at 320 x 240, 600kbps. These played fine and filled most of the screen, though we noted occasional frame drops. The speaker is surprisingly loud and clear for a phone. The GPS works with AT&T Navigator, powered by TeleNav. This subscription service costs $10/month and you can stop and start it at any time with no contract ramifications. It offers very good spoken turn-by-turn directions, a very good POI database with location and phone number info and on-screen maps and directions. The speaker is loud enough to be heard in a sedan and the GPS locks onto satellites quickly. Conclusion The Samsung Impression is a powerful and fun feature phone. Its strong suit is multimedia thanks to the fantastic 3.2" AMOLED display, excellent CV streaming video playback and local video playback. The web browser, as with the Eternity, is one of the best feature phone browsers on the market for full HTML site support and the phone has good messaging and IM support, though email support is limited. The keyboard is large, roomy and easy to type on even if you have large hands-- and we're thrilled with the on-screen keyboards for those times one just needs to enter a few words or enter text one-handed. The only drawback? This is a large and heavy phone. Pro: Fantastic looking, large touch screen that's responsive. Excellent keyboard, strong video playback performance, good GPS. TouchWiz is fun to use and very easy to learn. Samsung's latest widgets make the phone easier to use. Very good HTML web browser. Con: Large and heavy phone by feature phone standards. Reception is middle of the road. Limited email accounts supported. No 3.5mm jack.
Price: $199 with 2 year contract after rebates Web sites: www.samsungmobileusa.com, wireless.att.com
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