Barb’s Blog

Today, I joined the 21st century and turned in my antique cell phone for a new one.

Laura also got one, we decided on the Samsung Impression.

The Impression’s touch screen is undoubtedly the highlight. As an active-matrix organic light-emitting diode display, it is a sight to behold with its brilliant colors, bright graphics, and sharp animations. At 3.25 inches, it’s just over the minimum size that we require from a touch-screen phone, but it offers plenty of room for most functions.

The phone book holds a hefty 2,000 contracts, with room in each entry for four phone numbers, an e-mail address, a URL, a company name and job title, a birthday, a nickname, a street address, and notes. You can save callers to groups and pair them with a photo, a message, and one of 11 (72-chord) polyphonic ringtones. You can save an additional 250 names to the SIM card.

The 3-megapixel camera takes pictures in five resolutions, from three megapixels down to 400×220. Other editing options include four quality settings, five “scene” selections (like night and landscape), exposure metering, four color effects, adjustable brightness and white balance tools, a self-timer, 20 fun frames, a multishot mode, a smile shot feature (the camera snaps a picture when it detects a smile), and a mosaic shot mode. The camera interface is easy to use with many options surfaced on the viewfinder.

The camcorder shoots clips in two resolutions (320×240 and 176×144), while offering a similar set of editing options. Clips meant for multimedia messages are capped at about one minute, but you can shoot for much longer in normal mode. The Impression has 190MB of user-accessible shared memory, but you can use a memory card for more space.

Well I might have got up to date with a new phone, but that doesn’t mean *I* am up to date. It will take me some time to figure it all out.